No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone's historical existence.
Literary proof is, but also doesn't exist for Jesus Christ.
There's a few mentions of just a "Jesus" but its not like no one else was named Jesus, and those don't really make any mention of him being remarkable in any way.
There's just no evidence
There exists documented proof in many bits of literature from around 200 BCE to around 100 CE of numerous different figures in what is called 'Jewish Apocalypticism', basically a small in number but persistent phenomenon of Jews in and around what was for most of that time the Roman province of Palestine, preaching that the end would come, that God or a Messiah would return or arise and basically liberate the region and install a Godly Kingdom, usually after or as part of other fantastical events.
Jesus was one of many of these Jewish Apocalypticists. Much like the rest of the movement's key figures, they were wrong, and their lives were greatly exaggerated in either their writings or writings about them or inspired by them.
This seems to be the (extremely condensed) opinion of most Biblical Scholars.
There are a very small number of modern Biblical Scholars that are 'Mythicists' of some kind, who believe that Jesus was completely fictional and wholly invented by certain people or groups.
This is an unpopular view amongst scholars and historians of that time and region, as most believe it more plausible that Jesus was just another example of a radical Jewish Apocalyptic preacher, which again, was fairly common for roughly 300 years in that region.
Its like how if you go to a big city theres always that one guy with a megaphone preaching imminent doom. 99% of people think this is silly and ignore them, but tons of people know that people like them exist and do have small followings.
I agree with you that Jesus wasn't God, who doesn't exist, and that there were no miracles, which are impossible. However, this is not the same thing as saying that there's no evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Jewish apocalyptic preacher.
The earliest documents about Jesus, such as the Pauline Epistles, were written by people who knew people who knew him. In a mostly illiterate society 2,000 years ago, this is about as good as evidence gets. It's also the exact same kind of evidence as a journalist or researcher writing an account based on interviews with people. This was how, e.g, Herodotus wrote his histories. When Herodotus says 'A guy rode a dolphin once' we dismiss that. But we don't say 'The people in the Histories didn't exist, except those for whom there's physical evidence, which is about three of them, not including the author'. We do much the same with Jesus and the miracles.
If the Apostles had wanted, for some reason, to make up a guy, that would have been risky. Other people would have just said, 'That guy didn't exist'. If they had anyway decided to make up a guy, they'd have invented someone who actually fulfilled the Jewish propehcies of the Messiah, instead of inventing Jesus, who obviously didn't. This suggests they didn't invent him, which strengthens the plausibility of the evidence we do have.
A third way of looking at this is to ask if there are any comparable figures, religious founders from the historic era, who we now think were wholly made up in the way you're suggesting. But there aren't. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster - they all certainly existed. Indeed, I can't think of any figures form the time period who were actually imaginary.
I'm pretty sure without the fossilised bones we would think dinosaurs weren't a thing
That's because there weren't multiple people around to write down what they saw. You're confusing paleontology and history. They have very different standards for proof.
There are tons of historical figures for whom we have no physical evidence. But we have tons of written evidence from people who all experienced those people.
That's prehistory. Everything we know about history comes from written accounts. Historians study written documents and argue whether or not the available evidence makes it more likely that something (or someone) was real or fiction.
Most historians agree that there was a Jewish man named Jesus (yehoshua), who preached in Judea and the Galilee in the early first century, who gained followers and was crucified by Rome. There are also historians who examine the same evidence and conclude it is more likely that no such person existed, because that's how academia works.
See also for comparison: Genghis Khan
We don't have the bones of gengis khan either
The point is that you are asking the wrong question sort of. If we only accepted physical remnants of someone or their life to prove they exist, Jesus wouldn't be the only one we would have to throw out.
Not to say I know how to prove stuff historically, it does sort of seem like magic sometimes. If we found out today that carbon dating was off by a magnitude I would not be shocked, so that's all the faith I have in it due to my bad understanding of it.
Archaeology in good at giving us clues about the living thing. References to people existing is almost purely based on text people wrote. The proof would be someone writing down "Chrestos, popular among the poor was crucified for his crimes for spreading heresy" as a contemporary. But since the earliest reference we have is a century after his death it's not necessarily accurate or true.
You won't find fossilized Jesus, he apparently got resurrected and became wine & cookies, so some people started eating him on Sundays. And he doesn't want us to say fuck, or shit, or do it in the butt. But that's not really related to the question.
As an atheist I believe Jesus existed, I just don’t think he was the son of god or that he was resurrected.
It would have been far easier to start a religion around a real man with actual followers than if he was a figment of someone’s imagination.
I like to picture my Jesus as a desert hippie that people liked and told tall tales of in order to give people living in that harsh environment some hope and meaning.
IIRC, the religion didn't get anywhere is Palestine after Jesus supposedly died and it wasn't until decades later that it picked up in and around Greece thanks to Paul, but no one was around that saw any of the events attributed to Jesus - it was all heresay.
I mean the bible is how many pages and how much of it actually takes place during Jesus's life? And what is the timespan of the small part that does? Like a year? And the 4 gospels that talk about it are all rehashings of the same stories (more or less) and even contradict each other at times.
That's a story with a lot of gaps and plot holes to base a belief system around - and that doesn't even include all the baggage and hate that comes along with it.
People nowadays lose their mind and make death threats to the creators of stories that don't fix or create new plot holes in canon. And we're supposed to smile, nod, and happily accept one of the worst constructed stories ever just because some old white men that live the opposite way they tell us to live say so?
