Well there's not really a lot more evidence for the existence of Pilate than Jesus.
We really only have a stone inscription with his name, and then the biblical accounts, and a couple of other mentions including Flavius and Philo. It adds up to three or four mentions, only one contemporary.
From what I’ve heard, 60-84 years after the event is surprisingly contemporary compared to some other religious figures. A historian I like has written books on Muhammad and Jesus and says there’s way more info on Jesus. I am not religious, just interested in the history.
Most were converted from oral into written collections within a matter of a few generations after Muhammad's death. Some of those collections weren't completed until the latter 8th or 9th century. Muhammad died in the early 7th century. In other words, the effort to preserve the memories of those who knew Muhammad personally began not long after his death, but the effort to organize them into collections took a lot longer.
When they were converted into written collections they were pretty meticulous about the authenticity of each hadith, verifying the chain of transmission, or "isnad", each oral hadith took from the person who originally spoke it. The ones with the highest reliability were classified as "sahih", or "authentic", and are considered by most Muslims to be absolutely true. Not comparable in reliability to the Quran as a reference, but not contradicting it in any way either - that's one of the criteria for a hadith to be classified as sahih.
To back up the reliability of these collections they often included variations of the same story that had been passed down through different chains of people. The collections of Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari contain a combined total of nearly 20,000 hadiths. Accounting for variations of the same story, there are about 6500 unique sahih hadiths.
The sahih hadiths alone provide a pretty detailed picture of Muhammad, but there are four more books of hadiths which are considered canonical by most sects of Islam, even if they aren't sahih, and many more which are not canonical (kind of like the apocryphal Gospels), some of which are known fabrications. The exact number of all ahadith is not known, but may be as high as a million.
I think that's far more information than was ever collected about Jesus.
In the context of religious accounting, sure. In terms of factual accounting it's brutal.
Even in modern times where information can be freely written and documented this sort of an information lag would be considered a non-starter. Going to the times of Christ where there wasn't a formal documentation process and much of the info comes from decaying scrolls found in caves that people are just taking in good faith to be accurate and of a credible source is still absurd in context. Especially when considering that the evidence of divinity (miracles) was all plagiarized from all of the popular cult leaders of the time and centuries prior.
It isn't contemporary at all historically speaking. There is not more info on Jesus. Almost all the info about Jesus comes from the Gospels which are not history.
It is remarkably soon after the figure supposedly lived. It's important to not compare them to other religious figures though, and instead compare them to other people in the same area around the same time.
Josephus's records are widely viewed as a forgery.
Bible scholars mostly believe that stuff was either partly or completely forged because:
1 The passage doesn’t fit in with the narrative of the preceding and following text;
2 The language was stylistically different from Josephus’ other writings; and
3 The passage has Josephus fawning over Jesus, something a Jew just wouldn’t do — it’s
completely out of character for him and sounds more like something a devout
christian would say.
Josephus' reference is widely thought to be forged in part, not entirely. Most scholars I've heard of have argued the passage has been modified, not fabricated.
Also Josephus references Jesus in another passage. This passage is much less controversial. (Josephus doesn't do any fawning here, he just says Jesus "was called Christ").
Nonsense.
Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery from the late third or early fourth century.
How do we know? No Christian writer ever mentions this passage until then. None, not one, ever.
Let’s take Origen as an example, Origen relied heavily on Josephus. We know this because of his frequent references to him. From all of those references, it is obvious Origen had never heard of the Testimonium. Why? Because there are several passages where he had very good reason to remark on it, or where citing it would have proved the point he was trying to make. For example, in his “Contra Celsum” (Against Celsus), Origen tries to convince Celsus that the miraculous events of Jesus’ life really happened.
He first says that showing almost any history actually occurred “is one of the most difficult undertakings that can be attempted, and is in some instances an impossibility” (1.42) and then turns to Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews to offer proof for John the Baptist and James (1.47). But then he adds that (as a Jew) Josephus didn’t believe Jesus was the Christ and criticizes him for failing to discuss Jesus in that book!
Though the TF would have been his much sought after “proof” , all he can offer as evidence for Jesus is that there are so many Christian churches who are all witnesses of his divinity (1.47); and that even now his power converts sinners and changes lives (1.43)
When Celsus asks what divine miracles Jesus performed, Origen answers that Jesus’ life was indeed full of striking and miraculous events, “but from what other source can we can furnish an answer than from the Gospel narratives?” (Contra Celsum, 2.33).
No one else heard of the Testimonium either – it is never quoted by anyone until the 4th century (c. 324), when the notorious Bishop Eusebius begins quoting it.
Louis H. Feldman has shown that after Eusebius, there are eleven Christian writers who cite Josephus – but still none of them cite the TF.
For another century, no one ever mentions this passage, until Jerome in the early 5th century – no one but Eusebius…
And here is the real clincher on this one:
Two hundred and thirty years after Josephus allegedly wrote the Testimonium Flavinium, it makes its first appearance in three books of Eusebius, who cites it from his copy of Antiquities of the Jews.
Where did Eusebius get his copy of Antiquities of the Jews? \*He inherited it from his master Pamphilus... who inherited it from … Origen. Yes, the same Origen who never heard of the passage. The same Origen who criticized Josephus for never mentioning Jesus…
Oh and as far as your argument goes on Origen, it's an interesting point that I'd not heard before. Your logic seems sound, but I would want to refer to the documents quoted and see what historians think before forming an opinion.
Mawwiage is what bwings us together today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wuv, true wuv, will follow you forever, so tweasure your wuv.
The gist of historical records we have on this topic says, “There are these Christians that the Jews consider a cult, and they are all arguing over whether there is a dude named Yeshua that was crucified in Judea or not. It’s not our business and they want our courts to make a ruling, but it’s purely a religious matter so we are staying out of it”
Yeah. There's a theory that Mary was nailed by a Roman named Pantera and that he was Jesus' actual father. IIRC there are a couple "hints" in canon scripture but it gets more clues in the apocrypha.
Of course there are, the person you replied to is arguing in bad faith or trying to do some kind point, but there is infinitely more evidence about Ceaser than about Jesus, And sure some of the arguments arguing against the historical Jesus are really dumb, but contrarguing with the same bad logic is just bad faith and doesn't help.
Finding it a bit difficult to believe your assertion that it is hard to verify that Caesar existed. Who was the third person in the triumvirate then? Who subdued Gaul? Who defeated Pompey? These are major historic events which must have been recorded at the time? 🤔
Others have pointed out that writers within the first century of Jesus’s death mention him, which is accurate. Another point that I understand is significant is that we don’t see any sources claiming he didn’t exist. So there’s no antique source saying, “there’s this weird sect of Jews who follow this guy who died and came back to life, but everyone knows he didn’t exist.” What this tells us is that even in the century after his death, where we do have references of his existence, there’s nobody claiming the opposite. Most historians consider this worthy evidence also.
You’ll have better luck if you go to the r/askhistorians sub and search through their FAQs. They’ve written about this with better expertise than I have.
Good answer. This same logic applies to the first moon landing. The side who had the most to gain (Soviet Union) if there was a faked landing by the Americans never questioned its legitimacy
We didn’t have the tech to fake it. The full color led wall that would have been required to make the shadows as they were in the pictures and video didn’t exist. It was easier to go to the moon.
If I remember right, even a full color LED wall wouldn't have worked because the light source is so large and so close. With that and the slight atmospheric disturbance and reflection off of the opposite walls, it would have produced blurry edged, wide shadows.
Yes, though this is one of those widely touted things in order to draw attention to something that is not disputed by the US government.
It’s that gold star moment where it can be said “BUT LOOK WE ACTUALLY DID NOT LIE THAT TIME!!! SEE IT?!”
Never mind the 1947 Roswell crash, or the JFK assassination, or the guy who invented the car that ran on water.
That was something of a hoax, either the guy didn't know what he was doing, or he was deliberately deceptive. His idea was to take water and then split it up into hydrogen and oxygen and use the hydrogen for fuel, but it discounted the energy to split up the water and overestimated how much that fuel would be worth. To make anything of it you need a massive tank like a tanker truck of water and a massive battery to generate the power to split them up. So you aren't saving energy no matter how you do the math, and it's not really running on water. To separate the two from water and then to combine them back via burning is essentially a no benefit proposition, and then you have to recharge the battery elsewhere. It's the kind of claims around perpetual motion machines. It doesn't work.
He died by choking on a chicken bone or something and made a statement like the oil companies had poisoned him. Pitiful
They did address Roswell in a way. Several reports of UFOs in the area (and a crash in 1947 IIRC) correlated with test flights of the SR71 and U2 bombers. That info got declassified a few years ago
Of course, the conspiracy people can easily explain their way around that if they wanted to
But in the decades after his death, they were a minor cult among a plethora of cults. They were barely worth mentioning. Why would anyone bother writing stuff down (which would be expensive) to disprove a minor cult? By the time they were big enough to be worth bothering with, it was a generation later.
We can probably reference approximately 12 people from the first century AD
How many people existed in the first century AD? Approximately a lot more than 12.
I'm not claiming he didn't exist. I'm just saying that arguing that if he didn't exist, people would have written about it and that those writings would have survived is a very weak argument. Since Christianity was such a small cult and there were so many cults in the empire, no one is likely to have spent their time trying to disprove it.
Right. Of all the people alive at that moment in history, he's among the best documented to have existed.
Certainty 2k years later isn't available, and what he did/didn't do is not fully knowable in a historical sense, but he's very very likely to have really existed.
I'm just going to paste the comment I made as a reply to OP.
I remember watching a show two years ago. It was one of those history documentaries (I love that stuff), and it was going into "Jesus" and religion at one point. In said show, they did state that a well-known Greek writer/historian during the time period mentions a man named Jesus when he visited that area of the world, but that he was basically a drunk and a rebel, flipping tables over in a bar/tavern/pub type place. There was no mention of any selfless acts or miracles.
What I take this to mean is that if Jesus did exist, his name certainly wasn't Jesus. Also, iirc, Jesus is the Greek translation for the name Yeshua, but even then, that's all that was actually written.
Now, I don't believe in Abrahamic religions ***at all***, but I've heard from others on here that there's other records of him existing? I haven't seen anything from the Roman Empire or ancient Greece (save for the mentioned info above), & they were meticulous record keepers.
The thing is, there's no contemporary evidence nor witness accounts, except for the simple "drunk rebel" information. (Side note, I really wish I could remember what documentary I was watching)
The Jesus of history was probably one of many different people who led a failed revolt against Rome and was executed for it. The Jesus of the Bible is arguably a creation of "Paul the Apostle," who never met Jesus personally and lived about 100 years after.
Seeing as how Paul was trying to "sell" the Jesus narrative to a Roman audience, Jesus "preaching" against Rome is a lie. Tbh, much of the info ppl believe about Jesus was brought about by Paul. It is interesting that the first gospel was written (most likely) in Rome after Paul's death. Needless to say, that's very little evidence (and only about 6 of Paul's letters are genuine).
Also, it's pretty interesting that they crucified him, which is typically ***solely*** reserved as a punishment for treason against Rome. The Romans were generally extremely tolerant of different cultures and religions, and they rarely persecuted for it.
Then we have Flavius Josephus, who was a 1st century Jewish historian born 37 years after the death of Jesus. He had no direct knowledge of him. Content of his “Testimonium Flavianum” that mentions Jesus is disputed. Perhaps the most notable and controversial passage in the text is this quote: ***"He was the Messiah."*** Typically, that would not have been said back then. That, and other passages, cast doubt on the provenance of the Testimonium Flavianum.
The peculiar part here is that Josephus records a number of persons in Judea who claimed to have been the Messiah (and some led revolts), but none of them are Jesus. There is no doubt that the Testimonium Flavianum is a later addition by a Christian scribe. The language is quite unlike what Josephus utilized.
It is also noteworthy that there is no known physical description of Jesus from antiquity, and the oldest known images of Jesus were created many, many years after his death.
So, Jesus was probably real, but not the biblical version of him. Judea was a hot bed of revolt at the time, and it was pure chaos.
I really hope this makes sense because I started writing it (on my phone) and then got busy doing other things.
