Historicity of Jesus

[Minimalist]

There were hundreds of men named Y'shua in first century Judaea. There had to be as it was a very common name.

How can we, nowadays, tell if it was a common name?

There are over 20 jesuses named in Josephus alone....not counting the one that xtian forgers invented.

[Aractus]

ah.... I see...
I wonder why the bible doesn't mention the carving of the name on JC's casket/tomb?
Was it a practice only the wealthy could afford?

No, even ossuaries for the poor are inscribed. You don't have inscriptions when there is a mass-grave (e.g. 20 or more people buried together), although sometimes you do still have a family name.

[Simon Moon]

I'm kind of a 'Jesus historicity' agnostic.

I tend to lean toward the Biblical character probably being a composite of several 1st century itinerant messianic Rabbis named Y'shua.

But then, I haven't read Richard Carrier's newest book, "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt", where he applies Bayes' Theorem to the subject. It might sway me.

But even if he did exist, that does not offer any evidence for any of the supernatural and god claims for him. Just like Mohamed's historical existence does not offer any evidence that he flew to heaven on a winged creature, or was dictated the Koran in a cave by and angel named Gabriel.

[Tonus]

As a christian I always accepted the historicity, but when you look deeply at it...it looks suspect at best.

One thing you might notice over time is that many theist arguments come down to "this or that could have happened." Which is to say that their holy book says that something happened, and although there is no evidence that it did, the lack of sufficient disqualifying evidence allows them to hang on to the possibility that it happened. The most obvious version of this is the old "you can't prove god doesn't exist" ploy.

Where Jesus is concerned, I suspect that their hope is that if they can establish that there was a guy named Jesus around whom the new testament was built, then the accounts in the books could have happened. And that is sufficient evidence for them. Which makes sense for a belief system built on presuppositions, after all. Doesn't work too well if you're short on Kool-Aid, though.

---

There are over 20 jesuses named in Josephus alone....not counting the one that xtian forgers invented.

I wonder why it doesn't strike the christers as weird that Josephus seems pretty nonchalant about what he wrote in the TF, if it was indeed what he had written. He interrupts himself to tell his readers that hey, there was this amazing guy who WAS THE CHRIST AND CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD and, um... what was I going on about? Oh yeah, this other sundry shit. Let's get back to that and forget all about the god figure.

Well, no wonder there seems to be so little reporting on Jesus during his time-- no one was impressed by stuff like walking on water, healing the sick, feeding thousands out of a basket, and dying them coming back to life. Just another day in the ancient middle east!

[Stealth]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the stuff about the Virgin birth was inserted after the fact. Well, after-after the fact since the NTs seem to deal only in second hand sources after all the events had already finished. He was meant to be the descendant of David originally to fulfil prophecy, which now he isn't, because he got switched out that blood line.

It's all complete crap, if there was a real guy, you're lucky if he did or said a handful of the things attributed to him in my opinion. I'm not sure it's even a given that he was crucified, if he existed at all.

Apologies if I mucked any details up, this was a hasty post before bed

The only truths, if any, I would say would be a poor peasant jew that claimed to be son of David, and for that was crucified. Just like 1000's of other jews and criminals. What made him so special I think is the Romans, for reasons I don't know.