Religion is the OG fandom war
What do you mean by physical proof?
Some history is known by digging up physical stones n bones. Some is known by digging up texts.
There are multiple texts dated to the 1st century that all corroborate the story that a person called Jesus was crucified around 33AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
It's weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.
There's even a link to a well cited article examining the skepticism of the historicity of Jesus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
I don't feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.
In my experience, when it comes to debating the validity of religion, people tend to get far more emotional than other topics. People who are normally level-headed and quite logical tend to completely lose their ability to think rationally. And I mean both the people who argue for religion and against it.
Yeah there are plenty of historians who have done good work studying this and the academia is mostly settled. Not to say there's no controversy, but there's definitely an orthodox opinion.
I don't feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.
but then
It's weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.
Well cited article aren't proof of existenceof a man. Is spiderman real if enough people cite the comics? A group of influential people could gather and make their own circle of these myths and present it as a fact. And it isn't fucking new.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-dark-world-of-citation-cartels
Religions and all their influence could force a lot of heavily studied subject to be skewed for their benefit. Hell, there were studies that were treated as standard making sugar and alcohol heavily beneficial for human beings. And we're talking about a person.
The evidence isn't even that strong, there i just aren't that many people willing to risk becoming a pariah to dispute them.
If you are a Christian, there is no doubt Jesus existed. Any oblique reference to a rabbi who was persecuted hundreds years ago is considered evidence that Jesus existed. But no contemporaneous documentation exists.
If you're not a Christian, debunking all of those vague references that might be proof of a Jewish leader named Jesus just isn't particularly important, won't persuade anyone who believes Jesus was(is) God, and will paint a target on your back for terrorists.
Wait… you mean to tell me there’s not a collective of atheist Wikipedia writers that have dedicated their lives to the absence of religion and citing themselves on refuting evidence on Wikipedia?!?
Wouldn’t it be weird of every Wikipedia article on the historical validity of Jesus was written by Christian scholars that have dedicated their lives to their religion? It would be wild if they were just citing themselves in these Wiki articles in order to sell some books, wouldn’t it?
No, there arent a lot of texts from the 1st century AD about him. The majority by far stems from the second century or later.
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
The article you provided (if you read it) should actually serve to cast more doubt on the idea; it does not “answer the question to the affirmative.”
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
That implies each source says: "A man called Jesus was crucified". The article you provided (if you read it) should have told you otherwise.
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Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, year 93-94: "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."
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Tacitus's Annals, year 117: Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus
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Physical proof? No. But if that's the criterion for proof that someone existed, then that mean 90% of historical figures can't be proven to have existed. We don't have the remains of Alexander the Great or any artefacts we can be sure are his. We have no remnants of Plato, none of his original writings remain.
Did a person name Jesus live sometime during the first century AD? Scholars are fairly certain of that. We do have textual evidence other than the bible that points to his existence.
It is highly unlikely that he was anything like the person written about in the bible. He was likely one of many radical apocalyptic prophets of the time.
We don't have too many details about his life but because of something called the criterion of embarrassment we have good reason to believe he was baptized by a man named John the Baptist and was later crucified. (i.e. most burgeoning religions seeking legitimacy don't typically invent stories that are embarrassing to their deity)
then that mean 90% of historical figures can’t be proven to have existed
Well for most of those we tend to use independent verification for their existence. And in the case of jesus, we have literally zero Credible examples of independent verification.
And in the case of jesus, we have literally zero independent verification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
If you mean Jesus as described word for word in the bible? Yes you are right. Such a mythical figure never existed.
A man name Jesus from the first century AD? Who preached in the Levant? Who was baptized by a man named John and was later crucified? There is good enough evidence of such a person existing. This isn't even a debated question among new testament scholars anymore.
I see you are familiar with Bart Ehrman, Even he doesn't dispute that a historical Jesus existed.
Here's an even deeper dive from Bart Ehrman.
We do have textual evidence other than the bible that points to his existence.
Idk why you would need textual evidence besides the Bible to be certain the guy existed. It's not like these are magical books that sprung from the earth. They have historical reasons for existing and the most likely reason includes the existence of the dude.
I'm by no means an expert but I was briefly obsessed with comparative religion over a decade ago and I don't think anyone has given a great answer, I believe my answer is correct but I don't have time for research beyond checking a couple of details.
As a few people have mentioned there is little physical evidence for even the most notable individuals from that time period and it's not reasonable to expect any for Jesus.
In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus. Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus mentions him twice, once briefly telling the story of his crucifixion and resurrection. The second is a mention in passing when discussing the brother of Jesus delivering criminals to be stoned.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that a Jewish spiritual leader with a name something like Jesus Christ probably existed and that not long after his death miracles are being attributed to him.
It is also worth noting the historical context of the recent emergence of Rabbinical Judaism and the overabundance of other leaders who were claimed to be Messiahs, many of whom we also know about primarily(actually I think only) from Josephus.
The part mentioning Jesus's crucifixion in Josephus is extremely likely to have been altered if not entirely fabricated.
The idea that the historical figure was known as either 'Jesus' or 'Christ' is almost 0% given the former is a Greek version of the Aramaic name and the same for the second being the Greek version of Messiah, but that one is even less likely given in the earliest cannonical gospel he only identified that way in secret and there's no mention of it in the earliest apocrypha.
In many ways, it's the various differences between the account of a historical Jesus and the various other Messianic figures in Judea that I think lends the most credence to the historicity of an underlying historical Jesus.
