What do you mean by physical proof?
Some history is known by digging up physical stones n bones. Some is known by digging up texts.
There are multiple texts dated to the 1st century that all corroborate the story that a person called Jesus was crucified around 33AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
The evidence isn’t even that strong, there i just aren’t that many people willing to risk becoming a pariah to dispute them.
If you are a Christian, there is no doubt Jesus existed. Any oblique reference to a rabbi who was persecuted hundreds years ago is considered evidence that Jesus existed. But no contemporaneous documentation exists.
If you’re not a Christian, debunking all of those vague references that might be proof of a Jewish leader named Jesus just isn’t particularly important, won’t persuade anyone who believes Jesus was(is) God, and will paint a target on your back for terrorists.
Wait… you mean to tell me there’s not a collective of atheist Wikipedia writers that have dedicated their lives to the absence of religion and citing themselves on refuting evidence on Wikipedia?!?
Wouldn’t it be weird of every Wikipedia article on the historical validity of Jesus was written by Christian scholars that have dedicated their lives to their religion? It would be wild if they were just citing themselves in these Wiki articles in order to sell some books, wouldn’t it?
No, there arent a lot of texts from the 1st century AD about him. The majority by far stems from the second century or later.
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
The article you provided (if you read it) should actually serve to cast more doubt on the idea; it does not “answer the question to the affirmative.”
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
That implies each source says: “A man called Jesus was crucified”. The article you provided (if you read it) should have told you otherwise.
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Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, year 93-94: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
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Tacitus’s Annals, year 117: Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus
I didn’t provide any article. I read the one you linked.
In this most recent response, you are annotating sources from 93, and 117. Those years are notably (at minimum) 60 years after the supposed resurrection; and as such are not first hand accounts.
They very likely was someone named Jesus, because there were many people with that name. There was very likely someone named Jesus that was crucified, because many people were crucified. There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
They very likely was someone named Jesus, because there were many people with that name.
The second one doesn’t use that name. Read the sources.
There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
Well of course, but that’s common sense. Dead people stay dead as a rule.
I didn’t say the second one used “that name.” Read what I wrote.
There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
The question in question was “Is there any real physical proof that Jesus christ ever existed?”
Jesus Christ is very specific. Jesus Christ, the son of God, who was crucified and rose again on the third day… that is fake.
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Physical proof? No. But if that’s the criterion for proof that someone existed, then that mean 90% of historical figures can’t be proven to have existed. We don’t have the remains of Alexander the Great or any artefacts we can be sure are his. We have no remnants of Plato, none of his original writings remain.
Did a person name Jesus live sometime during the first century AD? Scholars are fairly certain of that. We do have textual evidence other than the bible that points to his existence.
It is highly unlikely that he was anything like the person written about in the bible. He was likely one of many radical apocalyptic prophets of the time.
We don’t have too many details about his life but because of something called the criterion of embarrassment we have good reason to believe he was baptized by a man named John the Baptist and was later crucified. (i.e. most burgeoning religions seeking legitimacy don’t typically invent stories that are embarrassing to their deity)
then that mean 90% of historical figures can’t be proven to have existed
Well for most of those we tend to use independent verification for their existence. And in the case of jesus, we have literally zero Credible examples of independent verification.
And in the case of jesus, we have literally zero independent verification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
Even assuming the passage is totally genuine, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents Tacitus had to work with and it is unlikely that he would sift through what he did have to find the record of an obscure crucifixion, which suggests that Tacitus was repeating an urban myth whose source was likely the Christians themselves,[3]:344 especially since Tacitus was writing at a time when at least the three synoptic gospels are thought to already have been in circulation.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tacitus
According to Bart Ehrman, Josephus’ passage about Jesus was altered by a Christian scribe, including the reference to Jesus as the Messiah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
Scholars have differing opinions on the total or partial authenticity of the reference in the passage to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate.[15][30] The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic.
