cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/49389144
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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I will never understand why people talk of what's akin to a Harry Potter character as if it was a real person.
There is no reliable historical evidence that Jesus ever existed.
Considering the alleged feats of the character, that would be very unlikely, and even a minor figure like John the baptist, has better actual historical evidence than Jesus.
Occam's razor suggest that Jesus was simply made up as an idea, and never really existed.
Much the same as the Greek demigods.
There is actually evidence that Jesus existed in Paul's Letters 50-60 AD although he did not have direct contact with him but he met his followers and wrote about him.
Evidence for him being God is completely different question and can probably neither be proven or disproven.
"Paul" is an anonymous author, and therefore has no credentials.
By your own account it was written decades after the fact, and based only on 3rd party account, which in itself is similar to hearsay in a court, which for good reason is inadmissible as evidence.
That does not count as reliable historical evidence. It's actually 3 steps removed from it, as there are 3 obvious sources of error.
I think more likely "Paul" or whatever his actual name was, was one of the original authors of the story of Jesus Christ, similar to being the author of Harry Potter.
As in the whole thing was completely and totally made up, and there is no rational reason to believe otherwise.
You can then pretty much say that most classical history is made up since it's just some accounts of people often written post-mortem.
Often in history from the time of the Roman Empire the sources are few and far between since it'd have to survive 2000 years to get to the present.
All we know is that suddenly a bunch of people starting talking about a rando in the desert called Jesus. Even though we don't have an eye witness writing we have a person that spoke with the eye witnesses.
Then also, it's just some letters he's sending to a Christian community in modern day Turkey that happened to survive.
I'm an atheist but I feel the evidence is pretty solid for Jesus existing. Rest of it is exaggeration I think.
That's a whopping false equivalence, and actually must be regarded as an outright lie.
For instance Cleopatra lived before the time of the stories about Jesus:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/cleopatra-egypt-pharaoh-life-history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra
There is lots of physical archaeological evidence of her existence in the form of numerous contemporary relics, and there are numerous famous contemporary literary sources, and actual first hand accounts, where she is called a seductress.
Regarding Cleopatra we even have a decent idea how she looked. We know when she was born and when she died with good accuracy, we know she had an affair with Caesar. And we know who here parents and grandparents were.
If Jesus had just 1% the evidence of Cleopatra, there would be no doubt about his existence. And Jesus allegedly founded the biggest religion on earth, was the son of God, and performed numerous miracles. Yet crickets from everybody living in the area at the time, and stories first came out far removed in both time and distance from where they occurred.
You know almost or is it exactly like in a fairy-tale "In a country far far away long long ago...".
Then show a single piece of solid evidence!! As it is, you are just parroting fundamental Christian rhetoric.
Of course there's a lot of information about Cleopatra, she was married to the Consul of the Roman Empire and was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. Of course documents on Jesus are going to be a lot more scarce.
Jesus was not a big name during his lifetime, he was literally just a random guy in the desert that led a cult. It's hard enough to find data on literal Roman emperors during the crisis of the third century.
To get some data on Jesus you first need a guy that can write (rare), writing stuff on a person of little renown (very rare), that is predominantly followed by poor people (also rare), and for it survive 2000 years. I'm frankly surprised there is any data at all on him that's this close to him being alive instead of people just writing down oral history like they did for rise of Muhammad.
I'm not saying that there is a lot of data but that there is some. I personally think it's very plausible that there was a cult leader that essentially started Christianity. Oral history points to Jesus as well as second hand witnesses.
Other writings include Tacitus (known for being unbiased on his writing about roman emperors) writing on how he was crucified during Tiberius' reign. Tacitus had access to a lot more data than we have and was a very competent historian.
I don't believe he had any powers or was in any way magical godly or anything but Christian writings refer to him as well as Romans in a situation where it's very plausible that a religion is started by a leader of some sort. I find it very likely that he existed.
There's no smoking gun but all the guns are pointing in the same direction.
Your claim was that most of classical history has a similar lack of evidence to the lack of evidence for Jesus. Which I showed by example is decidedly false, and now you agree that Cleopatra from before Jesus in about the same area, has lots of evidence because she was significant! So we can probably agree that significant events of the time actually generally have reliable historical evidence. So basically your claim now is that Jesus wasn't really significant!!
So at what point was it decided he performed miracles and was the son of god?
