I think Lemmy has a problem with history in general, since most people on here have degrees/training in STEM. I see a lot of inaccurate “pop history” shared on here, and a lack of understanding of historiography/how historians analyze primary sources.
The rejection of Jesus’s historicity seems to be accepting C S Lewis’s argument - that if he existed, he was a “lunatic, liar, or lord,” instead of realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
scholars agree that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth existed in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea in the 1st century AD.
But,
There is no scholarly consensus concerning most elements of Jesus’s life as described in the Christian and non-Christian sources.
Exactly, and at that point, does it make sense to consider that person the same as the one from the new testament?
I think a big point of contention in the debate is that people say ‘Jesus was(n’t) real’ without clarifying whether they mean the former or the latter bit of your comment. I have a hunch there’d be more agreement if everyone was more clear. Thanks for the helpful comment!
People should be mindful of the phrasing. The title of this post, for example, is misleading trying to make it seem more than there just being records of a person who had the name Jesus. Nobody would call me a historical figure in the future just because I existed.
I do not give a fuck about this evidence. I want evidence that this man is what Christianity is founded on. It doesn’t need magic or anything, but more than just a fucking name having existed for me to even start thinking it’s the same dude.
It’s the name with the explicit connection to James, a leader of the early church.
There’s a difference between the idea of a pseudo-fictional composite character, like King Arthur who was constructed centuries after his time, and a real historical guy who existed and had stories written about what he said.
Consider how much evidence we have for Pythagoras. Pythagoras was also a weird religious cult leader, but I’d expect most here would know him for the Pythagorean theorem. Which he didn’t come up with. Does that not make him enough of a “Pythagoras” for you?
You have to gauge your sense of skepticism. There’s a difference between “oh, Gilgamesh seems to be showing up in all of these King’s List documents that claim thousands of years of dynastic dominance which are 80% bullshit to oil up a kingship’s perceived position in the world.” and “oh, here’s a bunch of texts about an unusual rogue ‘rabbi’ that developed a following; there’s some probably exaggerated claims of healing, an oddly novel resurrection story that has more added to it as each Gospel is written.”
Read just the resurrection, Mark-> Matthew-> Luke->John to see how the more fanciful stuff develops. Heck - maybe even read the New Testament in chronological order - starting with the letters of Paul and see them as dealing with situations happening in real time. Treat it as a ‘found footage’/‘ambiguous narrator’ collection. A murder mystery.
There’s a difference between reading the Bible as a religious text, to either prove or disprove, and as a compilation of vastly different documents, by vastly different authors, writing across centuries.
For a modern example, think about John of God - one of the faith healing charlatans that Oprah promoted. Will people who live in the next few centuries automatically discount his existence because they find it occasionally next to a description of his supposed miracles, which accounts are perhaps more likely to survive than those of his sexual assault allegations? Will the things that he will have said to have said not be accurate, even if other information about him is not?
At the end of the day, there’s just as much evidence for the existence of several early historical figures that we don’t doubt the existence of. I think it’s reasonable to not privilege the text as anything other than a primary source document, and recognize that a lot of similar supernatural claims have been added to multiple real world figures in history.
I think the difference between doubting Pythagoras and doubting Jesus is that no one is claiming g Pythagoras existed to bolster their claims on holding a moral superiority. A lot of historical research (especially early on) into the history of Jesus is done by religious scholars who are explicitly seeking to back up things they already believe. I don’t trust them. Most of the consensus is built upon this pre-conceived idea that he’s real, and so the support is on shaky footing.
No one really cares if Pythagoras existed or not, so it’s not worth considering. A lot of people hold a certain (potentially harmful, or at least ignorant of reality) view on the world because of a supposed figure named Jesus, and the fact there isn’t much evidence he existed at all pretty heavily breaks the illusion we know he did miraculous stuff. If it’s questionable that he even existed then it’s certainly questionable that he did anything special.