Respected Christian scholar R. T. France, for example, does not believe that the Tacitus passage provides sufficient independent testimony for the existence of Jesus [Franc.EvJ, 23] and agrees with G. A. Wells that the citation is of little value
A. The first line of the Tacitus passage says Chrestians, not Christians.
Suetonius says Chrestus was personally starting trouble in Rome during the reign of Claudius.
Suetonius is writing years after Tacitus yet doesn’t mention that Chrestus died.
So Chrestus can’t be Jesus because it’s the wrong decade, wrong continent and missing a death.
B. The second line in Tacitus that mentions Christ and his death was never noticed until after the mid-fourth century. So this second line is fake.
P.S. Even if the second line was somehow authentic, the information would have come from Christians. This would be the equivalent of deriving Abraham’s biography by talking to Muslims.
This is why Bart Ehrman specifically dismisses Tacitus and Josephus. As do most other biblical scholars.
In the immortal words of Christopher Hitchens, if this is all you got, you are holding an empty bag.
Even assuming the passage is totally genuine, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents Tacitus had to work with and it is unlikely that he would sift through what he did have to find the record of an obscure crucifixion
Why? If it was a popular myth, why assume he wouldn’t try to confirm/deny it
According to Bart Ehrman, Josephus’ passage about Jesus was altered by a Christian scribe, including the reference to Jesus as the Messiah
So? I’m not presenting evidence for him being a Messiah. I am saying there is some independent evidence of him existing.
B. The second line in Tacitus that mentions Christ and his death was never noticed until after the mid-fourth century. So this second line is fake.
I agree that is bizarre, but not proof of it being fake. Though should be taken with a grain of salt.
This is why Bart Ehrman specifically dismisses Tacitus and Josephus. As do most other biblical scholars.
Who is Bart Ehrman and why relay his beliefs rather than speak for yourself?
If you mean Jesus as described word for word in the bible? Yes you are right. Such a mythical figure never existed.
A man name Jesus from the first century AD? Who preached in the Levant? Who was baptized by a man named John and was later crucified? There is good enough evidence of such a person existing. This isn’t even a debated question among new testament scholars anymore.
I see you are familiar with Bart Ehrman, Even he doesn’t dispute that a historical Jesus existed.
Here’s an even deeper dive from Bart Ehrman.
We do have textual evidence other than the bible that points to his existence.
Idk why you would need textual evidence besides the Bible to be certain the guy existed. It’s not like these are magical books that sprung from the earth. They have historical reasons for existing and the most likely reason includes the existence of the dude.
The new testament stories were written well over a hundred years after. That would be like someone today writing an account of the civil war based solely on stories.
The new testament stories were written well over a hundred years after
Not right.
These were written 20 to 30 years after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle (“Fourteen of the 27 books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder.”) It would be more like someone writing about this now, which I do remember.
Gospel of Mark is dated to around the year 70
Book of Revelation around 81-96
The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel
The New Oxford Annotated Bible claims, “Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus’s life and teaching.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament
As far as I know, we simply don’t have directly contemporary, first-hand evidence of him. Even the most ‘contemporary’ accounts of him that still exist were written at least 50 years after he would have died, and those are quite cursory. Perhaps primary sources were lost–or intentionally destroyed when they didn’t align with beliefs–or perhaps they never existed. There’s not even much evidence for Pontius Pilate (I think one source mentioning that he was recalled to Rome and executed for incompetence?), and there should be, given that he was a Roman official.
People that study the history of the bible–as in, the historical bible, not the bible as a religious text–tend to believe that a historical Jesus existed, even if they don’t believe that he was divine.
IMO, the most likely explanation is that Jesus was yet another in a long-line of false messiahs, and was summarily executed by Rome for trying to start yet another rebellion. Since cult members tend to be unable to reconcile reality with their beliefs, they could have reframed their beliefs to say that he was a spiritual messiah, rather than a physical messiah.