Or was that not enough to be a big name? But none the less, he was the founder of the biggest religion of all time!
The more logical reason he wasn't a big name at the time and place of the stories about him, is that he actually never existed.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Jesus Christ, he performed miracles and was the son of god.
What I was saying was that if Jesus Christ had just 1% of the evidence Cleopatra has, there would be no doubt.
The constant special pleading about Christianity is mind boggling, always with the double standards!!
Oh for Christ sake no there isn't, rumors and hear say is not data, that's little more than noise. The whole point I made is the lack of reliable data, of which there is none.
People keep claiming here that there is, but nobody can show anything, because there isn't.
Then it isn't really Jesus Christ is it? Yes there were probably a few hundred people in the area named Jesus, but NONE of them were Jesus Christ. I also know a taxi driver called Jesus, that friggin not evidence of a Jesus Christ. That you don't believe he had magic abilities, only proves you are not entirely delusional, but you still believe without evidence what's akin to Harry Potter once walked the train stations of England, based on a bunch of children coming straight from a Harry Potter movie saying so.
There was a guy named Jesus, born in Nazareth and crucified by the romans. There's no mystery about that and it's historically accurate
The rest, however...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Based on what?
There is no evidence of either regarding the character Jesus Christ of the bible.
Sorry - you're wrong in this.
There are non-Biblical contemporary accounts of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, the travelling preacher who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It's generally accepted that he was a real person.
As for the magical side things attributed to him - the immaculate conception, the miracles etc - well, that is a matter of faith.
To use another historical figure, look at William Wallace. There is contemporary evidence that he was a real person, but we don't have much at all. Most of what we have is works created long after he died - legends and stories that have fashioned him into the person we think of. He was a real person, but Braveheart isn't a true story.
If you want another example of how distorted things can get over time - just look at the current "American" version of Jesus.
The Biblical Jesus was a Jew who said people should look after the poor, love our neighbours, respect cultural differences, and that nothing God has made is unclean. He said pursuit of money is the root of all evil and, angered by the commercialisation of the temple, flipped over the tables of the money-changers.
The American Jesus is a white Christian who hates foreigners and their ways, hates gay people and hates atheists. Conversely, he loves billionaires, mega-churches and capitalism.
Historical Jesus is probably real, but that doesn't mean the Bible is an accurate account.
Tacitus and Josephus aren’t particularly reliable in the question of Jesus’s historicity.
Their only sources seem to be Christians, or recorded testimony of Christian’s. Tacitus in particular was writing decades after the cruxifoction supposedly happened.
Josephus has similar problems, but also, his works may have been altered to include descriptions of Jesus as “a good man who did great works leading to his execution.”
We don’t actually have any surviving first hand accounts- not even the gospels were first had.
Edit to clarify: we wouldn’t really expect there to be any evidence; so the lack of it is quite unsurprising. The only right answer here, as far as I’m concerned is “we don’t know.” But that’s less fun. In any case, even if Jesus were historical; he’d likely be quite surprised by the things he supposedly said and did.
LOL good point. 👍
Whether the Testimonium Flavianumin (Josephus' description of Jesus in Antiquities) was entirely a Christian insert or the section was just edited by Christians is debated, however there's consensus that Josephus' reference to "he brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" in Antiquities is authentic.
And you think that a guy basing his stories on third or fourth hand accounts of believers decades after the fact is… credible evidence a guy existed?
Particularly given that his source was probably the gospels of mark and Mathew, and maybe Luke- and none of those are particularly credible- for one thing they’re not eyewitness accounts, and for another, anonymous.
Mary was the immaculate conception (born without sin), Jesus was the virgin birth. Joseph was just some smuck, I guess. I can also list the original origin story for dozens of super heros.
Ah! But Joseph was an heir to David! He wasn’t just some schmuck! He had an incredibly necessary role of explaining how Jesus could be David’s heir.
Too bad he wasn’t Jesus’s daddy.
I can see the family resemblance with David, another historical figure with limited archeological evidence for their existence. Doesn't mean they didn't exist, just that the past is poorly preserved.
The last being poorly preserved doesn’t mean they existed. It means we don’t know.
I put it in the same category as Arthur or Achilles- there may have been a guy named that, but the stories told are so out of sync with what really happened that it doesn’t matter; the real David, Arthur or Achilles, and indeed Jesus may as well be different people.
