Did Jesus exist?

[Skipper]

As with the claimed existence of god, isn't the burden of proof on you?

So I would love to see some credible books and encyclopedias saying that Jesus DID exist. THE BIBLE is an example of something which is not credible.

Truth is when looking at records for that long ago there is always going to be doubt about truths and details, but you would think a guy going around walking on water, curing diseases and raising from the dead would cause enough of a stir that there would be more than the usual amount of evidence for a normal person around that time.

Even if we except he did exist, where outside of the bible does the world ever talk of his amazing magical tricks? Logically you have to say they never happened. Then if you go as far to except that the things he did do we're possible you then have to ignore that biblical accounts of a man called Jesus rehashes things used in previous stories/religions such as virgin births and raising from the dead.

So Jesus as the bible teaches did exist...as long as you over look the difficulties in using records so old to prove the existence of one person, ignore the lack of records talking of his powers, also decide to believe that all the stories pre-bible that are similar in content to what Jesus does were just coincidences and then also put faith in the idea that he is the son of god whilst having absolutely ZERO evidence to back that up.

[thesummerqueen]

I was trying to find a particular article I had read, but this will suffice in the meantime.

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Nazareth-Inve...303&sr=8-2

[Minimalist]

Mohammad did exist.

There is no contemporary evidence for mohammad's existence, either. Same as jesus. Same as King Arthur. Or the Easter Bunny.

[thesummerqueen]

Mohammad did exist.

There is no contemporary evidence for mohammad's existence, either. Same as jesus. Same as King Arthur. Or the Easter Bunny.

At least King Arthur had a cool sword. And a hot wife.

[Minimalist]

As with mohammad's flying fucking horse or jesus' bullshit "resurrection" that was just chrome tacked on to the story later.

[thesummerqueen]

Yeah, but I'm just sayin'...out of the made up shit, the sword and hot woman were more interesting.

Odin had a better flying horse too.

[theVOID]

Ok so I created a thread called, 'Where did Jesus get His morality' and for some reason a lot of people doubt Jesus's existence.
So I would love to see some credible books and encyclopedias saying that Jesus did not exist. evilbible.com is an example of something which is not credible.
You can say that Jesus was a fabrication (which historically makes no sense) but this argument has as much crediblity as the idea some creationists think that scientists fabricate fossils for evolution.
I would like to quote Napoleon:
‎"I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of myself, Caesar, and Alexander should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant – Jesus – should be able to stretch His hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations"
Can you really disagree with that?

Okay, how about this:

Rene Salm is an Archaeologist Author who has lead Aggregated the most thorough Archaeological excavation of the Galilee region to date, one of the things that he discovered was that there is absolutely no evidence of Nazareth existing until the second CE

There is no mention of Nazareth in any of the oldest manuscripts of Mark or Matthew and there are early traditions of Luke where the sole appearance of Nazareth is written Nazarean, which is the name of the "Church" that Paul belonged to, the "Sect of the Nazarean". While it has been claimed by many theist historians that "Obviously they were the Nazareans because Jesus was from Nazareth" None of the early Nazarean traditions mention Nazareth at all.

So Nazareth is likely a mistranslation from Nazarean, it is likely the Greek authorship in the 2nd CE (which is before the earliest manuscripts we have) didn't know of Nazarean but did know of Nazareth and corrected the texts. Bob price has a whole lecture on this if you're interested.

Also, Jesus was apparently a Rabbai, but this term wasn't used until after the compilation of the Pentateuch in the 3rd CE.

AND There were no Pharisees outside of the temple at the time, by law, it wasn't until the destruction of the temple that we have evidence of their activities in any formal sense outside of Jerusalem. The Pharisees were temple priests, and we have almost no accounts of them travelling, let alone living in a shit hole in Galilee Yet Jesus had many run-in's with these Pharisees...

[thesummerqueen]

Thank you Void.

[Minimalist]

One correction before the fundies jump all over you, Void. Salm, himself, is not an archaeologist. He makes no such claim in his book. He is a linguist and also a composer. What he has done, however, is correlate all the archaeological evidence to date ( his bibliography is 14 pages long ) including those studies which question the Franciscan's findings.

One of the most compelling parts of the book was the study of ancient writings. "Nazareth" it would seem was of no consequence to early xtian writers. Origen, for example, lived in Caesarea Maritima but apparently never even bothered to go there...and it certainly existed by Origen's time. The so-called "Paul" never refers to jesus of nazareth...or anywhere else, for that matter and common Jewish custom would have been to refer to a person by his father: jesus, son of joseph, for example.

[/u]

[theVOID]

Cheers Min