There are lots of people now today who claim to be god, claim to be jesus, claim to have magic powers. so it would appear this is just normal human behavior and has been for a very long time. But the main reason people continue to believe these ancient holy books and all the stories in them is literally because they are protected from inquiry. So Jeff down the street claims to be jesus? We can go test him and try to falsify his claims. But some guy 2000 years ago, ya its not possible to check that one out. And That is why they persist, its by design.
Let me see if I can explain what I mean.
A historical Jesus might have had a small cult following, enough that the Romans couldn’t ignore him. He would have been talking about Jewish liberation from the Roman rulers, and how he was called by god. And then boom, he gets executed. His followers probably believed that he was actually the son of god, sent to liberate them. But now he’s dead. How do they reconcile the belief with the reality? So they retcon everything; he was a spiritual messiah, and he’ll eventually return and free the Jews, once the people are spiritually prepared.
You can see traces of this in the way that the four gospels don’t agree with each other, but they all include bits of prophecies from earlier scripture about the messiah. They were written with the intent of making Jesus appear to fit in to older prophecies about who the messiah would be, since he ended up not being the liberator that they had been expecting.
You can see similar behaviors in cults now. It’s clearly visible with Q; Trump was supposed to be their messiah, but he hasn’t managed to make any of their prophetic beliefs come true. So they’ve invented reasons why Trump’s holy will has been thwarted, and changed their history, rather than accepting that he was a false messiah.
You just gotta have faith!
Then why is it that the message was so powerful that the Roman empire abolished its idol worship and chose Christianity? Especially as Jesus a.s. was supposed to be a rebel against the empire?
Do you think people 2000 years ago were all stupid?
The message of Christianity is excellent for subjugating populations, giving them purpose & hope, keeping people busy & out of trouble. I think that all sounds very appealing to rulers.
And the roman empire was not able to do that already? From my understanding mythologically/spiritually the Roman empire was perfectly settled with what it had before in terms of political power. Incidentally the roman empire declined and fell apart in the centuries after accepting Christianity.
And before the Roman empire there were the Egyptians. They seemed to fare much better in terms of power with their idol worship than later when they embraced Abrahamic religions, yet they did.
Do you think people 2000 years ago were all stupid?
If they behaved as you described, then yes.
Do you think people 2000 years ago were all stupid?
No stupider than people now. Christianity remains very popular.
The question is typically described as “the historicity of Jesus”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
There are similar debates for other famous ancient figures.
The general academic consensus on Jesus (and many similar figures) is that they did exist and many of the details have been fictionalized.
Conversely, there are many other people from his time that definitely did exist and verifiably so. I have a bronze coin minted in Judea by Pontius Pilatus. I can look at it, I can touch it, it’s real. Even as an avowed agnostic, I see no reason why Jesus couldn’t have been a real person (minus the miracles that were almost certainly later additions).
It figures that the source cited on the documents relating to his execution can only be read about in some guys book.
No, there’s barely any physical evidence that anyone a few hundred years ago existed.
But if writing is enough, there are some. Tacitus basically said: “Nero blamed the Christians, followers of that Guy called Jesus who Pilatus executed a few decades ago.”
Wikipedia at least says both his Baptism and crucifixion are not disputed by historians.
There’s a bunch of old texts about a Jewish “prophet” called Jesus, who was gathering some followers. As far as I understand, there’s no really reason not to believe the person existed.
Then again, all the Jesus lore, there’s no reason to believe his miracles were real as those made no sense and there’s no real proof besides those same texts written after Jesse’s death
This. There is evidence that a preacher called Jesus existed, was crucified, and was well-regarded enough to start a following that persisted even after his death.
There isn’t, however, strong historical evidence for any of the magical parts of it.
I don’t think anyone is talking about the miracles when they refer to the historical Jesus.
Every Christian takes an historical proof of Jesus as affirmation of the stories within the New Testament.
Let’s not do the ‘every Christian’ thing. It’s worth remembering the US has a very ‘unique’ type of Christian.