No there isn't. Simply not true, you've been led to believe the bible is reliable, but even the bible description of Jesus is written a lifetime after the fact by third parties, based on hear say (or fantasy).
There is not a single verifiable or first hand historic evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, continuing to claim that doesn't make it so.
Well, I'm certainly glad that I wrote out all that, for you just to reply to the first paragraph!
Anyway, you're wrong. Literally minimum effort required to dig these out, but I'll do it for you anyway.
Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus
Annals by Tacitus
Antiquities has two mentions, along with a rather grim description of what Nero was doing to Christians. Annals has one mention.
And I think you're fundamentaly mistaken about what the Bible is. It's just a collection of works. The Old Testament is pretty much the same stuff as the Jewish Tanakh, and predates Jesus fairly significantly. The New Testament is composed of works created after Jesus's death. This includes several letters by a guy named Paul.
"OK, and...", I hear you say.
He was absolutely a contemporary of the historical Jesus, carried out missionary work after his conversion.
I'll grant that there are no first-hand accounts - even Paul's accounts were second-hand from people who actually knew Jesus. But it doesn't mean anything - there are few first-hand accounts of anybody from before the early middle ages, let alone a commoner born 2000 years ago.
???
Either way, I appreciate you providing those, it's a fascinating topic. Frankly even if Jesus was just some guy running around deceiving people into thinking he was the Messiah, he had some good lessons and that's gotta count for something.
People have always known how to behave kindly.
His moral teachings were pretty bland, even relative to his era. (Which, for example, is why he never criticized slavery, despite it being something he’d encountered daily.)
Josephus:
I don't really have to look up those, I'm very well aware of them, because as I wrote, there are excruciatingly little, even when counting things that aren't really evidence.
First Josephus wrote that way after the fact, and they are NOT first person experiences (as you admitted), so even if truly written by him, it does not constitute reliable historic evidence.
In fact the entry was allegedly written a decade AFTER the oldest book in the Bible describing the life of Jesus. So clearly more likely faked by himself to seem more complete, or by a fraudster to create evidence, maybe to increase the value, or to please his church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_of_the_Jews
Actual meaning they don̈́t agree.
How is it both authentic and subjected to Christian interpolation.
Annals by Tacitus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus)
Notice not a single mention of Jesus until near the end with this comment:
It must be embarrassing to have to quote those as "evidence", for what billions consider the most significant event in the history of mankind, when both reek of having been manipulated.
The fact that you really believe I was unaware of these, just show your own ignorance. Because these are parroted over and over again by Christians, exactly because they don't have any historically reliable evidence.
This despite huge efforts to find this evidence, financed by Churches through 2000 years, combined using by far more resources than any other investigation into the history of anything.
Investigating the pyramids have been peanuts by comparison, yet we know several Pharaoh that are thousands of years before the story of Jesus Christ. Just Cleopatra which were slightly earlier than the fantasy figure Jesus Christ, But Cleopatra is an indisputable historic character, despite the Roman empire was way more notorious in cataloging everything.
But that's because Cleopatra and Pharaohs actually existed, and despite being way less significant, than if Jesus Christ had actually founded Christianity. Even without the miracles of the Bible being true!!!
If you think about it critically and regard the context and compare to the evidence of other historical events, it becomes pretty clear that Jesus Christ never existed as an actual person.
The claim about Tacitus not writing on Jesus comes from one "source" in the pop culture section. That source is a fictional character in a novel (one who's obviously portrayed as highly biased on this issue, ironically...) it gets even more embarassing when you look up what that novel is about...
There's also this which mentions that his writings on Jesus are pretty much agreed to be authentic. The Roman empire was indeed very good at keeping records, that's why Tacitus is considered such a reliable source...
You're making a lot of claims about the motivations of people, with no actual evidence to show for it, and using that to dismiss them as sources. This is painfully ironic. Not everything is a Catholic conspiracy, it's okay for the world to be nuanced.
Thanks for replying to this. This is everything I would have said, except in a far less exasperated way than I would have said it!
I'm going to draw a line under it now though. I honestly don't have energy to explain why a street-preacher who was active for a only a few years does not have the same quality of historical evidence as Cleopatra.
They're either stupid or a troll. A quick look through their profile shows a lot of posts in Danish, so I don't think they're stupid. Scandinavia, however, is famously home to trolls of all shapes and sizes.
Ahaha, that's very true Scandinavia is a mysterious place.
