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Interesting. I thought it was fairly well established that Jesus existed in some capacity but the debate was about who he actually was and (from a religious standpoint) if he did any of the things the Bible claims he did. It’s interesting to read that non-jewish people of the time seemed to have no knowledge of his existence.
At the same time though, I wonder if it’s possible that most people just ignored him, which is why there’s apparently very few accounts of him until after he supposedly died, resurrected and ascended to heaven. Kinda like a street preacher in Times Square, NYC. How many people actually acknowledge street preachers on social media, and how many of them actually know the preachers by name? Then think about how social media didn’t exist yet, so the bar to be recorded in history by uninterested third parties (even just as a letter to a friend about that “annoying Jesus guy”) is probably a lot higher.
Not saying he existed, just that it’s interesting to think that he could have existed but the lack of evidence is just because no one gave a fuck.
How much of the gospels have to be true for you to be comfortable jesus existed? On one end you’ve got a dude named Jesus (0%) to every non-magical account at 100%.
Even the non-mystical stuff should have left a mark, but it doesn’t seem like it really did.
That’s the thing. Personally I’d need an individual who fits the nonmagical description moderately well and made the majority of the claims he’s said to have made. Namely I need most of his major teachings coming from the same individual. A parable or two here or there is one thing, but the beatitudes, the greatest commandment, turn the other cheek, etc that’s important to the claim that this individual existed. If it was just some dude who got executed named Jesus who wandered around clarifying the Torah that’s not the historical Jesus
I am always struck in the reading by how Jesus basically just sounds like every other two-bit cult leader. Everything is put in very grand terms as though he were greatly respected and doing everything for a captivated public but these could actually be just have been very commonplace interactions.
Like just look at how the Mormons mythologized Joseph Smith. He was literally just a “rock in a hat” grifter and dowser of the type was reasonably common who when his life is placed in appropriate historical context was not really super notable. He just got popular. There are a metric fuckton of cults at any given point who just never make superstar notoriety and die out largely uncommented on even in our news and propriety obsessed modernity. Their internal writings however are always self centered and bombastic. Cults elevate the mundane into hyperbole when you are inside them but from the outside they retain their mundanity. There’s a lot of people who just slip through historical cracks the further back you go because their contemporaries didn’t record things they didn’t think was notable or was just the water they swum in. Hard records generally tend to be beaurcratic and stories evolve dramatically to gain staying power.
We don’t treat “Christ” as the job title it is. It isn’t applied to other people but it could be. We say “Christ-like figure” but they could just be Christs. There are plenty of failed Christs out there. You generally dunno which ones have staying power until past the general limits of a human lifetime.
I’ve read some stuff suggesting pretty much that – a cult that he started, ditched when it got out of hand and they killed his brother, but then he rejoined to reign it back in. Far from low-born, far from celibate, far from magical. He’s buried in northern Spain and was survived by three children.
Can I get your sources?
Dave down the Red Lion
It’s a novel take for me, as well. I’d have assumed the Pharisees would have surely written about him as they hated him so much…
But I’m still trying to wrap my little head around mythologised history and historicised mythology!
Some version of Jesus absolutely existed, since is was a pretty common name. Street preachers were not uncommon either, so it’s very possible that there was one named Jesus.
The real debate about whether Jesus existed is whether any of the biblical stories are at all accurate. There is No reason to think they are.
Also he was supposedly very prominent but apparently no historian or political writer back then recorded anything about him.
Weird, I read that jesus was not a common name at the time and that it would have been something like yusuf in reality if he was real
“Jesus” is a Latin translation of a Greek translation of the Hebrew name Yeshua so, yes, “Jesus” wasn’t literally a common name in Israel. It was actually Yeshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ,) that was a common name.
absolutely existed
vs
it’s very possible
are two wildly different claims which cannot co-exist.
Except they were two different claims. “Some guy named Jesus existed”, and “Some guy named Jesus was a street preacher”.