One tends to make things up in ways that fit with what one knows, not make up specific inconvenient things out of context with what would have been expected.
In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus
Misinformation.
There's Tacitus's Annals (year 117), Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (93-94), Mara bar Serapion's letter to his son.
Seutonius (Lives of the Twelve Cæsars) and Pliny wrote about the conflict between the Romans and the followers of Christ (or Chrestus) around that era.
You are the one who is doing the misinforming. All of the sources you mention, except Josephus, were written up to more than a century after his supposed existence. With Josephus being written around half a century after his existence.
And as mentioned, the specific quotes from Josephus are of a dubious nature.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here but both Suetonius and Pliny are talking about Christians in the 2nd century, Tacitus speaks about Christ only in the context of Nero blaming Christians for the great fire. These are literary evidence for the existence of Christians in the second century but are not direct literary evidence of the existence of Christ as an individual which was the question I was addressing.
I'd be delighted to be shown to be wrong but I believe my original post stands.
The thing is that compared to other historical people we kid of have similar evidence. Like we have records of Socrates existing and we have records of some Joshua existing.
The difference is that nobody claims that Socrates was a fantastical god being who defied death, which is a extraordinary claim, we just say he was a very smart guy, we se very smart guys on a daily basis, nothing special with that so we can just believe it and even if we are wrong it has no real life implications.
For the Joshua guy, that's quite a different story. The claims about him are extraordinary and need extraordinary evidence. But we only have normal evidence. If the claims about him were true it would contradict almost everything we think we know about the universe, how it behaves, etc.
So again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The difference is that nobody claims that Socrates was a fantastical god being who defied death,
To use a more modern example, pretty much everyone agrees that Grigori Rasputin was a real person who played a crucial role in the court of the last Czar of Russia.
But there are some positively wild and unexplainable stories that have a decent amount of corroborating evidence that they happened. The story about him healing the prince via a phone call sounds like actual magic. However we all know magic isn't real, there is definitely some kind of logical explanation. But that explanation is lost to time.
So where do historians land on Rasputin? Well, there was definitely a guy called Rasputin. Some of the stories about him are true. Some are probably false or exaggerated. There isn't even a consensus on what colour the dude's eyes were. But that doesn't mean we dispute his existence.
But that explanation is lost to time.
One translation I read suggested a probable explanation.
Rasputin's phone advice was the same as many modern quacks: keep the patient away from modern medicine and doctors.
So the hemophiliac prince was no longer given his normal cocktail of drugs, which probably included a new medicine for the time: aspirin.
Stop giving a blood thinner to a hemophiliac and his condition (temporarily) improved. The best explanation for the people at the time was "magic".
It was a shame how he carried on.
We have a lot more contemporay primary sources for the existence of Socrates than we have of Jesus (of which the number of contemporary primary sources is 0).
nobody claims that Socrates was a fantastical god being who defied death
Socrates literally claimed that he was a channel for a revelatory holy spirit and that because the spirit would not lead him astray that he was ensured to escape death and have a good afterlife because otherwise it wouldn't have encouraged him to tell off the proceedings at his trial.
Also, there definitely isn't any evidence of Joshua in the LBA, or evidence for anything in that book, and a lot of evidence against it.
The new testament stories were written well over a hundred years after. That would be like someone today writing an account of the civil war based solely on stories.
The new testament stories were written well over a hundred years after
Not right.
These were written 20 to 30 years after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle ("Fourteen of the 27 books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder.") It would be more like someone writing about this now, which I do remember.
Gospel of Mark is dated to around the year 70
Book of Revelation around 81-96
The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel
The New Oxford Annotated Bible claims, "Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus's life and teaching." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament
As far as I know, we simply don't have directly contemporary, first-hand evidence of him. Even the most 'contemporary' accounts of him that still exist were written at least 50 years after he would have died, and those are quite cursory. Perhaps primary sources were lost--or intentionally destroyed when they didn't align with beliefs--or perhaps they never existed. There's not even much evidence for Pontius Pilate (I think one source mentioning that he was recalled to Rome and executed for incompetence?), and there should be, given that he was a Roman official.
People that study the history of the bible--as in, the historical bible, not the bible as a religious text--tend to believe that a historical Jesus existed, even if they don't believe that he was divine.
IMO, the most likely explanation is that Jesus was yet another in a long-line of false messiahs, and was summarily executed by Rome for trying to start yet another rebellion. Since cult members tend to be unable to reconcile reality with their beliefs, they could have reframed their beliefs to say that he was a spiritual messiah, rather than a physical messiah.
There are lots of people now today who claim to be god, claim to be jesus, claim to have magic powers. so it would appear this is just normal human behavior and has been for a very long time. But the main reason people continue to believe these ancient holy books and all the stories in them is literally because they are protected from inquiry. So Jeff down the street claims to be jesus? We can go test him and try to falsify his claims. But some guy 2000 years ago, ya its not possible to check that one out. And That is why they persist, its by design.
Let me see if I can explain what I mean.
A historical Jesus might have had a small cult following, enough that the Romans couldn't ignore him. He would have been talking about Jewish liberation from the Roman rulers, and how he was called by god. And then boom, he gets executed. His followers probably believed that he was actually the son of god, sent to liberate them. But now he's dead. How do they reconcile the belief with the reality? So they retcon everything; he was a spiritual messiah, and he'll eventually return and free the Jews, once the people are spiritually prepared.