The fact is, historical consensus is built on backing up a belief, in this case. Not on fact originally. It becomes incredibly hard and dangerous to your career to question the consensus without evidence —and you can’t have evidence of non-existence. That means anytime anyone questions it people yell “most historians agree!” and no further questions are asked. I think it’s much healthier to question it, regardless of what the consensus is. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s been wrong, and it can’t hurt to be skeptical.
I think the difference between doubting Pythagoras and doubting Jesus is that no one is claiming g Pythagoras existed to bolster their claims on holding a moral superiority.
Pythagoras literally ran a mystery cult, and was associated for centuries with magical/divine powers after. Look at what probably happened to Hippasus.
Modern Bible scholars disconnect any ideas about moral superiority. The goal is to understand Jesus as a man, to the point where you can find polemics by modern Christian scholars about how godless the field is.
It’s good to question things, but there needs to be reasoning behind your question. There needs to be some sort of explanation of how a conspiracy developed to make a guy up who was crucified (Jewish conceptions of the Messiah at the time were more a kingly type ordained to overthrow the Roman yoke, and crucifixion is a pretty humiliating death…) Where is the motive, means and opportunity for a bunch of people to simultaneously decide this guy existed?
No one alive today cares. At the time, sure. No one is a part of his cult today, unlike Jesus’s cult.
Modern Bible scholars disconnect any ideas about moral superiority.
Like I said, it’s based on knowledge from people who didn’t. I feel like you’re purposefully ignoring parts of what I said.
It’s good to question things, but there needs to be reasoning behind your question.
There does not need to be reasoning to not believe something. There needs to be reasoning to believe something. I don’t believe Jesus existed in the same way I don’t believe any other person who we don’t know about existed. I just don’t hold a belief. It doesn’t matter to me, and I haven’t seen enough evidence to actively hold a belief, and I don’t care enough to try. It’s not important to me.
I think even “vague Jesus human person existed” is maybe too much confidence with nothing to back it up. Don’t even know if it was a singular dooms day death cult leader or an amalgamation.
Sure, a man like Jesus was inevitably real. He just didn’t have powers, due to powers being impossible.
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Take this childish shit back to reddit. Adults are speaking.
Again, the existence of a historical Jesus does not mean miracles or resurrection or God. This is childish, reactive anti-theism.
The majority of scholars agree that while Josephus likely mentioned Jesus, the more explicit references to his divinity and resurrection are the product of later Christian interpolations, aimed at enhancing the narrative to align with Christian doctrine.
https://www.bartehrman.com/josephus/
Josephus was born shortly after a historical Jesus would have died. His mentions of Jesus in his writings was from more than sixty years later when christians were an active and growing cult in the region where he lived. I agree that Jesus was likely a historical person but Josephus is only a point of evidence for it. It’s the easiest known mention of Jesus and not too much after he would have lived but Josephus’s writings are far from proof of a historical Jesus.
It’s quite possible, but the waters are muddied since every legendary facet was treated as fact, so the historical record is relatively less reliable given how much of it was manipulated in the name of faith.
Celsus, a second century author and critic of Christianity, did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Early Roman and Jewish critics of Christianity did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Instead, their claims were that he was the son of a Roman soldier (no virgin birth) and that his miracles were attributable to the same common magic that everyone believed in at that time.
If I were writing in 170 CE, and wanted to prove that Christianity was false because Jesus was made up, then I would probably say that.
Historians are aware of the fact that texts can be altered or manipulated or untrue. That’s part of the process of reading a primary source - thinking critically about what your source is saying, what biases they might have, and yes, if there were alterations or manipulations. There is ample study and linguistic analysis to determine those kinds of changes.
You can’t just assume something is true because historians didn’t say it wasn’t. That’s not how it works.
People not claiming he wasn’t real is not evidence that he was real. Presumably they were making statements acceptable for their period in time in their location. Was it acceptable for them to proposition that he may not have existed? Is that even useful?