Jeez people, next you’re going to tell me the whole Jesus story is just a fucking rehash of other stories that already existed
I love that the article compared Bible stories to tv tropes
Seriously, Joshua? I’m willing to give you a pass for including a resurrection in your foundational myth, but this is… No one sees it happen, there’s nothing particularly impressive about it that stays afterwards, it’s just- some women find the corpse is no longer there, and they tell the men, and the men confirm that the corpse is indeed no longer there. What am I even suppose to do with this? It’s not just that you’re using the most tired trope there is, it’s that you don’t do ANYTHING with it. And I don’t mean anything new or innovative, I mean anything at all! What’s even the purpose of this resurrection? It even works against your narrative! You’re telling me that the father kills the son as a sacrifice for humankind, but then the son just resurrects? Then what’s even the point of the sacrifice? Does the son even have ANYTHING to do afterwards? No…?
I’m sorry, Joshua, but I’m going to have to give you an F. This might have been interesting before Osiris or Zagreus, but you’re literally thousands of years late. Try better with your next religion.
This might have been interesting before Osiris or Zagreus,
BTW, there’s a theory that Judaism has been heavily influenced by Akhenaten’s attempt at introducing monotheism in Egypt. It really feels as its skeleton is not Semitic, though it of course includes lots of things reminiscent of Semitic religions too.
That makes sense. So much of the spread of religions is the changing of the religion to fit the converted.
Yes, I think I’ve heard that, say, Coptic church has some traits of ancient Egyptian religion, Syriac churches have more of Judaism in then than in other kinds of Christianity.
I definitely can see that Armenian church has some local pagan and Zoroastrian remnants (more of the latter, I think that’s because during conversion cults of local deities associated with Greek gods or treated similarly to them would be considered the main enemy).
And when I sometimes hear which things Catholics in Latin America often believe, feels wild too.
Yeah the example that comes to mind for me is that in Pakistan and Bangladesh there are Muslim Hijra. Also the number of catholic saints who are eerily similar to gods in areas they’re revered must be acknowledged. St Nicholas in Turkey is very different from the odinesque version of him in the Germanic and Nordic traditions. St Bridget is extremely similar to Brigid. Hell, Christmas is on the feast of Sol Invictus.
I particularly love Santa Muerta. The idea that death is the patron Saint to pray to for protection when you’re being persecuted regardless of how just it is is a powerful thing.
These changes can be small to large and they’re one of the most beautiful aspects of religion speaking as a pagan.
Your telling me there was no Jewish zombie carpenter?
I mean it sounds stupid when you think about it. As long as talking snakes are real, i’m finrle with it.
Don’t forget magician
Saying the Bible is based in history is kinda like saying Cocaine Bear is based on a true story
In fact I’m pretty sure we have more evidence of Cocaine Bear’s existence
All of history should be taken with a grain of salt. Was a historical figure as bad as history said? Or did the patron of the guy writing things down really hate him? “Hey scribe, write on that scroll that this guy fucks donkeys.”
Or maybe the patron of the scribe really likes someone. “Write down that the Emperor made Rome Great Again!”
And you may be shocked to learn about many non-christian documents mentioning the gods they believed in at the time. Should they be ignored too?
Everything in history requires interpretation. And many times religious texts do contain indication of things that happened. Viking Sagas talked about going to North America. Next page they might talk about fighting dragons. Should all of it be ignored.
This is the importance of archaeology. Gotta dig up some stuff to confirm or reject the things they were writing down back then. Because none of it is really things we can fully trust.
History is just a story that tell each other until we find evidence that conflicts with it.
Read this wiki about Boudica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica
Seems convincing, right? It’s all made up. The only thing we know of this person (if she even existed) comes from two accounts from Tacitus who wrote about her many years later (sound familiar?) and Cassius Dio who wrote about her a centurey later. There’s archaeological evidence that four towns in Britain were burned to the ground in the same time period. I guess that might have been Boudica? It’s possible, so we’ll go with that.
“It is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters” - Boudica to her army, as documented by a Roman historian that wasn’t there.
I think that this is true for ancient and medieval history, but ever since the printing press we’ve got massive amounts of contemporary primary sources. So it’s not like we cannot say with certainty what happened during World War I, World War II, 1930s Germany, civil rights movement, etc.
Zealot by Reza Aslan is a great read on this subject.
It compares and contrasts between Jesus of Nazareth vs Jesus the Christ.
Basically says that Jesus hated the rich for fucking up the temples and stealing from the common folks.
But somehow that shit got twisted by rich people and now you have prosperity gospel which is basically a lie to take advantage of people who don’t know much.
