Evidence for Jesus Christ?

[Napoléon]

By the way, I think this needs to be moved to the general religion discussion board. Jesus is also a figure in the Muslim faith as well.

Yes sorry, i didn't realise i posted it in this particular section

[Minimalist]

In any case, every time this thread is repeated the lack of evidence for a HJ becomes obvious.

[Thor]

If you're going to mention Josephus, it must be noted that he was born AFTER Jesus supposedly died. Therefore, Jospehus could not possibly have been an eyewitness to anything Jesus supposedly did. At best, anything Jospehus could write about Jesus would be hearsay. This would be like someone telling me about the exploits of Pecos Bill and I write about it. Then, a few hundred years later someone finds my writings and says, "Hey! Apparently, there was a guy named Pecos Bill! And look at the amazing things he didl!"

[Minimalist]

"Eye-witnesses" are hugely overrated. There are "eye-witnesses" to UFOs, ghosts, and fucking Elvis coming back, too.

[DeistPaladin]

Here's another reason I think the arguments for a mortal, historical figure on whom the myths of Christianity are based are completely moot.

I've heard that some historians think there was a real "King Arthur" in history. Does that mean the English folk tales are based on a real person? Remove the magical elements, his famous sword and companion wizard, etc. and what is left? An English king with a group of loyal knights? And this is distinct from so many other English kings who lived during that time how?

If we're going to seriously talk of the "historical Jesus" or the "historical King Arthur", there's a certain level of truth we need to expect from the legends. Washington was real, though the story of the cherry tree was a fabrication. There's still enough of the story left over that we can speak of a real person behind the folklore. What about with Jesus?

When you take away the miracles from Jesus, you've already stripped away most of the story. Nearly all of his scenes in the Gospels involved some kind of miracle as a punctuation point or the only thing that makes the event remarkable.

What about the teachings of Jesus? The sermon on the mount didn't involve a miracle. But many of Jesus teachings were either uttered by OT scribes ("Love thy neighbor as thyself" appears in Leviticus) or discovered by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato. Additionally, since Jesus wrote nothing down and since nothing was recorded for at least 40 years, we have no dependable sources as to what his teachings were.

How about the ministry of Jesus? Again, since no contemporary reports exist and even the ones that came later are cursory and oblique, we can only assume his movement was far from famous or controversial as the Gospels contend.

What's left?

What do we mean when we say "historical Jesus"? Some wandering rabbi named "Yeshua" who was a doom crier that ended up being crucified?

Yeshua was a common name back then. Doom criers, messiah contenders and splinter factions of Judaism abounded. Judea was chafing under the yoke of Roman occupation and looking for their messiah. Absolutely nothing about what's left, if there is anything to speak of, was unique. The legend could have been a fabrication, or based thinly on the life of a real Yeshua, or based on several religious leaders who might or might not have had the name Yeshua.

How can we ever know anything about this hypothetical person? Does it even matter at all?

[Doubting Thomas]

From the very Wikipedia article quoted:

However some scholars have argued that the very identification of James the Just with the "brother of Jesus" is highly dubious, mainly because there is no corroborating evidence that James the Just was Jesus's actual brother (see Relationship to Jesus), and because the word "Christ" doesn't appear anywhere else in Josephus's works, aside from the Testimonium Flavium which they dismiss in its entirety as a blatant forgery (although many scholars maintain it was only partially forged). So to those scholars who admit that the Testimonium is in its entirety a forgery, a Christian interpolation, it makes no sense that Josephus would introduce James the Just as "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ", since he doesn't mention this man anywhere else in his writings. Moreover, they say, James the Just was an important figure on his own, whereas "Jesus who called Christ" wasn't, at least not for Josephus, or his roman audience, and therefore it is unlikely that the Jewish historian would have felt the urge to appeal to his so called brother's credentials in order to identify him (as if Jesus was the more important character, and James could only be identified in relation to Jesus, about whom otherwise Josephus is completely silent). Instead, they argue, the original text which read "and brought before them a man who was called The Brother of the Lord, who's name was James", was altered by a Christian copist from the 2nd or 3d century into "and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, who's name was James", who simply regarded that "the Lord" in James title was referring to his lord Jesus Christ, and wanted to make that thing clear to anyone who read that fragment.

Even if Josephus' writings weren't forged, why are there no Roman records of Jesus? After all, he was a pretty big troublemaker according to them, and would have been written about.

[Minimalist]

Does it even matter at all?

Actually, it does. As H. L. Mencken said:

Either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if he did not, then it is sheer nonsense.

[Napoléon]

Even if Josephus' writings weren't forged, why are there no Roman records of Jesus? After all, he was a pretty big troublemaker according to them, and would have been written about.

I had a bible basher answer this one for me, apparently the romans deliberately wiped all knowledge of him from the history books.

How convenient.

[DeistPaladin]

Even if Josephus' writings weren't forged, why are there no Roman records of Jesus? After all, he was a pretty big troublemaker according to them, and would have been written about.

I had a bible basher answer this one for me, apparently the romans deliberately wiped all knowledge of him from the history books.

How convenient.

A Protestant former friend once had a conspiracy theory that the Catholic Church gathered up every scrap of information and locked it away in the Vatican.

This is why proving a negative is so futile.

[Minimalist]

Even if Josephus' writings weren't forged, why are there no Roman records of Jesus? After all, he was a pretty big troublemaker according to them, and would have been written about.

I had a bible basher answer this one for me, apparently the romans deliberately wiped all knowledge of him from the history books.

How convenient.

But they left in Hannibal? And Attila? And Alaric? And Arminius? And Caligula? And Nero?

Instead they spent all that time and effort to rid themselves of referenes to a ridiculous preacher?

It's a ludicrous assumption.