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Historical Jesus

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I think the fact that Paul joined an already existing Jesus cult and set about challenging their belief system is evidence that Jesus and his followers (brothers and all) probably did exist.

I suspect that very soon we will hear about Richard Carrier and his, er, research...

It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter!

Cause all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Camp Mohawk because they have all the money!
 
Don't forget his trusty apostles fanning out in all directions to North Africa, to Syria, Greece, Palestine to dispell rumors and urban legends about Jesus and preserve his true story.

As Robert M. Price says "It's blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the cheesemakers, now you got that straight Simon?"
 
Define Jesus?

Is Jesus the son of God who performed miracles and rose from the dead? Didn't exist.

Was Jesus a wandering rabbi who pissed off the Roman authorities and got strung up for it? Possibly. But, if so, meh.

So, my usual view: to the extent he was remarkable, he didn't exist. To the extent he existed, he was unremarkable.
 
I think he was a real person and must have been quite remarkable to have left such an impact on history, like Gandhi or Hitler.
Probably an intelligent and handsome, but misguided chap, with son-of-god-like charisma and oratory instincts, lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time in history to start something that took on a social life of it's own beyond his wildest dreams. But I'm just speculating.
What does science say, was he a real person?
 
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Jesus was real, and the evidence of his having lived can be found in his works, which were so profound that their effects are commonplace today, full two millenia after he died.

God saw that humankind was plagued with a dearth of imagination when it came to invective, tending to focus on genitalia, incest and doubtful parentage. And so He sent down His son to do something about this. And His son did not disappoint Him, his name lives on today on our lips.
 
I think he was a real person and must have been quite remarkable to have left such an impact on history, like Gandhi or Hitler.
Probably an intelligent and handsome, but misguided chap, with son-of-god-like charisma and oratory instincts, lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time in history to start something that took on a social life of it's own beyond his wildest dreams. But I'm just speculating.
What does science say, was he a real person?
No-one really knows. And honestly, it would be very difficult indeed to know for sure. There is equal vehemence on both sides.
 
No-one really knows. And honestly, it would be very difficult indeed to know for sure. There is equal vehemence on both sides.

But not equal numbers. The Academic consensus is that there was a historical Jesus (HJ). That consensus is based on textual analysis and an understanding of the cultural context of 1st century Roman Palestine, amongst other things.

There are a few people who argue against the HJ, but they haven't come anywhere near convincing the majority of experts.
 
But not equal numbers. The Academic consensus is that there was a historical Jesus (HJ). That consensus is based on textual analysis and an understanding of the cultural context of 1st century Roman Palestine, amongst other things.

There are a few people who argue against the HJ, but they haven't come anywhere near convincing the majority of experts.
That's not what I hear, but I'll defer to you as I am far from being an expert on the subject.
 
The "academic consensus" also is that Homeopathy works, if you only ask the academics from that field.
 
Also, textual analysis really only says that about 30% of the sayings and stuff in the gospels are compatible with each other enough to have possibly been said by the same person. No more, no less.

The first and most obvious problem is, almost nobody agrees WHICH 30%, which is a problem. Different people have cherrypicked radically different and mutually incompatible Jesuseseseses. Which of them is the real one? Is any of them, actually? How many different persons have been mashed up into the one we got?

The second, is that the same kind of analysis actually says that the gospel writers didn't really know what was happening there. So insisting that one can still cherrypick what totally really happened there takes a bit of a leap of faith.

The third is that any analysis will also show that it's structured like an ancient novel, with structures like the chiasm and inclusio that tend not to happen like that in any given person's life. So whatever information the gospel writers had about Jesus, has been severely edited to fit that structure. At the VERY LEAST its chronology was rearranged.

The even bigger problem is: you can do the same for the myth of Cthulhu, as I've actually shown in another thread, a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. Or for Superman, Luke Skywalker, or count Pierre Bezukhov, or indeed Count Dracula, or your favourite Game Of Thrones character. If your only criterion is what the book says and what is compatible enough to be possible to have been said by the same person, then almost any character ever qualifies.

And I mean, 30% self-compatible is actually piss poor even for known fiction characters. Any author worth his salt will have his characters have consistent world views, until events in the novel warrant changing them, and then he/she actually shows that happening. If you wrote a character that is all over the place like Jesus in a modern novel, unless the whole POINT is that he's a big lying hypocrite, you wouldn't get it past any publisher.
 
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Has anyone who recommends loving enemies existed?

Well, whoever wrote those passages of the New Testament clearly existed, so, yes. Whether those passages related to an actual carpenter's son from Nazareth who believed himself to be the son of God is of less importance, in the sense that, even though I know David Icke exists, the fact of his existence really makes very little difference to me.

Dave
 
But not equal numbers. The Academic consensus is that there was a historical Jesus (HJ). That consensus is based on textual analysis and an understanding of the cultural context of 1st century Roman Palestine, amongst other things.