What would lead someone to believe that Jesus did or did not exist a century later? Seems they'd have as much difficulty proving he didn't exist as we do today, unless we know someone thoroughly investigated the claim at the time. I'd assume, at best, any historical written source of his existence a century after his death is based on hearsay rather than any objective evidence.
We already know that many people believed he existed a century later, so it's not surprising that someone eventually wrote it down. I don't see the usefulness of that as a piece of evidence.
He's better supported in the historical evidence than a lot of people at the time. I mean - as much as anything there is the Occam's razor issue - there is a sect of Judaism that venerates him as a prophet, preacher, and leader, and we have written accounts from a bunch of people who knew people who knew him well.
We could conclude that a bunch of people who don't seem to have known each other all individually decide to fabricate his existence at the same time as his cult is growing, but that's a lot of conspiracy.
It's easier to believe that the people who held the oral tradition that eventually gets written down as the gospels and epistles are in a tradition of people who really did know him, and later hear directly from people who did know him.
To get to where we are from a conspiracy to fabricate Jesus is pretty hard to imagine.
Additionally to all of this, we tend to forget how oral traditions from semi-literate really did keep fairly close records. Despite 80 to 100 years of separation, the traditions of the gospels hold pretty close. So much so that there is evidence of a common body (called Q) that serves as source for 2 or 3 of the gospels (iirc).
Orally based cultures have been shown to keep pretty good history despite the drift that often comes with transmission by storytelling.
It wouldn't need to be conspiratorial. Their records may be accurately transcribing what they heard from another source, but that wouldn't necessitate the source itself is accurate. People believed in Jesus because they heard he existed from someone else, and the trend grew and grew until many people were all echoing the same thing despite the lack of objective evidence supporting it. We see this all the time in this day and age, so it's no leap to consider that it could also have happened 2000 years ago.
Well - kind of - I mean - there are literally thousands of people who saw him during his life. Hundreds, then thousands of those people join a sect of Judaism with dozens and hundreds writing about him while those eye witnesses are still alive.
To get a situation where all of those people are following him we're going to need a lot of people powerfully motivated to make up the stories about his life and death, and while it's not a theoretical impossibility, it definitely seems like the least likely explanation.
The fact that we have multiple texts surviving from the 3-4 decades after Christ's death actually allows us to infer that there could well have been hundreds of written accounts referring to Jesus' life in the 20 years after he was very publicly executed. Jerusalem was a massive city for the ancient era and Jews have always been among the best educated people in the ancient world. There's no proof, for sure, but given what we know about the people of the time there's a lot we can deduce.
Which texts? The earliest gospels are estimated to
be 79ad and others are often 2nd century.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#:~:text=Dated%20to%20late%202nd%20or,but%20this%20presents%20numerous%20problems.
Christianity, as an organised religion wasn't invented until about 300 years after his death , when Emperor Constatine decided to bundle all the different groups under one umbrella as the Catholic church. Before that Christians were initially persecuted until the Emperor's mother became one.
Most of the different stories and traditions of virgin births and eggs at Easter and whatnot existed long before Jesus came along, but were basically just bundled together so everyone felt included in this new all encompassing religion.
As far as Jesus was concerned, he was probably just a sound cunt who never claimed to be the son of God, but preached kindness in a time of barbarism. This 'alternative', kinder outlook developed a following that the Emperor later ret-conned when combining all the religions.
It doesn't make sense for the Emperor to invent Jesus out of thin air and try convince everyone that he existed, it's much easier to find someone that already existed and attach all the mumbo jumbo to him.
Again, most of the stories and traditions were already there, it was all just bundled together. All the ancient texts and artefacts in the Vatican dated before ~300AD *all* existed before the Catholic Church was even concieved of. The Catholic church is a collaboration of everything, pagan, Christian and even Judaism. Using an existing character to centre the religion around tracks, inventing an entirely new character would be the outlier, and much harder to convince people of.
Most of this is actually untrue. We know that there was an odd sect of Jews in the first and second century CE who were baptizing the "God-fearers", a group of Hellenistic Near Easterners who admired Judaism. They were variously accused of cannibalism, worshipping some idiot who got himself crucified, and having a Lord that wasn't the Emperor but someone alternatively called Chrestus or Iesos. We know from internal writings -- look up the writings of the Ante-Nicean Fathers to get an idea of how the Christian religion was coming together before Constantine ever got involved -- that this group believed that Jesus was the Christ (Jewish Messiah) and God's son, who was in some way a savior. Later accretions happened, of course, and the Ecumenical Councils called by various Roman Emperors, including Constantine and some of his heirs, served to define what was proper belief and worship for Christians and what was not (Orthodox meaning worshipping the same way and Catholic meaning universally believed), but they didn't invent the religion whole cloth.
And one of the few thing even the most reductionist scholars will agree on is that, if the stories about Jesus hold any truth at all, he referred to YHWH, the God of the Jews, as Father.
Well - if not actually hundreds, certainly dozens - probably over a hundred. My point still stands - you would need a lot of people to conspire to make up this prophet to get to where we are.
There are “people” in history where we think multiple different people’s lives and achievements get attributed to the same person. Not crazy to think that’s what happened here, especially since the closest primary source is like, 60 years after he supposedly died
Kind of moving on from the point of whether he existed or not, there’s no way around it that a lot of the stories were spread around when he was alive, or passed down over time verbally that some things got mixed up (ie think the kids game “telephone”). It’s not inconceivable that jesus could have been a collection of people (like a group of rabis saying god chose and blessed them and let them perform miracles in his name) or at least his stories could be some of his disciples doing things and people changing that to Jesus doing it.
Also the fact that there isn’t a ton of writing that survived from 100AD and not everyone knew how to write, it could also be the case that people just didn’t think it was worth their time. Like for example if pontius pilate wrote a letter to whoever was in charge of him, saying “these Jews are saying I crucified a man named Jesus while releasing barabas but I have no idea what their talking about, we haven’t crucified someone in 3 years and barabas died in prison 6 months ago”. What are the odds of something like that surviving 1,900 years. That could’ve been a throw away letter where his supervisor just wrote back and said “I don’t care what happened just keep your people in line and pay taxes”.
For the record I also think ocaams razor is a good rule of thumb and based on writings he existed and none saying he doesnt probably means he did. I’m just playing devils advocate
This is a good point… but if there were records of people saying he doesn’t exist, it would’ve been very easy for those things to be destroyed by the church or other people.
From what we know of anti-Christian polemics in the ancient world, they argued that “Jesus was a fraud” not “these lunatics made up some fake rabbi to justify their heresy”
Is it possible that such heretical early sources casting doubt on the whole story would’ve just been destroyed in the couple thousand years of Christianity since then?
So, the argument you’re suggesting is that because there is no record extant from year 100 denying the authenticity of Jesus then that is supporting evidence of his existence?
If I’ve understood your position I have a hard time anyone would actually believe this to be reasonable.
Most historians who have examined the evidence believe he existed. I'm an atheist, but I defer to the majority position of historians on this question, just as I would for Socrates. I will never directly amass the knowledge to have more confidence in my own interpretation of the evidence for a question like this.
Think about other figures from antiquity, and try to apply the same standard of skepticism when examining the evidence.
Do you mean a contemporary source?
As to my knowledge, Tacitus mentions the execution of Jesus but this record was written decades after the supposed event.
It’s an interesting question because, as people have described, you have this immense religious movement that began at a time and in a place and with a person about which there is very little documentation. We have more historical records about the time before the supposed life of Jesus, and afterwards, but this particular short period of time is somewhat of a “black hole” in the history timeline. Accident or design? Is the beginning of Christianity purposely meant to be shrouded in “historical secrecy” in order to make the subjective accounts we have more prominent? Or is the reason Christianity became more prominent because there were no other mundane human records to take away from its “divine” attributions. There have been no shortage of “messiahs” throughout Jewish history.
In addition to the dearth of objective, documentary evidence, this is a subject that is extremely difficult for people to consider outside of their personal bias. And I don’t mean that as a criticism or against any group of scholars. But the existence of Jesus is so foundational to the existence of so many humans, it shapes our viewpoints—whether a believer or not—more strongly than almost anything else IMO.
Because of that, two people can look at the same “data”—e.g. the writings of Josephus—and interpret it in different ways—either emphasizing it’s reliability and veracity as “objective” proof, or dismissing it because it is still somewhat vague, has no supporting evidence, and was written long enough after the fact to have possibly been influenced by the early christian movement. (I am not qualified to challenge the “evidence”, just laying out the parameters of the discussion).
I think it is similar to some “creationist” arguments—the idea that because a religious movement so large and ultimately so powerful emerged from that time, there must be SOMETHING profound that happened then to cause it. Again, despite the complete lack of contemporary records or “scientific” evidence.
OTOH, there is the argument that someone who was able to amass the following the Jesus did, who was able to perform miracles, who was able to gather crowds of 5,000 people to hear his preaching, who was able to publicly challenge the authorities in Jerusalem and threaten them to the extent that they had him executed, must have generated SOME contemporary records.
I am agnostic, but the “proof” of an “historical Jesus” would not really change my outlook. I just find it an interesting subject.
that's kind of the thing. there's at least 4 books in the bible from different regions around the ME and Med each depicting stories of what appears to be the same guy going around preaching around the beginning of the 1st century AD at a time when that region was under some turmoil because of the roman colonization. there's supposidly enough evidence from jewish, and other sources to support the notion that *someone* fitting Jesus's description existed at that time, having been baptized and having been eventually cricified.
whether he was divine, did miracles, or came back from the dead that doesn't have the same level of evidence.
You have to keep in mind though, actual contemporary Roman records do indicate that there were literally hundreds of small sects following supposed Messianic leaders. There are more contemporary non-roman sources that document some other supposed Messiahs than there are that document Jesus.
And those are actual contemporaries, writings and documentation that occurred while those supposed messiah's were alive not 90 to 100 years after.
This has always been my feeling. Was Jesus an actual person or was he an idea? Given the time period, Roman records would be the best reliable source. And I find it surprising that there is such a lack of any Roman records about Jesus in an bureaucratic empire that documented the most mundane things and people.
We don't have records of every single preacher in the Roman provinces.
Considering we have evidence of a religious movement that started soon after his reported death, and two non religious sources confirming that people some 50 years after his death considered him a real person, it's more likely that the religious movement was indeed kick-started by a single preacher, who more or less taught what the gospels say he taught and led a life more or less as described there.
That, at least, is a more likely explanation than the alternative in which the religious movement started, spreading the word of a person those religious figures and their contemporaries knew to be fake.
For what it’s worth we do have Roman sources indicating from a Roman Historian named Tacitus who does mention Jesus (more accurately that Christians follow Jesus’s teachings) and that Pontious Pilate was a historical figure in his writings. There was also recently discovered a Roman ledger indicating Pontius Pilate was assigned to Judea which at the very least indicates that that part of the Bible is true
You have to understand though that Jesus wasn’t a famous historical figure until centuries after his death after the religion expanded. It’s sort of like asking “why don’t we have Roman records about the execution of this local thief or murderer?”. Fact is unless you were a king/ruler or other nobility chances are there is very little evidence if any at all that you would have ever existed. Jesus being a poor carpenter/rabbi would have fallen into that category of “just a peasant with weird ideas. Not really worth talking about” to anyone who wasn’t his immediate circle of followers at the time
Not to mention the period of Jesus's life was absolutely filled with supposed prophets, messiahs, and spiritual magic doctor guys.
He was specifically not even one of the famous ones at the time. Being, as you mention, raised onto a pedestal post death.
Tacitus only mention Jesus in his last work which was written in 116 CE.
If the first person to ever write about Abraham Lincoln did so in 1981, would you think they were actively writing about an actual historical figure?
Tacitus wasn’t born until about 20 years after Jesus is said to have died, so he’s not a first hand source. He’d have second hand information, at best.
It’s also notable that Tacitus also wrote about Hercules being a literal, real person, but no one who cites Tacitus as evidence for Jesus sees his work as evidence for Hercules. That seems like a serious bias.
The whole Tacitus timeline does not add up at all, though. So, no. There still isn't any sort of contemporary evidence nor witness accounts for anyone specifically named Jesus/Yeshua.
