Did Jesus exist?

[Jehanne]

Was Jesus of Nazareth an historical person?  I voted for the first option, "Yes, absolutely."

I believe so myself. Here's a great resource besides the bible. Interesting that many christians don't even look at this:

http://www.near-death.com/science/research/jesus.html

I think that he was a religious loon, a total nut-job.  But, yes, the "Jesus didn't exist" meme, IMHO, needs to be expunged from the atheistic consciousness.

[Jehanne]

I believe so myself. Here's a great resource besides the bible. Interesting that many christians don't even look at this:

http://www.near-death.com/science/research/jesus.html

Right, because it is a well known fact that people are simply incapable of making shit up.

The Gospels are filled with legendary, embellished material.  Even William Lane Craig acknowledges this fact with respect to Matthew 27, going so far as to say that Matthew was not writing literal history.  Of course, Craig is a fool; very little historical information can be gleaned from the Gospels, but they all, clearly, point to an epileptic revolutionary with delusions of grandeur, Jesus of Nazareth.

[GrandizerII]

I believe so myself. Here's a great resource besides the bible. Interesting that many christians don't even look at this:

http://www.near-death.com/science/research/jesus.html

I think that he was a religious loon, a total nut-job.  But, yes, the "Jesus didn't exist" meme, IMHO, needs to be expunged from the atheistic consciousness.

It's ok to consider Jesus may not have existed, but to date, it hasn't been established that mythicism is a better position than Jesus historicism. There is not yet a good Jesus mythicist theory, whether we're talking about Doherty's theory or the theory of amalgamation or Acharya's copycat theory or some other variation.

Also, some thing to always keep in mind, the real evidence for Jesus' historicism is in the context surrounding the New Testament, not the books themselves.

[GrandizerII]

Right, because it is a well known fact that people are simply incapable of making shit up.

The Gospels are filled with legendary, embellished material.  Even William Lane Craig acknowledges this fact with respect to Matthew 27, going so far as to say that Matthew was not writing literal history.  Of course, Craig is a fool; very little historical information can be gleaned from the Gospels, but they all, clearly, point to an epileptic revolutionary with delusions of grandeur, Jesus of Nazareth.

Putting aside the virgin birth and the resurrection (and everything in the Gospel of John), there isn't anything really spectacular in the Synoptic Gospels attributed to Jesus. Sure, there were reports of healing and such, but this is something that we hear about attributed to real people in this present day as well.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's ok to consider Jesus may not have existed, but to date, it hasn't been established that mythicism is a better position than Jesus historicism.

You mean, except for all the miracles and magic and non-history that make the character legendary, by definition, and not historical -at the least-?  Other than all of that?  

The only options on the table for "jesus" are legendary and mythical. IMO, that makes mythicism a better position than historicism by default.

Also, some thing to always keep in mind, the real evidence for Jesus' historicism is in the context surrounding the New Testament, not the books themselves.

Let's see some of that? I have a feeling that it's going to fall far, far short of evidence for a historical jesus. Let's imagine a future, though, in which you do provide knockdown drag out evidence that jesus was really, really real. The character in the gospels would remain legendary regardless (and could still very well be mythical). It's not the "jesus of context exterior to the gospels" that people believe in....and I'm at a bit of a loss trying to imagine what jesus you could possibly be referring to as a candidate for historical in the first place, apart -from- the gospels jesus.

You find a lost book of christ somewhere?

[dyresand]

I believe so myself. Here's a great resource besides the bible. Interesting that many christians don't even look at this:

http://www.near-death.com/science/research/jesus.html

I think that he was a religious loon, a total nut-job.  But, yes, the "Jesus didn't exist" meme, IMHO, needs to be expunged from the atheistic consciousness.

There is no historical fact that a guy named jesus lived and the damning fact of the matter is no one has the birth date of the guy 
no has evidence of mary.

[GrandizerII]

For those interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba

An example of someone who clearly existed but whose life story was full of "legend".

[The Grand Nudger]

Not sure what the airquotes are doing.  The character of Sai Baba as told with those stories included is legendary, not historical. Is this what you're angling for in the case of jesus? A legendary character? You must realize,if so, that you've already given up on a historical jesus?

Let's throw up jesus' wiki page as well. For comparison. I have a feeling that one of these things is not like the other...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus

[Aegon]

Oh jeez, looks like I'm going against the grain again. 

It's just bizarre to me. You believe in global warming, don't you? Sure, there are a select few scientists that don't think man-made global warming is a thing. But there's a scientific consensus on it existing. It's the exact same situation here. There is a consensus among historians that Jesus existed. So why are you only listening to the select few historians who disagree? I mean, purely from a logical standpoint, there must have been an historical Jesus for 1) the Jews to doubt the divinity of and 2) for an entire goddamn religion to form. How could a religion form over absolutely nothing? Every religion in history has had its driving force. But anyway..