There are a few people who argue against the HJ, but they haven't come anywhere near convincing the majority of experts.



You mention “experts” who's opinion we should all apparently accept and agree with.

So, who are these experts?

We have had this exact conversation here before, over literally tens of thousands of posts.

By “experts” you mean Bible Studies Scholars and New Testament Scholars.

But out of all the tens of thousands of such Biblical Scholars, how many entered that profession as devout Christian believers? The answer as far as we can honestly tell is … all of them!

How many have since lost their Christian faith? The answer is that we know of only a tiny handful. In fact the only two who are well known are Bart Ehrman and Hector Avalos. But as both of them have explained themselves, the were also both originally highly devout evangelising street preachers.

So how neutral and unbiased is a profession of “experts” like that?


Also what are these “experts” using as their evidence to conclude that the Jesus they all already believed in, did in fact exist? The answer is that their only source of evidence is the biblical writing itself.

In what other field of academia would something like anonymous 2000 year-old written claims of miracles and the supernatural count as reliable or credible evidence?
 
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Also, textual analysis really only says that about 30% of the sayings and stuff in the gospels are compatible with each other enough to have possibly been said by the same person. No more, no less.

The first and most obvious problem is, almost nobody agrees WHICH 30%, which is a problem. Different people have cherrypicked radically different and mutually incompatible Jesuseseseses. Which of them is the real one? Is any of them, actually? How many different persons have been mashed up into the one we got?

The second, is that the same kind of analysis actually says that the gospel writers didn't really know what was happening there. So insisting that one can still cherrypick what totally really happened there takes a bit of a leap of faith.

The third is that any analysis will also show that it's structured like an ancient novel, with structures like the chiasm and inclusio that tend not to happen like that in any given person's life. So whatever information the gospel writers had about Jesus, has been severely edited to fit that structure. At the VERY LEAST its chronology was rearranged.

The even bigger problem is: you can do the same for the myth of Cthulhu, as I've actually shown in another thread, a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. Or for Superman, Luke Skywalker, or count Pierre Bezukhov, or indeed Count Dracula, or your favourite Game Of Thrones character. If your only criterion is what the book says and what is compatible enough to be possible to have been said by the same person, then almost any character ever qualifies.

And I mean, 30% self-compatible is actually piss poor even for known fiction characters. Any author worth his salt will have his characters have consistent world views, until events in the novel warrant changing them, and then he/she actually shows that happening. If you wrote a character that is all over the place like Jesus in a modern novel, unless the whole POINT is that he's a big lying hypocrite, you wouldn't get it past any publisher.

Nevertheless, no one has come up with a better explanation for the texts we have than an actual religious leader who was killed by the Romans.

The idea that he was a pure invention raises more questions than it answers.

No serious Scholar has a problem with the fact that the gospels aren't accurate records of his life. It's the same problem Historians deal with all the time regarding individuals in antiquity.

Maybe one day someone will prove that he never existed, but that hasn't happened yet.
 
You mention “experts” who's opinion we should all apparently accept and agree with.

So, who are these experts?

We have had this exact conversation here before, over literally tens of thousands of posts.

By “experts” you mean Bible Studies Scholars and New Testament Scholars.

But out of all the tens of thousands of such Biblical Scholars, how many entered that profession as devout Christian believers? The answer as far as we can honestly tell is … all of them!

How many have since lost their Christian faith? The answer is that we know of only a tiny handful. In fact the only two who are well known are Bart Ehrman and Hector Avalos. But as both of them have explained themselves, the were also both originally highly devout evangelising street preachers.

So how neutral and unbiased is a profession of “experts” like that?


Also what are these “experts” using as their evidence to conclude that the Jesus they all already believed in, did in fact exist? The answer is that their only source of evidence is the biblical writing itself.

In what other field of academia would something like anonymous 2000 year-old written claims of miracles and the supernatural count as reliable or credible evidence?

Try talking to a Historian and leave the bible thumpers alone. You might learn about how Historians research these questions and (spoiler) it doesn't involve accepting "anonymous 2000 year-old written claims of miracles and the supernatural" as reliable evidence.

It has been years, you could have looked it up by now...
 
Nevertheless, no one has come up with a better explanation for the texts we have than an actual religious leader who was killed by the Romans.

No. You just keep decreeing that there can't be a better explanation, but that's no more supported than when a completely different gang insists that there is no better explanation than controlled demolition in 9/11 :p
 
Try talking to a Historian and leave the bible thumpers alone. You might learn about how Historians research these questions and (spoiler) it doesn't involve accepting "anonymous 2000 year-old written claims of miracles and the supernatural" as reliable evidence.

It has been years, you could have looked it up by now...

No, you could have looked it up by now. Because actually you'd find that there are virtually no real historians actually claiming the HJ. What you have are some THEOLOGIANS pretending to be historians, while applying a "historical method" that's actually several iterations out of date compared to what actual historians use.
 
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