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.
Have you heard about this dude named Brian?
I’m Brian, and my wife is too!
Downvote for stating “facts” without sources.
Joseph Smith was real too. Why should anyone care
Well, the followers of Joseph Smith spent a great deal of money back in the early ‘oughts against gay marriage. Perhaps looking into things like the Book of Abraham (a “translated” copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which wasn’t able translated until after the Rosetta Stone, and clearly does not say what Smith said it did), genetic testing of Native American tribes showing no Middle East inheritance, the various anachronisms (iirc, pre Columbian horses?) and the precedence of “KJV’ism’s” in the text might be important. We can debunk a lot of what Smith said, which might have significance for a religion that has a stranglehold over the politics of Utah.
Religious cults don’t care about reality.
You might not care about any particular religion, but there is a pretty good chance that any particular religion cares about you, and wants to enforce its ideas on yourself, and the world.
Religion drives wars, it drives politics, it drives culture, it is a fundental component of human existence.
Just because its own mythology or doctrines may be whatever level of contradictory or false… does not mean these things do not affect you, and the rest of the world.
That has nothing to do with what I said. You’re not convincing people to leave their cults by arguing historical minutia with them.
Sometimes people aren’t always trying to convince people to leave cults, and are instead just trying to describe and discuss aspects of reality, like religions.
People should care about reality, reality involves religious people driving how that reality progresses.
If you disagree with that, you don’t actually care about truth, you are an anti-intellectual.
Ideas must be considered, explored, examanined, discussed, in order to determine their truth or falsity.
Sometimes people aren’t always trying to convince people to leave cults, and are instead just trying to describe and discuss aspects of reality, like religions
And they’re free to do that, but it doesn’t have anything to do with with improving conditions for anyone or deprogramming cultists, so to assert that everyone should spend their time on it is ridiculous, as it amounts to a hobby.
People should care about reality, reality involves religious people driving how that reality progresses
People have a limited amount of time in their lives to spend. Learning about a religion, or how it ties into real history, should be done as a hobby by those interested or when it is pragmatic to do so. Arguing with zealots about how their cult ties into history is a pointless endeavor that is really playing their game, and therefore not pragmatic.
If you disagree with that, you don’t actually care about truth, you are an anti-intellectual.
Now you’re just being unserious.
Ideas must be considered, explored, examanined, discussed, in order to determine their truth or falsity.
Not all ideas are equal. If someone says we should genocide an ethnic group, the correct response is to recoil in horror and condemn the idea. When someone makes supernatural claims from their religious cult, the correct response is to make arguments that have at least some chance for a spark of deconversion - not to engage them in a rousing conversation about minutia that will NEVER have any positive impact.
Hmm… let me get this straight.
Your unpopular opinion™ is that someone named Jesus may have existed around the same time that all the stories about Jesus Christ of Nazareth were written?
and that “most mainstream scholars of the era” agree with OP
Saying Jesus existed but biblical events didn’t happen is meaningless. And since we know the bible is full of crap, it doesn’t really matter if a Jesus existed or not. That specific fairy tale Jesus is made up. Maybe it is a dramatization of real events, maybe it is a mix of stories and legends about several different people, maybe it was fabricated, it doesn’t really matter. Saying “Jesus existed” is just feeding the apologists, and there are so many Christian historians than I cannot take claims like that seriously.
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.
Jesus doesn’t have to be a single historical person.
Never knew Jesus is plural from Jesu
I’ve always understood historical Jesus as a concession, and not a reflection of confirmed existence.
…there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
I bet he was a member of the Judean People’s Front.
Fuck off! He’d definitely have been a member of the Peoples front of Judea
Splitters
I think you’re both wrong. I think he just always looked on the bright side of life.
I think Loretta would have a problem with that.
Can someone share a link or two that confirms the existence of historical Jesus?
UsefulCharts just released a youtube video on the topic. The argument is basically “the earliest documents referencing Jesus aren’t explicit that he was real but on the other hand it wasn’t long before he was treated as real”. Basically there wasn’t a lot of time for myth to be reinterpreted as history.