Aside from the gospels, you have Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus (and Lucian, who never seems to get mentioned in these debates.) Here's a comment from an historian on the matter. I think he says it pretty well:

On the global warming comparison, you're not even close. We have tons of independent evidence for anthropogenic global warming, we have testable theories and we have predictions that can also be tested. For Jesus we have one single piece of  evidence, written after the fact under the control of the claimants and known to be massively doctored. To claim the same evidential status for Jesus as agw is to poiso. The well agains agw.

History is not a hard science. That wasn't the point of my comparison. I was comparing how much of the scientific community agreed upon something versus how much of the historian community agreed upon something. When you speak in favor of climate change, you say 97 percent of the scientific community agrees it is real. The other 3 percent are crazy, or mistaking the data in order to push an agenda. And that's exactly the case here with any historians who claim there was no historical Jesus. No peer-reviewed journal would publish such bad history. That's why all the publications about Jesus not existing are only among popular literature. They're not taken seriously. And as for your "we only have one piece of evidence," no, we don't, that is incorrect.

Ps I also see your "reputable" historian friend includes the Testamonium Flavinium for evidence of Jesus. Given that the evidence pretty strongly suggests thqt it is a later interpolation into the text by Eusebius at c 325 CE I would suggest that by rights it should be ignored.

Actually the whole thing with Josephus brings up a major problem with the biblical field of historical study. If the only evidence we had for Octavian was a partisan biography full of magical fantastic events and a couple of small passages of authors eaqually removed from the events, of very doubtful authenthicity then no reputable historian of that period in Rome would accept him as historical. Yet that's the standard under which we are supposed to hold Jesus. With the same stanard I can prove that Fionn McCumhail tricked the Scottish giant by pretending to be a baby.

Hey, news flash: there are plenty of people in history who we accept as having existed that have EVEN LESS evidence in favor of their existence than Jesus did. A famous one? Plato! You think Plato was real, no? Well there's no hard evidence in favor of him being a real person. The only true, concrete evidence we have in favor of Plato existing is A) there was a large group of followers who spread his philosophy and B) there was an academy in his name. The biography of Plato is not considered reputable or reliable. Everything else about him has been established on part of speculation by historians. I know you must be thinking, "Aegon, I'm not stupid. Plato wrote a number of works. How is that not concrete evidence?" Because many of his works can't be proven to actually be written by him and very well may have been written by one or more of his followers. His works are heavily fictionalized. This seems familiar, huh? A philosopher who managed to amass a great number of followers with no solid evidence of him existing besides the followers themselves...

So with the same standard, Plato never existed. Be sure to tell the world your discovery! The philosophy academia is sure to be disappointed. 

I will always trust reputable historians and peer-reviewed scholarly work over people on the internet on things like this. But I thank you anyway

So you also believe that a million man army from Sudan invaded Judea. How many angels have you seen lately buzzing around with six wings?

Put on your historian hat for a second and realize that these stories can be used to pinpoint many true, historical things. Take the Greek tragedy Antigone for example. Do you think the play's events literally happened? No. But historians have actually used the play to make many different statements about the society in which the play took place. But you might say, "Yeah and none of the characters are real either, just like Jesus isn't real in the Gospels!" Okay, fine. Perhaps an even better example would be reading the creation myths and other similar myths from nearby cultures. What about the Epic of Gilgamesh? Obviously most of the events in that story are ridiculous are never happened. But it is agreed that Gilgamesh was a true, historical person, and all Ancient Near Eastern historians include him on their list of Sumerian kings. Are we going to argue about whether or not Gilgamesh was a real person? It is generally accepted that he was. Just like it is generally accepted that Jesus was, as historians apply the same logic to the Gospels. Yes, obviously mostly fiction. But you don't dismiss potential historical clues because of that. That's bad research.

I will always trust reputable historians and peer-reviewed scholarly work over people on the internet on things like this. But I thank you anyway

But apparently only if they agree with your predetermined notions.

I see no reason to respond to this considering you're doing the same thing, ignoring centuries of research because you read a popular literature book that none of the academic community takes seriously. It's not like I'm just one stubborn Jesus-lover. I look like I'm in the minority on here, but in actuality you are. 

Like I said above, history is not a hard science. You work with what you have. And by historians' standards, Jesus existed. Otherwise, plenty of other historical figures never existed either.

[robvalue]

The problem is not so much with deciding whether "Jesus" existed, it's defining exactly what it means for him to have existed.

If "Jesus" is defined so loosely as to be anyone the story could have been based on, given a few correlations, then there are millions of the bastards. But the figure written is a fictional figure. How exactly someone strips that down to be left with what they consider to be enough for a "historical figure" is going to be a matter of judgement. And clearly not everyone agrees, so they are not talking about the same "Jesus".

Personally, I think there is no way to be at all certain or even confident that it's exactly one person under the myth, no way at all. Especially given the length of time between the events and the recording of the events by people who didn't even experience it themselves. They could even have intended to write about a single figure, and yet have actually written about a legion, due to the nature of oral stories. They couldn't even know, so I'm buggered with a red hot cabbage if we can.

That is my take, for what it it's worth. [Nothing. It's worth nothing daddy. Make me my dinner.]