All the historical evidence for Jesus in one room
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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That is just wrong. There isn’t any evidence anything he said was true, but we know that the guy that the Bible was written about existed and was crucified and taught what would become christianity. Now the evidence is essentially that the book exists about him, and that he is referenced in other adjacent religious texts, but that evidence is still more than the evidence that it was made up, and is still enough that it’s widely believed that he was a real guy. If what he taught was true or not is another story.
Secular scholars consider the historical account of Jesus existing in the writings of the Roman Jewish Historian Josephus. There are extra biblical references to him. Enough so that secular historians consider the person known as Jesus of Nazareth to be a historically real person. His ministry wasn't even that uncommon at the time. There were many apocalyptic preachers around that time and other magicians/miracle workers, like Simon the Magician.
Repeating stories he heard decades later. Hearsay by people who had an incentive to lie. Josephus also said things like this:
It's interesting to me that you consider him a valid source for one thing you can't prove but reject pretty much everything else the man said especially since you can't really disprove the Adam and Eve story.
Interesting because your boy Josphius was in the area and wasn't aware Nazareth even existed. In any case truth doesn't depend on how many people assert something.
And?
Thank you. I was looking for a place to point out that the evidence is the bible and historical figures saying that these people say this. I mean if there was actual roman data from a census (which supposedly was being done when he was born) and government paperwork around the crucifixion that would be different.
How do we know this?
Spiderman must exist as well. Also all the books about him were written multiple decades later.
You mean the Gnostic stuff written two centuries later or the Talmudic stuff written only a mere 150-400 years later?
Means motive and opportunity. Means, the early stories are all ripped off. Motive, sex and greed. Opportunity, if Paul is to believed in his 7 undisputed letters the only two people to see the resurrection are Peter and James and "the twelve" who he doesn't name and never met.
We know this because a group of followers doesn’t just form and grow without someone they are following. The entire teachings of everyone within his group revolves around Jesus, and if he didn’t exist then Christianity never began. People need a leader to form a group, they don’t just all be together and say hey, let’s make up a dude and then follow what we made up. They believed enough to die for their group, and they believed enough to dedicate themselves to growing it. That doesn’t just happen if you made it on a whim or made up a key point of your story which could be validated. Additionally just because books were written multiple decades later doesn’t mean that they were completely made up. People can live multiple decades, and stories of experiences and knowledge of people can survive this long easily too. We also don’t know what they knew at the time because lots of information about Jesus that would have survived had been altered much much later by kings who wished to use Christianity for control, we of course know he didn’t completely make up Jesus as there are books referencing him from before this happened, however it does mean our information now is more limited than theirs, so we can’t assume they made this up based upon the same information we have now. It is both logical and just true that they would have had access to more valid information than we do today. They where also often scholars who’s job it was to write about true people and to prove together missing info and validate this sort of thing is even real. With all the information that was available at the time they still believed he existed. We can’t say just because such evidence was lost doesn’t mean that they all came to an invalid conclusion or all made it up. It’s just illogical. As for actual biblical events that had few witnesses, it’s fine to believe that that was made up, or information was lost so it was believed that something happened when in reality there is an entirely different reality that we just don’t have what we would need to piece together today. As we are assuming many stories are being made up or are incorrectly accounted throughout it, it’s not fair to say any events in his life happened based on the book alone, so this a mute point.
TLDR Jesus was real because he formed a group that still exists and followed his teachings from the beginning. Groups don’t just form and follow a fake persons teachings and still believe it and constantly lie about his existence. Scholars closer to his life who had more information than we do now believed he existed, and we can’t invalidate multiple scholars with more information than us just because we don’t have that information anymore.
Right so here is the thing. We know someone kicked Christianity off, it couldn't have been fully organic. This doesn't mean that because you have established that there must be a founder the founder is of the form you want it to be.
James could have made up the whole story. There is more evidence pointing that way than a historical Jesus.
We actually don't know any of that, and that is not what the historical consensus is either.
I am always curious about how the Jesus was real crowd explains all these things Jesus supposedly taught that no one seems to know about until about fifty years later. And why these things he taught just happen to be from a subset of the Greek OT that was popular at the time. Strange how an Aramaic speaking rabbi, in an area with a 1% literacy rate, would only quote from a book written in Greek. And no one is aware of these parables and sayings.
According to Paul these are all the things that Jesus taught:
Don't get divorced and if you do the woman is never to marry someone else
Pay your preacher
The second one is debatable as well.