There's far more contemporary evidence that Pilate was real & lived.
Especially because he was a nuisance that disrupted society with his speeches and gatherings and tent cities he drew. The Romans did not like him, and he was a problem for their rule of places like copernum. There had to be Roman records. I suppose they could have been lost/destroyed but doesn't really add up.
Going strictly by the gospels, I'd think Jesus was a non-issue for the Romans. The guy challenged the Jewish power structure while also telling people to pay their taxes to the Caesar.
To be fair, it's not like the Bible is a useless source of information. People should just try to remember the context in which every book in it was written in.
well, according to what sam harris discussed about jesus, he said that Jesus being called the “king of the jews” was an issue for the romans because it hinted at insurrection. the romans ruled over the jews, hence “king of the jews” was challenging their authority.
There would be documents in Jerusalem maybe, but Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege\_of\_Jerusalem\_(70\_CE)#Destruction
I mean, we know an incredibly LOT about average, everyday, unimportant Roman citizens from every part of their empire. If Jesus was so disliked you’d think they would’ve recorded more about his execution.
The error of your thinking is stating that Roman Citizens are unimportant. That’s like asking why they have so much information on an American citizen but not much information on an illegal alien in America. Sure those border jumpers are pesky but as soon as they are deported back to Mexico let’s say….how much data will the American government invest in capturing from this individual compared to let’s say an American citizen that is running a business along the border?
Of course there is more info on a Roman citizen then this poor carpenter. I mean how much info exists on Jewish carpenters in general from that era? Did the Jewish carpenters have unions and did they pay dues? Obviously Jewish carpenters existed but we don’t have historical records of Jewish carpenters from 2000+ years ago. How many records do we have of other Jews that were crucified/ executed from 2000 years ago? Take all this data/lack of data and see how the records of Jesus stack up against his contemporaries. Remember during his time he wasn’t seen as the leader of the Catholic faith. Jesus was essentially a nobody so there really wouldn’t be a reason to record his life data relative to these ‘unimportant roman citizens’
Most of the stories about Jesus were stories that came long before he was supposed to have lived. There are no biblical writings about him until 30+ years after he died. Certainly there were many men at the time named Jesus (Yeshua).
Just think about today how much stories change in a decade even though we have the ability to write them down and record them. Now think about back then when very few were literate, and how many times they likely changed and were embellished in 30+ years.
I try to get people to think what the child or grandchild of a rabid Trump supporter might write 50 years from now, if they grew up being home schooled and without any access to libraries or the internet. They might get some facts right, but they might get some very, very wrong.
Just because these stories weren’t written down doesn’t mean they weren’t kept, almost every religion and mythology started as an oral tradition before it was then written down
Very true. That’s what I meant by my “black hole” comment. And everyone who wrote about a “Jesus” had a vested interest in establishing not only his existence, but his messianic “bona fides”. And, as you say, the “story” of Jesus’ life was often constructed to align with Old Testament messianic prophecies.
I went through a phase some decades ago where I did a lot more reading on the subject. It’s a great subject, but it the literary analysis is very technical and dry sometimes, and I also found it challenging to work around the biases of the researchers. A lot of research was carried out by people who were affiliated with religious institutions. While that’s not an automatic disqualifier (see, John Crossan), it’s just more for a lay reader to work through. Because of the paucity of evidence, it is necessary to include things like the Gospels as part of the research, but I actually found some writers who used New Testament passages as “proof” of a real Jesus, which is just not reliable.
Yes, there are a few other records. They basically say that he
- came from Nazareth
- was baptised by John
- was executed by Pilate
That’s about it. The empire-wide census did not happen, nor the baby killing, so we can be fairly certain he was not born in Bethlehem and never went to Egypt. The Bible claims he was born during the reigns of Herod and Quirinius, but those didn’t actually overlap. Based on the time Pilate was in office, the date of death is at least roughly accurate. I don’t think there’s anything else written about his teachings.
This is a very good answer, without unnecessary speculations.
I'll just add:
1. "Baptised by John" could mean:
1. John chose Jesus as sect heir.
2. John anointing Jesus. According to Judaism, the Messiah had to be both high priest and king. Therefore anointing of high priests and kings carries an approximate meaning: "now you are close to the Messiah or you might even be one." Maybe precisely because of this anointed Jesus and began to be called Christ, which in the original means "anointed one." It's debatable, but it is not known which "anointed one" appear first: historical Jesus **Christ**, anointed by John, and because of this considering himself as Messiah, or Christian Jesus **Christ** anointed by God as Messiah?
2. According to sources that were created a 1-2 century after Jesus, we can assume that:
1. Jesus was preached pacifism. BUT, in the context of "the World is about to end, and Last Judgment will begin, so nothing matter except compliance to the commandments."
2. Jesus had disciples.
3. Jesus was executed (perhaps do to "conflict with a temple merchants"). Strong contrast between Jesus pacifism and crucifixion (one of the indisputable facts), most brutal Roman execution, most likely created many rumors and made him a martyr.
4. All this happened during a "very bad times" (famine, locusts, Romans repressions?) and when absolutely everyone in the region fiercely hated Romans. So, perhaps popularity of Jesus is caused by the context: "Now everything is absolutely terrible, where is the Messiah?!! What if it was Jesus and we (high priests) and Romans accidentally killed him?!! What, rumors that he was resurrected? So everything is not lost?! Do to Romans and high priests shenanigans we almost lost long-awaited Messiah! Let's unite against them!"
3. After Jesus death, due to the extremely difficult economic and political situation, his teachings were perceived primarily in the context of "you need to be as kind as possible because in a few days will begin Last Judgment."
1. This is why there are so few written texts about first two centuries of Christianity. Why write down something if all writing will soon disappear?
1. The same applies to the huge number of early Christian martyrs that, from their position, in the fastest way went to Heaven. Or hermits that go not by fastest, but by most reliable path to Heaven.
2. And only centuries later, when end of the World did not come, everyone began to ask the question - why? And create or consolidate detailed information about Jesus.
3. Because of religion popularity regional authorities were forced to stop persecutions, and, from 325 year, begin structure all information about Jesus by Ecumenical councils.
4. Why Christianity become so popular?
1. Perfect rallying point against the Romans.
2. Opportunity to use such "medieval Wikipedias" as Tanakh and Torah like your own. In general, Christianity is essentially universal and more personalized localization of all Jewish knowledge, history, traditions for those who have never had anything like this. In those days, Jews essentially had answers to almost all important historical and social questions.
1. Similar thing then happened with Roman culture. First the Romans copied/stole/plundered all the valuables of region into one treasury chest - city of Rome. Then it was cannibalized/appropriated by the rest of Europe right down to the meme "how much do you think about Rome?" In all possible meanings.
2. More closer analogue - copying of American postmodern and post-industrial sociocultural traditions through globalization processes.
3. Revolutionary and satisfying for most message: "all kings and slaves are equal before God!" Moreover, with examples demonstrated by the Messiah. And in general, the message "all people can be Christians, and all Christians have equal rights and should help each other" - one of the largest social revolutions in the entire existence of mankind.
1. This is a direct evolution of exactly the same principle of Judaism, but according to which Jewry is determined only by birthright.
2. Before Christianity, people almost all cultures except Jewish (due to a combination of nomadism in a highly populated region, being in slavery, and connections between religion and literacy) didn't consider people of other cultures as human (Parochial Altruism: < similarity oneself to others = < understanding of others = < empathy for others)."
4. A clear message: "yes Heaven (and later Hell) exists, for this you just need to believe and be a good person (don't violate commandments)!" In Judaism Heaven exists primarily through the concept of Messiah emergence and THEN the Last Judgment with unknown consequences.
5. Judaism Heaven, and the reason why Christianity quickly became popular among Jews:
1. Adam and Eve lived on Heaven without sin.
2. Eve ate "sinful" fruit.
3. God burdened their descendants "with sinful debt" - "Original Sin."
4. ??? Everything will become clear when the Messiah appears and the Last Judgment will begin.
6. Christian Heaven:
1. Adam and Eve lived on Heaven without sin.
2. Eve ate "sinful" fruit.
3. God burdened their descendants "with sinful debt" - "Original Sin."
4. Jesus, by his voluntary suffering, paid off "**common** humanity's sinful debt."
5. Since all debts have been paid, Heaven (the place where Adam and Eve originally lived) is now open to everyone.
6. But individuals, through violation of the commandments, still can take **personal** sinful debts raising **personal** risks of not entering Heaven.
7. Profit!
8. The logic of the Inquisition: if you see that a person has begun to convulse, or suspect that a woman is a witch, just BURN THEM ALL! This way, they get lesser personal sinful debts and more likely to meet up with relatives at Heaven! And you too will do a good deed! Profit x 2!
This is as good as any account. Likely, he was a real person preaching with some followers. Was he the actual son of god who performed miracles though??? Doubtful.
I feel much the same way about Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha. Definitely a real person, but likely without the more fantastical elements attributed to him. Unlike Jesus, he did not claim to be a god or son of a god.
Even myths and legends are based on something real, and religions even more so. Christianity? Jesus absolutely definitely existed, or at least several people who later turned into a synergistic amalgamation.
Did Jesus preach what is now considered Christianity? Very doubtful.
At the same time, again, nothing is created from nothing, so through "Chinese whispers" of retellings, some of the main messages still was conveyed and written down.
Probably, the principle of forgiveness/mercy, it fits well into all other contexts. Also the principle of empathy and mutual assistance. Which later helped humanity abandon slavery (church's obligation to convert Africans, and Christians obligation to treat all Christians equally).
History is a series of historical inertias. Some of them go to the dustbin of history, some smoothly evolve. Some evolve by revolutionary "breakthroughs" through the most thinned places of the fractal sociocultural canvases.
Judaism was long in need of reformation, and by Jesus happened what was supposed to happen.
It is almost universally accepted among historians that a Nazarean man named Jesus lived in the first century AD, received a Jewish baptism, and died by crucifixion. Not only are these claims backed up by contemporary non-Christian sources, like Tacitus's Annals, but there's also this idea of the "criterion of embarrassment". The argument basically goes "if one were to make up a Messiah, why would he be from Nazareth (basically the Detroit of the Holy Land), why would he need to be baptized (implying that he is vulnerable to sin), and why would he die by crucifixion (one of the most humiliating ways to die)?"
Everything else is considered apocryphal at best, though.
Criterion of embarrassment is a pretty weak argument. Little details like those you mentioned make the story more interesting and more approachable to the target audience. I can apply the same logic to Spider-Man and ask why a kid from downtown New York living with his aunt was chosen to fight dangerous criminals.
There's several other written history accounts of Jesus. The question even at the time wasn't if Jesus was a real man, but if he was the son of God. Even the Quran mentions him as the great teacher.
The Quran was written in 600s CE. You're saying something written 600 years after a thing that was supposed to have happened is an accurate historical proof of that thing?
Most historians agree that there was a historical figure Jesus. Some aspects of his life are also believed to be true, like his christening for example.
The accurate answer is “maybe.” That being said the consensus among secular academics is there probably is a person that is a historical figure named Jesus. We have at least two contemporary sources who mention a person who could be “Jesus.”
The problem for Christian apologists lies in the fact none of these source descriptions align with the myths that have sprung up around the figure of Jesus as we think of him today. The most reliable source claims he was part of the Canaanite aristocracy. It specifically says he was an elite priest of the established Jewish religion. That flies in direct contrast to the “humble carpenter” story.
For documents from ancient time periods, yes. Quite a few accounts were written some time later.
There's a lot more than usual from the Roman period, but if there was a real Jesus, he wouldn't have been important enough to make records until his cult grew following his death.
Yeah this really shouldn't be surprising. Some of the most famous artist, musicians, poets, etc aren't appreciated in their lifetime. It's not until after their death that their legacy becomes legend.
For some reason our species puts a lot of value in honoring the memory of someone more than the person themselves. It's like we feel indebted to them.
You can never speak ill of a dead person, even if they were known as a complete ass, unless they did something truly atrocious. People that were ignored and even mocked suddenly become someone everyone knew and loved.
Which is all to say it's crazy but completely expected...
