Did Jesus Actually Exist?

You're peddling the feeble bullshit the Christians always peddle. None of what you mention are contemporary sources. The New Testament cannot possibly be considered a reliable source (it's like asking a crook if he's honest), and it, of course, is not contemporary. You continue to ignore that the majority of modern scholars, including theologians and the majority of whom are/were christians, consider the Josephus passages to be interpolations.

The Tacitus passage is so feeble i'm not surprised hat you use it, given the paltry nature of any evidence you ever present here for anything. At the time of the fire, even christians didn't call themselves christians. That was still true at the time that Tacitus wrote his histories. A further evidence that the passage is an interpolation is that it is flatly contradicted by Suetonius, who was born five years after the Great Fire, and had access to a host of eyewitness accounts. Suetonius does not mention any persecution, or even any blame being attached to the event. That's reasonable, since large conflagrations were common in Rome, both before and after the so-called Great Fire. Suetonius praises Nero for his efforts, not to fix blame, but to succor the victims of the fire--given that Suetonius had a low opinion of Nero, and never hid that, the omission of any reference to a persecution is striking. Finally, no one in antiquity mentions such a passage in Tacitus, even though Origen, Pamphilus and Eusebius were all born after the publication of the histories of Tacitus.

Then maybe you can tell us again how the invention of a spear thrower by a small band of homo sapiens in southwest Europe was evidence that h. s. exterminated all other hominids. Then you can tell us again how viruses cannot reproduce without DNA--all you have to do is account for the RNA viruses which cause influenza and ebola--Mr. Scientific Culture.

You really are hopeless.

I guess for some people...a discussion about George Washington would have to include the notion of him throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac...chopping down a cherry tree and owning up to it...and never telling a lie...in order for the discussion to be appropriate and reasonable.

I think not.

Jesus, the teacher and purveyor of some reasonable notions of how life on this planet could be made more pleasant...may or may not have existed...even if some of the people who heard the message had to make him more than he actually was.

None of us know if the Jesus of the message was a single person...or an amalgam of many.

I love that President Jefferson took the supernatural elements out of the new testament and "Jesus" teachings and then releasing what is now known as the Jefferson Bible.

There is a wealth of contemporary evidence for George Washinbton, and it does not include the bullsh*t stories of Parson Weems. Furthermore, Washington is not and never has been the focus of a religious cult, a circumstance in which believers reoutinely suspend disbelief. There may be a handful of people who stilly buy Paron Weems' line of BS--but i doubt it.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of people who have and who still do believe that Jeebus raised the dead, turned water into wine and fead a multitude from a basket of fish and bread. Of course, over the course of the last 2000 years, there have been billions who believe or have believed that Jeebus was divine.

The comparison is risible--the situations are not analogous.

And even if Josephus was a contemporary of Jesus, which he wasn't, that still would not make him a credible witness to Jesus's life. I am a contemporary of Elvis, and I have nothing credible to say on whether Elvis lives or not.

No.. there is no historical evidence of Jesus Christ existing. Just because the majority believe something doesn't make it so. If it did, the world would be flat right now.

"The sources for the historicity of Jesus are mainly Christian sources, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles. The authenticity and reliability of these sources has been questioned by many scholars, and few events mentioned in the gospels are universally accepted"

^ This is not proof. It's like asking an author whether his book is true or not when he wrote it as non-fiction but it clearly isn't. What do you think the author would say? "Oh yes, it's true!!" It's like asking a scientologist if their religion is true along with their documents or whatever they have. What do you think they're going to say?

"Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20. The general scholarly view is that while the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then subject to Christian interpolation or forgery.[34][35] Of the other mention in Josephus, Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman has stated that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities 20, 9, 1 and it is only disputed by a small number of scholars.[36][37][38][39]

Roman historian Tacitus referred to Christus and his execution by Pontius Pilate in his Annals (written ca. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.[40] The very negative tone of Tacitus' comments on Christians make the passage extremely unlikely to have been forged by a Christian scribe[41] and the Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Christ's crucifixion,[42] although some scholars question the authenticity of the passage on various different grounds"

^ This is not proof either. A. It is questioned of even being authentic. B. It is not evidence because it is hearsay, it was written a long while after Jesus already died. I wonder why, because Idea's gain traction through age. It took TIME for Jesus to be spread, because he was an idea. If he was a man, they would have recordings dated to when he was alive. I would have.

As I said...I guess for some people...a discussion about George Washington would have to include the notion of him throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac...chopping down a cherry tree and owning up to it...and never telling a lie...in order for the discussion to be appropriate and reasonable.

I think not.

Jesus, the teacher and purveyor of some reasonable notions of how life on this planet could be made more pleasant...may or may not have existed...even if some of the people who heard the message had to make him more than he actually was.

None of us know if the Jesus of the message was a single person...or an amalgam of many.

None of us know if the Jesus referred to in the Bible existed or not...although some people laughingly want to insist he did exist...and some even more laughingly want to insist he did not.

But we do not know.

I just said I was happy you saw the light. You are inventing the "in your post" part.

I said so because you agree with me that:


That is therefore officially agreed between us. You even say that "that was a no-brainer". I agree.

