Did Jesus Actually Exist?

Krumple wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:

At some point, there was a person (or some people) who realized that loving one another was a better option for civilization than constantly hating and fighting.

So the "message" was born.

To most of us...the ones who feel the message is a worthwhile message, it doesn't really matter how the message arose...if it came from one guy named Jesus or a whole bunch of people.

The only people to whom it really does seem important are the people who are screwing over the message.

Weird that!

Was this before or after the message to murder disobedient children?

The supposed Jesus lived after what we now call the Old Testament was written...and that message is in the Old Testament...so it would have to be after.

Jesus essentially was saying that we should love one another.

There are many fig trees in the gospels. Quote please.

I agree that the message is more important than the messenger. The thing is that, as you perhaps imply, spreading doubt about the messenger's historical existence (maliciously, I repeat -- their arguments have little to do with facts as I have shown) result in debasing the gospels entirely, making them fake documents, forgeries. Therefore it decredibilise the message and makes any attempt by humanists and secular people to use any pieces of wisdom there might be in it.

That's why the historicity of Jesus is important to a secular humanist like me: he proposed a new ethic which has historical and philosophical and moral importance. I care about the message and, and I believe there's ample evidence a precise guy -- a Jew from Galilea as it turned out -- actually said it.

And just to be clear, I don't think he was a god. IMO he was a bastard, an outcast, an unruly yeshiva student, yet brilliant. Evidently likable, crazy if you will judge him rationally, yet very courageous. And ultimately influential beyond any other man perhaps.

You won't quote the passage you wish to criticize? Now that's odd, or as I said before, malicious.

Assuming we talk of the same fig tree, to me this parable is about creativity and generosity, a life without which is not worth living. A barren fig tree is a waste of arable land. The theme comes frequently in the gospel: don't put your lamp under a shade; what have you made of your talent? You can also find it in Hillel: "if not now, when?" is about doing something useful with your life, as I read it.

And just to be clear, I don't think he was a god. IMO he was a bastard, an outcast, an unruly yeshiva student, yet brilliant. Evidently likable, crazy if you will judge him rationally, yet very courageous. And ultimately influential beyond any other man perhaps.

As I explained in many posts up thread, the fact that the Jews of the time or soon thereafter never denied his existence, but instead proposed in the Talmud a different version of a very similar figure, Yeshu the bad guy, the magician, the fake prophet... That fact is a powerful argument for the historicity of Jesus. If the good rabbis of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century had had the slightest doubt about the Jesus character being a forgery or a myth, the Talmud would reflect that. Instead it provides us with a possible name for Jesus' father (Pantera).

The rabbis of the time wanted to get rid of Christianity, and they were not so stupid as to validate in the Talmud a putative conspiracy by some heathen or another to invent a fake messiah wannabe, right under their nose.

I've never been able to understand the kind of position that my good friends edgarblythe and cicerone imposter take, denying even the historical existence of this mentally disturbed itinerant preacher from Nazareth....... but to deny his very existence flies in the face of all logic and reason.

We'll at least we can agree on something. I think you're a sorry ass too.

That couldn't be further from historical truth. The Babylonian Talmud (a longer version than the one from Palestine) was written in a place and time (3rd - 5th century, under the Sassanids) where and when Rome and the Church had no power. That's PRECISELY why it can afford to be polemic about Jesus. In fact, the most virulent passages were deleted from most versions of the Talmud in the Middle Ages, when the Church objected to them.

. . . Yeah but didn't Jesus deliver the parable of the fig tree? . . .