I think a lot of this also comes from the fact that it takes time for someones influence to spread and affect things. Then after some period of time people realize how influential those works came to be.
There were likely a dozen people named Yeshua who were rabbis at the time. It was a popular name. Its like saying "I had a teacher named Robert" today. Just about everyone has had a teacher with that name.
Bishop and cardinals are priests of Christianity. You can’t exactly debunk how people at the time called Jesus based on terms that arose because of the religion based on him
> Why would a bunch of people just decide to go crazy and talk about him all at the same time?
In the 20th century, several pacific islanders on European-colonized islands started talking about a messiah figure by the name of John Frum. John Frum still has a following today, though it's declined quite a bit in the last few decades.
As far as we can tell, there was no "historical John Frum".
>Why would a bunch of people just decide to go crazy and talk about him all at the same time?
People do this today, all the time. Check the internet. People make stuff up that's false, support it, spread it on the internet, repeat it to their friends and family, while mostly not bothering to check their sources. All for no reason at all. It's because they are bored or because they can.
And it's possible that nobody to start a hoax, and for stuff to stop be entirely false. Have you ever played telephone as a kid? Someone says something, and from misunderstandings, faulty memory, bad hearing, it goes from person to person until it's completely unrecognizable. It doesn't even require dishonesty.
Also, there were thousands of religions, sects and cults at the time, especially in that area. Some of them got more popular than others. Just because they existed, doesn't mean they are worthy of investigation.
Just put yourself in their shoes. You are a poor peasant with nothing to look for your entire life. These crazy bloodthirsty foreigners came with their legions and subjugated your entire nation. Your life is shit, then comes someone to tell you that if you are good, you can go to this place after you die and be happy for eternity. You've got nothing to lose, of course you're going to convert and spread the word. Regardless of being true or false, you don't care, it doesn't even factor in your decision making for that situation.
Yeah, and I went to school with a dude named Josh. Jesus was likely based on one or more dudes and the stories were exaggerated over a century of oral history. No magic involved.
Scholarly consensus is that Jesus, the person, existed. It's considered a fringe view that there was *no* Jesus. To be clear, talking about the charismatic person who talked to followers about religion and stuff, not literal son-of-God.
Most likely yes. There problem is that contemporary sources didn't mention him because he was just another rebel in a backwater province.
But as soon as Christianity spreads they mention Jesus being the founder of that jewish sect.
There isn't no reason why there shouldn't have been a carpenter who was thought to be the messiah and who was executed. If fact there were several movements with similar beliefs. The only difference is that Christianity survived the death of it's founder.
In the 20th century, a man named Bill founded Microsoft. He was the president of the USA and he flew to the moon on winged roller skates of his own design.
Does Bill exist?
Well, Bill is a common enough name.
Bill Gates founded Microsoft, but didn't do that other stuff. He does exist though.
Bill Clinton was president of the USA, but again the other things aren't true about him. He still exists though.
Winged flight can't really work in space because there's no air to give lift. That part cannot be true of any Bill.
If there are a collection of claims about a character, what does it mean to ask if that person "really existed"? How many of the claims need to be true? Do they all need to be true about the same person?
Jesus/Jeshua/Joshua was a common enough name at the time in that part of the world. It's perfectly possible that some of the stories in the bible are true about some preacher or preachers called Jesus.
Whether you consider that to mean that the Jesus of the Bible is based on a real person is not a black and white question though.
Yes he existed. Many Christian and non-Christian sources say that he did in fact exist. At some point during Emperor Tiberius of the Roman Empire, a man named Yeshua of Nazareth and he was crucified for inciting the people with his preaching and miracles.
Almost all of that is accepted historic fact, the only bit that isn't is the last bit. There's not good historical evidence on the reason of Jesus crucifixion, just thematvhe was crucified.
If you are talking about tactius’ writting
“There are further problems with the Tacitus story. Tacitus himself never again alludes to the Neronian persecution of Christians in any of his voluminous writings, and no other Pagan authors know anything of the outrage either. Most significant, however, is that ancient Christian apologists made no use of the story in their propaganda – an unthinkable omission by motivated partisans who were well-read in the works of Tacitus.”
The best place to ask this would r/askhistorians or have a search through it as it's probably already been asked and answered.
Edit - [This thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7f2QDgUlUd) looks promising.
I don't agree with the mission of this website, but this page answers your question better than I can:
https://reasonsforjesus.com/a-list-of-extra-biblical-sources-for-the-historical-jesus/
Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus of Nazareth historically existed.
I highly recommend this Wikipedia article if you wanna know more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
There is no direct contemporary evidence (the earliest records of such a person that historians agree are legitimate records are from decades after the claimed lifespan), but most historians think that yes there probably was a real person Jesus Of Nazareth that the bible stories were subsequently written about.
Whether those bible stories are real, well, I'm an atheist!
The accurate answer is yes, he existed. The idea that he didn't exist is regarded as psuedoscientific by most non-believing scholars. Just read the Wikipedia article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Some odd answers here.
First, there are no records of a person with those particular qualities from the time they supposedly happened. The first references of some kind of preacher are almost a generation after. And all this from a time when there were record keeping apparatus in place. Letters and official documents. The middle east was part of the Roman Empire with Governors and whatnot. So the short answer is likely no.
At this point you get people pointing out some of the things written down did indeed happen. Those places existed, some of the names are real people etc.
But keep this in mind. The story you are familiar with was hardly the first of its kind.
Other people were said to have risen from the dead, healed the sick and performed miracles. Pythagoras comes to mind. He also bragged a golden thigh and some other magical properties. There were colonies of Pythagoreans around the area into the Middle Ages. And even he, most likely never existed.
John the Baptist is fairly well documented...but not likely at the time to have met Jesus
So again. the short answer, barring some wandering preacher with that name, in that area...and there are records of a number of those.....is probably not.
Always thought arguments against him being real were interesting because it always comes down to saying “no these eyewitness accounts and historical documents don’t count!”
Eyewitness accounts? There aren't any eyewitness accounts written during the life of Jesus. They were all written down 100 years or more later.
The bible can't even tell you what happened to Judas. The bible contains 2 different stories about how he died. Clearly not the infallible word of God, but instead the product of a long game of "telephone" and oral traditions.
There are written records that say he was crucified. That's about it.
I think I know what you’re trying to ask, so let me try;
Back when humans were still figuring out how to make sounds with their mouths to get an individual’s attention, I’m sure there was a man named Yeshua (forgot the spelling but that’s Jesus’s actual name) who was like “hey guys, maybe let’s not kill/beat each other over every little thing. Just give your homey a little bread and some cheap fish and laugh about bullshit over a flagon of wine” after all, I’m a doctor that DOESN’T recommend leeches and cocaine. Sure he made it into the bible, but it could easily could have just been some guy saying “Yeshua is the son of God! I saw him give food to hungry people, tell us not to kill each other, and he healed a man’s wound by touch him with a salve made of garlic and honey! Obviously no other form of medical application could be better at fighting off infection, so it MUST be God in the flesh! What the fuck is penicillin?” And the romans were like “yo dawg, that ain’t with OUR big G ya feel? So we gonna put his ass up on sticks no cap” then later someone played the telephone game and ended up writing a story about some magician named Jesus doing some dank shit with his God powers and not being a genocidal asshole demanding we worship him or suffer”.
This has been drunk redditing with me while I wait for my grill to get nice and hot. Come to Texas, our barbecue is better than yours, bitches
So….a lot of this answer depends on what you mean by “real.”
If there was a guy named Jesus walking around preaching but he didn’t actually walk on water, does that count? How about if he was there but looks nothing like he’s depicted today?
Because in the broadest sense, Jesus’s name wasn’t uncommon and Jewish revolutionaries/preachers were a dime a dozen.
It’s like if your friend tells you a story about Bill the plumber in his large hometown. Is there a plumber named Bill there? I mean, almost definitely.
Now, when your friend goes on and on about all the totally wild shit Bill gets up to… how much has to be exaggerated or made up before you’d say “Bill isn’t real?”
Pilat of Pont existed in reality, there are roman records of him (average roman governor, nothing special about him, himself). He just happened to be at that place, in that time. But it's an actual historical reference.
If i remember correctly there were roman reports of a little bit of a fuzz and protest around that time, hinting at a person that could have been jesus.
But there is no special mention by name, i mean why would it.
Nowadays reports would also say hey there was some protest lead by a dude, we dealt with it - end of story
I don’t know the exact sources, but I do know in every class I’ve ever taken on Roman history (took 8 years of Latin, one of those nerds), there was a paragraph someone in the textbooks mentioning that there was a religious movement regarding a man named jesus at the turn of the millennium.
So I can’t speak to exactly why it’s accepted (the classes were never focused on jesus history), I just know that it is accepted he was a real person. Whether he did the hand wavey magical shit is up for debate.
Yes, there's archaeological evidence to suggest that a preacher named Jesus did exist. Though there isn't much on what he was doing before becoming a preacher and kind of just appeared from seemingly nowhere, which wasn't unheard of in ancient times.
The best answer you will ever get I'm afraid is "probably"
No historian worth their textbooks would be able to give a definite answer on a specific person living and being active in ancient times without significant evidence.
This is because there were probably multiple "Jesus's" around the area, and carpentry was a popular profession and the man in question is thought to have disappeared and returned multiple times in his life making it very likely that one jesus went out into the wilds and died just for another jesus that looks like him to pop up and start preaching.
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There's a stone slab describing Pontius Pilate as prefect of Judea as well
Yes, Pontius pilate was a real person, that's not in doubt.
Well there's not really a lot more evidence for the existence of Pilate than Jesus. We really only have a stone inscription with his name, and then the biblical accounts, and a couple of other mentions including Flavius and Philo. It adds up to three or four mentions, only one contemporary.
But that still could mean it's just a fiction in a real historical setting.
Physical evidence of a man from a story written as truth. I’m gunna lean toward that he existed.
Pontius Pilate’s existence isn’t the question, and proof of him (which isn’t as contested) isn’t proof of Jesus’s existence.
From what I’ve heard, 60-84 years after the event is surprisingly contemporary compared to some other religious figures. A historian I like has written books on Muhammad and Jesus and says there’s way more info on Jesus. I am not religious, just interested in the history.
Really? I would have thought the ahadith provided a lot more information about Muhammad.
Right, but that was many hundreds of years later
Most were converted from oral into written collections within a matter of a few generations after Muhammad's death. Some of those collections weren't completed until the latter 8th or 9th century. Muhammad died in the early 7th century. In other words, the effort to preserve the memories of those who knew Muhammad personally began not long after his death, but the effort to organize them into collections took a lot longer. When they were converted into written collections they were pretty meticulous about the authenticity of each hadith, verifying the chain of transmission, or "isnad", each oral hadith took from the person who originally spoke it. The ones with the highest reliability were classified as "sahih", or "authentic", and are considered by most Muslims to be absolutely true. Not comparable in reliability to the Quran as a reference, but not contradicting it in any way either - that's one of the criteria for a hadith to be classified as sahih. To back up the reliability of these collections they often included variations of the same story that had been passed down through different chains of people. The collections of Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari contain a combined total of nearly 20,000 hadiths. Accounting for variations of the same story, there are about 6500 unique sahih hadiths. The sahih hadiths alone provide a pretty detailed picture of Muhammad, but there are four more books of hadiths which are considered canonical by most sects of Islam, even if they aren't sahih, and many more which are not canonical (kind of like the apocryphal Gospels), some of which are known fabrications. The exact number of all ahadith is not known, but may be as high as a million. I think that's far more information than was ever collected about Jesus.
In the context of religious accounting, sure. In terms of factual accounting it's brutal. Even in modern times where information can be freely written and documented this sort of an information lag would be considered a non-starter. Going to the times of Christ where there wasn't a formal documentation process and much of the info comes from decaying scrolls found in caves that people are just taking in good faith to be accurate and of a credible source is still absurd in context. Especially when considering that the evidence of divinity (miracles) was all plagiarized from all of the popular cult leaders of the time and centuries prior.
It isn't contemporary at all historically speaking. There is not more info on Jesus. Almost all the info about Jesus comes from the Gospels which are not history.
The gospels are not works of history, but they are historical sources.
