Jesus Christ

[DeistPaladin]

ive been searching and its hard to find only historical evidence. thats all I want. all the historical evidence. also i just wanted to know how people on this site viewed the historical figure of jesus

You remind me of myself when I first got involved in the freethought movement. I was curious about what the "real story" was. Before then, I was content to assume he was some cult leader deified by his followers, who insisted that he was sighted just as Elvis fans would do 2000 years later. Who knows, 2000 years from now, there may be a thing called Elvisianity, that tells myths about Elvis, his healing musical powers and how he died for all our sins.

So I started doing some digging to see what was said about Jesus outside the Bible but still within the same century (1st Century CE).

Short answer: Not much. Good luck ever knowing what the true story is, if there even is one to tell.

Long answer: A few scraps and oblique references.

Josephus: Testimonium Flavianum (a laughable forgery that has an orthodox Jew raving about how Jesus was the Christ).

Tacitus: His Annals, written in the 2nd century, contain an oblique reference to the founder of the Christian faith. He explains that they get their name from "Christos", which translates to "the anointed one". Jesus isn't mentioned by name. He relates that this "Christos" was crucified by Pilate. Whether he was passing on something the Christians told him is uncertain, since the reference is so brief. There is no mention of a resurrection or that he was sighted by his followers afterwords, a point that should have been of interest to a Roman lawyer and one who had a fascination with mythology to boot. This is the strongest piece of evidence that any Jesus ever existed. I'll turn it over to Min to provide more detail on why it's a shaky ground to base a belief that there's any truth to the story.

Bar Sarapion: in 70 CE, he mentions that the Jews killed a "wise king" and received no benefit. This "wise king" is never named.

Seutonius: Says in the 2nd century that a "Chrestus" (translates to "the good one") stirred up trouble for Claudius in Rome (circa 50 CE). Few Christians will use this as evidence because of both the date and the name.

The Talmud: There are no contemporary references in Jewish records of either a Jesus or a Paul. It's not until the 4th century that Christians can even claim there was a Jewish reference to Jesus. A verse in the Talmud states that a Yeshua was put to death after a trial for sorcery. Christians excitedly point to this as a reference to Jesus. Problem is that Yeshua was a common name, sorcery was a common charge, the trial lasted 40 days, the accused was connected with the government, and he had five disciples, none of whom were the 12 the Bible lists. This is not consistent with the Christian story.

Bottom line: If he existed, he wasn't noteworthy during the time he lived and nobody outside his circle even noticed him. Good luck ever knowing what the real story was, if there was one.