All the historical evidence for Jesus in one room
Now whether Jesus was a divine being, sure that picture depicts the evidence of that. But we "know" that a man named Jesus certainly existed and was crucified.
Thank you. We know that Mohammed existed, yet I don't believe that an angel came to him with the words of the Quran, and I don't believe in islam. Most scholars agree that Jesus existed, so it feels counter productive to try to assert that he didn't exist. His existence is not a threat to my worldview, and besides, I follow the truth wherever it leads, not just where it's convenient.
The problem with all of this "evidence" is that Christians don't want to officially recognize any of it because it proves Jesus or Joseph as he was probably called. Was just a normal guy.
I am still waiting for the evidence. We have Paul who didn't see anything, despite being in the area when it all supposedly went down, we have him call into question the credibility of the eyewitnesses, and despite spend decades with Christians only seems to know 11 facts about Jesus. Then we get complete silence for 50 years and an off-hand mention of the some hearsay by a man who believed in a literal Adam and Eve as historical fact.
Meanwhile every single part of the Jesus con is found in the stories and history that was around at the time. It is a hacky unoriginal derivative work with all of the evidence conveniently missing.
His name was Joshua, or Yeshua, not Joseph. Joseph was his father's name. Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua or Yeshua
That wiki article presents zero historical evidence and is full of references to biblical scholars claiming there was s areal historical Jesus because the bible says so. Pure garbage source.
This argument is like saying “some guy named john did in fact live and was sentenced to life in prison in Louisiana”.
There was, in fact, lots of jeshua’s and Jehoshua’s that were alive at the time- and many of them executed. That’s not credible evidence for the existence of the biblical Jesus. It was a very common name, after all.
Show me the evidence, not what theist apologists argued later via tampered hearsay decades removed from the facts.
Ok, Pompeii. Less than a century later, before Constantine reskinned the Roman religion with the Christian label, we've found hidden shrines and symbols used by followers of Jesus. And uncovered very recently - not much room for it to be falsified. There's also contemporary accounts that spread extremely fast throughout the Roman empire and beyond, but those weren't buried under ash until the modern era.
That's a long way to go in very little time - that's only maybe 3-4 degrees away from the original source. Not nearly long enough for a mythical figure to develop organically
You can dispute the details, but someone must've been the figurehead at the very least. The gospels themselves hint at the events being staged to some extent by a small group spreading an ideology according to a literal plan - the public events literally start with Jesus's cousin gathering support for the movement, and then Jesus goes around recruiting specific people as apostles
The Romans also kept records - there's a lot of corroborating evidence for certain events spread too far and wide for a pre-information age society to fabricate. Even things like his birthdate - I think they've been able to narrow it down to a few days in July, during the census, where we had accounts of a temporary new star in the sky
Even the papers that are given clickbait-y headlines like "historians dispute the existence of Jesus" generally dispute certain aspects, there was almost certainly a historical figure named Jesus who was killed by the Romans for inciting a resistance movement
I’m an atheist and this is a dumb take
You easily could've just said God instead and avoided a lot of controversy. Leave Christians to ignore the history books. Don't go down to their level.
It's pretty bold to say that there's no evidence for him.
For starters, the claim that he existed is rather unextraordinary. That he was the messiah might be extraordinary, but just that a dude with that name who did some of the same things isn't too remarkable. This means that we don't need a ton of strong evidence. Compounded with the fact that he was (if he existed) poor, and therefore it's not expected that he'd leave much evidence, we need hardly anything to say the man existed.
Since there seems to be a consensus by experts that he existed, and since neither of us are experts (probably, I don't actually know about you), you need to either present a reason to be skeptical of those experts or present evidence contradicting their claim.
I'm not able to filter through everything Josephus and Tacitus wrote, interpret it in the intended context, and judge it's validity. Thus I need to trust other people's findings.
If you could show that these experts are unreliable (perhaps they're religiously motivated, though I think secular historians agree), then we could start from scratch and the burden of proof would be on people claiming the man existed.
There’s no surviving records of his (or anyone named Jeshua or any variant there of,) ever having existed.
In fact if any such record were to be found, it would almost certainly be fraudulent.
There are records of people saying he existed well after his reputed death… but those records are pretty universally from individuals with extensive motive to lie- what with being cult leaders and all that.
Even if there were records of someone with his name existing, matching them to jesus-of-the-bible would prove almost impossible- the best would be a “well maybe it was him” kinda deal.
It would be like finding some guy named “John” had been incarcerated in Louisiana and insisting he was John Coffey and here to save us all.
Just making shit up now? Folks there are plenty of memes to be had without fabrication of patently untrue comments.
OP, I am with you.
I have researched the historicity of Jesus in the past to try to confirm my faith, but all we have is either Christian sources or sources written more than 300 later after Jesus supposedly died.
What we are sure of is that Paul really existed, and it's him who mainly spread this new religion. That he was telling the truth, no, we will never be sure.
I am sorry for the other comments here. I thank you for you submission but seeing the response of the rest of the community here I am going to block it and move on.
A Dutch historian wrote a book that analyzed Paul's actions as if he was a Roman double agent who had to stop religious uprising against the Roman empire. If you read the bible in that way it gets hard to ignore it. The romans were treated as an instrument of god, whose taxation should be payed without disagreement.
It's my personal favorite interpretation of the christian faith ever. How a disinforming operation became bigger than the institution it was meant to protect and eventually overtook it.
Who is this for? What point are you trying to make? There is arguable evidence for a jesus-like character (as seen in the comments), so this post really helps no one and makes you look like an uninformed, angsty, immature person.
And maybe you are and will grow out of it to be helpful to any sort of community, but this post isn't part of that.
There is arguable evidence for a jesus-like character
May I see it?
so this post really helps no one and makes you look like an uninformed, angsty, immature person.
Will personal attacks produce the evidence?
Arent historians pretty sure jesus existed? You know he just couldnt walk on water and turn water into wine and everything else they say about him lol.
The caption left out an important word: All the contemporary historical evidence for Jesus.
"The signs are all there, is your lack of faith to stop you from seeing them" - [ Says every religion EVER]
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