A man ahead of his time. source
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
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They aren't binary options.
For example, it's also possible that there was a real person, but that then a lot of biographical details were added in and made up.
But it's quite unlikely that the entire story is made up, in large part because of how much of the narrative is dealing with trying to claim that other people are wrong about it.
The earliest records are from a guy known to his audience as persecuting Jesus's followers. Who then complains that his audience has accepted a different version of Jesus.
The earliest canonical narratives in Peter's own tradition are trying to explain why he was present in the area where a trial that required bringing witnesses before the accused where two or more needed to agree for testimony to be considered was reportedly denying him there.
You simply don't see details like that with made up supernatural narratives. Where's the story about Mithras keeping his status secret and only making claims of being a promised savior in private? In the story where Dionysus is captured by pirates is there a weird line about someone running down the street butt naked?
The earliest texts in the Christian corpus have very odd nuances compared to pretty much all other fully fictional traditions we're aware of, but those nuances are in line with what we see with more modern cults around a figure who ends up dead or imprisoned where there's then competing splits thereafter.
It is very, very unlikely the accounts are 100% true, even in matters separate from the magic stuff. They are even outright at odds with each other. For example, John 18:20 makes a claim nothing was said in secret but the Synoptics all have secret explanations for at least the sower parable.
But the idea there was no historical individual at the kernel of it all is quite unlikely as well. There's too much evidence the first century tradition is battling over the details of a record regarding a real centralizing figure that does not occur with synecretized or fabricated mythos.
Just because L Ron Hubbard was not a great war hero as Scientology claims does not imply there was no historical person named L Ron Hubbard founding the tradition that later made stuff up about him.
I didn't mean to imply otherwise, I'm sure there were real people. I just don't see why anyone would insist it's one person, this being quite common at the time (in name and deeds and prophecy).
Do I think that they (or one of them) had real powers to raise the dead and heal the sick? No. I also don't think that the moon was cut in half by Mohamed, or that Moses parted the Red Sea; I don't think any of these Abrahamic tales are real actual events...
But I would love to see any evidence to the contrary, and am always trying to learn more.
Well some of the mythos is almost certainly pulling things in from elsewhere. Even just the way the canonical gospels (likely) add events to fulfill old testament prophecy, such as the dividing of clothes.
But I'd be fairly surprised if the tradition conflicts were regarding multiple different Jesuses vs a single Jesus that was being fought over.
For example, the Jesus ben Panthera vs Jesus ben Joseph vs Jesus ben Stada conflict seems very much to be disputes over the ancestral lineage of a single figure than accounts of totally different figures. Notably, a son of a Roman soldier (ben Panthera) or an unfaithful woman (ben Stada) does not have a claim on being the messiah. Complicating that debate is that Joseph is never even mentioned in Mark, which has the claim of being the messiah only said in secret not in public.
Sounds like Paul Bunyan to me lol, lots of debate over the nuances of his life too
If Jesus didnt exist as the son of god then what does it matter? Santa isnt Saint Nicholas and Jesus Christ isnt whatever historical julio you want to project onto why are we even entertaining this bullshit? There is no historical Jesus because there is no Jesus Christ, it's not more complicated than that.