I remember that one miracle closely resembles CPR. He put his hands on a body and brought it back to life.
There are zero contemporary primary sources for his existence.
Primary sources? No, but there are independent secondary sources by people with no skin in the game.
Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (circa 93–94 CE).
Annals by Tacitus (circa 116 CE)
The earliest Christian writings are also more about the teachings of a disruptive Jewish preacher who was then crucified, than they are about magic.
There is no proof outside of the Bible and some other writings. Even those mentions seem to have occurred well after Jesus supposedly lived.
In terms of non-literary proof, there isn’t anything credible.
There’s more evidence that King David existed.
Chances are he was more like a cult leader it wasn’t until a decade or two after his death that things really got into full swing, so chances are the actual Jesus would be quite surprised by everything “he” did.
But there were a lot of Jewish mystics cropping up at the time so it’s not impossible or even implausible for some one vaguely matching the description to have existed.
Exactly. An example from outside the Bible might be Achilles. There was probably a great warrior with that name in the Mycenaean Greek world. Later storytellers probably just added more to make it sound better or the material was from other warriors who were like Achilles.
Some of Jesus’ teachings definitely come from the milieu of the Roman era in Judea and Palestina.
Personally my favorite head canon is that Jesus was, or his parents were, Egyptian born Jews or Coptic converts to Judaism. It’s a reverse Obamas birth certificate. There is so much time spent establishing the lineage and explaining the flight to Egypt.
Good thing back in the day there were probably very few cult leaders…
Does anyone wonder about how the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the Egyptian myth of Horus affects the narrative about the Jesus that supposedly lived and died a century earlier? You know the one that happened to have incredibly important political value for the established leaders of the time?
No? Me either. Praise Horus!
You realize that a significant portion of the bible is the collected letters and works that were at the time (that it was assembled) considered credible, right?
There’s a period of around 80 years that’s pretty hard to account for, but unlike the four gospels where there’s little corroborating evidence that tracks back into that 80 year period, the epistolary works are pretty likely to be authentic. They also reference a bunch of other letters that didn’t survive, something that tends to make them more likely authentic than not. And they involve people who were eyewitnesses of a man named Jesus (or Joshua or Yeshua if you prefer) and his younger (step) brothers.
The rest of the statements about him were solidified by 80 years or so after his death, but all the accounts don’t quite line up — which is actually a good argument for them being based on actual events.
So while there may be plenty of room for debate as to how much of the biblical teachings actually originated with a man named Jesus, his actual existence seems more evident than, say, Shakespeare.
The mental gymnastics is palpable. That things don’t line up is evidence they’re true? And because people believed it at the time it must be credible? Did a guy really live in the belly of a whale for three days simply because some simpletons believed it?
Of course not because it’s a load of hogwash. Go play telephone with a class of 6th graders for 5 minutes and then tell me these stories are accurate. Also the events in most of them are clearly impossible situations.
That’s how epistemological analysis works… if the general structure is the same but everyone pulls different meaning out of an event, something probably happened. If everything lines up exactly, someone probably faked the letters. If there’s totally conflicting stories, the record has been tampered with too much to say anything. If there’s no record, there’s nothing to say one way or another.
I suppose the burden of proof would have to be that low to believe something so ridiculous
How is this post downvoted so much? You said how actial historical analysis work!
Assembled a thousand years after the fact by a group with a vested interest in solidifying the narrative to fit their own.
Hell, the Tanakh didn’t really get put together until well after Christianity appeared and it was a reaction to Christians appropriating Jewish literary culture to establish their own.
It’d be similar to people a thousand years from believing that Christian Gray is literally descended from Edward and Bella.
I have said this many times-
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if there was a “real” Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus that is worshiped is an impossibility. A fiction. His life is full of details that defy basic biological and physical laws. On top of that, nothing he supposedly said was written down at the time, so we have no idea if what is recorded to have been his sayings in the Bible are things he actually said.
