Did Jesus exist?

[Jericho]

Wait...I just had a thought.

If Jesus was real and a demigod...and Cleopatra was real and a demigod...that means...

Trump must also be a demigod...

[Aegon]

Nearly 10 pages after my posts and people still use the "no contemporary sources" argument...

[Wyrd of Gawd]

According to the Bible Paul was the first character to preach about Jesus.  Paul created the Jesus character to sell his idea about resurrection and eternal life.  Everything people knew about Jesus they got from Paul.  The Gospel writers developed the Jesus character and showed why he was worthy of being worshiped.  Since life sucked at that time it was easy to gain converts, especially once they dropped the circumcision and communism requirements.  It wasn't a peer pressure religion and there was no expensive rituals or pilgrimages.  It was a religion for the common poor man that taught obedience to the status quo.

I suspect that if there was a Paul, he made up alot of stories about "Paul" as well.

Paul claimed to have been all things to all men.  He was a master BS'er.

[Minimalist]

Nearly 10 pages after my posts and people still use the "no contemporary sources" argument...

That's because there are NO CONTEMPORARY SOURCES.

Got it now?

[Aegon]

Nearly 10 pages after my posts and people still use the "no contemporary sources" argument...

That's because there are NO CONTEMPORARY SOURCES.

Got it now?

And there are plenty of people in ancient history WHO DON'T HAVE CONTEMPORARY SOURCES ABOUT THEM BUT ARE STILL ACCEPTED AS EXISTING.

Got it now?

[Minimalist]

And if any of them fucking mattered today it would be a problem.

You see, you jesus shits keep insisting that we should follow the "teachings" of this guy who you cannot show even existed. 

If Clyde the Shitkicker in Ancient Assyria did not exist, so what?  You have brought this bullshit on yourself by insisting that fairy tales are real.

Try thinking about that for a while.

[Pat Mustard]

Thanks for posting evidence which disproves your argument, you little ball sucking shit you.

Brilliant riposte, Constable. 

A truly dazzling display of the intellectual and rhetorical prowess of the "bright" side.

I'm pretty proud of it too, idiot. It says more in one short sentence than all your donkey ball sucking walls of text ever had.

[Pat Mustard]

Min, that coin is in Greek.
Tell me a bit about that. Was it Greek money or Egyptian?

As Rhythm has said Cleopatra was of the Ptolemaic dynasty (the last of them in fact). As such she was part Greek and part Egyptian, and depending on where she was she played up the Greek and Egyptian parts accordingly (in Alexandria she was all Greek, when she travelled up the Nile to the Egyptian centres she was all Egyptian).

[The Grand Nudger]

IDK Aegon, if "accepted as existing" is in fact the only support offered for either jesus or -any- other character,....are we really discussing historicity at all? Are you even disagreeing with anything? I also think that "accepted as existing" is how this historicity claim was arrived at, as I've said, a bare appeal to tradition.

If the question is "upon what evidence do we conclude that -x- existed historically" the answer "-x- has long been accepted as historical" does not answer it.

[Aegon]

And if any of them fucking mattered today it would be a problem.

You see, you jesus shits keep insisting that we should follow the "teachings" of this guy who you cannot show even existed. 

If Clyde the Shitkicker in Ancient Assyria did not exist, so what?  You have brought this bullshit on yourself by insisting that fairy tales are real.

Try thinking about that for a while.

Why are you so insistent on me being a Christian? For the fourth fucking time, I'm an atheist. Like I said, this is your problem. An inability to separate Jesus the man and Jesus the myth. If one isn't real, the other one just can't possibly be real!

Don't worry, before you say it, I'll say it for you: "Can't separate the man and myth because they're the same fucking thing!" Ha ha! Good one, man! Got me there!

IDK Aegon, if "accepted as existing" is in fact the only support offered for either jesus or -any- other character...are we really discussing historicity at all? Are you even disagreeing with anything? I also think that "accepted as existing" is how this historicity claim was arrived at, as I've said, a bare appeal to tradition.

It's about a disagreement over what constitutes evidence. People who don't study history demand better evidence, but the problem is 95 percent of ancient historians see what evidence we have for Jesus as good evidence. And it's not because they're Christians looking to prove Christianity as true. Ancient historians can be Christian, Muslim, agnostic, or atheist, but their training still tells them what to look for and how to find it in order to better paint a picture of the world's past. Jesus being a real person DOES NOT mean he performed miracles. Jesus being a real person DOES NOT, IN ANY WAY give the whole "God" thing any better of an argument. The fact that a Jewish man who believed himself to be the Messiah preached to a town of people and then got executed IN NO WAY "proves" Christianity, and I just don't understand why some people are so quick to ignore historians' judgments on the matter. Him existing =! him being the son of God and all that jazz. 

Again, it's all just weird to me. It'd make MORE sense that people were duped into believing Christianity if there was an actual prophet figure to base it all on. 

See how easy it is to create a religious cult around a living person, even in modern times: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Cv5hZfOmk