If the goal is to convince people to not follow that religion, and they currently do, they’re much more likely listen if you agree they have a basis in reality but are slightly incorrect. It’s part of the reason Christianity has been so successful —it meets people where they are and adapts to their beliefs.
If you want to convince people that they’re wrong, you don’t say that. You say “you’re right about this, but this part is wrong.” If you say their entire belief system is built on lies then they double down. It’s been shown time and time again with doomsday cults. The more they’re proven wrong the more strongly the followers believe in it.
Was it acceptable for them to proposition that he may not have existed?
Yes! The pagan Romans were still in power. An easy way for them to win points would have been to point out the guy never existed. Why would Tacitus describe the crucifixion if it didn’t happen?
You have communities of people claiming that this guy was real and being obnoxious to Roman authorities. The Romans eventually went full ham on Judea - burning down the second Temple. It would be really really unusual if the guy didn’t exist and they didn’t say so.
Were this any other historical figure it would be enough to say we have sufficient evidence for existence. You’re letting your bias against the followers of this figure color what evidence you’ll accept for their existence.
Are we all going to turn into Muhammad mythicists next?
I mean… maybe. He was writing about events 150 years ago in another country. He may not have had direct knowledge of them. Think about how contentious history can be today with the benefit of modern documentary evidence, professional historians, etc. and think about how uncertain things under such distance would be back then.
What Jesus are they talking about? That needs to be defined first. Not the one depicted in the bible that’s for sure.
A Jesus who had an apocalyptic ministry, some amount of followers, was executed by the Roman state and said at least some of the things recounted in the Gospels. Matthew and Luke are clearly pulling from some sort of earlier source, which likely had at least some accurate accounts of his teaching.
TLDR: “The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source”
You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That’s one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible. Shitloads of New Testament books are Apostles sending Jesus’ words to various churches and governments. Look up “epistle”.
Look at the Old Testament for more history. Books like Leviticus, where we can pick out loads of weird proscriptions, were the records of law as the Tribe of Levi saw it.
A scholar can spend a lifetime unpacking the Bible without believing in ghosts, holy or otherwise. You’re doing the “I’m too smart for this bullshit!” thing. Stop. You’re having the opposite effect.
You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That’s one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible.
Also the fact that modern scholars recognize that not all of the Epistles were even written by Paul! You’d think if all of these Bible scholars were fervent Christians hellbent on ignoring historical evidence, they wouldn’t be arguing that Paul didn’t write Ephesians or Colossians, or that the Pentateuch was probably a compilation from four different authors!
I never knew they had all been ascribed to Paul, always thought there was various authors.
Ephesians and Colossians explicitly claim to have been written by Paul.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. - Ephesians 1:1
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. - Colossians 1:1
I find it funny that you end up with a or multiple pseudo-Pauls, when… Paul is already not his original name, lol.
The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source
Have you ever read a document from before 1400? Just curious, because you seem to be under the illusion that reading primary sources means that you either take everything they say literally, or dismiss them as entirely made up. This is exactly what I mentioned with regard to ignorance of historiography and method earlier.
Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes all say contradictory things about Socrates. Will you argue that Socrates was fictional?
The letter J wasn’t even invented until the year 1524, so formally speaking, Jesus, Jews, Judges, January, June, July, and every other word including the letter J did not exist in the 1400s or before.
Therefore, Jesus never existed.
Lower case letters are medieval too, so only IESUS existed. Case closed.
That’s just orthography; the letters and words didn’t exist, which is unrelated to whether the things they represent did. There was in fact a judge, a January, and a Julius Caesar in Rome.
The joke ->
💨
-> you
His name in Aramaic, which was what he almost certainly would have actually spoken, was almost certainly Yehoshuah, which was a common name at the time.
It was often shortened to Yeshua, sometimes to Yeshu.
(This is still a common surname in Hebrew to this day.)