I always relate it to Ian Fleming having a schoolchum who’s father’s name was Ernst Stavro Bloefeld. So was there a real Ernst Stavro Bloefeld? Yes. Was he a supervillain fighting the world’s greatest secret agent? No.
I don’t think this answer is really in the spirit of “no stupid questions”.
Ok, if you want me to sum up in a way that addresses it: Because the Jesus OP is very likely thinking of is fictional, there is no real physical proof of his existence.
It doesn’t matter.
I’d say the “Real Historical Jesus” matters at least as much as a Real Historical Julius Caeser or a Real Historical Abraham Lincoln.
I always relate it to Ian Fleming having a schoolchum who’s father’s name was Ernst Stavro Bloefeld.
That’s different in so far as Fleming was simply borrowing a name for a totally independent character. But Fleming was, himself, a Naval Commander and intelligence officer who leveraged his own biography to inform James Bond’s personal traits. What’s more, he borrowed heavily from the reports and anecdotes of other intelligence officials both during and after WW2 to inform the behaviors and attitudes of his side characters in his original novels.
It actually is pretty interesting to talk about “The Real James Bond” from a historical standpoint, because British intelligence services were pivotal in maintaining the imperial and international financial controls necessary to run a globe-spanning empire.
In the same vein, you might be curious to read about “The Real Julius Caeser” after working through the Shakespearean play or “The Real Abraham Lincoln” after getting through the stories where he’s a Vampire Hunter. These biographies inform all sorts of cultural and economic norms of the era. And reading about historical individuals can be both entertaining and illuminating, particularly when you begin to consider how your own world ended up as it is today.
“Why is Christianity a globe-spanning religious movement going back 2000 years?” is a question worth interrogating. And you can’t really interrogate that question without asking who this Jesus guy was or how he got so popular.
There’s nothing to read about when it comes to any real Joshua, son of Joseph the Carpenter of Nazareth because nothing has been written about such a person.
Quite a bit has been written on the possible siblings of Jesus.
Written while Jesus was still alive? If so, please present said writings. If not, that doesn’t really change my point.
Written while Jesus was still alive?
You could disprove the existence of Socrates with this line of reasoning.
Are we talking about whether or not a historical person the Jesus of the Bible is based on existed or are we talking about whether or not there were any contemporary accounts? Because those are two very different things.
As I suggested in the beginning, whether or not a “real” Jesus existed is not really relevant, because if we did, we know nothing about him except what was written a long time after he would have died, which we can’t trust. Which is the same reason not to trust Plato’s dialogues even if Socrates existed. Plato wrote them long after Socrates died.
if we did, we know nothing about him except what was written a long time after he would have died
Hardly the first instance of a historical figure with unreliable historical accounts. You could make the same criticism of Egyptian pharaohs. They were deified in their eras, too. Their monuments were not completed until many of them were long dead. I guess we should just ignore them and pretend they had no impact on the course of history.
We aren’t out here trying to prove Socrates existed.
Listened through a history of rome podcast and learned an interesting thing where win was basically like a concentrate so you would mix it with water to drink. Aka. water -> wine.
Using reasoning like this to remove the supernatural from the Bible rather defeats the entire point, doesn’t it? If Jesus just made Gatorade like anyone else would, that’s a rather unremarkable thing to describe. Hardly worth committing to writing.
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I am sure there are countless mundane tasks that are pretty unremarkable.
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Does the Bible really have a point? I guess other than brainwashing masses?
That’s what I’m saying. There’s no record of him wiping his ass or playing cards. If it’s in the book it must be intended to present something exceptional. Explain his actions as something mundane and there isn’t really any reason to write it down.
But equally, the fantastic supernatural elements make the whole thing into a fairy tale to be completely disregarded as a dubious source of folk wisdom at best by any thinking person.
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It was common practice to dilute wine.
Isn’t that just port then?