You can see traces of this in the way that the four gospels don't agree with each other, but they all include bits of prophecies from earlier scripture about the messiah. They were written with the intent of making Jesus appear to fit in to older prophecies about who the messiah would be, since he ended up not being the liberator that they had been expecting.
You can see similar behaviors in cults now. It's clearly visible with Q; Trump was supposed to be their messiah, but he hasn't managed to make any of their prophetic beliefs come true. So they've invented reasons why Trump's holy will has been thwarted, and changed their history, rather than accepting that he was a false messiah.
You just gotta have faith!
There's a bunch of old texts about a Jewish "prophet" called Jesus, who was gathering some followers. As far as I understand, there's no really reason not to believe the person existed.
Then again, all the Jesus lore, there's no reason to believe his miracles were real as those made no sense and there's no real proof besides those same texts written after Jesse's death
This. There is evidence that a preacher called Jesus existed, was crucified, and was well-regarded enough to start a following that persisted even after his death.
There isn't, however, strong historical evidence for any of the magical parts of it.
The question is typically described as "the historicity of Jesus". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
There are similar debates for other famous ancient figures.
The general academic consensus on Jesus (and many similar figures) is that they did exist and many of the details have been fictionalized.
Conversely, there are many other people from his time that definitely did exist and verifiably so. I have a bronze coin minted in Judea by Pontius Pilatus. I can look at it, I can touch it, it's real. Even as an avowed agnostic, I see no reason why Jesus couldn't have been a real person (minus the miracles that were almost certainly later additions).
It figures that the source cited on the documents relating to his execution can only be read about in some guys book.
There is no proof outside of the Bible and some other writings. Even those mentions seem to have occurred well after Jesus supposedly lived.
In terms of non-literary proof, there isn't anything credible.
There's more evidence that King David existed.
Chances are he was more like a cult leader it wasn’t until a decade or two after his death that things really got into full swing, so chances are the actual Jesus would be quite surprised by everything “he” did.
But there were a lot of Jewish mystics cropping up at the time so it’s not impossible or even implausible for some one vaguely matching the description to have existed.
Exactly. An example from outside the Bible might be Achilles. There was probably a great warrior with that name in the Mycenaean Greek world. Later storytellers probably just added more to make it sound better or the material was from other warriors who were like Achilles.
Some of Jesus' teachings definitely come from the milieu of the Roman era in Judea and Palestina.
Personally my favorite head canon is that Jesus was, or his parents were, Egyptian born Jews or Coptic converts to Judaism. It's a reverse Obamas birth certificate. There is so much time spent establishing the lineage and explaining the flight to Egypt.
Good thing back in the day there were probably very few cult leaders....
Does anyone wonder about how the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the Egyptian myth of Horus affects the narrative about the Jesus that supposedly lived and died a century earlier? You know the one that happened to have incredibly important political value for the established leaders of the time?
No? Me either. Praise Horus!
You realize that a significant portion of the bible is the collected letters and works that were at the time (that it was assembled) considered credible, right?
There’s a period of around 80 years that’s pretty hard to account for, but unlike the four gospels where there’s little corroborating evidence that tracks back into that 80 year period, the epistolary works are pretty likely to be authentic. They also reference a bunch of other letters that didn’t survive, something that tends to make them more likely authentic than not. And they involve people who were eyewitnesses of a man named Jesus (or Joshua or Yeshua if you prefer) and his younger (step) brothers.
The rest of the statements about him were solidified by 80 years or so after his death, but all the accounts don’t quite line up — which is actually a good argument for them being based on actual events.
So while there may be plenty of room for debate as to how much of the biblical teachings actually originated with a man named Jesus, his actual existence seems more evident than, say, Shakespeare.
How is this post downvoted so much? You said how actial historical analysis work!
Assembled a thousand years after the fact by a group with a vested interest in solidifying the narrative to fit their own.
Hell, the Tanakh didn't really get put together until well after Christianity appeared and it was a reaction to Christians appropriating Jewish literary culture to establish their own.
It'd be similar to people a thousand years from believing that Christian Gray is literally descended from Edward and Bella.
I have said this many times-
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if there was a "real" Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus that is worshiped is an impossibility. A fiction. His life is full of details that defy basic biological and physical laws. On top of that, nothing he supposedly said was written down at the time, so we have no idea if what is recorded to have been his sayings in the Bible are things he actually said.
I always relate it to Ian Fleming having a schoolchum who's father's name was Ernst Stavro Bloefeld. So was there a real Ernst Stavro Bloefeld? Yes. Was he a supervillain fighting the world's greatest secret agent? No.
I don't think this answer is really in the spirit of "no stupid questions".
Ok, if you want me to sum up in a way that addresses it: Because the Jesus OP is very likely thinking of is fictional, there is no real physical proof of his existence.
It doesn’t matter.
I'd say the "Real Historical Jesus" matters at least as much as a Real Historical Julius Caeser or a Real Historical Abraham Lincoln.
I always relate it to Ian Fleming having a schoolchum who’s father’s name was Ernst Stavro Bloefeld.
That's different in so far as Fleming was simply borrowing a name for a totally independent character. But Fleming was, himself, a Naval Commander and intelligence officer who leveraged his own biography to inform James Bond's personal traits. What's more, he borrowed heavily from the reports and anecdotes of other intelligence officials both during and after WW2 to inform the behaviors and attitudes of his side characters in his original novels.
It actually is pretty interesting to talk about "The Real James Bond" from a historical standpoint, because British intelligence services were pivotal in maintaining the imperial and international financial controls necessary to run a globe-spanning empire.
