jswayze

A recent Gallup poll indicates 93% of us believe Jesus did indeed live and breathe. That's a little confounding since my understanding is that some 15% of us are "non-believers", so I have come to this site to investigate the claim of the poll and to my bewilderment it does appear a good many of you do seem to accept the historicity of Jesus. Of all people, how can you believe in such? 2000 years of intense searching has failed to unveil the slightest scrap of evidence of such a person or anyone resembling such a person, so I find myself somewhat dismayed to find people at this exceptional site have bought into our cultural upbringing to the extent of not questioning this rather fundamental issue.

That's a serious question I pose, but I guess I can't pass without mentioning the young people's posts I see who are obviously simply mad at Christianity. Thus it makes sense for someone like Rev. Timothy Muse joining in to troll for these young people in hopes of bringing them back to the fold. I would hope there are others explaining, as these young people work their way through their anger, that Christianity is a religion embracing the Bible as its mythological source...no more, no less, and the priests of the religion are just doing their job as True Believers, meaning anything is fair in pursuit of a Soul.

I also see quite a few knowledgable people who come here to find other open-minded people with whom they can engage in reasonable discourse. After posting this, I intend to follow some of these discussions and join in from time to time. It's a wonderfully vibrant site.

Toto

There are a fair number of non-Christians who think that Jesus was a historical figure, who did not intend to start a new religion, and whose words were misinterpreted by his followers. The "evidence" is based on a few fragments from ancient writers, and the assumption that someone must have been behind the gospel stories.

Jesus is an important cultural icon in the US. There's no percentage in denying that he exists, as opposed to saying that he was a historical person who was misunderstood, especially if you can use his presumed message to bash your political opponents.

epepke

I don't see anything wrong with questioning the issue. And, no, Josephus doesn't really count.

As I see it, though, the idea that there was a Jesus or possibly several messiah figures blended into one is a simple and ordinary explanation for the body of speech attributed to Jesus. Furthermore, I would expect a completely imaginary character to be less morally ambiguous and nuanced than the Jesus character; Jesus is a bit out of place given the literary standards of the time. The messiah business was booming back then, so it isn't an extraordinary claim. Whether the Jesus stories were based on one person, a pastiche of several people, or commentary on the messiah business in general, it's far from the worst historical story that we have.

At some point, also, I don't see that it's really a fundamental or even a particularly important issue. Eventually it becomes a bit like arguing whether Shakespeare's plays were written by Shakespeare or another guy with the same name.

Diogenes the Cynic

It's not accurate to say that there is "no scrap" of evidence for HJ. There are, in fact, scraps (no more than scraps but scraps, nonetheless) of evidence which suggest that possibility. It seems to me that part of the problem with HJ/MJ debate is agreeing on a clear definition for what minimum conditions would be sufficient to constitute a historical Jesus. You express some distress that a portion of an educated Infidels' community would entertain the possibility of a historical Jesus but it should be said that we are emphatically not talking about the character of Christian myth as he is portrayed in the gospels. That we don't believe in miracles goes without saying, but for the most part, we don't even accept the non-supernatural narratives of the gospels. HJ speculation is about the possibility of a historical author of a core sayings tradition attributed to Jesus who may or may not have been crucified.

I sometimes liken it to the difference between Santa Claus and the historical Nicholas of Myra.

We all agree that there was no Santa Claus, the HJ discussion is about whether there was a St. Nicholas.

Lógos Sokratikós

We live in an information jungle. Most of us are not experts in most of the relevant fields, even though we take sides.

Juggling the available information is very hard to do, be it relative to belief(theism)/non-theism or not. It isn't a surprise to me that the groups don't overlap snug and exactly.

... In other words, most of us, most of time don't know what the sh-- to think! And it's not a wonder... everybody is preaching to us: theists, non-theists, TV evangelists, Al-Qaeda, abortionists, non-abortionists, feminists, gays, homophobes... Dizzy yet?

