Comment on Is there any real physical proof that Jesus christ ever existed?

• SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  AFAIK most historians/scholars agree that Jesus was a real person (even if a lot of the Bible’s claims about what he did is not true). What are you basing your opinion on?

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  • nyctre@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Exactly this. The person did exist. There’s proof of that. It wasn’t the son of god and didn’t perform miracles, but he was real nonetheless.

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    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Important notion that Jesus never claimed to be the son of god and that entire line of thinking was established some four hundred years after.

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

      So we have to differentiate between what is the actual Gospel and life of Jesus and what the more creative parts of the churches invented on top of it over time.

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      • nyctre@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. John 8:58

        Which is from one of the original 4 gospels. Apparently there’s evidence of it being written as early as 70AD. There’s a couple other quotes I found in a link some other person linked in this thread but this one seems most direct.

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      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that there was (most likely) an actual historical person who is the origin of these stories, i.e. Jesus. He’s probably not really as fantastical as the Bible would have you believe, but he did exist, as opposed to being just an entirely fictional character.

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• sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There exists documented proof in many bits of literature from around 200 BCE to around 100 CE of numerous different figures in what is called ‘Jewish Apocalypticism’, ie Jews in and around what was for most of that time the Roman province of Palestine, preaching that the end would come, that God or a Messiah would return or arise and basically liberate the region and install a Godly Kingdom, usually after or as part of other fantastical events.

  Jesus was one of many of these Jewish Apocalypticists. Much like the rest of the movement’s key figures, they were wrong, and their lives were greatly exaggerated in either their writings or writings about them or inspired by them.

  This seems to be the (extremely condensed) opinion of most Biblical Scholars.

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  • blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    m.youtube.com/watch?v=z8j3HvmgpYc

    Satans Guide to the Bible for more apocalyptic felt Jesus.

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  • Liz@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve heard theories that key people probably had hallucinations of Jesus a few days after he was killed, which was the big thing that helped launch him from yet-another-apocalyptic-preacher to (eventually) God himself. I don’t know how well these are accepted, though.

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    • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This stems from the fact that, so far, the earliest written fragments we have from what is now the New Testament are some of the writings of Paul.

      Paul was not one of the Apostles, and it seems possible that, after persecuting earlier, existing Christians, he could have basically had a stress induced psychotic break and hallucinated the vision of Jesus that he had, then converted.

      Thing is though, Christians would have to … you know exist and already be a real thing first, for that to make sense.

      It does explain why Paul does not mention some very key elements of the narrative of the Gospels: He just had not actually read about or heard of those parts yet.

      This creates some theological problems down the line, and some of those problems were ‘remedied’ by what a good deal of scholars and historians believe to be forgeries… chapters of the Bible that modern Christians attribute to Paul, but do not seem to actually have been written by Paul.

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      • Liz@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The explanation I heard was that it was likely Mary and Peter hallucinated Jesus only a few days after he died. That’s a very common timeframe for when people hallucinate seeing dead loved ones, and the early descriptions in Bible match the flavor of dead loved-one hallucinations people typically have, with the figure assuring the person everything will be all right and whatnot. Other descriptions (like Jesus appearing to all twelve disciples or crowds of people) seem to have been written later more as persuasive arguments, with doubting Tomas acting as the stand-in for the skeptical listener. This is all from “How Jesus Became God” and I have no idea how mainstream or fringe the author’s views are.

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      • GojuRyu@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I think it is more likely that they refer to the minimum witnesses argument put firth by a youtuber Paulogia. He has done a lot to popularize it as a response to the criticism that sceptics have no singular explanation for the proposed evidence of Jesus provided by the spread of christianity and the accounts of early cristians.

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• frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s just no evidence

  I have a pet peeve about this phrase. A) yes there is. B) that’s not the standard, e.g. it would be incorrect to say there’s no evidence aliens abduct and probe people: there are eyewitness accounts

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  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A) yes there is.

    I don’t believe that, and since it’s impossible to show evidence something doesn’t exist, the people claiming evidence Jesus existed is gonna have to do some linking…

    that’s not the standard

    You mean evidence?

    Evidence isn’t the standard for things existing?

    What exactly is the standard in your mind for whether a historical figure existed?

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    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Evidence isn’t the standard for things existing?

      What exactly is the standard in your mind for whether a historical figure existed?

      Hard evidence has never been the standard for proof that a historical figure existed. Corroborating records are. It’s great if you can find some hard evidence, but if that was the standard then most people in history wouldn’t have any historical proof of their existence. And even when there is a corpse, we still rely on burial records to be certain that the corpse is who we think it is.

