veclock

Was Jesus an historical person? What does the evidences point at?
And which similarities do Jesus have with for example egypt gods?
Thanks in advance!

PhilVaz

<< Was Jesus an historical person? What does the evidences point at? >>

The vast majority of all historical scholars will say Yes. In here the vast majority say No.

Jeffery Jay Lowder of Internet Infidels: “There is simply nothing intrinsically improbable about a historical Jesus; the New Testament alone (or at least portions of it) are reliable enough to provide evidence of a historical Jesus. On this point, it is important to note that even G.A. Wells, who until recently was the champion of the christ-myth hypothesis, now accepts the historicity of Jesus on the basis of 'Q'.” ("Josh McDowell's 'Evidence' for Jesus," also Wells The Jesus Myth [Open Court, 1999])

Secular historian Will Durant: “The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul....No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion....in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ....no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so loft an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel.” ("Ceasar and Christ," volume 3 of Story of Civilization)

Graham Stanton of Cambridge: “Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.” (The Gospels and Jesus)

Bishop N.T. Wright: “It is quite difficult to know where to start, because actually the evidence for Jesus is so massive that, as a historian, I want to say we have got almost as much good evidence for Jesus as for anyone in the ancient world....the evidence fits so well with what we know of the Judaism of the period....that I think there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today [aside from G.A. Wells, etc], who doubt the existence of Jesus....No Jewish, Christian, atheist, or agnostic scholars have ever taken that [proposition] seriously since. It is quite clear that in fact Jesus is a very, very well documented character of real history. So I think that question can be put to rest.” ("The Self-Revelation of God in Human History" from There Is A God by Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese [HarperOne, 2007])

Robert Van Voorst: “Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their [i.e. Jesus-mythers] arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely....The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question....Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.” (Jesus Outside the New Testament, page 6, 14, 16)

<< And which similarities do Jesus have with for example egypt gods? >>

Osiris: possible "resurrection" if you define "resurrection" as being chopped up into several pieces, being re-assembled by Isis, and living in the world of the dead (the "underworld").

Horus: healing miracles are associated with Horus-the-Child, Horus was (like Jesus) a "son of God" since he was son of Isis and Osiris, and he was (like Jesus) a lord and a king, as Jesus was "King of Kings" and "Lord of Lords" (book of Revelation).

All About Horus: An Egyptian Copy of Christ?

Parallel Pagan Saviors

Phil P

motorhead

If I had a dollar for every historical Jesus thread around here...

Are you at all familiar with HJ studies? Even try to Google "Historical Jesus" and see what you get. Lots of info. Not trying to scare you away, just if you want more info.

veclock

Sorry, after creating this thread I saw the others.
I've googling, but I've found too much info, so I thought it would be simpler to get shorter answers here.

Yellum Notnef

With all those dollars you could buy the fanciest gun they make and shoot yourself in the head which IMO would be better than reading one more argument about Jesus, historical or not.

I have no idea why people are so drawn to this, but then I also don't understand why some people love to play chess so much either. I guess the two are similar except with chess there are no crazy apologists who appear out of nowhere when ever some one takes the chess set out of the closet.

ApostateAbe

There is a lot of information out there on the topic, and almost all of it is complete bullshit. There are a lot of people with an interest in making people believe that Jesus was a mythical offshoot of Horus, Krishna, Mithra, Hercules--those are the bigger ones, but there are many more, and the proponents can't really decide among themselves which ones have priority, mainly because they make up the information as they go. Try to find the scholarly descriptions and translations of the original sources on the mythical figures of antiquity. If someone tries to claim that Horus was crucified and came back to life, then try to find out about the original document that proves that the ancients believed Horus was crucified and came back to life. Don't settle on a polemic writing from the 19th century.

bacht

Really? You must be aware of the evangelical & fundamentalist emphasis on the literal truth of scripture. For them Jesus was definitely a Galilean Jew born around the year 0 and executed around the year 30 by a Roman official in Jerusalem. This is the same mindset that insists there was a real Noah and his ark rests on some mountain in Turkey, or that Moses really did wander 40 years in the Sinai with thousands of Hebrews, etc.

Yellum Notnef

Sorry. What I meant to say was "I have no idea why rational non-religious people are so drawn to this".

I'm well aware of why people in the cult care so much about it since stupid is as stupid does. Nothing you can do about that.

No Robots

Why don't you start by telling us why you spend so much time on this subject?

ApostateAbe

To answer your question, "Was Jesus an historical person?", the answer is yes, and that answer is found by constructing the most likely theory on Jesus to explain the contents of the earliest Christian writings. The earliest writings on Jesus are the authentic epistles of Paul and the synoptic gospels. Paul writes with disinterest in meeting James, "the brother of the Lord," and the brother of Jesus according to the synoptic gospels, and Paul writes of having meetings and disagreements with Peter, a direct disciple of Jesus according to the synoptic gospels. The synoptic gospels accurately describe the sociological environment of the region, and they paint a picture of Jesus that fits a known profile--an apocalyptic cult leader. According to the synoptic gospels, Jesus makes a prophecy of the end of the world that would happen within "this generation" and before "some standing here" taste death. Christians kept the prophecy throughout the centuries, but the apparent deadline quickly became an embarrassment that they had to reinterpret and defend awkwardly in their writings. It is the sort of Jesus that is unlikely to be born in mere myth, but examples of such cult leaders are abundantly found throughout the world and throughout history.

I recommend the book, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, by Bart D. Ehrman, a very well-qualified and mainstream scholar of New Testament studies. His book can be found in many libraries, and it is almost fully published on Google Books in pdf form.