Personally I’m ambivalent, Sherlock Holmes wasn’t real but he may have had a real effect on criminology. People may confuse his historicity. Compared to Houdini.
I was under the impression that historians more didn’t have any evidence to discount the existence of the guy than so much as distinct records of him, so because of Christianity it’s generally accepted a guy existed. But it’s been a while since I looked into it and my memory is kinda shit, I’m getting old.
This passage in Josephus’s Antiquities would be the best evidence outside of the New Testament texts. Josephus refers to “Jesus, who was called Christ”’s brother James being executed, likely due to his role in leading an early group of Christians.
You can also read Bart Ehrman for some analysis and arguments from a professional historian.
Context: Josephus was born 4 years after Jesus’ supposed death, and he wrote his Antiquities some 60 years after that…
I don’t know if that’s trustworthy in archaeology / history, but that doesn’t feel very trustworthy to me.
I dunno, Rebecca Skloot was born 21 years after Henrietta Lacks died, but The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is still widely hailed as one of the best and most accurate biographies ever written. Jonathan Eig was born 4 years before MLK died, but his biography of the man from a couple years ago (55 years after King’s death) isn’t spurned. Heck, Ron Chernow missed Alexander Hamilton by a century and a half but it was so faithful that even the rap opera based on it was hailed for its accuracy.
Doesn’t seem to me that such a range is necessarily disqualifying of the account.
Those seem like poor examples, contemporary authors have access to vastly more resources.
Maybe. Vastly more disinformation to identify, too, though.
The passage refers to the killing of James, which would have happened sometime in the 60s CE, only about three decades before the writing of the Antiquities and during a time when Josephus was alive.
Just want to add a couple of things
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There were no extra-Biblical references to Pontius Pilate until 1961. Now imagine how much documentation must have surrounded the Roman prefect of Judea. All of it gone, except for a bit of limestone.
Also an argument (I think I heard it from Hitchens, but not sure): We know that the Nativity story is bogus because the Census that was supposed to bring Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem is anachronistic. And we know that it’s important that Jesus be from Bethlehem (City of David) because the Messiah was prophesized to be from there.
So the question is: if were making up Jesus from whole cloth, why not just make him Jesus of Bethlehem? Why go to the trouble unless Jesus of Nazareth was something people were already familiar with?
I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding your 1961 statement, but from Wiki on Pontius Pilate:
Surviving evidence includes coins he minted and the Pilate Stone inscription. Ancient sources such as Josephus, Philo, and
the Gospel of Lukedocument several incidents of conflict between Pilate and the Jewish population, often citing his insensitivity to Jewish religious customs. The Christian gospels, as well as Josephus and Tacitus, attribute the crucifixion of Jesus to Pilate’s orders.The Pilate Stone is where his 1961 date comes from. The Josephus bit that mentions Pilate is the “Testimonium Flavianum” which is the reference to Jesus in Josephus that was likely edited by a later source. It does look like the numismatic evidence (coins) are ridiculously common though.
Often, coins are the only evidence of historical figures. Lots of petty kings that never have anything written about them, but do have coins.
Who fucking cares?
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.
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.
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.
Amalgamation doesn’t work on such short timelines. We have evidence of christian missionaries less than 50 years after JCs death. It’s not comparable to, say, Arthur, where the legends start 400 years after his supposed death.
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.”
I don’t think most serious scholars would swear that a Jesus existed at that time and place, but would say that it is much more likely than not based on the confirming evidence from outside of the Christian faith. At some point you need to decide how much evidence is enough for any ancient topic. There’s no particular reason that I’ve found credible enough to convince me that there WASN’T a historical figure there, even though I absolutely refuse to accept any magic or miracles.
That’s the thing though —you shouldn’t need convincing that he wasn’t real. You should need convincing the he was real. I don’t have any particular reason to doubt he existed, but equally I don’t have a good reason to believe it either, so I just don’t. That’s the default position.
I don’t need to doubt he existed to also not hold a belief that he did.
