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Did Jesus exist?

Did Jesus exist?

  • 1. Yes, Jesus was an itinerant Jewish Rabbi whose tale grew in the telling.

    Votes: 42 21.8%

  • 2. Yes, he was the Savior of mankind

    Votes: 11 5.7%

  • 3.No, There never was a Jesus, stories and myths coalesced into the NT Jesus

    Votes: 34 17.6%

  • 4. We don't have enough data to determine the case.

    Votes: 106 54.9%

  • 5. On Planet X the point is eternally Moot.

    Votes: 20 10.4%
  • Total voters
    193
  • Poll closed .

tsig

a carbon based life-form
tsig
Joined
Nov 25, 2005
Messages
39,049
There are several threads currently active on the subject of Jesus existence.

Here is a summation of the major points, many others have been raised but these seem to be the ones that recur.

(HJ = Historical Jesus MJ = Mythical Jesus)



Pro HJ:

Deny Jesus, deny history. The same methods used to verify Jesus are used to verify most of history.


Academic Consensus: Most professors of ancient history agree on an HJ only a lunatic fringe believe in an MJ.

Christianity: You need Jesus to explain the existence of Christianity

Motivation: Insecure atheists need to attack Christianity by denying Jesus

Anti HJ:

John Frum: proves religions can develop without an actual human founder.

Gospel unreliability: we don't know who wrote the gospels or just when they were written, many of the stories are unbelievable.

Academic bias: most of the professors who advocate the HJ are Christian theologians and teach at bible colleges.

Motivation: Some people have rejected Christianity but still have a soft spot in their hearts for Jesus.
 
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There were christians ready to die at the hands of Nero in 43ad, rather than recant and deny Jesus. It seems unlikely that people within living memory of Jesus lifetime would be willing to die for a fictional character. So I conclude there was a Jesus.
 
My guess is that there was an actual Jesus.

However, it has been very difficult to verify that Jesus did actually exist, therefore I would not be surprised to find out that Jesus did not exist at all.
 
HJ vs MJ is a false dichotomy: just the plausible explanations range from OG Street Rabbi to Pauline Hallucination and hit every point in between. I would, and have, and will continue to argue that as we don't have any evidence, any conclusions one might make (even in consensus) are mere opinion, and ought to be treated as such.
 
Scorpion said:
There were christians ready to die at the hands of Nero in 43ad, rather than recant and deny Jesus. It seems unlikely that people within living memory of Jesus lifetime would be willing to die for a fictional character. So I conclude there was a Jesus.
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Nero wasn't Emperor in 43. Claudius was. He died in 54 and Nero then reigned until 68.
 
Scorpion said:
There were christians ready to die at the hands of Nero in 43ad, rather than recant and deny Jesus. It seems unlikely that people within living memory of Jesus lifetime would be willing to die for a fictional character. So I conclude there was a Jesus.
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Sort of like the Volksturm in 1945. Hitler wasn't god, btw.


(And I don't give a flying about Godwin.)
 
I voted 3, but with the usual footnote that I don't think someone close enough to the Gospel character can be supported as existing or necessary. There may however have been one dude or more dudes called Jesus, out of the thousands of Jesuseseses running around Jerusalem, who may or may not have been crucified, and may or may not have expressed various opinions that passed for sedition at the time.

Sorta like I don't think there was a historical Superman, although I'm convinced there must have been more than one journalist called Clark, who may or may not have had a crush on a coworker and a tendency to never be around when important stories happened.
 
Belz... said:
Can't say I'm surprised that there aren't any options such as "probably". :rolleyes:
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If you put in enough options to make everyone happy you'd soon exceed the 20 option limit.
 
I voted "not 2" because that's the only one I can be certain about.
 
I'm going for the Planet X option.

Why? On the one I consider it likely that there was some actual bloke ala Brian who got hijacked by the religious.

OTOH, were it proven that no such bloke existed, my response would be "meh, tell someone who gis a ****".

The existence or not of a HJ is just such an irrelevance to the 21st century that it might as well be on planet X.

It's only relevance is to the various loons who want to legally impose their particular dog on everyone else.
 
The only Jesus of whom I'm absolutely certain exists, is the Jesus who cleans my pool.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
HJ vs MJ is a false dichotomy: just the plausible explanations range from OG Street Rabbi to Pauline Hallucination and hit every point in between. I would, and have, and will continue to argue that as we don't have any evidence, any conclusions one might make (even in consensus) are mere opinion, and ought to be treated as such.
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Agreed.
 
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