Jesus Christ?

[Deranged]

I think "evidence" means different things to the average Joe on the street than it does to the JREF forum members that He lived at all. Most scholars agree He lived but they often don't claim that He was "all that. " I've read that John the Baptist was da Man back then; Jesus not so much. I think Jesus caused enough fear and annoyance that he was crucified. Along with hundreds or thousands of others. They didn't want anyone rocking the boat and appearing to usurp power.
It makes me wonder why I believe my ggrandfather existed. I don't have any writings by him or about him and his photograph , while it claims to be one of him may be of someone else. My father never spoke of him. So, technically we don't have JREF type evidence Jesus existed at all. I feel certain He did, though. And listening to scholars on television speak of Him I may be in pretty good company.

 

[Kirk]

I'm just guessing here, but since the people who go around telling most of the Jesus stories are generally Christians, it would be a bit self defeating of them to end their tales with "...maybe, we just don't have enough evidence to be sure either way..." That would kind of get in the way of the whole "you must have faith" deal.


If you figure out a sure-fire method of calculating the odds, make sure you let Richard Carrier know:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245769

1. Obvisously, the devoted have a vested interest. I am talking about everyone else...

2. Can't do it. But 0 is a certainity that cannot exist with the evidence in this case, no?

 

[Kirk]

So other than the Bible, what other evidence is there then?

Any?

Any from when he supposedly lived?

 

[Resume]

I think "evidence" means different things to the average Joe on the street than it does to the JREF forum members that He lived at all. Most scholars agree He lived but they often don't claim that He was "all that. " I've read that John the Baptist was da Man back then; Jesus not so much. I think Jesus caused enough fear and annoyance that he was crucified. Along with hundreds or thousands of others. They didn't want anyone rocking the boat and appearing to usurp power.
It makes me wonder why I believe my ggrandfather existed. I don't have any writings by him or about him and his photograph , while it claims to be one of him may be of someone else. My father never spoke of him. So, technically we don't have JREF type evidence Jesus existed at all. I feel certain He did, though. And listening to scholars on television speak of Him I may be in pretty good company.

Who is this He you speak of? Jeshua B doesn't warrant the H. The Christ might, but no evidence JBJ is that feller I'm afraid

 

[Foster Zygote]

So other than the Bible, what other evidence is there then?

Any?

Any from when he supposedly lived?

Not a shred. But that's not surprising given that he was a minor, local religious figure in a largely illiterate world. There may have been some local Roman record of his execution, or some contemporary cleric may have made a note of it, but any such records are almost certainly long since lost to time. The Jesus movement spread by word of mouth for some time before anyone started writing about it. This helps to explain why it morphed into so many varieties.

 

[mutile]

if the biblical descriptions are inconsistent then there is zero chance that they are true.

 

[Kirk]

if the biblical descriptions are inconsistent then there is zero chance that they are true.

That makes no sense.

How about:

if the biblical descriptions are inconsistent then there is low chance that one or some of them are true.

 

[TimCallahan]

So other than the Bible, what other evidence is there then?

Any?

Any from when he supposedly lived?

There are two references to Jesus in Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, written ca. CE 90. One of these is an obvious forgery, the other may have been doctored. Beyond that, the first extra-biblical reference to Christ is in the Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, written ca. CE 115 . His contemporary, Pliny the Younger, wrote about Christians but not about Christ.

The rather long entry in Josephus, commonly referred to as the Testamentum Flavianum, as the "testimonial" is a later forgery inserted into the text. Other than that, Josephus only mentions Jesus in passing, referring to James as the brother of Jesus, "who was called the Christ." However, "who was called the Christ" may be a later insertion.

Tacitus refers to Pontius Pilate putting Christ to death for sedition. However, he gets Pilate's office wrong. So he may have been merely repeating what the Christians themselves had said of Christ.

All in all, the evidence for the existence of Jesus in quite thin. While I think he was historical, the only thing we can say about any historical Jesus is that he was a messianic pretender who was put to death by the Romans. As a messianic pretender, he would have had an apocalyptic world view, which we do find reflected in the gospels and the Pauline epistles. He might also have been influenced by Greek Cynic philosophers, whose way of life would mesh well with an apocalyptic outlook.

 

[ufology]

So other than the Bible, what other evidence is there then?

Any?

Any from when he supposedly lived?

There are no artifacts whatsoever that I'm aware of that can be positively attributed to the Biblical character known as Jesus. He was supposedly a carpenter, yet there is nothing built by him. There are no documents or carvings or clothing and no remains. He appears to be a personification of religious beliefs that were passed along over a span of about two and a half centuries following his alleged death. But like I said before, this makes him even more fascinating to me than had he actually been flesh and blood.

 

[Foster Zygote]

if the biblical descriptions are inconsistent then there is zero chance that they are true.