When translated into Greek, this became IESUS.
This is because Greek doesn’t really have a representation of Y as consonant, and because Greek also doesn’t really do the ‘sh’ sound, that got changed to just an ‘s’.
The earliest Gospels that we have are largely (entirely?) written in Greek, because:
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Most people of the time were illiterate or functionally illiterate, and most people who learned how to write, well they were taught Greek, because it was the most common shared language of business and governance in the eastern Mediterranean.
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There was very obviously a push to proselytize to Greek speakers, the Gentiles, to grow the movement outside of Judea, by many early Christians.
Anyway, yeah, you are correct that the harder J consonant did not develop until much, much later, in Europe.
So… if you were to do a more modern, direct translation of Yehoshuah, to a modern name in modern English, it would roughly be Joshua / Josh, not Jesus.
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Plato (indirectly via fabricated self insert character) describes Atlantis as a story he read from his great great uncle Solon, who himself apparently heard about the story from ‘Egyptians’…
… therefore, Atlantis is 100% confirmed real, lol.
Could also be teachings of some of the other messianic cults just misattributed to Jesus, but either way he was clearly the only one that managed to maintain relevance much past their death.
As you indicated, this isn’t an unpopular opinion in the wider world. There are records outside of Christian scripture that mention Jesus. No legitimate historians doubt that he existed.
Yeah - it is an unpopular opinion on Lemmy though. I’ve been accused of being Christian for making this argument, as if accepting the historicity of the figure inherently means accepting the claim that he was a divine being.
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Ehrman has said that he is both agnostic and atheist but that “I usually confuse people when I tell them I’m both”. “Atheism is a statement about faith and agnosticism is a statement about epistemology”, he said.
Ehrman argues that Jesus of Nazareth existed historically, and has summarized the claim in popular form “he did exist, whether we like it or not”. His position on Christology is historical rather than confessional. In summarizing How Jesus Became God, NPR recorded his judgment that “Jesus himself didn’t call himself God and didn’t consider himself God”. He has also written that Jesus did not teach postmortem reward and punishment as popularly conceived. In a 2020 essay he argued that Jesus proclaimed resurrection and the coming kingdom rather than eternal torment.
Adults are discussing history. Whatever they did to you in Sunday school class is not relevant here.
historicity
I think you’re looking for the word “history”
edit: sorry… I try not to be that guy, but I couldn’t help myself
I stand corrected, TIL!
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Is Bart Ehrman a “religious scholar”?
Modern biblical scholarship starts with a prima facie assumption that miracles and god are not real. It’s a very rich field, with many people with a variety of religious beliefs and non beliefs.
Your ignorance and rejection of an entire academic field is no different from a creationist rejecting the academic consensus of biologists.
Please give me an example of “legitimate historian.” Do you read much academic history? Do you have a degree or any formal training in history on which to make the claim that you can distinguish “legitimate” historians from illegitimate ones?
Things we don’t understand happen. When we like the happening, it’s a “miracle,” when we don’t, a “catastrophe.”
I’m so puzzled by this insistence that all who analyze religious history must be religious nutcases. Even if you write off all the scholars who are religious, religion still exists as a concept in the world, and in the same way you don’t have to be a virus to study virology, you don’t have to be religious to study religion. There are plenty of atheists who are deeply interested in religion, if for no other reason than the massive impact it has on all our lives.
ITT: “Hitler existed”
Oh so you’re a Nazi and believe Raiders of the Lost Ark was a documentary?! Go to hell! (Which doesn’t exist and I know that because I’m smart.)
Anyway, my understanding was that the existence of a single man, Yeshua the Nazarene, was still a bit controversial. Don’t some scholars suspect the Biblical Jesus was an amalgamation of a number of itinerant preachers? Or does much of the historical evidence lie in the fact that the Gospels seem to be talking about the same person? Which I think is your take?
What’s your background on this particular post? LOL, not looking for a resume, just broad strokes.