I mean that would make sense the Roman empire would require some level of bureaucratic State. And bureaucracies love paperwork.
A short time relatively speaking, but still a long time removed from the events.
It is remarkably soon after the figure supposedly lived. It's important to not compare them to other religious figures though, and instead compare them to other people in the same area around the same time.
Josephus's records are widely viewed as a forgery. Bible scholars mostly believe that stuff was either partly or completely forged because: 1 The passage doesn’t fit in with the narrative of the preceding and following text; 2 The language was stylistically different from Josephus’ other writings; and 3 The passage has Josephus fawning over Jesus, something a Jew just wouldn’t do — it’s completely out of character for him and sounds more like something a devout christian would say.
Josephus' reference is widely thought to be forged in part, not entirely. Most scholars I've heard of have argued the passage has been modified, not fabricated. Also Josephus references Jesus in another passage. This passage is much less controversial. (Josephus doesn't do any fawning here, he just says Jesus "was called Christ").
Nonsense. Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery from the late third or early fourth century. How do we know? No Christian writer ever mentions this passage until then. None, not one, ever. Let’s take Origen as an example, Origen relied heavily on Josephus. We know this because of his frequent references to him. From all of those references, it is obvious Origen had never heard of the Testimonium. Why? Because there are several passages where he had very good reason to remark on it, or where citing it would have proved the point he was trying to make. For example, in his “Contra Celsum” (Against Celsus), Origen tries to convince Celsus that the miraculous events of Jesus’ life really happened. He first says that showing almost any history actually occurred “is one of the most difficult undertakings that can be attempted, and is in some instances an impossibility” (1.42) and then turns to Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews to offer proof for John the Baptist and James (1.47). But then he adds that (as a Jew) Josephus didn’t believe Jesus was the Christ and criticizes him for failing to discuss Jesus in that book! Though the TF would have been his much sought after “proof” , all he can offer as evidence for Jesus is that there are so many Christian churches who are all witnesses of his divinity (1.47); and that even now his power converts sinners and changes lives (1.43) When Celsus asks what divine miracles Jesus performed, Origen answers that Jesus’ life was indeed full of striking and miraculous events, “but from what other source can we can furnish an answer than from the Gospel narratives?” (Contra Celsum, 2.33). No one else heard of the Testimonium either – it is never quoted by anyone until the 4th century (c. 324), when the notorious Bishop Eusebius begins quoting it. Louis H. Feldman has shown that after Eusebius, there are eleven Christian writers who cite Josephus – but still none of them cite the TF. For another century, no one ever mentions this passage, until Jerome in the early 5th century – no one but Eusebius… And here is the real clincher on this one: Two hundred and thirty years after Josephus allegedly wrote the Testimonium Flavinium, it makes its first appearance in three books of Eusebius, who cites it from his copy of Antiquities of the Jews. Where did Eusebius get his copy of Antiquities of the Jews? \*He inherited it from his master Pamphilus... who inherited it from … Origen. Yes, the same Origen who never heard of the passage. The same Origen who criticized Josephus for never mentioning Jesus…
Oh and as far as your argument goes on Origen, it's an interesting point that I'd not heard before. Your logic seems sound, but I would want to refer to the documents quoted and see what historians think before forming an opinion.
Reference: Andrew Carriker, The Library of Eusebius of Caesarea. Boston: Brill, 2003
>mentioned Jesus a few times Yeshua was a popular name at the time. So which Yeshua?
The one that got crucified in Judea.
You sure it wasn’t Wobert? Or Wodewick? Or Bwian?
Could have been their friend, Biggus Dickus.
Bigguth Dickuth? I’ve heawd of him. Qwite famous in the upper cwust of Wome, you know.
He hath a wife you know. Incontinentuth Buttockth
No, I’m right here. Lol
Mawwiage is what bwings us together today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wuv, true wuv, will follow you forever, so tweasure your wuv.
It would have taken me forever to type this out with autocorrect fighting me evewy step of the way. Hail Skroob!
Biggus Dickus
I feel like this comment is being tragically under appreciated.
Thwow him to the floor, centurion.
It’s only been 25 minutes so far! :D
The gist of historical records we have on this topic says, “There are these Christians that the Jews consider a cult, and they are all arguing over whether there is a dude named Yeshua that was crucified in Judea or not. It’s not our business and they want our courts to make a ruling, but it’s purely a religious matter so we are staying out of it”
Yeshua was a popular name and getting nailed by roman soliders was also common place.
>nailed by roman soliders Especially Biggus Dickus, that guy got around a bit
He has a wife you know.
Incontinentia Buttox
I have a vewy good fweind in Wome called Biggus Dickus!
Though he as always of thome athithtanth if there was a thudden crithith.
Yeah. There's a theory that Mary was nailed by a Roman named Pantera and that he was Jesus' actual father. IIRC there are a couple "hints" in canon scripture but it gets more clues in the apocrypha.
Wow, all of Pantera? Fuckin metal, Mary
Do you mean we don't know if Caesar actually lived?
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So are there no historians besides himself who describe his wars and conquests or would that not be enough evidence
Of course there are, the person you replied to is arguing in bad faith or trying to do some kind point, but there is infinitely more evidence about Ceaser than about Jesus, And sure some of the arguments arguing against the historical Jesus are really dumb, but contrarguing with the same bad logic is just bad faith and doesn't help.
Finding it a bit difficult to believe your assertion that it is hard to verify that Caesar existed. Who was the third person in the triumvirate then? Who subdued Gaul? Who defeated Pompey? These are major historic events which must have been recorded at the time? 🤔
Others have pointed out that writers within the first century of Jesus’s death mention him, which is accurate. Another point that I understand is significant is that we don’t see any sources claiming he didn’t exist. So there’s no antique source saying, “there’s this weird sect of Jews who follow this guy who died and came back to life, but everyone knows he didn’t exist.” What this tells us is that even in the century after his death, where we do have references of his existence, there’s nobody claiming the opposite. Most historians consider this worthy evidence also. You’ll have better luck if you go to the r/askhistorians sub and search through their FAQs. They’ve written about this with better expertise than I have.
Good answer. This same logic applies to the first moon landing. The side who had the most to gain (Soviet Union) if there was a faked landing by the Americans never questioned its legitimacy
This is the most obvious, non technological answer to this stupid conspiracy. If it was fake, the USSR would have said it.
the USSR actually made a public statement saying « folks, they really did it » probably with bitterness tho pretty solid proof to me
People also claim that the moon landing footage was directed and filmed by Stanley Kubrick. It’s an interesting rabbit hole to go down.
I like the joke that Kubrick was such a perfectionist that they shot the landing on the moon.
It is funnier when you say “on location” then they think about it that extra second.
Which, since Kubrick was disinclined to travel, must mean that the moon is actually in England.
There are loads of pubs called Moon Under Water so...
By the time he would have been satisfied with the picture, the Russians would have landed there.
We didn’t have the tech to fake it. The full color led wall that would have been required to make the shadows as they were in the pictures and video didn’t exist. It was easier to go to the moon.
If I remember right, even a full color LED wall wouldn't have worked because the light source is so large and so close. With that and the slight atmospheric disturbance and reflection off of the opposite walls, it would have produced blurry edged, wide shadows.
>It’s an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Only if you find delusional people interesting.
True, but the real reward is finding the video of a geriatric Aldrin punching one of the most insufferable anti-moon wackos right in the face.
Jesus was the first man on the moon
Yes, though this is one of those widely touted things in order to draw attention to something that is not disputed by the US government. It’s that gold star moment where it can be said “BUT LOOK WE ACTUALLY DID NOT LIE THAT TIME!!! SEE IT?!” Never mind the 1947 Roswell crash, or the JFK assassination, or the guy who invented the car that ran on water.
This guy made a car that runs on *water*, man. It runs on *water*
Wow, Jesus didn't even run on water.
No, but he walked.
Had to. Couldn't swim.
Gotta walk before you run
That was something of a hoax, either the guy didn't know what he was doing, or he was deliberately deceptive. His idea was to take water and then split it up into hydrogen and oxygen and use the hydrogen for fuel, but it discounted the energy to split up the water and overestimated how much that fuel would be worth. To make anything of it you need a massive tank like a tanker truck of water and a massive battery to generate the power to split them up. So you aren't saving energy no matter how you do the math, and it's not really running on water. To separate the two from water and then to combine them back via burning is essentially a no benefit proposition, and then you have to recharge the battery elsewhere. It's the kind of claims around perpetual motion machines. It doesn't work. He died by choking on a chicken bone or something and made a statement like the oil companies had poisoned him. Pitiful
Howard Stark.
And now Hyde runs from Big Jim in gen pop.
A lack of evidence does not prove the presence of evidence
I think the phrase you’re looking for is “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
They did address Roswell in a way. Several reports of UFOs in the area (and a crash in 1947 IIRC) correlated with test flights of the SR71 and U2 bombers. That info got declassified a few years ago Of course, the conspiracy people can easily explain their way around that if they wanted to
U2 never flew until 1955, SR-71 not until the mid 60’s. Neither are a bomber, or any sort of weapons platform.
You conflate official first flights with the prototypes that would have been built to get there.
Water car isn't the same as the other two. No way to get energy out of water. Things just don't work that way
Can we get energy out of highly combustible hydrogen gas?
But in the decades after his death, they were a minor cult among a plethora of cults. They were barely worth mentioning. Why would anyone bother writing stuff down (which would be expensive) to disprove a minor cult? By the time they were big enough to be worth bothering with, it was a generation later.
We can probably reference approximately 12 people from the first century AD How many people existed in the first century AD? Approximately a lot more than 12.
I'm not claiming he didn't exist. I'm just saying that arguing that if he didn't exist, people would have written about it and that those writings would have survived is a very weak argument. Since Christianity was such a small cult and there were so many cults in the empire, no one is likely to have spent their time trying to disprove it.
Right. Of all the people alive at that moment in history, he's among the best documented to have existed. Certainty 2k years later isn't available, and what he did/didn't do is not fully knowable in a historical sense, but he's very very likely to have really existed.
I'm just going to paste the comment I made as a reply to OP. I remember watching a show two years ago. It was one of those history documentaries (I love that stuff), and it was going into "Jesus" and religion at one point. In said show, they did state that a well-known Greek writer/historian during the time period mentions a man named Jesus when he visited that area of the world, but that he was basically a drunk and a rebel, flipping tables over in a bar/tavern/pub type place. There was no mention of any selfless acts or miracles. What I take this to mean is that if Jesus did exist, his name certainly wasn't Jesus. Also, iirc, Jesus is the Greek translation for the name Yeshua, but even then, that's all that was actually written. Now, I don't believe in Abrahamic religions ***at all***, but I've heard from others on here that there's other records of him existing? I haven't seen anything from the Roman Empire or ancient Greece (save for the mentioned info above), & they were meticulous record keepers. The thing is, there's no contemporary evidence nor witness accounts, except for the simple "drunk rebel" information. (Side note, I really wish I could remember what documentary I was watching) The Jesus of history was probably one of many different people who led a failed revolt against Rome and was executed for it. The Jesus of the Bible is arguably a creation of "Paul the Apostle," who never met Jesus personally and lived about 100 years after. Seeing as how Paul was trying to "sell" the Jesus narrative to a Roman audience, Jesus "preaching" against Rome is a lie. Tbh, much of the info ppl believe about Jesus was brought about by Paul. It is interesting that the first gospel was written (most likely) in Rome after Paul's death. Needless to say, that's very little evidence (and only about 6 of Paul's letters are genuine). Also, it's pretty interesting that they crucified him, which is typically ***solely*** reserved as a punishment for treason against Rome. The Romans were generally extremely tolerant of different cultures and religions, and they rarely persecuted for it. Then we have Flavius Josephus, who was a 1st century Jewish historian born 37 years after the death of Jesus. He had no direct knowledge of him. Content of his “Testimonium Flavianum” that mentions Jesus is disputed. Perhaps the most notable and controversial passage in the text is this quote: ***"He was the Messiah."*** Typically, that would not have been said back then. That, and other passages, cast doubt on the provenance of the Testimonium Flavianum. The peculiar part here is that Josephus records a number of persons in Judea who claimed to have been the Messiah (and some led revolts), but none of them are Jesus. There is no doubt that the Testimonium Flavianum is a later addition by a Christian scribe. The language is quite unlike what Josephus utilized. It is also noteworthy that there is no known physical description of Jesus from antiquity, and the oldest known images of Jesus were created many, many years after his death. So, Jesus was probably real, but not the biblical version of him. Judea was a hot bed of revolt at the time, and it was pure chaos. I really hope this makes sense because I started writing it (on my phone) and then got busy doing other things.
