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.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
It’s weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on the m this very very heavily studied subject.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Yeah there are plenty of historians who have done good work studying this and the academia is mostly settled. Not to say there’s no controversy, but there’s definitely an orthodox opinion.
dandroid@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
In my experience, when it comes to debating the validity of religion, people tend to get far more emotional than other topics. People who are normally level-headed and quite logical tend to completely lose their ability to think rationally. And I mean both the people who argue for religion and against it.
bastion@feddit.nl 4 months ago
Pretty clear that’s the case here in the comments on this post.
reversebananimals@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yep. This is one of those posts that should have just been a web search instead.
frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
A literature search. The web is full of rubbish.
frog_brawler@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It’s almost like Christian Scholars (people that have dedicated their entire lives to this idea) have access to write for Wikipedia too…
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
I shouldn’t bother responding to this, but I have to point out that this weird assumption that scholars of Christianity are all Christian partisans seems pretty similar to people who say that climatologists are all biased in favor of a global warming hoax.
You don’t think anyone goes into studying a field to challenge the heterodoxy? That’s the fastest way to get famous. Even if the rest of your field hates you, you can make an incredibly lucrative career out of being “the outsider”.
If you don’t believe the experts, I guess it’s fine. But it’s weird when people use expertise on a subject as proof of bias to discredit expertise. It’s just such a silly thing to do.
frog_brawler@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I think it’s a weird assumption to assume the wiki-link that you posted is in support of the “Christ Myth Theory” (as they call it).
Read the contents of the wiki link you sent and check all of the citations, you’ll see that the Christian Scholars that contributed to writing the article aim to dismiss the theory by citing their own books.
bastion@feddit.nl 4 months ago
Kinda cringey.
pop@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
but then
Well cited article aren’t proof of existenceof a man. Is spiderman real if enough people cite the comics? A group of influential people could gather and make their own circle of these myths and present it as a fact. And it isn’t fucking new.
chronicle.com/…/the-dark-world-of-citation-cartel…
Religions and all their influence could force a lot of heavily studied subject to be skewed for their benefit. Hell, there were studies that were treated as standard making sugar and alcohol heavily beneficial for human beings. And we’re talking about a person.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
I didn’t say which side I come down on. I just said that there is lots of information with plenty of high quality citations.
I’m really happy that everyone is a winner.