I agree soooo much that this is EXACTLY what I have been saying in my posts FOREVER. You would know that if you deign to read them. (but you won't because of course there is no "light" in them whatsoever) Please find below for ease of reference a little selection of my recent posts. The similar point has been made by many other posters. The debate has been framed by this question for WEEKS.

You're just trying to change the goal post now...



Previous • Post: # 5,714,305 • NextOlivier5
Sat 12 Jul, 2014 09:55 am
@edgarblythe,

You mean like any legend grows over time. That is evidently the case for Jesus. But the question we are dealing with then becomes: was there a real man at the onset if the legend?...


Previous • Post: # 5,791,939 • NextOlivier5
Sat 18 Oct, 2014 03:52 pm
@izzythepush,

I'm just saying: either the boy Jeebus is based on a real character, or he is entirely fictional. Which option is the least improbable? The first one...


Previous • Post: # 5,792,291 • NextOlivier5
@MontereyJack,

To me, Elvis had the charisma of a dishwasher. But his 'resurrection' is interesting when trying to understand Jesus' 'resurrection'. Apparently, when too many people love you too much, you just can't die...

Previous • Post: # 5,792,494 • NextOlivier5
Sun 19 Oct, 2014 01:07 pm
@izzythepush,

In this [judea circa 1st century] messianic fever, there was no need to invent a savior ex nada: the place was full of candidates.


Previous • Post: # 5,792,533 • NextOlivier5
Sun 19 Oct, 2014 01:52 pm
@izzythepush,

So it boils down to: was this guy more or less who the texts point toward, or was this guy(s) totally different from what the texts say. [...] I can agree they have a lot of legend in them, but it seems to me gratuitous, logically almost laughable, and certainly unfair to the facts we have, to assume they are wholly fictitious.


Previous • Post: # 5,791,610 • NextOlivier5
Sat 18 Oct, 2014 10:16 am

@Setanta,

I haven't seen you address:
[...]
4) the argument that a conspiracy is very hard to fathom. [...] The alternative scenario -- that there existed a dude called something like Yeshu or Yeshuah at some point in Galilee who blew a mystical fuse and ended up on a cross for it -- seems much more believable to me.



So we agree... That's great news. And it was a NO-BRAINER FROM THE FUCKIN' Start.

Now who else here agrees with that version of events?

Just to drive the point home, I certainly would think Elvis existed as a man. He was evidently not the legend peddled around and it may be difficult to entangle legend and reality, but I think there WAS a cute little white ass called Elvis who made millions singing black music for a white audience, and died of overdose or something. Some lunatics say they saw him wandering around after his death but I don't believe that part.

Same for Jesus (different drugs probably).

You too are looking for evidence of the magical Jesus, or are you saying that there was no man called something like Yeshuah who wandered around preaching the kingdom of God etc...?

There was no man you have evidence to connect to the myth of Jesus.

You haven't got the memo, Ed? Set agrees with me. I'm so happy about it...... It was just a misunderstanding all along. He finally understood what the question was about.

Just so you know. You don't want to contradict Setanta on his boy Jeebus, now do you?

The problem here is the very same writing that claimed that "Jesus" existed and taught all those moral lessons are the very same materials that also claimed he was a supernatural being able to bring a long dead rotting body back to full life and is in fact the son of god.

The claims of supernatural standing of Jesus kind of lower the credibility of the non-supernatural claims contain in the same writings.

To sum up if these writings that was similar to the Jefferson bible telling of a non-supernatural moral teacher there would be far less questions of the truth of his existence.

That there were from one to a thousand people preaching using that name is no real link to Jesus, except for the atmosphere where the specific Jesus could be pulled out of thin air.

Ok, so you still think the character may have been totally invented, even as Jefferson described him (according to Bill), and even if you agree that the context as we know it seems favorable to or not against such a person to exist.

And the chances for his being wholly invented are what? 50/50 like Bill?

Just so we know who's still standing and where they stand. I hate moving targets...

In my opinion, he was not a man, but a product of the ferment that existed for years in those times.

Lots of babbling.



Throw all those sources to the trash.

Now, concentrate in Tractate Sanhedrin 43a.

To this evidence that Yeshu (Jesus) indeed existed as a man who was sentenced to death on the "eve of Passover" because apostasy (committing sorcery and more), what do you have to say about it?

Come on, start talking.

As usual, even using analogies are out of context in this topic. You can ignore the stories around George Washington, but you can't deny his historical existence as a person, which is the main question here talking about Jesus.

Comprende? oops, transliterating it to English... comprehende?

Id just remind everyone that there is a drastic difference as far as legitimizing either of their existences. The thing is George Washington was written about from multiple sources. Not to mention the coroner interning his body and writing about it in a book. The entire experience was enough to fill a book. Jesus does not have multiple sources which is even more bizarre since a man walking around healing the sick and doing miraculous things surely should have ended up in another source. Sure illiteracy was common back then but there had to be scribes of challenging religious views during his time that would have at least written something about a "magical" man. The ONLY source is the bible and it's credibility is suspect.

No, you and i do not agree, no matter what witless word game you attempt.