In the same vein, you might be curious to read about "The Real Julius Caeser" after working through the Shakespearean play or "The Real Abraham Lincoln" after getting through the stories where he's a Vampire Hunter. These biographies inform all sorts of cultural and economic norms of the era. And reading about historical individuals can be both entertaining and illuminating, particularly when you begin to consider how your own world ended up as it is today.
"Why is Christianity a globe-spanning religious movement going back 2000 years?" is a question worth interrogating. And you can't really interrogate that question without asking who this Jesus guy was or how he got so popular.
Listened through a history of rome podcast and learned an interesting thing where win was basically like a concentrate so you would mix it with water to drink. Aka. water -> wine.
It was common practice to dilute wine.
a schoolchum whose* father's name
His life is full of details that defy basic biological and physical laws.
Which is perfectly sensible given that he was given the power to perform wonders by god to establish that he is indeed a messenger of god. The entire point of wonders is them defying the otherwise imposed limits of the physical world. Because the only one who can grant this power is the source of the physical limits themselves and that is god.
This is logically consistent under the axiom that god exists. Which is what the scriptures are all about.
You can set the axiom that god does not exist. But as there is no proof of that, it is equally axiomatic. So given that your logic works on an unproven assumption you should not use it to criticize a different logic based on another assumption.
No, there's barely any physical evidence that anyone a few hundred years ago existed.
But if writing is enough, there are some. Tacitus basically said: "Nero blamed the Christians, followers of that Guy called Jesus who Pilatus executed a few decades ago."
Wikipedia at least says both his Baptism and crucifixion are not disputed by historians.
Nope. But that's also not as big a deal as a lot of folks make it.
Also, he's far from the only important(?) historical(?) figure we can't prove ever existed.
That's not the real question though. The real question is rather are there any "real physical proof" that Jesus had literally anything special that is in itself being the "son of God" or anything related to religion.
Anybody (sadly) can be crucified, especially during a period where it is trendy. Anybody can walk through part of the desert. Anybody can organize a meal, give a speech, etc.
Even if it's done exceptionally well, that does not make it special in the sense of being the proof of anything religious. We all have friends with unique talents, and social media helped us discovered that there are so many more of those around the entire world, but nobody in their right mind would claim that because Eminem can sing words intelligibly faster than the vast majority of people he is the son of "God".
I also read a book about a decade ago (unfortunately didn't write down notes about it so can't find the name back) on the history of religion, from polytheism to monotheism, and it was quite interesting. If I remember correctly one way to interpret it was through the lens of religions maintaining themselves over time and space, which could include growing to a sufficient size in terms of devout adepts. The point being that veracity was not part of the equation.
Well, that's the question if you want to believe in Christianity.
It's nearly universally accepted that he is a historical figure, though there is little to no evidence of that. The OP is asking why is that the case with so little evidence. They (presumably) aren't asking for a religious reason, just as an interest in history. If you are Christian and asking this question you are well past the point of no return for your faith
No, OPs question was perfectly fine, because it is necessary to stress the fact that we have not a single contemporary primary source that Jesus existed. So adding extra parameters is pretty pointless, since we cannot convincingly answer whether he actually existed, much less whether he was a religious figure. Scholars have reached a conjectural consensus that a Jesus in some form likely existed, but it is a consendus based on congecture and circumstantial evidence in the form of later secondary sources.
Eminem claimed to be a Rap God though. Praise be onto him.
Praise be Sol Invictus, the real OG Jesus
Girl gets married
Girl gets shitfaced and sleeps with someone other than her husband
Girl is pregnant!
Girl makes up some dumb shit to avoid jealous rage
Shit gets waaaaay out of hand.
There are many Jesus's in the world.
A far more likely explanation for the age and time was that she was raped.
Not that things have changed much.
I really like the theory that someone just made up an entire religion that would proceed to affect the entire world for thousands of years just to cover up adultery.
Did she? Or did they fuck out of wedlock and made some shit up?
Christianity exists. Religions don't tend to spring up from nowhere. Every myth has its nugget of truth. Was there a preacher back then whose followers later spread around the world? Almost certainly. Where else could Christianity have come from?
Was he the son of god though? Was he capable of all the miracles the bible claims? Is the god he preached even real? There is no evidence that the answer to these three questions is anything but no I'm afraid.
if you found a corpse it would cause a lot of problems for the religion.
Do you mean to say that there are actual remains of Jesus right now somewhere on Earth?
The answers here are absolutely crazy. Go find some credible biblical scholars (ones whose jobs are not dependent on statements of faith) like Bart ehrman and read what they say. My understanding is that most scholars agree that Jesus existed, and even that he was crucified. Don't trust lemmy, don't even trust me, go find the experts, read what they say, and decide for yourself.
The only physical proof you can have of a person that lived before photography is a body. So no, Jesus did not have a publically marked grave and we do not have his bones.
That being said, there is a difference between proving something historically and proving it in the court of law. Historical evidence points to Jesus having been a person that lived around that time.
No, and that is to even be expected.
He was a prophet whose movement had around 120 or so core disciples along with his apostles, plus thousands who followed him about and considered him a healer and revolutionary teacher.
There are people who have done similar things that are completely lost to history other than small records that vaguely outline the controversy surrounding them... We shouldn't really expect more in terms of proof...
But what is unique is the fact that we have an extremely well preserved corpus of text surrounding him. We also have some good idea that a lot of his followers were prosecuted and killed, and never recanted in the process, which might incline you to believe in the radical truth that they lived by.