      Like a third of the bible as well as several contemporary documents all point to the existence of a guy named something like Joshua (which we now translate as Jesus) who traveled around Palestine preaching and was crucified in around 33AD. There are plenty of historical figures who we mostly agree existed despite having approximately the same amount of proof as for Jesus.

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      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Corroborating records are

        And there’s not enough to prove that Jesus Christ existed…

        There’s a Jesus that got crucified, but no mention about him being able to perform miracles

        Like a third of the bible

        I don’t think any of it was written till decades after he supposedly died tho…

        Like, there’s lots of information about Bilbo Baggins in Lotr, that doesn’t mean it was written in the third age of Middle Earth homie.

        There are plenty of historical figures who we mostly agree existed despite having approximately the same amount of proof as for Jesus.

        Name one and I’ll disporve it.

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      • Jericho_One@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        several contemporary documents all point to the existence of a guy named something like Joshua

        IIRC, there’s really only a single mention of a possible link to someone of this name that was crucified at the supposed time, and that single mention happened at least 50 (maybe 100?) years later, and there’s evidence that this passage was added even later.

        So I didn’t think it’s true that there are “several contemporary documents” like you claimed…

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    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Quality of the evidence matters. I’m personally not a historical expert on the topic and in such situations, I’m inclined to believe whatever the people who are experts say - and as far as I gather, most experts are in the “Jesus was a real historical person”-camp.

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    • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Evidence isn’t the standard for things existing?

      Of course not. There are millions of examples of false claims for which there is more than zero evidence. e.g. I can claim I know which stocks will rise tomorrow, and point to various data of times I’ve been right. You can’t correctly say “There is zero evidence Frightful Hobgoblin is prescient about stock movements”.

      There often exists evidence of two mutually incompatible propositions. This is basics.

      If you want to research the historicity of Jesus it’s easily done. If you want to argue on the internet… you know what they say about that.

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      • Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I will say that while evidence existing isn’t definitive proof, the total lack of evidence would be convincing. That said, evidence does exist in this case, so

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• frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I agree with you that Jesus wasn’t God, who doesn’t exist, and that there were no miracles, which are impossible. However, this is not the same thing as saying that there’s no evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Jewish apocalyptic preacher.

  The earliest documents about Jesus, such as the Pauline Epistles, were written by people who knew people who knew him. In a mostly illiterate society 2,000 years ago, this is about as good as evidence gets. It’s also the exact same kind of evidence as a journalist or researcher writing an account based on interviews with people. This was how, e.g, Herodotus wrote his histories. When Herodotus says ‘A guy rode a dolphin once’ we dismiss that. But we don’t say ‘The people in the Histories didn’t exist’. We do much the same with Jesus and the miracles.

  If the Apostles had wanted, for some reason, to invent a guy, that would have been risky. Other people would have just said, ‘That guy didn’t exist’. If they had anyway decided to invent a guy, they’d have invented someone who actually fulfilled the Jewish propehcies of the Messiah, instead of inventing Jesus, who obviously didn’t. This suggests they didn’t invent him, which strengthens the plausibility of the evidence we do have.

  A third way of looking at this is to ask if there are any comparable figures, religious founders from the historic era, who we now think were wholly made up in the way you’re suggesting. But there aren’t. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster - they all certainly existed. Indeed, I can’t think of any figures form the time period who were actually imaginary.

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  • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Personally, I think it’s most likely that he’s composed of many people. It’s a bunch of stories which all got attributed as one person, which isn’t uncommon. Personally, though I’m far from an expert, I think there wasn’t a singular Jesus figure who actually existed, but rather a story of a figure named Jesus that rose from stories about other events.

    Like you said, it’s almost certain that something was happening around that time. In fact, there are many more Messiahs who were mostly forgotten. I just think it’s most likely that people told stories and those stories all merged together into another larger story, which then became the story of Jesus.

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    • frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s certainly possible that sayings of other people were later attributed to him, but to really make this case you’d need to have quotations that were attributed to multiple sources, including him, if you see what I mean. Absent that, it could be true, but there’s no particular reason to believe it.

      There are enough specific biographical details about Jesus of Nazareth to make it likely that there’s a specific, real central figure. For example, the fact that he was from Nazareth was a problem for his early followers (it didn’t match the Messianic prophecies), which is why they invented the odd story of the census, so that they could claim he’d been born in Bethlehem. That seems unlikely to have happened if there hadn’t been a real, central historical figure.

      Also, none of the early non-Christian sources claim he wasn’t real, which they surely would have done if there was any doubt on the matter.

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• Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  … The four Gospels?

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  • uienia@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Written up to a couuple of centuries after his supposed existence.

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The Gospel of John, the latest Gospel, was written between 90-100AD

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  • robocall@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They are still comprehensive documents about Jesus written in His lifetime

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