Part of the prosperity gospel is just modification of the middleman racket run by priests. Instead of being the interpreter and conduit between the person and god you now pay for that service with the idea that the more you pay the better your chances of god noticing you and your desire to go to heaven. Rich people have always assumed they can just buy their way into or out of any situation, heaven and hell included.
Exactly. It’s indulgences for Protestants, but without the priestly vows of poverty or the internal justification that the money is going to the poor. Hell they don’t even believe in purgatory, at least in indulgences there’s the idea that you’re going to be having a bad time and that through acts of charity you can buy your way into less. No this is instead you trade wealth on earth for divine favor in the form of wealth on earth. I struggle to imagine a lazier scam.
We have no contemporary primary sources which confirms the existence of neither a Jesus of Nazareth nor a Jesus the Christ. It is still just a discussion of interpretations of later secondary sources.
just some critical thinking notes.
The title says: “Findings Cast Doubt…” One might expect that the core of the essay will be … findings. One might expect that as with most commonly taught English writing practices, the first paragraph would both outline the point, and give a brief summary of the point.
Seven, eight paragraphs in, the ‘Findings’ are still being teased.
This type of article … accurate or not, is working through a ‘Palm reader’ technique, where they build up a series of ‘connections with the subject’, a long line of ‘Yeses’ then they slowly begin to introduce _their points. The technique is able to slip past some percent of critical thinking, because the person has been led down a path of agreements.
Again accurate or not, it couches the ‘Findings’ in a sea of ‘everyone knows’, ‘modern scholars agree’ , ‘doubts have existed from the beginning’. These are not facts, they are well worded disparaging digs, which contextualize the subject to their bias.
as long as we don’t have a time machine, Jesus’ existence is an unfalsifiable claim. Of course you’re not going to see definitive proof that he didn’t exist
I mean, yeah. If you read something about gnostic non-Christian versions of Judaism existent at that time, you might notice that the whole idea of him is reminiscent of what a gnostic cult believer should be himself.
The part about being a higher entity clothed in human existence which should remember itself, drop those clothes and ascend.
Probably grew out of some story of “the guy who actually managed to do that”, ha-ha, which somehow blended with a few real figures.
EDIT: Now when I think about it, makes Jedi religion in Star Wars seem even more Christian. Especially if we count various concepts (Journal of the Whills) and branches existent in the EU (Living Force, Potentium and what not).
I mean, in the book it even mentions that there are other people doing the exact same thing Jesus did. The book even implies that Jesus was not even one of the more popular trouble makers of the time. It’s more or less the sophists in a back-woods community that the Romans gave very little fucks about. Not surprising there’s little-to-no evidence.
That much is obvious, if you read Lucian, street prophets with followers were a mundane thing to see.
Actually now when the fine tradition of burning heretics is all but gone in the European cultures, this trait of Antique Mediterranean is slowly coming back.
Solar Deity! Get yer solar deity, right heeeyah! Solar deity! Free chocolate bunny with each conversion!
Hey this really amazing thing just happened to me and my friends group. It was world changing. Half of those friends don’t give a shit and never respond to text messages again… DECADES PASS … No one bothers to write any of it down. A major power predictably displaces everyone in the region to quell quixotic zealotry. No one can find work, they are homesick; outcasts; gutter fodder of the diaspora.
In reality it is more like, someone sees a Craigslist job post about a religious startup. A few dudes write a plausible fan fiction. They even copy each other’s homework like primary schoolchildren, errors and all; not even intentional obfuscation errors, the real deal little kid kind. Their works all fit into a prequel timeline niche. A COUPLE HUNDRED YEARS PASS Fan fiction universe is fucking god mode. Why? Because people are fucking stupid. Humans are sub sentient. There was no separation of church and state. This was as political as it was emotional, lack of fundamental logic skills, and survivalism. I don’t believe any fucker that tells me some unhappenable story decades later, and especially when the story can’t be corroborated except by his homework copying buddies getting put up in peoples houses and not needing to work because he wrote a plausible—to a largely illiterate population—fan fiction.
Oh no, big invisible guy in the sky will be upset!
I was gonna do the quiz it mentions here but it’s a 404 http://exchristian.net/3/
Cool article though - thanks for sharing. I wanna read thst Fitzgerald book now.
Edit: book was legit. First one is called Nailed and it goes through 10 myths about historical jesus. Absolutely fascinating.
Paywall, can someone paste the article?
Thank you.
