I'm about as atheist as they come, but it seems pretty settled history that the man existed and was politically impactful
He was most likely a real guy. But a guy Christian’s would absolutely hate: a brown Communist Palestinian who hung out with prostitutes, lepers, pariahs, refuted the legitimacy of the state, and organized massive mutual aid events to feed the poor. Probably a good dude. It’s a shame his followers are dicks though.
I'm starting to think he wasn't all that great. He would have been someone who started a little apocalyptic religious following around himself, and those kind of people don't tend to have the best interests of their followers at heart.
He probably did see himself as starting something that would kick the Romans out of Judea and install himself as king. Judas got cold feet about it and warned the authorities. The Romans crucified him for exactly what the gospel accounts say, except they had a lot more evidence than the writers were letting on.
The bible Jesus probably never existed, but there were clearly a guy a lot of people followed called Jesus that the romains crucified.
Except his name was probably some version of Joshua. The Jesus spelling comes from the Greek, where a lot of masculine names end in -s.
Yeah, disbelieving in the existence of Jesus the Jewish carpenter is about as silly as disbelieving in the existence of Pontius Pilate.
I'm an anti-theist, and I used to be on this page, but a while ago I read about how even this might not be true. We don't have any real proof he existed at all.
Where'd you read that? Here are at least the known sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
There's way less evidence of a ton of historical figures and events that are taken for granted as established history. Just my two cents
Right. It's applying the same standard of evidence that we use for everything else on history. Truth is, we don't have great evidence for pretty much anyone who wasn't a regional ruler. If you rose the standard much higher, you'd end up with history being a big blank, and that's not useful.
In other words, if you reject a historical Jesus outright, you also have to reject Socrates and Spartacus and a whole lot of others.
Spartacus was real. I know because I'm Spartacus.
I'm Spartacus!
The consensus among historical scholars is that some itinerant preacher who we can reasonably call the historical Jesus existed. That is the state of the field. There was lots of religious fervor at the time, it was already probably clear to everyone that something bad was going to happen to the Temple, there were lots of similar guys running around.
Arguing that the man probably existed is not arguing that he advocated for the things he was saying in the Bible, that he was in any way divine, or that one should believe in Christianity. It’s not arguing for leftist hippie Jesus either. Just that at this point in history, some sort of Jewish rabble rouser claimed to be a messiah and started a small group of followers. This is not a crazy claim - rabble rousers exist, Jewish people exist and have a complex religious/political figure called a messiah, and the group of followers was causing problems in less than a hundred years.
Remember that historical argumentation and proof looks fundamentally different than argumentation and proof in physics or math. You can’t do “Josephus minus The Testimonium Flavianum plus Pliny’s letters equals Christ.” No one is going to be able to trot out a photo of Jesus. Although here’s something fun: here’s one of the first depictions of Jesus.
There's a set of atheists who don't stop at saying the Bible is full of contradictions. They feel the Bible must be wrong in every single aspect. This is a position just as fragile as fundamentalists--after all, some events like the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians definitely did happen--and you don't need to make that claim in order to disregard the bible as divinely inspired.
Edit: clarified wording
That's dope that Jesus had one of those horse-heads masks all the way back then. Truly ahead of his time.
The consensus is also that Mark at least somewhat more accurately represents the historical figure than the other gospels, which are all either fairly culturally Greek or Greek to the core (John).
I like leftist hippie Jesus tho
The one true JC
set DeusEx.JCDentonMale bCheatsEnabled True
And now he can do wonders, too.
I remember reading about this.
IRC before Emperor Constantine there was still a bit of a religious taboo of portraying Jesus (a god), due to the whole bible being against idolatry thing. So it was mostly metaphorical images of a buff shephard, if there were pictures at all, because Jesus was a shephard to his followers, and buff because why wouldn't you make him buff?
After Constantine converted, Christianity was romanised. The Romans loved idolatary so that taboo went out the window ASAP. The image of Jesus was partly inspired by images of Apollo and Dionysus (hence white, fit and feminine) then later Zeus (hence the authoritative beard). It's not actually inspired by actual Jesus, whose appearance was (perhaps deliberately) not described properly in the New Testament. The Church basically adapted its product to the tastes of the Roman market, just like the whole Christmas tree and Saturnalia gift giving becoming Christian traditions.
Apparently there's a similar thing in Islam, where a lot of the stuff that's supposedly a core Islamic value, is just Arabic culture that predates Islam. Something that annoys non-Arabic Muslims. From what I can tell, Muslims are even more likely to pretend their religion came fully formed and never changed/adapted in its long history. Understandably, I tend to avoid discussing this with devout Muslims. LOL
Obviously, religious extremists can't admit that their religion changes and adapts, or they'd have to admit that that one value they think is really important might be changed too or that their religious texts aren't the inerrant word of their god. Which is probably one of the reasons why different religious sects love to fight each other over stupid shit, rather than admit that they're both the same religion, but just a bit different based on local tradition and history because their religious texts were written by humans not gods.
Or at least, that's my theory.
Dear Jesus. Not responding to every "prove it" remark. But look, you people know that just because the supernatural clearly isn't real, does not mean that Jesus was not a real historical figure. No serious historian thinks he wasn't real. Most who study this period of history believe he was a real apocalyptic preacher, who was killed somewhat unexpectedly by the Romans, and whose followers at least claimed to have visions of him after his death.
None of these things are particularly far out there claims. There are many apocalyptic preachers today, no today we don't kill them, but their followers also often claim they've seen some crazy things.
This is one of those silly arguments that only makes sense before you think about any detail of it. When you actually look at events in the narrative you start having to throw things out one at time until there's almost nothing left - no trial. no last supper.no temple whipping, No feeding the 5000. No census...
1% Jesus isn't Jesus, but if what you mean is that a real person inspired the foundation of the church then what you're saying is they were able to make up a completely fictional account of every detail of a popular characters life - if they can do that then they why not just make him up entirely?
You forgot supply-side Jesus
Is that a bottle of, uh, personal lube?
It's a candle, but I suppose if you're real determined...
Scientifically, he was probably a real dude.
Probably, but there were tons of apocalyptic Jews at the time. Did any of them turn water to wine, rise from the dead, etc? Nah
Jesus was a cave man from the upper paleolithic era who survived and studied under the Buddha, then went west to try and spread those teachings, and was unintentionally ascribed godhood by his followers.
If you got that reference, I'll buy you a drink of your choice should we ever meet.
What a great movie! I'm not the one for rewatching movies, I've seen this one three times, so yeah... That's a lot for me
Nah, Jesus existed.
A lot of people were called Jesus back then.
Jesus of Nazareth on the other hand ...
A lot of people were called Jesus back then.
Still are, I know a bunch of Jewish dudes named Joshua.
I’m “white” and look like the dude in the middle.
Honestly we need to stop using the words “white” and “black” to refer to skin. All the humans I’ve ever seen are brown. Maybe we should call albinos “white people”. Maybe. Probably not.
Jesus on the left looks like he’s got jaundice.
I made American Jesus
No no, that's the People's Liberation Front of Judea.
I see him on the interstate.
Darkmatter2525?
Confirmed John Cena is Jesus.
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