Of course I am biased - I am a Christian - but it really does just seem pointlessly antagonistic to dismiss His Existence at all.
This is one of the silliest quotes because we know that the ancient pagans often viewed one another's gods as correspondent - "Thor is their Zeus," etc.
And then you have the problem of henotheism where there is potentially a single god with many avatars and a pantheon of lesser spiritual beings... And you start to realize, "Wait, if the Vasihnavites, Shiavites, etc. are really just saying that there is a an arch deity over everything with many avatars in the form of lesser gods that he wears the masks of, plus lesser deities that can't defy him and act as angels and demons...
"... What is a God, really? Aren't they nearly monotheists..?"
What is a God.
Plus there's the very classic position of the Jews and the Chrsitians - the gods of gentiles are demons.
Christianity does not become a religion that denies other gods, but one that claims other gods are misidentified.
Throw in some liberalism and yuo can even have Christians arguing that the worship directed as Vishnu by devoted Hindus who lead ethical lives and strive to be great manifestations of goodness & virtue for the sake of God's love is not the worship of demons, at all, but rather, an attempt to reach our God through their own traditions that may even be guided in some form by the Holy Spirit...
So, IDK, IDK to what extent anyone is denying other people's gods and its relevance to religion today.
We also have some good idea that a lot of his followers were prosecuted and killed, and never recanted in the process, which might incline you to believe in the radical truth that they lived by.
Man, I can't get trial transcripts for cases that happened 2 years ago, and you're getting them for trials that happened 2,000 years ago?
The very earliest stuff obviously doesn't have that, and we rely on church history because it wasn't like even the most interesting thing a Roman governor did that week to kill some random churchmen who created conflict among Jews, nor do we have much preserved about mobs killing these guys other than in the original Christian communal sources.
But really, if you start from the premise that everything Christians ever write about thesmelves is pure propaganda without an iota of truth in it, that creates a non-serious standard with which to evaluate things.
Is it really absurd to think that Protomartyr Stephen was killed by a mob of Jews for preaching a radically different religion to them in a time of great political upheaval? Isn't this exactly what we think of Christians at later times - that they'd just turn on a guy and kill him for being a heretic? Why is it so unbelievable that it once happened to a Christian? Why is it so troublesome that the only people who bothered to write about these martyrs and preserve their memory were the people who were victims in the course of this?
Obviously, you can say that it's propaganda and lies, and maybe some of it was. But we know it's absolutely historic that Christians wre officially persecuted later on. it is also par for the course that they would be less formally persecuted prior to that. it also amkes sense that Christians, like every other group, try to preserve a communal memory.
Hi, Christian! 👋 I'm dad.
Congratulations! Remember to have extra diapers available at all times.
But what is unique is the fact that we have an extremely well preserved corpus of text surrounding him.
IIFC all those writing are dated to well after the life time, like 100 year past it or so. It may be a bunch of written things but there is no/little reason to take those writings as anything but written down stories.
Ever play Telephone with a single word for 5 minutes? Now do that to a epic for 100 years, the end result will certainly be something but it may be nothing like the truth
I am not saying you have to believe the corpus of text as 100% factual and become a Christian right now, but I am suggesting that people believing the text isn't absurd... Moreover, I would suggest that it tends to prove that Jesus Christ was real...
The text itself asserts
- Times & places where he was; actual historic figures; a trial and a death, all of a single person.
- Claims he drew large crowds, healed people, had some publicly known altercations with local religious authorities.
- Claims that other people died in very public events (Stephen the Martyr in Acts) and that actual meetings were convened to decide what to do about it with the head Jewish rabbi at the time (Gamaliel)
- Records his teachings in ways that sometimes kind of conflict with one another in terms of phrasing, and also records different details about events that could be mutually contradictory...
Which all implies that the synoptic Gospels and Acts were very opened to being fact checked by their contemporaries and future generations by trying to place themselves in history, and that the texts were not designed by a cabal of conspirators who wanted to deceive people and come up with the perfect story because the story they made was hardly written by committee - it has things we'd see as imperfections & errors.
Ever play Telephone with a single word for 5 minutes? Now do that to a epic for 100 years, the end result will certainly be something but it may be nothing like the truth
The Telephone game is designed to show you how private rumors occur.
The four Gospels are all the accounts of eyewitnesses to these events that were then recorded by their own hand or by their assistant's hand, and preserved within the church. Of course, some speculate that they were forged later, but there's a very long, complicated argument that involves the earliness of the spread of the knowledge of the Gospels and how well they were independently preserved in faraway locations from France to Egypt that indicate that they likely were completed shortly after Christ's death.
It's also the case that Christianity was a proselytizing faith, right, so immediately there are operations which send missionaries into the world to spread the news... By all means, deny the miracles and the story, but it seems likely that there was consensus about what had happened before the missionaries departed, which allowed for there to be the preservation of the Gospels and what would later constitute the New Testament.
There's not a good argument to be made that these guys were just spreading nonsense and spitballing it as they go - the story was straight before they were leaving Jerusalem, or else the four Gospels and the subsequent apostolic letters would not have been something they could have ever all agreed upon.
Almost all of the Christian folklore surrounding Jesus can be directly tied to other myths that were common knowledge to Mediterranean people at the time.
There was a dude called Jesus, there were a lot of them. That one was Jewish and belonged to an evangelical cult was likely. But we can't really say that because the Bible exists so too must have the Jesus described within.
What we have today was written by people hundreds of years after the fact. There was nothing written during these events, nothing at least that survived.