I hope not, because port is my wine of choice and I would be like, “fuck you, Jesus. I wanted to drink that!”
a schoolchum whose* father’s name
His life is full of details that defy basic biological and physical laws.
Which is perfectly sensible given that he was given the power to perform wonders by god to establish that he is indeed a messenger of god. The entire point of wonders is them defying the otherwise imposed limits of the physical world. Because the only one who can grant this power is the source of the physical limits themselves and that is god.
This is logically consistent under the axiom that god exists. Which is what the scriptures are all about.
You can set the axiom that god does not exist. But as there is no proof of that, it is equally axiomatic. So given that your logic works on an unproven assumption you should not use it to criticize a different logic based on another assumption.
There’s nothing “perfectly sensible” about defying the laws of physics just because a book says he could.
Again you are making an assumption as the base of your logical construct.
That assumption is that the “laws of physics” are absolute in the sense that you know them. This is already problematic from a scientific point of view because our understanding of what the “laws of physics” are were and are under a constant change.
The scriptures are based on the axiom that god created everything including the laws of physics so when he chooses to, these laws can be defied. You can disagree with that axiom, but that does not mean that the logic is inconsistent.
So if you want to be honest your argument is “I don’t believe the scriptures, so i don’t believe in Jesus” which is perfectly valid, but very different from “I know Jesus is impossible and i can prove it.”
Maybe to make an example in science to wrap it all together. Before the invention of microscopes some doctors theorized about bacteria and viruses as the source of diseases. They often got ridiculed as “some invisible animals making us sick? Yeah you drank too much wine again” . Then the telescope came about and it could be seen what used to be unseeable for humans. Nowadays if you would claim there to be no bacteria you’d be rightfully ridiculed. But we also saw in human history that knowledge got lost and things that were established knowledge became bold theories subject to ridicule again.
So being honest to science and human knowledge the valid position is “I don’t believe in Jesus like described in the bible, as it is inconsistent with what i can observe today, but i have no proof in either direction.”
But this position is not more or less valid than “I do believe in Jesus like described in the bible.” Or “I do believe in Jesus but not like described in the bible.”
The Bible is a bunch of self-contradictory folk-tales. Which makes it useless in knowing any real Jesus. So, while one cannot say historical Jesus absolutely didn’t exist, one cannot cite the Bible as a credible source of any knowledge about him. One might as well contemplate historical Hercules.
Did i ever cite the bible as that? I also think the bible has many inconsistencies and looking at concepts like trinity or Jesus as literal son of god being introduced hundreds of years later, are things i also disagree with.
But i understand that theological differences are something different from scientific differences. And i think it is important to separate the two.
Because scientific differences can be analyzed with repeatable tests and empirical evidence. Theological differences are either a simple matter of different faith or they can only be discussed in whether the theology is consistent in itself. But that again relies on certain axioms, like math relies on certain axioms or many social sciences need to use axioms because of the complexity of empirical information.
No, I am assuming that a book written in the iron age was written by people with no knowledge of physics and I am also assuming, like every other iron age religious text, there’s no need to accept it as truth.
Your whole “you can’t prove it isn’t true” argument is not how anything works. The burden of proof is on the claimant. In this case, my claim is I have no reason to believe any of it is true based on modern physics. And telling me I can’t assume that the laws of physics work all the time doesn’t really compel me to think otherwise since I’ve never seen any modern documented account of the laws of physics not working.
If your god wants me to believe he exists, he knows what he can do about it. I guess he’s fine not providing a shred of evidence he exists outside of an iron age book, which means I’m fine assuming he doesn’t exist.
was written by people with no knowledge of physics
So why would they write about it and describe it as wonders? Do you think they did not understand that walking on water, giving life to the death, curing diseases on the spot and other things ascribed to Jesus as wonders were defying the conventional laws of nature?
The burden of proof is on the claimant.
Exactly. You claim to know that Jesus as described in the bible is an impossibility. So you have to proof that. All i want you to acknowledge, is that you are making an assumption, not providing proven knowledge.
