Did Jesus Actually Exist?

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Unlike the much-discussed other passage in the same work, called the Testimonium Flavianum (Ant. XVIII. 63 - 4), the passage above, to many scholars, looks authentic because Jesus is no big deal in the narrative.

It's unlikely that he was thought of as a 'big deal' by his contemporaries. He was just enough of a nuisance to arouse the wrath of the Saducees who then turned him over to the Romans to be executed. Crucifixions were so commonplace that probably few people outside of his own group even noticed.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Quote:

Crucifixions were so commonplace that probably few people outside of his own group even noticed.

Of course the other possible reason that people did not noticed was that he was not crucifixions as he did not exist.

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

I think it's a fairly safe bet to say various Roman Emperors and generals existed.

Hell fifty years or so before the so call life time of Jesus we still have Julius Caesar very own PR writings on his military campaigns.

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@BillRM,

One cannot compare the respective likelihood of Jesus and Julius Caesar to have left a "proof of life".

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@BillRM,

Many people did not notice Thales or Socrates either. I bet that mean they never existed...

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Jesus was never known as "Jesus". Such a name is a transliteration of "Yeshu".

Greeks used to add the letter "s" at the end of names, like Josephus. Decades later after the death of this man, his Hebrew name Yeshu became Iesous for the Greek translators of the Hebrew writings. It is understood that no one of the apostles knew any "Jesus" but a person called Yeshu to whom they considered a rabbi.

The Tractate Sanhedrin relates that because Yeshu was influential due to his royal ancestry (descendant of King David), he wasn't stoned but sent to be hanged. The crime was "apostasy".

There is no doubt that Yeshu existed as a person two thousand years ago, a better way to ask about him is if he (was) existed as the son of God.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Many people did not notice Thales or Socrates either. I bet that mean they never existed...

Plenty of nice sold proof of both of those men living something we do not have with Jesus.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

One cannot compare the respective likelihood of Jesus and Julius Caesar to have left a "proof of life".

The point being that long before the so call life of Jesus period we have men who we do have proof of life for and we do not have any such level of proof for "Jesus".

There is no reason to assume that there once was a real living man, be that man a man or a man god, behind the Jesus story any more then there was a real person behind any of the Rome and Greek gods.

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@Lustig Andrei,

This is one of the many examples in which the so-called gospels have got everything wrong. Pilate existed, although many scholars disputed that for a lack of evidence, until Israeli archaeologists unearthed an inscription in about 1960 or -61. But he was not a proconsul as the gospels claim--and in fact, at that time, proconsuls were not appointed as sub-provincial governors. He was a prefect, as the inscription shows. As a prefect, he had no authority to try or execute anyone. He would have been obliged to send any accused to the Legate of Syria, his superior, to be tried and, if convicted, to be executed.

Whether or not this joker existed, there is a great deal of reason to question the accounts of the gospels, because they get it wrong, wrong, wrong again and again. Given that the god-botherers insist on their moral authority based on what they claim are eye-witness accounts of their boy Jeebus, it is very important to confront the errors of their scripture, which are legion.

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@Olivier5,

Given that you've not provided any reliable evidence, there's no reason to take y ou seriously.

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@carloslebaron,

You are so full of sh*t. The Greeks did not automatically add an "s" to names, leaving aside that they had no letter "s." Josephus was called Josephus because he was captured in the Jewish war and became a slave of Vespasian. When Vespasian became emperor, he was freed and took the Roman name Titus Flavius Josephus. That was in honor of Vespasian, whose gens, his family name, was Flavius. If you want to be considered authoritative, you might benefit from not making sh*t up.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

I don't see why we should hold J's historicity against higher standards than the average roman's.

I don't, if you want to doubt the existence of Flavius the inn keeper from Pompei, go ahead.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt the existence of Jesus, most of which have been gone over ad nauseam on this thread.

I'm not convinced either way.

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@Setanta,

He's a Holocaust denying piece of crap who can't even get 20th Century history right. He's got no chance with anything that happened earlier than this morning, and even that's a big ask.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

I'm not convinced either way.

This is a good point, i'm not convinced either way myself. However, the so-called gospels are so full of gross historical errors and contradictions that they should be doubted. The christians are so avidly eager to assert the historicity of Jeebus because they seem to think that that will then establish the veracity of the scripture. Fat chance.

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@Setanta,

One of the biggest lies is that Augustus required everyone to return to their place of birth for a census. The gospellers seemed very desperate to shoehorn Jesus into certain OT prophecies.

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@izzythepush,

That's because they wanted to link him to King David. That's a dubious distinction--David was a jumped-up brigand from the hills.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:

I don't see why we should hold J's historicity against higher standards than the average roman's.

I don't, if you want to doubt the existence of Flavius the inn keeper from Pompei, go ahead.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt the existence of Jesus, most of which have been gone over ad nauseam on this thread.

I'm not convinced either way.

I agree, Izzy.

I am not convinced either way.

Whether a single person existed or not, however, I am still impressed with much of the move toward the attitude of tolerance and "love one another" rather than intolerance and "kill the bastard before he kills you" that prevailed in many places prior to the thing that became Christianity.

Unfortunately, Christians soon became the mortal enemy of the teachings that became Christianity. The intolerance and killing became part of Christianity...and in fact, defense of Christianity became a reason for the reversion.

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@BillRM,

We have n0 proof of life for 99.9% of all men who ever lived. You picked as your example the most powerful man WORKDWIDE around -50 (Julius Ceasar). Perhaps also the richest, a sort of combination of Bill Gates and Napoleon. Be serious.

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@Olivier5,

You can believe what you want. Just try not to get upset when others don't feel the same.

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We can't prove Ogg the caveman existed, but I can personally verify he did. He shaped a stone to tip a spear and left a half cooked bear on the spit when he died. He painted a picture of Mrs Ogg on the cave wall. If you can't believe Mrs Ogg who can you believe?

1 Reply

Did Jesus Actually Exist?

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