Also, why is he referred to as being from Nazareth when the Bible clearly states he was born in Bethlehem? Was Nazareth a state in which lay Bethlehem? I thought Judea was the state.
Don’t some scholars suspect the Biblical Jesus was an amalgamation of a number of itinerant preachers?
I haven’t seen this idea seriously suggested. Perhaps some of the ideas are an amalgamation - I suspect Paul had to do with a lot of softening of anti-Roman rhetoric. But the mainstream consensus suggests an individual.
Also, why is he referred to as being from Nazareth when the Bible clearly states he was born in Bethlehem? Was Nazareth a state in which lay Bethlehem? I thought Judea was the state.
What seems to be likely is that he was from Nazareth (tiny, backwater town), but prophecy would suggest he needed to be from Bethlehem, which explains the ridiculous “go to your homeland for the census” thing. (This also is sorta evidence for the historicity of the individual - what we might call a “criterion of embarrassment” - if they were just going to make the guy up on the spot they’d have had him just born in Bethlehem.)
My background is that I have a BA in history, and have done a little graduate level study of religion and historiography. I’m not a professional academic but I’m enough of an armchair enthusiast to have studied a little Koine.
they’d have had him just born in Bethlehem
Doesn’t the Bible say exactly that?
So his parents were from Nazareth and the census was a literary device to get Jesus’ birth to line up with prophecy? I’m still a bit confused.
So his parents were from Nazareth and the census was a literary device to get Jesus’ birth to line up with prophecy?
Yes. Jesus was referred to often as a “of Nazareth.” If he had actually born in Bethlehem, then he probably would have been referred to as “of Bethlehem.” Notice how Mark, the gospel that was probably written first, does not have any form of birth story. Luke and Matthew have two contradictory accounts, which invoke a contrivance to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. Mark just says that he came out of Nazareth.
It’s easy to see the authors of Luke and Matthew adding the nativity stories in to make a prophetic argument.
I think the closest thing to a “historical” Jesus in the Gospels is probably found in the original Mark. The ending of Mark describing Jesus’s appearances after the resurrection is a later addition and was not present in the original texts.
Downvote for stating “facts” without sources.
Jesus-ish existed? Just a thought. A little of this a little if that. Some of these & those. Perhaps a few of the other things and ta da. An individuals legacy can change with every generation. The fish gets bigger every time my Dad recounts the tale of the monster Largemouth Bass he caught.
Have you heard about this dude named Brian?
I’m Brian, and my wife is too!
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82vxOBbYSzk
Esoterica - Who was the historical Jesus?
I’ve always understood historical Jesus as a concession, and not a reflection of confirmed existence.
Going from memory here, I heard it years back. Robert M. Price’s podcast The Bible Geek covered the argument against a historical Jesus in an episode, noting that a major pillar in the argument is an obituary written by Josephus. Wikipedia has a page on Josephus’s account.
Price’s argument, such that I remember, has to do with the fact that Josephus’ account outright calls Jesus the Messiah, despite supposedly being written in the first century CE when this would have been a niche argument, suggesting that this account was not actually written when it purports to be. But I haven’t listened to Bible Geek in a long time, all of this could be a misrepresentation.
Price is specifically referring to the “Testimonium Flavianum“ there, which most scholars agree was altered. The part of The Antiquities that refers to “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” most scholars think is original, and I don’t know if Price has made an argument about that quote.
Price is probably the only person with enough background to be a mythicist, but his arguments still just don’t seem to match how people act. “Oh, the Egyptians have Osiris, let’s make up our own god who gets resurrected!”
The evidence just seems more likely to show that the man existed, and had more elaborate details added to his biography as time went on. You can see a much higher “Christology” as you read each Gospel in the order they were written (details in the resurrection story, how many angels were at the tomb) until you get to John which makes Jesus the logos itself. The story needs to start with some sort of nucleus, something real, that has things added to it step by step.