Yeah the comment on Cleopatra is just laughable on the face of it haha, I didn't even think it was worth addressing.
Glad you're stepping away there's no point getting worked up on this. I normally wouldn't have engaged to this degree myself, but I found that particular rebuttal to Tacitus to be so damn funny that I couldn't not.
I suspect they're genuine, I feel I've been this person in the past. Sometimes it's hard to learn to reevaluate and be wrong about things, and religion is a pretty stigmatising issue that can leave you with a lot of unresolved and misguided anger. It's unfortunate, but human.
The only verifiable fact is that the Romans were into crucifying people AND there were rebel sects in Judea.
The rest is just really good story telling
That's like saying that trains stations are a verifiable fact of Harry Potter.
Actually they made movies and we have the original text of Harry Potter so … it’s a less credulous statement than that.
Lots of folks getting their panties in a bunch about something they don’t understand, it’s not OUR fault no contemporary peers wrote of this “Jesus” fellow but instead we got tales of a rebel leader inflated over the years.
He’s just John Henry with a couple thousand years to simmer.
Yes by comparison the evidence for Harry Potter is overwhelming.
I'm no expert whatsoever, because frankly it makes no difference to me, but last I heard it was accepted that Jesus the person existed.
It's hard to find trustworthy sources when I'm being lazy and so many people are trying push very biased views, but this is something, I guess. There's also a Wikipedia article about it, but I'm tired and it's dry.
The problem is that when you look at the non christian sources like josephus their sources are christian or each other so its sorta a circle jerk. There is no written roman record from the census that bible mentioned that was so important his dad had to go back to Bethlehem. Then also somehow the mass slaughter of little boys is not mentioned. So josephus basically says the chrisitans say there was this guy jesus christ who was crucified. That was his source. He does a detailed life of herod including some fucked up things he did like killing a wife and sons and in a law but never mentions a slaughter of children.
2000 years of massive Christian propaganda without evidence. There are plenty historical people from that time that have actual historical evidence, and even people from thousands of years earlier. Just because a lot of people are delusional, doesn't make their delusions true. And without evidence there is no reason the rest of us should believe their delusions.
The claim that historians don't believe Jesus Christ is a made up character is itself suspect, the entire western world has been brainwashed to believe Jesus was an actual figure, were those historians from the same universities that feature theology as a valid study? Granting Christianity absolutely undeserved authority.
Imagine a university having an entire branch of study of Harry Potter that was equal to Physics, Math, history and so on! Based on a 2000 year old tradition of often fanatically believing and trying to prove the existence of Harry Potter, and with 90% of Philosophers through the centuries believing the stories to be true, exclusively based on faith with no evidence.
ALL the Theological and Philosophical "evidence" from centuries of trying to claim the bible is true has been disproved. And even today Christians continue to use those old already disproved ideas, because average people aren't aware the arguments have been proved to be invalid, often centuries ago!
It would be laughably moronic if it wasn't so sad and destructive.
Well again, it doesn't actually matter to me. I'm not trying to have a debate, I'm just saying that's what I've heard and I tend to trust experts on their own fields. You can make up your own mind about what you believe, makes no difference to me.
I don't think it's really that big of a deal if he was a real person or not, it doesn't say anything about the validity of religion one way or the other. Plus I don't think it's really that far fetched that someone could have amassed a bunch of followers and birthed a new religion. It still happens in the modern world.
Edit: I read how you've responded to everyone else. Take a break friend, people are just having a discussion with you, disagreing isn't an attack.
It's fine if you personally think the evidence isn't reliable, but calling everyone delusional and shouting down frankly well supported arguments as fake with no way to back it up all while refusing to read and engage with them isn't a good look. If you can legitimately explain why people are wrong, I'm sure they would appreciate the discussion and potentially learning something.
If you can't, then I'd suggest reflecting on why this is so upsetting to you. Believe me I absolutely understand what it's like to hate religion and to be filled with an intense desire to want it to all be wrong and evil, but that shouldn't affect how you treat people.
I do too, but most historians throughout time that have studied Christian historicity have been Christians themselves, meaning these are not unbiased scientists, but more likely to be Christian fanatics desperately seeking evidence for their belief.
I agree it's not far fetched, there is just no evidence of it, which is weird, since shortly after it becomes the official religion of the Roman empire!
A movement that big with such a charismatic leader and no evidence?