If you go looking for proof of Jesus, you'll either come out disappointed, or delusional. Think of guys like Ken Ham.
Keep the faith, by all means. But part of believing is accepting that you don't get to have proof.
Almost all of the Christian folklore surrounding Jesus can be directly tied to other myths that were common knowledge to Mediterranean people at the time.
Yeah I got the Mithra chainmail in my AOL account back in 1998 - I know the arguments.
But Christianity presents us with something very wild - it takes the Messianic tradition of Jews which was hitherto interpreted as being about creating an earthly Kingdom that conquers the world and incorporates the gentiles into Israel (or makes the gentiles servants of Israel, who all become noblemen living in a heaven on earth, some interpretations)... and Christ says
"Yeah, but no - the Kingdom is purely spiritual. It's not temporal. The gentiles join us by worshiping God with us and living these truths - look, this Roman occupier has more faith than all Israel, because you guys are just terrible. You bicker over the law, and miss the total point of the law..."
And the Messiah is now about conquering the world through spreading the Gospel of loving God, and loving your neighbor as yourself, giving up your possessions and conquering greed, freeing yourself from hypocrisy; living in simplicity and supreme virtue, at peace with those around you, practicing non-violence, and now we don't even need any kind of ceremonial laws at all because we are living the virtues. And that's how the world becomes part of Israel - by adopting the great things abotu our religion - and that's also how you get to heaven, which is only achievable after death when I come again...
This is a very unique interpretation of the Judaism of the time - absolutely revolutionary.
Even if you want to say that all the miracles and 'signs' are a myth, I think that the "Mithra" angle is actually bad beacuse you could just say they came up with those signs and added them so as to be able to claim they are fulfilling the Old Testament, which was infinitely more relevant to the Jews who were the community that gave birth to the religion.
Keep the faith, by all means. But part of believing is accepting that you don’t get to have proof.
Yeah I agree - there is no proof, and if there was proof, it would ruin it, because we'd no longer be doing good and loving God and our neighbor because it is right, but we would be doing it with the expectation of receiving heaven...
We would no longer be living a spiritual life for the good of oruselves and others - in hope & faith - but we would be Capitalists engaging in transactions that we deemed profitable.
Irrespective of whether people believe the prophets to be prophets the level of "proof of existence" they demand is often way beyond what is accepted for other historical people.
And frankly it is quite childish. There is rational criticisms of what happened between the life of Jesus a.s. and what is printed in modern bibles. There is a lot of rational criticism for various christian institutions like the catholic church or other churches.
And i think it is unsurprising when looking at groups like atheist memes. It mostly seems to be a self help group for people who struggled under bad christian parents, rather than a theological conviction. And i don't think that mocking Christianity is the healthy approach to reconcile with that childhood trauma.
It seems like the consensus is that the stories probably stem from a real guy because that's deemed more likely than no person existing as a basis for the story, but no, there is not material evidence for jesus christ's existence
Yes there is, here is his mugshot shortly after he was booked. Looks like he spent the evening turning water into wine.
There most likely were a bunch of people called Yeshua back then.
Yeah, I've got one of his toes in my car
You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
I had read that there were Roman census records that proved a Rabbi named Jesus did live at about the right time, but now I can't find a source to back that up, so that's probably bunk.
Seems likely. There’s probably a Rabbi named David somewhere today too.
Yeah, but the odds of census records surviving that long are pretty low. Apparently, there are references to Jesus from some Roman historians that scholars think corroborate his existence, but they come about 100 years after Jesus supposedly lived, so they're not exactly evidence.
Completely unlikely since no such census records are extant.
People who are jnfamilhar with the historiography are very much overestimating the amount of primary source material which exists from the Roman Empire, simply because historians have been very good at extracting information from the miniscule fraction (relative to the amount which was produced) of extant written sources we do have from the period.
There are no such records. Just having any extant census records from the Roman Empire would have pretty sensational, let alone some stemming from Judea at the supposed time of Jesus.
Yeah, that makes sense. I wish I could track down where I read this to figure out if it's a bad source or I'm misremembering it. I may be mistaking Tacitus' reference to Christ, but I don't think it's that. I distinctly remember reading about some sort of population record of a Rabbi named Jesus and thinking, "Wow, I'm surprised a record like that survived." The problem is this was 10+ years ago, and search engines suck now, so I'll never find it again.
I read a comment once about this: https://lemmy.world/comment/10801312
There's the Talpiot Tomb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talpiot_Tomb
It might not be him but also it might.
This conclusion, while weakly supported by a statistical analysis of the names involved, is rejected by most archaeologists, theologians, linguistic and biblical scholars.
There's a bunch of references for archaeologists debunking it.
I know you said "it might not be him" but I feel like that understates the weight of evidence against that possibility.
After reading that page, I strongly suspect that's not him. It's all based on statistical modeling, and it's been heavily massaged. Even with that, they give it 1/600 odds (on the low end) of it being random chance, which those aren't bad odds.
Apparently the inscriptions are partially illegible, so assuming it's even correct their statistical model is based on the name Mariamne being Mary Magdelene (which is clearly not the name we remember her by) and being Jesus's wife, Maria being the mother, and Jesus having a son, which we didn't know about, named Judah, as well as a few other assumption that really do not feel like they should be making.
Even making a ton of assumptions, the odds are still not particularly convincing. It feels like something that can increase someone's faith if they don't question it, but if you examine it at all reveals how much people are reaching to prove what they already want to believe.