Godless Wonder

I don't know if Jesus really existed as a person or not, and I don't really have a belief one way or the other, but such a claim is not so extraordinary, that a person existed who claimed to be the messiah. David Koresh and lots of other nut jobs actually existed. Why not Jesus?

jswayze

Let me see if I can clarify why I think it is important for those of us capable of thinking beyond the Christian belief system to question the historicity of Jesus. (I want to do so in a few words...there are books that could be written on this topic, and should be written, for that matter.) Probably the most damaging aspect of western religions is their immutability when viewed as historical Truths, rather than as guidelines for living a good life. One of the responders hinted that the story of Jesus is based on the morality of the times in which the books were written, and this is certainly true.

Times change, but if the Bible, and particularly the Jesus teachings are construed as the Word of God, there is no room for negotiation. As we say, "It's the Gospel Truth." If it is believed to be the literal Word of God, there are no limits in what should be done to protect and enforce those words. The same applies to the other western religions as well, but for most of us, Christianity is our common point of contact.

Does the importance of Jesus not being historical make sense to you? The point is, it is very different than whether or not Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. These are life and death issues. Ask the Left Behind believers. I began with statistics, so let me quote another: almost 40% of everyone in America believes the Second Coming will occur in his/her lifetime. Believing that, why would you be worrying over the environment, or even trying to pacify the Arabic world?

Another responder said there are "scraps" of evidence that Jesus did in fact exist, or someone like him. That simply is not true, and all of us should stop being lured into debates on this point. No credible theologian would argue this. If Christianity had one letter from, for instance, a Roman soldier saying, "By the way, today we crucified a guy who claimed to be the King of Jews", it would be trumpeted constantly from the roofs of every church. After all, thousand of period letters from Roman soldiers do exist. But a letter mentioning Jesus does not exist, nor does anything else exist of any nature whatsoever. And in fact, nothing will ever be found because it is mythology. Had he lived, or someone like him, some record would have been uncovered by now. As I said, you can bet Christians have been turning over every rock for the last 2000 years.

I hope I've put together a strong enough argument for the importance of this. Historicity leads to elitism and justification. We who should know better should stand firm on this point.

Diogenes the Cynic

History is not amenable to what you think is important and I think your extropolations are way off base. The existence of a Historical Jesus does not in any way translate to any sort of necessary acceptance of the Bible as "truth." I've already said the gospels are not historical truth. All it would mean is that a real person was mythicised into a figure of devotion or worship. It has happened many times in human history. There is nothing extraordinary about it.
That was me and it is true. There are a few scant scraps of evidence which suggest that HJ may have existed. Those scraps would be the Pauline references to brothers and disciples of Jesus as well as the extra-Biblical references in Josephus and Tacitus. The Josephus passages may be spurious (at least the TF is) and Tacitus has problems as well, but I think the fact that Paul's letters give a faint hint that he may have believed Jesus was historical is a "scrap" of evidence. The majority of contemporary scholarship still accepts HJ even if they don't accept any of the supernatural aspects of the story.
This is the lamest sort of argumentum ad absentia. Letters from Romans? Are you serious? Do you think we have letters from Romans about every single person who was crucified? Why would we?

I am agnostic on HJ. I don't know, but I do know that it can't be definitively ruled out and I also believe that it is no threat to free thought or to atheism if he did.

Your argument is like saying that we can't accept the existence of Mohammed because then we'd have to accept the Koran as the word of Allah.

Columbus

I don't know better. Something happened two thousand years ago that resulted in the Christian religious tradition. It seems most likely that it was a charismatic rabbi causing trouble for the local authorities. He got himself killed and his followers carried on, embroidering the legend for many years. Eventually some of the accounts were written down, by then largely myth.
I don't think there is a clear connection. I think a true biography of the HJ would be more helpful than claiming that he didn't exist at all. You'll never be able to demonstrate the negative, even if you are right.
Not really. At least not to me. But welcome to the Forum. I'm sure that we agree upon much more than we disagree with.

Tom

sharon45

Jesus out of the NT couldn't have existed even barring the supernatural.

The letters of 'paul' are about a supernatural jesus.

A historical jesus should be like the number 468,247,845. Yes there were lots of Jewish men and Rabbis at around the time, and there were many claimed Messiahs too. So also are there lots of 468 millions, but only 'one' '468,247,845'.

Many things happen two thousand years ago, but the christian religion is a product of two thousands years and ever changing as is the character of jesus.

I have known about this point for a long time. The world would have been much better off if there never were any religions.