Again Occam's razor indicate the story was made up by followers of Jesus Christ, an idealized concept that existed before they personified him in stories that are now included in the bible. Christianity did not start with the writings of the scripture in the bible.
This is something widely accepted by secular historians, it's widely accepted by atheists too.
Occam's razor does not work like that. It would actually suggest that Jesus did exist, given that it requires a single person to have existed instead of requiring a mountain of very valid evidence to be a conspiracy while a whole group people, who's entire profession revolves around determining the trustworthiness of such evidence, to suddenly all be very bad at their job on this one specific issue etc.
I gave you sources, just take the time to read them. Check out refercence g from the wikipedia page
And last but not least, if historians and scholars overwhelmingly agree that a guy named Jesus existed in Judea during the first century, who am I (but also, who are you) to assert otherwise ?
(Remember that proving the absence of a thing requires some finesse, make sure you have that)
Show me a single piece of evidence that document the existence of Jesus is true, You can't just point me to a page flooded with multiple false Christian propaganda.
I have read lots and lots of so called "evidence" of which there are 3 pieces claimed to be the major pieces of evidence, and they are all highly unreliable, and considering the alleged importance of Jesus Christ at his time, 3 pieces of faked evidence is way less than what we could reasonably expect, even if they were somewhat trustworthy.
Here's a link to "the internet" read and lean. https://www.google.com/ /sarcasm on your link that I have already read years ago. What they call evidence is not actually valid historical evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_Jesus_Exist%3F_(Ehrman_book)
Yet another Christian circle jerk.
Wow 3 Christians agree that their faith is true. How the fuck did you imagine such trash could convinced anyone who isn't already convinced without evidence?
Take a tidbit like this moronic kind of logic:
It does nothing of the sort, that's like saying telling a lie with holes in it, is an indication it's true.
Or that people would probably line up their lies better if they lied.
Well surprise they don't, and that's actually a way police often detect criminals.
Trash like this is decidedly insulting to people with intelligence. But of course, that's not the people they make their money on.
I'm not Christian and I couldn't care less if Jesus really was a guy.
Your obsession over this is pretty weird. This is not something that scholars are actively debating over.
Ehrman is an agnostic atheist and one of the most renowned experts in the field of theology. He's definitely not a Christian circle jerk.
I can fully understand that you don't agree on this. But you can't be this upset and this much and
Guess the majority of experts who devoted their lives to this issue are less intelligent than you then.
Do you care that Israel is destroying lives in Gaza?
Well I do, and similarly I care that false religions are destroying lives and families with superstition all over the world.
And the only kind of religion there is, is false religion, because if it were true it would not be religion.
Why don't you care?
You'd be kicked out of highschool debate at this point, but okay.
Did you actually read what I said? Jesus being a real historic person and not being a son of the God or whatever Christians believe him to be is not mutually exclusive.
This is not the way to be critical about Christianity(or anything, really). If anything, you're making it worse.
There still isn't any evidence of his existence either way. And believing he existed without being the son of God, kind of makes even less sense than if you were actually a Christian. Because being a delusional Christian has it's own inherent logic.
Believing his existence despite the lack of evidence without being a Christian doesn't make the least bit of sense.
It's beyond reason, it's like saying you believe in god, you just don't believe he has any powers. It simply doesn't make any sense from a rational standpoint.
As I stated early on, it's as naive as believing the Greek demigods were real. They have somewhat similar stories, and similar lack of evidence of being real. But you might as well say they were probably real, they just weren't demigods.
It's also akin to believe some guy named Santa Claus live on the North Pole, he is just not bringing gifts every Christmas.
Based on what? Religious fanaticism maybe? I don't see how Christian intolerance should be a good point against me in this debate.
Because he is, real or not, a very important and influential cultural figure and has been a very large and dominant part of Western culture since late antiquity, and billions of people believe him to be real, unlike Draco Malfoy who has only been around for a few decades and hasn't caused a massive political, economical, cultural, linguistic, and religious impact across continents.
Me:
You:
So he is even if he isn't?
You make zero sense.
I mean, no matter whether he was a real person or not.
Wow that's a weird way to phrase that, "because he is" looks like you claim he is real in the context of me stating there is no evidence for it.
A way clearer way to say the same would be:
Real or not, he is a very important person.
The way you put it is very confusing.
I think that was a part of the joke: some people are so picky that even a made up personage who was intended to be good all around is not good enough for them.
I think you are right.