“Oh, the Egyptians have Osiris, let’s make up our own god who gets resurrected!”
Isn’t that pretty much the whole origin of the roman pantheon? They heard about the cool greek gods and made their own copies.
That’s a common misunderstanding/simplification. It’s more “wow, these gods are kinda similar to ours, so they must be the same.” Portable Orange on YT has a good and well sourced video, and I think reading Dr. Devereaux’s blog posts is a good way to understand some ideas about ancient polytheism. Neither of these are published journal articles or books, but they both thoroughly cite their sources.
Yeah afaik the earliest record of the gospels and Jesus date to 90AD, which is of course beyond the memory of a single generation. Either the stories were passed down orally that long (telephone game), or the whole thing was really invented around that time, since there are multiple written records suddenly appearing in the early 2nd century.
The creation of Christianity around 90-120AD makes more sense than anything to me, given the geopolitics of the time.
A stroll through any necropolis back then would reveal many tombs marked Yeshua and Miryam and Yosef. Just common names. If someone were to invent myths around that time, they might just pick names like that, especially given the hebrew meaning of Yeshua (salvation through god).
I not a biblical scholar so grains of salt.
What I remember from Bible Geek (and/or Human Bible, another podcast he did) was that the earliest of the gospels actually dates to the 4th century CE, and that three of them are likely derivative works from an earlier book, lost to us, that scholars call “Q.” I think it was John that was the only gospel thought not to originate from it.
Addition: looking it up, here’s Q source on Wikipedia. It states that Matthew and Luke are thought to originate from Q, but not Mark or John.
The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written about 70 CE. (There’s also evidence that a “Q source” and a “sayings source” were floating around earlier - the commonalities in Luke and Matthew) Paul’s epistles are even earlier; Galatians was written somewhere 40-60 CE. Paul’s epistles are written to communities of Christians, meaning that that Christianity has already spread by then.
It’s not quite certain that Jesus and Paul actually met in person. So all his writing might be apocryphal. His word might have become christian canon, but he is not really a source one can trust.
While Jesus and Paul likely never met in person, the point is that Paul is writing to established Christian communities within a few decades of Jesus’s death. There are already churches with established leadership and community structures.
Interesting, thank you for the missing detail there. I didn’t realize Paul’s writings were that early, but, he would have been 65-70 at least by then? I suppose that’s possible.
Who fucking cares?
Because people made religion out of it? A religion from a Canaanitic people, who never set food in the desert they claim to have walked in for 40 years, but hey, we can’t all worship the same Canaanitic Storm God Elohim, amirite?
Yeah, cults are gonna cult. People made religion out of spaghetti and comets. I still don’t care if Jesus ever existed.
I don’t necessarily care if Buddha or Carl Sagan existed, but I like the philosophy that is attached to them.
Why do we care about history in general?
It provides us with some patterns in human behavior, things that cannot really be studied in a lab. You could approach early Christianity as a way to better understand mass movements, or the different coping strategies of an oppressed/conquered people. You could read the text of the New Testament and ask yourself why these ideas were appealing and what that might say about human nature.
As part of the study of ideas, Christianity is a really interesting expression of how Hellenistic thought mixed with Judaism. There’s a reason a lot of Neoplatonists were Christian.
The early conflicts with Judaism as Christianity developed its own identity have pretty far reaching impacts, with the death of Jesus being placed on all Jews and being used to justify atrocities to this current day.
Or, as a guy that thinks about the Roman Empire at least a couple times a day, it’s a great window into the experience of a backwater Roman province that eventually revolted and was absolutely crushed.
Jesus is not history in general, and I still don’t fucking care.
Okay, now do Atlantis.
The “evidence” for Atlantis is Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, which is pretty clear in context to be a myth Plato is using to make a philosophical point. He’s not claiming it is historical, and it connects to Plato’s ideal of a “Noble Lie.”