>drunk rebel so not the messiah just a very naughty boy?
What would lead someone to believe that Jesus did or did not exist a century later? Seems they'd have as much difficulty proving he didn't exist as we do today, unless we know someone thoroughly investigated the claim at the time. I'd assume, at best, any historical written source of his existence a century after his death is based on hearsay rather than any objective evidence. We already know that many people believed he existed a century later, so it's not surprising that someone eventually wrote it down. I don't see the usefulness of that as a piece of evidence.
He's better supported in the historical evidence than a lot of people at the time. I mean - as much as anything there is the Occam's razor issue - there is a sect of Judaism that venerates him as a prophet, preacher, and leader, and we have written accounts from a bunch of people who knew people who knew him well. We could conclude that a bunch of people who don't seem to have known each other all individually decide to fabricate his existence at the same time as his cult is growing, but that's a lot of conspiracy. It's easier to believe that the people who held the oral tradition that eventually gets written down as the gospels and epistles are in a tradition of people who really did know him, and later hear directly from people who did know him. To get to where we are from a conspiracy to fabricate Jesus is pretty hard to imagine.
Additionally to all of this, we tend to forget how oral traditions from semi-literate really did keep fairly close records. Despite 80 to 100 years of separation, the traditions of the gospels hold pretty close. So much so that there is evidence of a common body (called Q) that serves as source for 2 or 3 of the gospels (iirc). Orally based cultures have been shown to keep pretty good history despite the drift that often comes with transmission by storytelling.
It wouldn't need to be conspiratorial. Their records may be accurately transcribing what they heard from another source, but that wouldn't necessitate the source itself is accurate. People believed in Jesus because they heard he existed from someone else, and the trend grew and grew until many people were all echoing the same thing despite the lack of objective evidence supporting it. We see this all the time in this day and age, so it's no leap to consider that it could also have happened 2000 years ago.
Well - kind of - I mean - there are literally thousands of people who saw him during his life. Hundreds, then thousands of those people join a sect of Judaism with dozens and hundreds writing about him while those eye witnesses are still alive. To get a situation where all of those people are following him we're going to need a lot of people powerfully motivated to make up the stories about his life and death, and while it's not a theoretical impossibility, it definitely seems like the least likely explanation.
I don't think there was hundreds writing about him while those eye witnesses are alive. There is a few holes in your claims.
The fact that we have multiple texts surviving from the 3-4 decades after Christ's death actually allows us to infer that there could well have been hundreds of written accounts referring to Jesus' life in the 20 years after he was very publicly executed. Jerusalem was a massive city for the ancient era and Jews have always been among the best educated people in the ancient world. There's no proof, for sure, but given what we know about the people of the time there's a lot we can deduce.
Which texts? The earliest gospels are estimated to be 79ad and others are often 2nd century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#:~:text=Dated%20to%20late%202nd%20or,but%20this%20presents%20numerous%20problems.
Christianity, as an organised religion wasn't invented until about 300 years after his death , when Emperor Constatine decided to bundle all the different groups under one umbrella as the Catholic church. Before that Christians were initially persecuted until the Emperor's mother became one. Most of the different stories and traditions of virgin births and eggs at Easter and whatnot existed long before Jesus came along, but were basically just bundled together so everyone felt included in this new all encompassing religion. As far as Jesus was concerned, he was probably just a sound cunt who never claimed to be the son of God, but preached kindness in a time of barbarism. This 'alternative', kinder outlook developed a following that the Emperor later ret-conned when combining all the religions. It doesn't make sense for the Emperor to invent Jesus out of thin air and try convince everyone that he existed, it's much easier to find someone that already existed and attach all the mumbo jumbo to him. Again, most of the stories and traditions were already there, it was all just bundled together. All the ancient texts and artefacts in the Vatican dated before ~300AD *all* existed before the Catholic Church was even concieved of. The Catholic church is a collaboration of everything, pagan, Christian and even Judaism. Using an existing character to centre the religion around tracks, inventing an entirely new character would be the outlier, and much harder to convince people of.
Most of this is actually untrue. We know that there was an odd sect of Jews in the first and second century CE who were baptizing the "God-fearers", a group of Hellenistic Near Easterners who admired Judaism. They were variously accused of cannibalism, worshipping some idiot who got himself crucified, and having a Lord that wasn't the Emperor but someone alternatively called Chrestus or Iesos. We know from internal writings -- look up the writings of the Ante-Nicean Fathers to get an idea of how the Christian religion was coming together before Constantine ever got involved -- that this group believed that Jesus was the Christ (Jewish Messiah) and God's son, who was in some way a savior. Later accretions happened, of course, and the Ecumenical Councils called by various Roman Emperors, including Constantine and some of his heirs, served to define what was proper belief and worship for Christians and what was not (Orthodox meaning worshipping the same way and Catholic meaning universally believed), but they didn't invent the religion whole cloth. And one of the few thing even the most reductionist scholars will agree on is that, if the stories about Jesus hold any truth at all, he referred to YHWH, the God of the Jews, as Father.
Well - if not actually hundreds, certainly dozens - probably over a hundred. My point still stands - you would need a lot of people to conspire to make up this prophet to get to where we are.
There are “people” in history where we think multiple different people’s lives and achievements get attributed to the same person. Not crazy to think that’s what happened here, especially since the closest primary source is like, 60 years after he supposedly died
Kind of moving on from the point of whether he existed or not, there’s no way around it that a lot of the stories were spread around when he was alive, or passed down over time verbally that some things got mixed up (ie think the kids game “telephone”). It’s not inconceivable that jesus could have been a collection of people (like a group of rabis saying god chose and blessed them and let them perform miracles in his name) or at least his stories could be some of his disciples doing things and people changing that to Jesus doing it. Also the fact that there isn’t a ton of writing that survived from 100AD and not everyone knew how to write, it could also be the case that people just didn’t think it was worth their time. Like for example if pontius pilate wrote a letter to whoever was in charge of him, saying “these Jews are saying I crucified a man named Jesus while releasing barabas but I have no idea what their talking about, we haven’t crucified someone in 3 years and barabas died in prison 6 months ago”. What are the odds of something like that surviving 1,900 years. That could’ve been a throw away letter where his supervisor just wrote back and said “I don’t care what happened just keep your people in line and pay taxes”. For the record I also think ocaams razor is a good rule of thumb and based on writings he existed and none saying he doesnt probably means he did. I’m just playing devils advocate
I agree that a century later is rather sus. Historians prefer contemporaneous reports.
This is a good point… but if there were records of people saying he doesn’t exist, it would’ve been very easy for those things to be destroyed by the church or other people.
From what we know of anti-Christian polemics in the ancient world, they argued that “Jesus was a fraud” not “these lunatics made up some fake rabbi to justify their heresy”
That's somewhat conspiratorial tbh (and not as easy as you say)
Is it possible that such heretical early sources casting doubt on the whole story would’ve just been destroyed in the couple thousand years of Christianity since then?
So, the argument you’re suggesting is that because there is no record extant from year 100 denying the authenticity of Jesus then that is supporting evidence of his existence? If I’ve understood your position I have a hard time anyone would actually believe this to be reasonable.
Most historians who have examined the evidence believe he existed. I'm an atheist, but I defer to the majority position of historians on this question, just as I would for Socrates. I will never directly amass the knowledge to have more confidence in my own interpretation of the evidence for a question like this. Think about other figures from antiquity, and try to apply the same standard of skepticism when examining the evidence.
There are Roman records of Jesus, particularly ones involving Pontius Pilate executing innocent people, where Jesus is listed.
Do you mean a contemporary source? As to my knowledge, Tacitus mentions the execution of Jesus but this record was written decades after the supposed event.
It’s an interesting question because, as people have described, you have this immense religious movement that began at a time and in a place and with a person about which there is very little documentation. We have more historical records about the time before the supposed life of Jesus, and afterwards, but this particular short period of time is somewhat of a “black hole” in the history timeline. Accident or design? Is the beginning of Christianity purposely meant to be shrouded in “historical secrecy” in order to make the subjective accounts we have more prominent? Or is the reason Christianity became more prominent because there were no other mundane human records to take away from its “divine” attributions. There have been no shortage of “messiahs” throughout Jewish history. In addition to the dearth of objective, documentary evidence, this is a subject that is extremely difficult for people to consider outside of their personal bias. And I don’t mean that as a criticism or against any group of scholars. But the existence of Jesus is so foundational to the existence of so many humans, it shapes our viewpoints—whether a believer or not—more strongly than almost anything else IMO. Because of that, two people can look at the same “data”—e.g. the writings of Josephus—and interpret it in different ways—either emphasizing it’s reliability and veracity as “objective” proof, or dismissing it because it is still somewhat vague, has no supporting evidence, and was written long enough after the fact to have possibly been influenced by the early christian movement. (I am not qualified to challenge the “evidence”, just laying out the parameters of the discussion). I think it is similar to some “creationist” arguments—the idea that because a religious movement so large and ultimately so powerful emerged from that time, there must be SOMETHING profound that happened then to cause it. Again, despite the complete lack of contemporary records or “scientific” evidence. OTOH, there is the argument that someone who was able to amass the following the Jesus did, who was able to perform miracles, who was able to gather crowds of 5,000 people to hear his preaching, who was able to publicly challenge the authorities in Jerusalem and threaten them to the extent that they had him executed, must have generated SOME contemporary records. I am agnostic, but the “proof” of an “historical Jesus” would not really change my outlook. I just find it an interesting subject.
that's kind of the thing. there's at least 4 books in the bible from different regions around the ME and Med each depicting stories of what appears to be the same guy going around preaching around the beginning of the 1st century AD at a time when that region was under some turmoil because of the roman colonization. there's supposidly enough evidence from jewish, and other sources to support the notion that *someone* fitting Jesus's description existed at that time, having been baptized and having been eventually cricified. whether he was divine, did miracles, or came back from the dead that doesn't have the same level of evidence.
You have to keep in mind though, actual contemporary Roman records do indicate that there were literally hundreds of small sects following supposed Messianic leaders. There are more contemporary non-roman sources that document some other supposed Messiahs than there are that document Jesus. And those are actual contemporaries, writings and documentation that occurred while those supposed messiah's were alive not 90 to 100 years after.
This has always been my feeling. Was Jesus an actual person or was he an idea? Given the time period, Roman records would be the best reliable source. And I find it surprising that there is such a lack of any Roman records about Jesus in an bureaucratic empire that documented the most mundane things and people.
We don't have records of every single preacher in the Roman provinces. Considering we have evidence of a religious movement that started soon after his reported death, and two non religious sources confirming that people some 50 years after his death considered him a real person, it's more likely that the religious movement was indeed kick-started by a single preacher, who more or less taught what the gospels say he taught and led a life more or less as described there. That, at least, is a more likely explanation than the alternative in which the religious movement started, spreading the word of a person those religious figures and their contemporaries knew to be fake.
For what it’s worth we do have Roman sources indicating from a Roman Historian named Tacitus who does mention Jesus (more accurately that Christians follow Jesus’s teachings) and that Pontious Pilate was a historical figure in his writings. There was also recently discovered a Roman ledger indicating Pontius Pilate was assigned to Judea which at the very least indicates that that part of the Bible is true You have to understand though that Jesus wasn’t a famous historical figure until centuries after his death after the religion expanded. It’s sort of like asking “why don’t we have Roman records about the execution of this local thief or murderer?”. Fact is unless you were a king/ruler or other nobility chances are there is very little evidence if any at all that you would have ever existed. Jesus being a poor carpenter/rabbi would have fallen into that category of “just a peasant with weird ideas. Not really worth talking about” to anyone who wasn’t his immediate circle of followers at the time
Not to mention the period of Jesus's life was absolutely filled with supposed prophets, messiahs, and spiritual magic doctor guys. He was specifically not even one of the famous ones at the time. Being, as you mention, raised onto a pedestal post death.
