The Historical Jesus

[Pat Mustard]

That seems like an impossible question because even those historians who take Gospels to contain some historical facts about Jesus, consider that they are something like 95% made up (lies). And there isn't any other evidence of him except in the NT. Like what do you mean by "was Jesus a real person?"

From what I understand the "real" Jesus did not exist but rather there might have been someone, like an apocalyptic preacher, who inspired myths about him. Like, you can't say there was a historical Santa but rather a guy who inspired Santa Claus mythology. Granted, there is more evidence that the guy who inspired Santa Claus mythology actually existed.

Mara Bar Samrion, "What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. Wat advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that their Kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good; He lived on in the teaching which He had given."

1) Doesn't refer to Yeshua bar Yosef, he wasn't king of the Jews. 2) The letter contains no reference to any form of christian religion. 3) The letter was quite likely a forgery, with no way to pin down a definite date of authoriship before the third century (two hundred years after bar Serapion's [note correct spelling] death). 4) Even then the oldest copy of the letter we have is from another three centuries later?

So yeah, not evidence for Jesus, not even a little bit.