I'd have guess people who thought the tomb was for the Jesus would have their faith shaken by it since it would mean Jesus was married and had a kid, though there are some obscure Christian sects that have believed that.
Man I wish people had commented and linked their sources. A bunch of yes and no’s is not really helpful.
how do you have sources for no? I mean I guess you can link to wikipedia and point out all the evidence is just some third party writings or such I guess.
No, there isn't. Nor is there proof of moses
https://www.history.com/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence
Tl;dr: No.
My opinion: It's a nice story. And with stories the most important thing is what it teaches us or makes us feel. Not that it's true. Maybe they took inspiration from several preaching hippies who lived back then and made one story out of that. Exaggerated everything and made stuff up. Probably all of it because the bible was't even written close to his supposed lifetime. It'd be like you now writing a story about a dude who died in
1870. Without any previous records to get information from. [Edit: The first things have probably been written down like 40-50 years after his death.]And I mean if Jesus existed, he would certainly disapprove of what people do (and did) in his name.
I don't know that the History Channel is a good representation of academic consensus. It should basically never be relied upon.
Agree. But that specific article seems pretty alright. Also talks about the relics and history records for example by Tacitus.
There also is a Wikipedia article which I think is not written that well. And a lot of education material by churches or religious organizations which I did not cite for obvious reasons.
(And the German Wikipedia article about sources for the historicity of Jesus seems very good. But it's not exactly OP's question and I don't know if it helps: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Außerchristliche_antike_Quellen_zu_Jesus_von_Nazaret )
He was created by Roman elites in order to divide the Jews and get them to pay taxes.
Nope
Nope.
Don't they have his foreskin saved as a religious artefact? Like in some church somewhere because it performs miracles?
Relics are almost always fake, and there are usually multiples of them at any given time. A lot of people have had Jesus' foreskin throughout the years, and I think there are 5 or 6 heads of John the Baptist floating around right now.
No.
There’s lots of ambiguous information. There is no firsthand, historically agreed upon data that supports his existence in the form we know him today. In other words, there was no magical guy doing magical things.
There is no Roman record of “nailed 3 prisoners to the posts today; Bill, Roger, and Jesus the magic guy who was a pain in the ass.”
However, like Arthurian Legend, it doesn’t mean some guy like Jesus didn’t exist, or an aggregate of characters weren’t assembled to be him on story. Arthur was possibly just a chieftain of a group who fought a couple of hefty battles and made a name for himself, but he ended up being an almost magical figure with wizards and witches in the story and - guess what, he will “rise again” from the dead when needed. And no, rising from the dead isn’t owned by Christian religious figures, Osiris of Egypt did it, Dionysius of the Greek Pantheon among many others. So maybe some dude, who probably wasn’t named Jesus, caused a stir and got a few people to take note. That grew over hundreds and even thousands of years to what we have now.
Want to know why King Arthur isn’t a competitor to Jesus? He a) doesn’t offer the opportunity to control people in this life for the hope of an afterlife, b) he isn’t profitable.
It is said that the foreskin of Jesus still exists...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce
For all I know it could be just an ancient dried up piece of bacon 🤷♂️
The only evidence of Jesus, is a few random mentions of someone named Jesus.
And it wasn't exactly a rare name.
Like, if I found written evidence of a dude named Paul, that doesn't mean Paul Bunyan was real.
It just means some dude named Paul was real.
All the crazy claims about being a Messiah wasnt until long after he was dead.
This isn't really right. The primary texts corroborate more facts than the name: that he was put to death by the Romans for inciting disloyalty.
No, Jesus never existed. He is a fictional character.
Now ask yourself if there's any real, physical proof that Zeus, Thor or Anakin Skywalker ever existed.
I've been looking forward to this!
I'm not sure what you'd expect to see regarding physical proof but I'd say probably not much. Maybe there's something in an ancient bible?
Before Jesus, many people were sanctified in the flesh in this way.Later, Jesus imitated the practices of his predecessors and added hype, and he became a legend after his death.
Lee Strobel (former athirst, investigative journalist) wrote a book titled The Case For Christ.
His goal was to write the difinive work on proving that Jesus wasn't who the Christians claim him to be. It backfired on him and he became a Christian.(See below comment from @weststadtgesicht with a more accurate quote.)
If you're wanting to read more on this topic, definitely read both sides and determine which has the stronger case. But the Strobel book seems to be well researched and well written, at least to me.
Where did you find that his goal was to prove Jesus wasn't who Christians claim to be? From what I've read about Lee Strobel, he was sort of an atheist by default and converted when his wife did. He became a pastor and only wrote the Case for Christ more than a decade later
I have updated my comment to direct to a comment from @weststadtgesicht that is more accurate.
That's not really how he himself describes it. His wife became a Christian and after going to church with her he wanted to investigate the backgrounds - he didn't want to disprove Christianity and was quite open-minded instead:
She invited me to a church, where I heard the Gospel explained in a way I could understand it. While I didn't believe it, I realized that if it were true, it would have big implications for my life. So I decided to use my journalism experience and legal expertise (at the time, I was legal editor of The Chicago Tribune) to investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity or any other faith system.
They've never been able to find Jesus's bones, which is itself strong evidence for the Biblical story that he was resurrected.
Strong Poe's Law energy with this comment.
Agreed.
Yes there is. Amen brothers and sisters.
Fa chrise sakes
lol and that proof is?
Jesus failed the final boss, and when it was game over, he used his game shark for infinite life and noclipped to end game screen.