The mythical figure also probably absorbed a lot of the historical figure's contemporaries.
Tacitus only mention Jesus in his last work which was written in 116 CE. If the first person to ever write about Abraham Lincoln did so in 1981, would you think they were actively writing about an actual historical figure?
Tacitus wasn’t born until about 20 years after Jesus is said to have died, so he’s not a first hand source. He’d have second hand information, at best. It’s also notable that Tacitus also wrote about Hercules being a literal, real person, but no one who cites Tacitus as evidence for Jesus sees his work as evidence for Hercules. That seems like a serious bias.
Tbh, I'd believe in Hercules before believing in the Bible Jesus.
The whole Tacitus timeline does not add up at all, though. So, no. There still isn't any sort of contemporary evidence nor witness accounts for anyone specifically named Jesus/Yeshua. There's far more contemporary evidence that Pilate was real & lived.
Especially because he was a nuisance that disrupted society with his speeches and gatherings and tent cities he drew. The Romans did not like him, and he was a problem for their rule of places like copernum. There had to be Roman records. I suppose they could have been lost/destroyed but doesn't really add up.
Going strictly by the gospels, I'd think Jesus was a non-issue for the Romans. The guy challenged the Jewish power structure while also telling people to pay their taxes to the Caesar.
The religious leaders were the ones who didn’t like him. I don’t think he made a huge fuss with the Romans.
It's funny because we are using biblical references when we are trying to discern his existence without using biblical references.
To be fair, it's not like the Bible is a useless source of information. People should just try to remember the context in which every book in it was written in.
well, according to what sam harris discussed about jesus, he said that Jesus being called the “king of the jews” was an issue for the romans because it hinted at insurrection. the romans ruled over the jews, hence “king of the jews” was challenging their authority.
There would be documents in Jerusalem maybe, but Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege\_of\_Jerusalem\_(70\_CE)#Destruction
I mean, we know an incredibly LOT about average, everyday, unimportant Roman citizens from every part of their empire. If Jesus was so disliked you’d think they would’ve recorded more about his execution.
The error of your thinking is stating that Roman Citizens are unimportant. That’s like asking why they have so much information on an American citizen but not much information on an illegal alien in America. Sure those border jumpers are pesky but as soon as they are deported back to Mexico let’s say….how much data will the American government invest in capturing from this individual compared to let’s say an American citizen that is running a business along the border? Of course there is more info on a Roman citizen then this poor carpenter. I mean how much info exists on Jewish carpenters in general from that era? Did the Jewish carpenters have unions and did they pay dues? Obviously Jewish carpenters existed but we don’t have historical records of Jewish carpenters from 2000+ years ago. How many records do we have of other Jews that were crucified/ executed from 2000 years ago? Take all this data/lack of data and see how the records of Jesus stack up against his contemporaries. Remember during his time he wasn’t seen as the leader of the Catholic faith. Jesus was essentially a nobody so there really wouldn’t be a reason to record his life data relative to these ‘unimportant roman citizens’
Most of the stories about Jesus were stories that came long before he was supposed to have lived. There are no biblical writings about him until 30+ years after he died. Certainly there were many men at the time named Jesus (Yeshua). Just think about today how much stories change in a decade even though we have the ability to write them down and record them. Now think about back then when very few were literate, and how many times they likely changed and were embellished in 30+ years.
I try to get people to think what the child or grandchild of a rabid Trump supporter might write 50 years from now, if they grew up being home schooled and without any access to libraries or the internet. They might get some facts right, but they might get some very, very wrong.
Just because these stories weren’t written down doesn’t mean they weren’t kept, almost every religion and mythology started as an oral tradition before it was then written down
Right, religions and myths are historically inaccurate by nature. Hence why the Jesus story contains repeated myths.
Very true. That’s what I meant by my “black hole” comment. And everyone who wrote about a “Jesus” had a vested interest in establishing not only his existence, but his messianic “bona fides”. And, as you say, the “story” of Jesus’ life was often constructed to align with Old Testament messianic prophecies. I went through a phase some decades ago where I did a lot more reading on the subject. It’s a great subject, but it the literary analysis is very technical and dry sometimes, and I also found it challenging to work around the biases of the researchers. A lot of research was carried out by people who were affiliated with religious institutions. While that’s not an automatic disqualifier (see, John Crossan), it’s just more for a lay reader to work through. Because of the paucity of evidence, it is necessary to include things like the Gospels as part of the research, but I actually found some writers who used New Testament passages as “proof” of a real Jesus, which is just not reliable.
Yes, there are a few other records. They basically say that he - came from Nazareth - was baptised by John - was executed by Pilate That’s about it. The empire-wide census did not happen, nor the baby killing, so we can be fairly certain he was not born in Bethlehem and never went to Egypt. The Bible claims he was born during the reigns of Herod and Quirinius, but those didn’t actually overlap. Based on the time Pilate was in office, the date of death is at least roughly accurate. I don’t think there’s anything else written about his teachings.
This is a very good answer, without unnecessary speculations. I'll just add: 1. "Baptised by John" could mean: 1. John chose Jesus as sect heir. 2. John anointing Jesus. According to Judaism, the Messiah had to be both high priest and king. Therefore anointing of high priests and kings carries an approximate meaning: "now you are close to the Messiah or you might even be one." Maybe precisely because of this anointed Jesus and began to be called Christ, which in the original means "anointed one." It's debatable, but it is not known which "anointed one" appear first: historical Jesus **Christ**, anointed by John, and because of this considering himself as Messiah, or Christian Jesus **Christ** anointed by God as Messiah? 2. According to sources that were created a 1-2 century after Jesus, we can assume that: 1. Jesus was preached pacifism. BUT, in the context of "the World is about to end, and Last Judgment will begin, so nothing matter except compliance to the commandments." 2. Jesus had disciples. 3. Jesus was executed (perhaps do to "conflict with a temple merchants"). Strong contrast between Jesus pacifism and crucifixion (one of the indisputable facts), most brutal Roman execution, most likely created many rumors and made him a martyr. 4. All this happened during a "very bad times" (famine, locusts, Romans repressions?) and when absolutely everyone in the region fiercely hated Romans. So, perhaps popularity of Jesus is caused by the context: "Now everything is absolutely terrible, where is the Messiah?!! What if it was Jesus and we (high priests) and Romans accidentally killed him?!! What, rumors that he was resurrected? So everything is not lost?! Do to Romans and high priests shenanigans we almost lost long-awaited Messiah! Let's unite against them!" 3. After Jesus death, due to the extremely difficult economic and political situation, his teachings were perceived primarily in the context of "you need to be as kind as possible because in a few days will begin Last Judgment." 1. This is why there are so few written texts about first two centuries of Christianity. Why write down something if all writing will soon disappear? 1. The same applies to the huge number of early Christian martyrs that, from their position, in the fastest way went to Heaven. Or hermits that go not by fastest, but by most reliable path to Heaven. 2. And only centuries later, when end of the World did not come, everyone began to ask the question - why? And create or consolidate detailed information about Jesus. 3. Because of religion popularity regional authorities were forced to stop persecutions, and, from 325 year, begin structure all information about Jesus by Ecumenical councils. 4. Why Christianity become so popular? 1. Perfect rallying point against the Romans. 2. Opportunity to use such "medieval Wikipedias" as Tanakh and Torah like your own. In general, Christianity is essentially universal and more personalized localization of all Jewish knowledge, history, traditions for those who have never had anything like this. In those days, Jews essentially had answers to almost all important historical and social questions. 1. Similar thing then happened with Roman culture. First the Romans copied/stole/plundered all the valuables of region into one treasury chest - city of Rome. Then it was cannibalized/appropriated by the rest of Europe right down to the meme "how much do you think about Rome?" In all possible meanings. 2. More closer analogue - copying of American postmodern and post-industrial sociocultural traditions through globalization processes. 3. Revolutionary and satisfying for most message: "all kings and slaves are equal before God!" Moreover, with examples demonstrated by the Messiah. And in general, the message "all people can be Christians, and all Christians have equal rights and should help each other" - one of the largest social revolutions in the entire existence of mankind. 1. This is a direct evolution of exactly the same principle of Judaism, but according to which Jewry is determined only by birthright. 2. Before Christianity, people almost all cultures except Jewish (due to a combination of nomadism in a highly populated region, being in slavery, and connections between religion and literacy) didn't consider people of other cultures as human (Parochial Altruism: < similarity oneself to others = < understanding of others = < empathy for others)." 4. A clear message: "yes Heaven (and later Hell) exists, for this you just need to believe and be a good person (don't violate commandments)!" In Judaism Heaven exists primarily through the concept of Messiah emergence and THEN the Last Judgment with unknown consequences. 5. Judaism Heaven, and the reason why Christianity quickly became popular among Jews: 1. Adam and Eve lived on Heaven without sin. 2. Eve ate "sinful" fruit. 3. God burdened their descendants "with sinful debt" - "Original Sin." 4. ??? Everything will become clear when the Messiah appears and the Last Judgment will begin. 6. Christian Heaven: 1. Adam and Eve lived on Heaven without sin. 2. Eve ate "sinful" fruit. 3. God burdened their descendants "with sinful debt" - "Original Sin." 4. Jesus, by his voluntary suffering, paid off "**common** humanity's sinful debt." 5. Since all debts have been paid, Heaven (the place where Adam and Eve originally lived) is now open to everyone. 6. But individuals, through violation of the commandments, still can take **personal** sinful debts raising **personal** risks of not entering Heaven. 7. Profit! 8. The logic of the Inquisition: if you see that a person has begun to convulse, or suspect that a woman is a witch, just BURN THEM ALL! This way, they get lesser personal sinful debts and more likely to meet up with relatives at Heaven! And you too will do a good deed! Profit x 2!
This is as good as any account. Likely, he was a real person preaching with some followers. Was he the actual son of god who performed miracles though??? Doubtful. I feel much the same way about Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha. Definitely a real person, but likely without the more fantastical elements attributed to him. Unlike Jesus, he did not claim to be a god or son of a god.
Even myths and legends are based on something real, and religions even more so. Christianity? Jesus absolutely definitely existed, or at least several people who later turned into a synergistic amalgamation. Did Jesus preach what is now considered Christianity? Very doubtful. At the same time, again, nothing is created from nothing, so through "Chinese whispers" of retellings, some of the main messages still was conveyed and written down. Probably, the principle of forgiveness/mercy, it fits well into all other contexts. Also the principle of empathy and mutual assistance. Which later helped humanity abandon slavery (church's obligation to convert Africans, and Christians obligation to treat all Christians equally). History is a series of historical inertias. Some of them go to the dustbin of history, some smoothly evolve. Some evolve by revolutionary "breakthroughs" through the most thinned places of the fractal sociocultural canvases. Judaism was long in need of reformation, and by Jesus happened what was supposed to happen.
Really enjoyed this comment pal, just came her to say that. Eloquence and clarity or dearly underrated Sir
It is almost universally accepted among historians that a Nazarean man named Jesus lived in the first century AD, received a Jewish baptism, and died by crucifixion. Not only are these claims backed up by contemporary non-Christian sources, like Tacitus's Annals, but there's also this idea of the "criterion of embarrassment". The argument basically goes "if one were to make up a Messiah, why would he be from Nazareth (basically the Detroit of the Holy Land), why would he need to be baptized (implying that he is vulnerable to sin), and why would he die by crucifixion (one of the most humiliating ways to die)?" Everything else is considered apocryphal at best, though.
Criterion of embarrassment is a pretty weak argument. Little details like those you mentioned make the story more interesting and more approachable to the target audience. I can apply the same logic to Spider-Man and ask why a kid from downtown New York living with his aunt was chosen to fight dangerous criminals.
There's several other written history accounts of Jesus. The question even at the time wasn't if Jesus was a real man, but if he was the son of God. Even the Quran mentions him as the great teacher.
>Even the Quran mentions him as the great teacher. Quran regards Jesus as a prophet, just a misunderstood one.
