Requia

I have repeatedly seen people say that the possibility of a Jesus who was just a man, and whose followers blew things out of proportion, should be discounted.

So why exactly, would people believe in a fake stories about someone who didn't exist, but not in fake stories about someone who did? People believed the stories about Ceaser, and there was actual historical proof he wasn't a god, shouldn't it be even easier to believe fantastical stories about someone who was only written about by people who bought into his godhood?

fromdownunder

I certainly accept that the Gospels may be very loosely based on a person, or persons who actually existed, and went barnstorming around spreading some sort of word early in the 1st Century CE. Anything beyond this is speculation.

Norm

aa5874

But, don't people today believe in the very Jesus whom they have never seen?

People today just read or hear about Jesus and believe he lived and believe he is the son of the God of the Jews. Some ask Jesus for money, health, to forgive all their sins and give them eternal life, yet they have never physically seen him.

They do not want Jesus to be just a man, they want him to be a God that can help them.

If Jesus was actually a man and people knew him as a man, I don't know if people would have asked him to forgive theirs sins and to give them eternal life when he was executed for blasphemy before he was even forty, based on the story.

I think it is far easier to believe Jesus existed as a God in the past, than to to know personally that Jesus was a man and was executed and yet ask that very dead man to forgive your sins and give you eternal life.

Requia

Yes but why would they know he had no special powers? What keeps whoever told the stories of him from hallucinating or lying about a real person, instead of doing the same for a fictitious person? Especially if this person was someone they had been told about, but not ever met.

Jesus could also easily have been a cult type leader, in which case it would have been a simple matter for a few of his followers to be far gone enough in their beliefs that they continued to see him after he died.

Please note that I'm not saying that it *did* happen this way. Just that there's no reason to assume no such person (with that name or otherwise) ever existed.

aa5874

But, if you read the writings of antiquity you would begin to realise that there were already perhaps hundreds of mythical Gods that were being worshipped over the habitable earth.

The Jews would not have worshipped a man who called himself a God. They would kill him.

Jesus believers would not have worshipped a man. That is one of the reason why they were being persecuted, they refused to worship the Caesars.

Jesus had to be introduced as a God from the very start, it could not have been found out that Jesus was a man.

If Jesus was just a man and Peter knew it, then he would have lied to himself and died for a lie.

The Jesus story appears to be just a belief probably written long after the supposed events and very far from Judaea and was believed by people to be true until Constantine made it the official religion in the 4th century.

zygot126

I believe in jesus, he is my inner jesus though. My inner jesus did not ascend into heaven. If you were raised a christian you usually have at the very least an inner jesus It is hard to shake.

I also believe in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These are more real and more deep in my heart from childhood than any Ceasar yet they are falsehoods total fabrications based upon many stories told over many years - These stories were told frm the heart over the years to our children. They were the stories of hope that gave some semblance of a meaning of life. Not to mention a great and noble way to live ones life.

It has only been recently with the advent of modern medicine has the hope of our getting to the next level been even remotely possible that which is eternity. Now existence and knowledge take us on what will be a fantastic journey.

One last thing - if any particular ceasar was a god it is quite possible you would not actually know it you see the next ceasar could quite simply exterminate from the planet that individuals name and could even if he wanted take an average person or the legacy of some revolutionary prophet and make him a god and infallable and do so with an iron fist meaning death to all who dared not beleive. Could just could maybe probably did happen.

Steven Carr

'Discounted'? No, just examined to see if it fits the evidence.

Did Ned Ludd exist?

Why do you think people believe fake stories about the Maitreya, a person who does not exist, but is claimed to be an obscure Muslim living in the East End of London, and who will appear on our TV screens any time real soon?

Clivedurdle

Jesus is a very special god who has become a human and lived and suffered and died like us - but with a very important caveat - without sin.

So this god is better than the others because he is fully god and fully human (but how can you be fully human without sin? How can you die as through sin death came into the world?)

So you can pray to this god for your sins, although even that doesn't quite work as huge chunks of the planet use human saints as intercessors!

Jesus is another god, this time with more added human, but not real sinful human!

Clivedurdle

Would it help if we imagine a continuum of gods?

At one end we have pure gods, some spiritual, some philosophical, the deist god, Ahura Mazda, Plato's god, Zeus.

Then second level gods, trumped up tribal gods, El. Yhwh, Allah are in this group.

Then various children of the gods and mixtures of humans and gods - Hercules, Jesus, angels, cherubim, chimera

Then humans who become gods - Caesars.

Then saints

Then you and me. (you are sons and daughters of the living god).

Doug Shaver

Those people believe the stories are not fake. Is that so hard to understand?