And telling me I can’t assume that the laws of physics work all the time doesn’t really compel me to think otherwise since I’ve never seen any modern documented account of the laws of physics not working.
Ever heard of modern Physics? Relativity theory? Relativistic effects? All of these are the results of observations in defiance of classical Newtonian physics. There is an ongoing revolution in physics since a hundred years because we keep observing things inconsistent with our prior assumptions about the laws of physics.
So why would they write about it and describe it as wonders?
The same reason the authors of the Vedas, the Quran, the Book of Mormon and any other religious text you’d like to mention. I assume you don’t think Vishnu is a god as well as your god. I look forward to the special pleading of why the “wonders” of the Bible are true and the “wonders” of the Trials of Hercules are not though.
Also, you’re “ever heard of” thing doesn’t change the fact that there is not a single documented account of the laws of physics not working. You are describing things being more complicated than was thought, not things not working.
But feel free to show me video of a modern-day miracle your god is responsible for. You know as well as I do that there is no such thing, but I’m sure you’ve got some amusing excuse for why your omnipotent god no longer performs those miracles of his.
So do you believe the people 2000 years ago knew nothing about the laws of nature or did they? Did they understand that walking on water was something regularly possible or not? Did they understand raising the dead was something not normally possible?
Because that is your claim. And i strongly disagree because we have plenty of evidence that people understood the laws of nature quite well, even if they couldn’t verbalize them in math yet. We have many ancient buildings and technologies that only work with a profound understanding of how physical matter behaves under normal circumstances.
EDIT: By the way i do not believe the bible to be an accurate description of Jesus, as there is an accurate description in the Quran. Still i don’t claim to have proof that Jews, Christians or Hindus are wrong, because i have different theological believes. I acknowledge that my believes are that. And Atheists should realize that they also have theological believes, which is fundamentally different from knowledge about natural sciences.
It sure is convenient that the omnipotent and wise God decided to send his son to earth and perform wonders to prove he is the messenger of God long before humanity had advanced enough to create better records and spread that truth. I wonder why God has not wisely re-upped on this, given technological advancement, which God should be pretty caught up on.
You make good points. May i introduce you to Islam?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_in_Islam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran
The final prophet Mohammed s.a.s. whose life and effect are well documented as well as the direct word of Allah s.w.t., preserved as original in the Arabic language of revelation in the Quran. You should not though that according to Islam Jesus was merely a human messenger as Allah neither was born nor gives birth. In the same wake Allah is one and not three. But these concepts were added by the church to the Christian theology four hundred years after the life of Jesus.
I appreciate your confidence.
Even with godly powers, you aren’t capable of contradictions.
This person is currently trying to argue with me that it was definitely true that when iron age people wrote in a book that Jesus walked on water decades after the event supposedly took place, it really took place because quantum physics tells us more about the universe than Newtonian physics, therefore something? I’m not sure. Somehow that makes walking on water possible but I just don’t have the faith apparently.
Can you elaborate what you mean by that?
That god couldn’t change the rules he himself created according to the scriptures? That seems pretty consistent to me.
You go that way, I’ll goto Jesus!
Pra ba jeeba
Nobody got my joke.
Christianity exists. Religions don’t tend to spring up from nowhere. Every myth has its nugget of truth. Was there a preacher back then whose followers later spread around the world? Almost certainly. Where else could Christianity have come from?
Was he the son of god though? Was he capable of all the miracles the bible claims? Is the god he preached even real? There is no evidence that the answer to these three questions is anything but no I’m afraid.
Religions don’t tend to spring up from nowhere.
Let me introduce you to our good friend Ronald Hubbard and this pesky Religion called “Scientology”
if you found a corpse it would cause a lot of problems for the religion.
