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Did Jesus really exist?

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chakka35 | 17:06 Thu 10th Feb 2011 | Religion & Spirituality
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My sixpenn’orth first, please.

Putting aside all religious considerations and all matters of faith, I maintain that if you look cold-bloodedly and objectively at the provenance of the Jesus story you must conclude that the probability that Jesus did not exist is greater than the probability that he did. Here’s why:

STAGE 1: the years 6BC to AD54
Jesus is supposed to have lived sometime during this period but there is no record of such a person. Not a word from anyone who supposedly knew him or debated with him; nothing from the rich men he counselled, the sick he healed or the thousands he preached to. No mention in Jewish or Roman records of the time or by any contemporary historians. So, two possibilities:

A: Jesus did not exist.
B: Jesus did exist but there was a conspiracy of silence lasting over half a century among a large number of people most of whom had no connection with each other.

STAGE 2: Paul’s epistles AD55 to AD60
There is where Jesus first appears. But Paul, who introduces the idea to the world, offers no evidence to back his claims or any eye-witness testimony that we can examine for ourselves. So, two possibilities:

A. Jesus did not exist.
B. Jesus did exist but Paul deliberately kept from us anything that could vouch for him.

STAGE 3: The gospels, AD70 to AD 90 -120??
As with Paul, these four unknown people also offer no evidence or first-hand testimony. So, two possibilities:

A: Jesus did not exist
B: Jesus did exist but the gospel writers continued the conspiracy that had started a century earlier.

Which is more probable - that A is correct or that all those Bs are simultaneously correct? I know where my money is.

Over to you, folks.
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Whether jesus did or did not exist has little relevance to anything. If you believe in christianity you will know he existed. If you don't believe in god then you don't believe in christianity so the question is not relevant. It is pointless to rake over a lot of historical anecdotes of dubious veracity. Jesus was a sideshow in a circus lacking a ringmaster. Unless of course you believe otherwise, as I don't.
I agree with you Starbuck. Whoever wrote the Sermon on the Mount had something worth thinking about. To my way of thinking the tragedy of Christ's teaching was being taken over by rulers and governments to their own ends.
It's questions like this that remind me of Naomi and her ability to put the 'Doubting Thomas' viewpoint.
Hi I.don.. belief doesn't alter facts.if 50% of people believe jesus existed and 50% believe that he didn't it doesn't mean he half existed.
DT - you realise that in years to come your teaching will appear as another chapter in the New Testament.

jomifl - The basic concept of Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. If you do not believe that you are not a Christian. There is a large choice of other religions which believe in God and which you can join if you like. Since I do not believe that he was the Son of God, then I am not a Christian, even though I like some of his teachings, and try to live by them. The Sermon on the Mount is especially good, as seadogg says. My son has told me that what I believe would fit in well with the Hindu religion, but as I have not investigated that I am not sure.
or not..
I have often wondered who actually wrote the complete works of the Bible especially the New Testament because in those days there would not have been many people who could write. In fact most of them were completely illiterate, which is why they were told stories or parables to illustrate what the preachers were trying to tell them.
Hi Starbuck.. It seems to have about 300 years taken to get the new testament cobbled together. Contrary to popular belief it is no more the word of god than the front page of the Sun newspaper and has more mistakes. Check out 'codex sinaiticus' on Wiki. Your questions will be answered but not any about the existence of god.
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Not an awful lot of response in kind to my probability exercise.

I asked that religious belief be kept out of it because I'm well aware that Christians believe out of pure faith and are not interested in historical facts. For example, jno talks about the sepulchre being fixed on the spot of the crucifixion by people who knew where it was. How does she know that? What people? How does she know that Jesus was crucified if we have no evidence that he existed? jno believes it because she has faith, that's all.
(Also, when she asks what the point would have been of inventing him she could ask the same question of all the classical Greek and Roman gods and many others.)

To assume that Jesus existed as some sort of good man or ordinary teacher (as naomi does) is to cherry-pick. How can my original analysis lead to that view? Unless you merely mean that there were ordinary men called Jesus, of which there would have been many, it being a very common name, then there is still no evidence of the existence of the NT Jesus even if you strip him of his miracle-working and other magic.

Since naomi is not here to bristle and call me lazy I will use the well-established commonsense route of Occam's Razor. The simplest an most straightforward solution to the question implied in my analysis is that Jesus did not exist.