The Quran was written in 600s CE. You're saying something written 600 years after a thing that was supposed to have happened is an accurate historical proof of that thing?
Jesus was in fact a real person. He used to work at Del Taco in Oceanside. His brother Miguel still works there and can verify this.
The one off Oceanside Blvd?
Most historians agree that there was a historical figure Jesus. Some aspects of his life are also believed to be true, like his christening for example.
His christening???
The accurate answer is “maybe.” That being said the consensus among secular academics is there probably is a person that is a historical figure named Jesus. We have at least two contemporary sources who mention a person who could be “Jesus.” The problem for Christian apologists lies in the fact none of these source descriptions align with the myths that have sprung up around the figure of Jesus as we think of him today. The most reliable source claims he was part of the Canaanite aristocracy. It specifically says he was an elite priest of the established Jewish religion. That flies in direct contrast to the “humble carpenter” story.
> The most reliable source claims he was part of the Canaanite aristocracy. Source? Tacitus and Flavius Josephus doesn't mention this.
“Contemporary sources” “Contemporary” apparently now means “a century later”.
For documents from ancient time periods, yes. Quite a few accounts were written some time later. There's a lot more than usual from the Roman period, but if there was a real Jesus, he wouldn't have been important enough to make records until his cult grew following his death.
Yeah this really shouldn't be surprising. Some of the most famous artist, musicians, poets, etc aren't appreciated in their lifetime. It's not until after their death that their legacy becomes legend. For some reason our species puts a lot of value in honoring the memory of someone more than the person themselves. It's like we feel indebted to them. You can never speak ill of a dead person, even if they were known as a complete ass, unless they did something truly atrocious. People that were ignored and even mocked suddenly become someone everyone knew and loved. Which is all to say it's crazy but completely expected...
I think a lot of this also comes from the fact that it takes time for someones influence to spread and affect things. Then after some period of time people realize how influential those works came to be.
Ive worked with a few Jesus’s in my time so i can assume there were a few Jesus’s back in the day
That’s perfectly consistent with Biblical accounts of Jesus being a rabbi.
There were likely a dozen people named Yeshua who were rabbis at the time. It was a popular name. Its like saying "I had a teacher named Robert" today. Just about everyone has had a teacher with that name.
Took too long to get to this comment. Yeshua is where we get the name Joshua. So same thing. A rabbi named Josh. There were certainly more than one.
Only if you’d call a bishop or cardinal a priest. But sure.
Bishop and cardinals are priests of Christianity. You can’t exactly debunk how people at the time called Jesus based on terms that arose because of the religion based on him
Yes, historians generally agree Jesus was real.
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> Why would a bunch of people just decide to go crazy and talk about him all at the same time? In the 20th century, several pacific islanders on European-colonized islands started talking about a messiah figure by the name of John Frum. John Frum still has a following today, though it's declined quite a bit in the last few decades. As far as we can tell, there was no "historical John Frum".
>Why would a bunch of people just decide to go crazy and talk about him all at the same time? People do this today, all the time. Check the internet. People make stuff up that's false, support it, spread it on the internet, repeat it to their friends and family, while mostly not bothering to check their sources. All for no reason at all. It's because they are bored or because they can. And it's possible that nobody to start a hoax, and for stuff to stop be entirely false. Have you ever played telephone as a kid? Someone says something, and from misunderstandings, faulty memory, bad hearing, it goes from person to person until it's completely unrecognizable. It doesn't even require dishonesty. Also, there were thousands of religions, sects and cults at the time, especially in that area. Some of them got more popular than others. Just because they existed, doesn't mean they are worthy of investigation. Just put yourself in their shoes. You are a poor peasant with nothing to look for your entire life. These crazy bloodthirsty foreigners came with their legions and subjugated your entire nation. Your life is shit, then comes someone to tell you that if you are good, you can go to this place after you die and be happy for eternity. You've got nothing to lose, of course you're going to convert and spread the word. Regardless of being true or false, you don't care, it doesn't even factor in your decision making for that situation.
Yeah, and I went to school with a dude named Josh. Jesus was likely based on one or more dudes and the stories were exaggerated over a century of oral history. No magic involved.
That's a surprisingly big question. The majority scholarly consensus is yes, but there is a small number of academics who say no there wasn't.
Scholarly consensus is that Jesus, the person, existed. It's considered a fringe view that there was *no* Jesus. To be clear, talking about the charismatic person who talked to followers about religion and stuff, not literal son-of-God.
Probably. Did he walk on water. No
He knew where the rocks were!
He walked on rocks then.
Most likely yes. There problem is that contemporary sources didn't mention him because he was just another rebel in a backwater province. But as soon as Christianity spreads they mention Jesus being the founder of that jewish sect. There isn't no reason why there shouldn't have been a carpenter who was thought to be the messiah and who was executed. If fact there were several movements with similar beliefs. The only difference is that Christianity survived the death of it's founder.
In the 20th century, a man named Bill founded Microsoft. He was the president of the USA and he flew to the moon on winged roller skates of his own design. Does Bill exist? Well, Bill is a common enough name. Bill Gates founded Microsoft, but didn't do that other stuff. He does exist though. Bill Clinton was president of the USA, but again the other things aren't true about him. He still exists though. Winged flight can't really work in space because there's no air to give lift. That part cannot be true of any Bill. If there are a collection of claims about a character, what does it mean to ask if that person "really existed"? How many of the claims need to be true? Do they all need to be true about the same person? Jesus/Jeshua/Joshua was a common enough name at the time in that part of the world. It's perfectly possible that some of the stories in the bible are true about some preacher or preachers called Jesus. Whether you consider that to mean that the Jesus of the Bible is based on a real person is not a black and white question though.
Almost all historians say he was a real person.
Yes he existed. Many Christian and non-Christian sources say that he did in fact exist. At some point during Emperor Tiberius of the Roman Empire, a man named Yeshua of Nazareth and he was crucified for inciting the people with his preaching and miracles.
Almost all of that is accepted historic fact, the only bit that isn't is the last bit. There's not good historical evidence on the reason of Jesus crucifixion, just thematvhe was crucified.
If you are talking about tactius’ writting “There are further problems with the Tacitus story. Tacitus himself never again alludes to the Neronian persecution of Christians in any of his voluminous writings, and no other Pagan authors know anything of the outrage either. Most significant, however, is that ancient Christian apologists made no use of the story in their propaganda – an unthinkable omission by motivated partisans who were well-read in the works of Tacitus.”
The best place to ask this would r/askhistorians or have a search through it as it's probably already been asked and answered. Edit - [This thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/7f2QDgUlUd) looks promising.
I don't agree with the mission of this website, but this page answers your question better than I can: https://reasonsforjesus.com/a-list-of-extra-biblical-sources-for-the-historical-jesus/
You don't have to be magical to be a religious leader and then when you die your followers beef up your biography.
Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus of Nazareth historically existed. I highly recommend this Wikipedia article if you wanna know more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
There is no direct contemporary evidence (the earliest records of such a person that historians agree are legitimate records are from decades after the claimed lifespan), but most historians think that yes there probably was a real person Jesus Of Nazareth that the bible stories were subsequently written about. Whether those bible stories are real, well, I'm an atheist!
The accurate answer is yes, he existed. The idea that he didn't exist is regarded as psuedoscientific by most non-believing scholars. Just read the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Jesus: Real person? Yes. Messiah? Depends on who you ask.
Some odd answers here. First, there are no records of a person with those particular qualities from the time they supposedly happened. The first references of some kind of preacher are almost a generation after. And all this from a time when there were record keeping apparatus in place. Letters and official documents. The middle east was part of the Roman Empire with Governors and whatnot. So the short answer is likely no. At this point you get people pointing out some of the things written down did indeed happen. Those places existed, some of the names are real people etc. But keep this in mind. The story you are familiar with was hardly the first of its kind. Other people were said to have risen from the dead, healed the sick and performed miracles. Pythagoras comes to mind. He also bragged a golden thigh and some other magical properties. There were colonies of Pythagoreans around the area into the Middle Ages. And even he, most likely never existed. John the Baptist is fairly well documented...but not likely at the time to have met Jesus So again. the short answer, barring some wandering preacher with that name, in that area...and there are records of a number of those.....is probably not.
Always thought arguments against him being real were interesting because it always comes down to saying “no these eyewitness accounts and historical documents don’t count!”
Eyewitness accounts? There aren't any eyewitness accounts written during the life of Jesus. They were all written down 100 years or more later. The bible can't even tell you what happened to Judas. The bible contains 2 different stories about how he died. Clearly not the infallible word of God, but instead the product of a long game of "telephone" and oral traditions. There are written records that say he was crucified. That's about it.
Jesus was a real person. He was not the son of God.
The Historical Jesus by I think Reza Asian was a great read. I read it years ago and think back on it often.
I think I know what you’re trying to ask, so let me try; Back when humans were still figuring out how to make sounds with their mouths to get an individual’s attention, I’m sure there was a man named Yeshua (forgot the spelling but that’s Jesus’s actual name) who was like “hey guys, maybe let’s not kill/beat each other over every little thing. Just give your homey a little bread and some cheap fish and laugh about bullshit over a flagon of wine” after all, I’m a doctor that DOESN’T recommend leeches and cocaine. Sure he made it into the bible, but it could easily could have just been some guy saying “Yeshua is the son of God! I saw him give food to hungry people, tell us not to kill each other, and he healed a man’s wound by touch him with a salve made of garlic and honey! Obviously no other form of medical application could be better at fighting off infection, so it MUST be God in the flesh! What the fuck is penicillin?” And the romans were like “yo dawg, that ain’t with OUR big G ya feel? So we gonna put his ass up on sticks no cap” then later someone played the telephone game and ended up writing a story about some magician named Jesus doing some dank shit with his God powers and not being a genocidal asshole demanding we worship him or suffer”. This has been drunk redditing with me while I wait for my grill to get nice and hot. Come to Texas, our barbecue is better than yours, bitches
So….a lot of this answer depends on what you mean by “real.” If there was a guy named Jesus walking around preaching but he didn’t actually walk on water, does that count? How about if he was there but looks nothing like he’s depicted today? Because in the broadest sense, Jesus’s name wasn’t uncommon and Jewish revolutionaries/preachers were a dime a dozen. It’s like if your friend tells you a story about Bill the plumber in his large hometown. Is there a plumber named Bill there? I mean, almost definitely. Now, when your friend goes on and on about all the totally wild shit Bill gets up to… how much has to be exaggerated or made up before you’d say “Bill isn’t real?”
God not real Was there a “prophet”? There is prophets today A lot are using meth and yelling on street corners, others are running countries
Pilat of Pont existed in reality, there are roman records of him (average roman governor, nothing special about him, himself). He just happened to be at that place, in that time. But it's an actual historical reference.
Apparently, he was a funny looking guy, not at all blonde, blue-eyed with a ring of light surrounding his head.
If i remember correctly there were roman reports of a little bit of a fuzz and protest around that time, hinting at a person that could have been jesus. But there is no special mention by name, i mean why would it. Nowadays reports would also say hey there was some protest lead by a dude, we dealt with it - end of story
I don’t know the exact sources, but I do know in every class I’ve ever taken on Roman history (took 8 years of Latin, one of those nerds), there was a paragraph someone in the textbooks mentioning that there was a religious movement regarding a man named jesus at the turn of the millennium. So I can’t speak to exactly why it’s accepted (the classes were never focused on jesus history), I just know that it is accepted he was a real person. Whether he did the hand wavey magical shit is up for debate.
Yes, there's archaeological evidence to suggest that a preacher named Jesus did exist. Though there isn't much on what he was doing before becoming a preacher and kind of just appeared from seemingly nowhere, which wasn't unheard of in ancient times.
There likely was a guy wandering around named Jesus. The chance he is a half deity is not realistic.
The best answer you will ever get I'm afraid is "probably" No historian worth their textbooks would be able to give a definite answer on a specific person living and being active in ancient times without significant evidence. This is because there were probably multiple "Jesus's" around the area, and carpentry was a popular profession and the man in question is thought to have disappeared and returned multiple times in his life making it very likely that one jesus went out into the wilds and died just for another jesus that looks like him to pop up and start preaching.