Do you mean to say that there are actual remains of Jesus right now somewhere on Earth?
if there are then there are some issues with the new testament
Ofc there are. Unless they got destroyed someway or another. There was a guy named Jesus that was crucified by the romans and all that. There is proof of that. It’s all the biblical stuff that there’s no proof of.
There was a guy named Jesus that was crucified by the romans and all that. There is proof of that
There isn’t actually. The proof is basically: it’s embarassing that their cult leader got painfully crucified, so the early Christians and writers of the new testament wouldn’t have made that shit up.
Personally I find it rather unconvincing.
Don’t believe in god either way, but if it’s good enough for the majority of historians , then it’s good enough for me. Not sure why you’d need more, but you do you.
if it’s good enough for the majority of historians
It isn’t. Historians would love to have independent evidence of the existence and crucifixion of Jesus, but there isn’t… so most historians refrain from taking a position one way or the other. The ones that do have to make do with what little objective information they have, and the best they can come up with is: well because of this embarassing thing, it’s more likely that he did exist and was crucified than that he didn’t, because why would they make that up?
That’s rather weak evidence, and far from “proof”.
Not sure why you’d need more
Well for one because the more prominent people who have studied this have a vested interest in wanting it to be true. For example, John P. Meier, who posited this criterion of embarassment that I outlined in my previous comment, isn’t really a historian but a catholic priest, professor of theology (not history) and a writer of books on the subject.
So instead of taking the glory for themselves like pretty much all other humans they decide to preach about an imaginary friend? Meh… Between “guy who got lost in history” and “bunch of guys that raved about that one gf that went to a different school”, I’ll go with the former as the more plausible one.
I’ll concede the fact that it’s not the same level of proof as other figures, but all these people writing about him is more than we have about others.
There are basically four positions you can take about this:
- Jesus existed and was crucified
- We can’t know, because there is no conclusive evidence, but I think (1) is more likely
- We can’t know, because there is no conclusive evidence, but I think (4) is more likely
- Jesus is a myth
I am on (2), as are most historians, and you put yourself on (1).
There had to be multiple Rabbi rabblerousers in Roman occupied Judea. Pick one.
That’s not the real question though. The real question is rather are there any “real physical proof” that Jesus had literally anything special that is in itself being the “son of God” or anything related to religion.
Anybody (sadly) can be crucified, especially during a period where it is trendy. Anybody can walk through part of the desert. Anybody can organize a meal, give a speech, etc.
Even if it’s done exceptionally well, that does not make it special in the sense of being the proof of anything religious. We all have friends with unique talents, and social media helped us discovered that there are so many more of those around the entire world, but nobody in their right mind would claim that because Eminem can sing words intelligibly faster than the vast majority of people he is the son of “God”.
I also read a book about a decade ago (unfortunately didn’t write down notes about it so can’t find the name back) on the history of religion, from polytheism to monotheism, and it was quite interesting. If I remember correctly one way to interpret it was through the lens of religions maintaining themselves over time and space, which could include growing to a sufficient size in terms of devout adepts. The point being that veracity was not part of the equation.
Well, that’s the question if you want to believe in Christianity.
It’s nearly universally accepted that he is a historical figure, though there is little to no evidence of that. The OP is asking why is that the case with so little evidence. They (presumably) aren’t asking for a religious reason, just as an interest in history. If you are Christian and asking this question you are well past the point of no return for your faith
Eminem claimed to be a Rap God though. Praise be onto him.
No, OPs question was perfectly fine, because it is necessary to stress the fact that we have not a single contemporary primary source that Jesus existed. So adding extra parameters is pretty pointless, since we cannot convincingly answer whether he actually existed, much less whether he was a religious figure. Scholars have reached a conjectural consensus that a Jesus in some form likely existed, but it is a consendus based on congecture and circumstantial evidence in the form of later secondary sources.
Praise be Sol Invictus, the real OG Jesus
Nope. But that’s also not as big a deal as a lot of folks make it.
Also, he’s far from the only important(?) historical(?) figure we can’t prove ever existed.