And that us what I shall assume from now on ... unless, of course, someone supplies some evidence that he did.
Jesus is mentioned by the Roman historians, Josephus and Tacitus.
You would think that as Jesus (according to the Bible) commanded vast crowds of people wherever he went, his words and deeds would have been recorded in copious amounts of contemporary documents. But what we actually find is a rather embarrassing historical hole where the Galilean carpenter should fit. The historical record is devoid of references to him until decades after his supposed death. The very first documents that do mention him are two brief passages in the works of the historian Josephus, written around 90 AD, but the longer of the two is widely considered to be a forgery and the shorter is likely to be one as well. The first unambiguous references to a historical, human Jesus, do not appear until well into the second century when they are mentioned by Tacitus who can hardly be described as contemporary to Jesus.

This is a person whose death apparently prompted a great earthquake, a worldwide three-hour darkness and the bodies of the saints arising from their tombs and walking the streets of Jerusalem, showing themselves to many people. And yet not a single one of these quite extraordinary events was recorded by a single contemporary historian.
Continued...

It's not as if there were no capable historians living in the vicinity at the time. For example there was Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived from about 20 BC to 50 AD; none of his works contain any mention of Jesus or Christianity. Justus of Tiberius, a native of Galilee who wrote a history around 80 AD covering the time Jesus supposedly lived, does not mention him once.

The historian Pliny the Elder, born around 20 AD, who took a special interest in writing about science and natural phenomena, doesn't make any mention in his thirty-seven-volume “Natural History” about an earthquake or a strange darkness around the supposed time of Jesus' death – and yet he would have been around to witness these extraordinary events in which he would have taken an acute interest.

There are only two real possibilities. One - Jesus did exist but his words and deeds have been greatly exaggerated to absurd levels by those who want to portray him as the literal son of God. Or two - Jesus didn't really exist at all and is rather, a spiritual ideal to which Christians should aspire.
There is a third possibility; that contemporary records were made but destroyed by those who had an interest in doing so.
Show me some real proof then I might believe!!!
What I wouldn`t give to get into the Vatican archives, but as I cant read Latin or ancient Greek I guess it would be a waste of time
Jesus may have existed as a person, but Alistair Campbell was there to cover up a single mother's mistake and glamorise it, had the story published in the Sun and everybody believed it! So now yo know.
I don't think it really matters whether he existed or not. Probably not, but there are still the "teachings" for want of a better word, and even if they are by latter day philosophers, what does it matter as long as they are well thought out and again for want of a better word "good".
The idea that all contemporary records of Jesus' life were destroyed by those who had an interest in doing so doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Not everyone back then was a supporter of Jesus and yet we don't even find any contemporary documents that criticise him. You would at least expect some documents to exist that pour scorn upon his teaching and denounce the man himself but instead we get nothing at all.

Also, I mentioned Pliny the Elder's thirty-seven volume work, “Natural History” which fails to mention numerous environmental and supernatural events. Assuming the three hour global darkness, the earthquake and the dead rising from their graves actually happened, there would be absolutely nothing to connect these events with the death of a particular individual. Therefore, there would be no reason to expunge these events from any contemporary records. It is far more likely and rational to conclude that these events did not happen as described in the Gospels.
Continued...

There is another reason I think that Jesus may not be a real historical figure. If I were to ask the question: Whom am I describing?

His birth was heralded by a star
His birth was witnessed by Shepherds
He was 30 when baptised
His baptiser went on to be beheaded
He was followed by 12 disciples
He walked on water and healed the sick
He gave a 'sermon on the mount'
He was crucified
He was buried in a tomb
He was resurrected after 3 days

Of course, I talking about the Egyptian God, Ra, who pre-dates the birth of Jesus by several thousand years.

If the evidence for a literal Jesus is looked at dispassionately and objectively, it seems unlikely that he existed. It is far more likely that Jesus as an apocryphal figure that has been constructed to represent all that is good about mankind.
wow, birdie, your posts are fascinating me!
As an atheist, who believed Jesus did exist, I find all this very very interesting.
The point you make about historians of the time, not recording anything, is certainly something to think about.
I didn't know that about Ra either.
I'm loving this post! Why weren't RE classes at school as interesting?!

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