And there are a lot of inconsistencies. But then there are a lot of inconsistencies regarding accounts concerning things that we know did happen. But what we see with the accounts of Jesus is a lot of interpretation and reinterpretation over time, and a lot of invention. Even the canonical gospels are written by authors with very different ideas about Jesus' message. Even "Luke" and "Matthew", who both used "Mark" as a source, had different takes on what Jesus was all about. A good analogy for the historical vs. fictional Jesus is Nicholas of Myra. There really was a man who lived in Asia minor during the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries, but the Santa Clause who is said to live at the North Pole is as fictional as Melkor, even though that character evolved over time from stories told about a real person.

 

[Kirk]

What is the prevailing opinion of skeptical historians then:

1. He existed but is attributed with way too many accolades / feats / stories
2. He existed and is an amalgam of several people embellished to serve the purpose of the religion
3. He NEVER existed at all and is nearly entirely made up
4. He NEVER existed and was created with stories and actual events of other people

 

[mutile]

And there are a lot of inconsistencies.

Then there is zero probability that they are all true.

 

[Kirk]

Then there is zero probability that they are all true.

That is a different statement.

 

[mutile]

That is a different statement.

how so?

 

[Kirk]

how so?

In your first statement one could be true. Qualifying with all is different. At least that is how I read it.

 

[davefoc]

What is the prevailing opinion of skeptical historians then:

1. He existed but is attributed with way too many accolades / feats / stories
2. He existed and is an amalgam of several people embellished to serve the purpose of the religion
3. He NEVER existed at all and is nearly entirely made up
4. He NEVER existed and was created with stories and actual events of other people

I think the answer to your question is item one, but that might be misleading. First, most skeptical historians don't specialize on first century Christianity and as such there opinion may not be that significant since it probably just reflects the mainstream view that an HJ existed. Secondly, if your question was limited to secular historians that do specialize in the area of early Christian history there is the potential for biases that makes their views suspect. The problem is that there is a market for written works on the historical Jesus, and there is a market for works claiming that the historical Jesus didn't exist. There is very little market for works that claim whether an HJ existed or not is unknowable, so there is just a simple self interest bias not to promote a view for which there is not much interest. In addition, even skeptical historians are subject to confirmation bias and if one has spent their whole career attempting to tease out the nature of an historical Jesus from the very few clues available it probably isn't all that easy to confront the possibility that there was no HJ.

Having said that, my view remains that an HJ probably existed although it seems less likely to me now than it did before I participated in the most recent did-an-HJ-exist JREF forum thread.

 

[IanS]

Having said that, my view remains that an HJ probably existed although it seems less likely to me now than it did before I participated in the most recent did-an-HJ-exist JREF forum thread.

I think we just don’t have enough reliable objective evidence about Jesus to make any worthwhile guess as to his likely existence, do we?

It seems to me there is actually no evidence of Jesus outside the religious beliefs expressed in the biblical eulogies. On that basis, personally, I simply have no credible evidence to decide either way.

That’s perhaps a negative rather than positive view, because it means there is actually no reliable evidence to show he ever existed.

 

[Kirk]

I think we just don’t have enough reliable objective evidence about Jesus to make any worthwhile guess as to his likely existence, do we?

It seems to me there is actually no evidence of Jesus outside the religious beliefs expressed in the biblical eulogies. On that basis, personally, I simply have no credible evidence to decide either way.

That’s perhaps a negative rather than positive view, because it means there is actually no reliable evidence to show he ever existed.

Yet even non christians tend to view jesus as factual... ****** romans!

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to properly mask profanity. Please see Rule 10 re: the auto-censor.

 

[Craig B]

Yet even non christians tend to view jesus as factual... ****** romans!

That's because the non Christians get their information, such as it is, from Christians. They have no independent sources of data, and never have had. The oldest parts of the Talmud, composed in the early centuries AD, have nothing to tell us about Jesus Christ. And Pliny had to interrogate Christians under torture, to obtain any information about their religion. All he discovered by this means was "excessive superstition", as he put it in a letter to the emperor Trajan.

 

[TimCallahan]

That's because the non Christians get their information, such as it is, from Christians. They have no independent sources of data, and never have had. The oldest parts of the Talmud, composed in the early centuries AD, have nothing to tell us about Jesus Christ. And Pliny had to interrogate Christians under torture, to obtain any information about their religion. All he discovered by this means was "excessive superstition", as he put it in a letter to the emperor Trajan.

We also need to remember that Christianity spread before many of the gospels were written. Mark probably wasn't written until CE 70 at the earliest. As to its spread, and the the spread of subsequent gospels, it's quite possible that some people followed one gospel and others another. John was written, at earliest, about CE 125 or at latest ca. CE 180. Also in circulation were the various infancy and childhood gospels, as well as the Gospel of Peter. So, what Jesus Christians in various locales worshipped probably varied greatly.

The churches founded by Paul would not have had any written narrative of the life of Jesus. The only reference to any narrative of his life in the Pauline epistles has to do with the institution of the Eucharist. Beyond that Paul only gives us the information that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. We can tell from the genuinely Pauline letters that the Christian congregations were communitarian and that these early Christians had an apocalyptic view of the world. It's reasonable, therefore, to assume that any historical Jesus was likewise an apocalypticist. This, of course, would be part of his messianic pretensions.