Numerous popes have been accused of miracles. It doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. If the criteria for a historical presence is that no one ever alleged you did anything supernatural, we’re going to have to cross a lot of people off the list of historical figures.
I have to point out that the oldest extant biblical texts, including the Old Testament aren’t that old. 200 years BCE, tops. Things have not survived well from that period. Papyrus ain’t that great. So when people say, “Hey! There’s no scrap of paper with a name on it!” I say, “So?” People after Jesus wrote down oral histories and summarized written histories that have not survived. Oral does not mean, “totally and completely bogus.” Oral histories carry with them inaccuracies, but so did written histories from this time period. Compare this with Moses, where the distance between his reports and his alleged existence are far greater.
You can compare Moses directly to other Near Eastern mythical figures and draw the conclusion that he’s a legend. Jesus was part of what is known to have been a common profession (prophet, not carpenter) at the time of his alleged existence. Reports of Jesus are not that far off from the period of his supposed existence, and those reports seem to refer to prior accounts of testimony, rather than the retelling of a folk-legend. But if you’re looking for something contemporaneous, then you may as well say that the Old Testament didn’t exist before 200 BCE, because we don’t have anything earlier. Of course the real work of understanding the origins of these stories involves inference rather than direct observation. Until someone invents a time machine.
Yes, but for each of them there are numerous independent non-magical references as well. If the ONLY reference for Jesus is magical. So I’d argue that is apples and oranges.
From 200 BCE, you are right. From the roman empire and jesus’s time, not true!
So are there not any other accounts of him except the biblical records? darn you had me excited for a moment…
Just last year it was discovered that the Egyptian god Horus was based upon an actual living person. He was called Howie, had brown hair, and was believed to eat rice crispies. Needless to say this is all rather controversial.
Then you haven’t read the Bible very carefully. There’s a lot in there that has little to do with magic in a direct sense. Of course, if you want to dismiss anything from the book as being utterly and completely false, then you’re not engaging it as a skeptic, but as a cynic. It’s not about history anymore, it’s about not wanting to believe a word of something that may very well contain factual information because it’s bound up with magic, because people at the time believed in magic and bound everything up with it. Then there’s the fact that New Testament is not a book. It’s numerous articles that were bound that way for present day consumption. Just because the magical bits were bound up with less magical bits, it doesn’t mean that’s how people should evaluate that evidence.
That’s only 200 years difference. One of the big deciding factors in what survives and what is discoverable is the quantity of materials. Empires generate tons of paperwork. Desert preachers don’t.
Again, that’s your personal bugaboo. But, there is a Jesus reference by Tacitus that is extremely negative towards Christians if that helps. It’s one reference, but it does meet the absurd criteria of being extra-Biblical.
Oh I’ve read the bible front to back numerous times, many different translations, even the original king james text which is 86 books as opposed to the modern versions which only has 66. I’m just as familiar with the apocrypha, the deuterocanonical texts, and many of the essene texts. I’ve studied all 3 historical canonizations that have lead to the modern bible, and the alterations that were made to the lists of books and some of the text themselves at each one. I’m even familiar with the more modern linguistic analysis of the original text that verify the time periods for some of the text and show that others were contributed to and changed by multiple authors at different periods in time. I find all this stuff fascinating. I don’t believe any of it religiously, but I am well aware that the modern bible contains numerous historical accounts as well as quite a few that aren’t. Just because I don’t personally believe the evidence corroborates there being a historical jesus doesn’t mean you aren’t free to believe in one or that I am unfamiliar with the material being discussed, nothing could be further from the truth.
The roman empire was meticulous at record keeping and knew how to create inks and writing materials that lasted much much longer which is the biggest factor.
See now this is finally something interesting and relevant and actually worth considering, and a good contribution to the discussion. This is something that can be weighed towards there having been an actual human. I thank you for this tidbit of information of which I was not previously aware. You can bet I’ll be reading a lot more about this. Thank you.
And it should be too obvious to state, but requiring external verification of people or events before considering religious texts to contain historical facts is standard historical academia, not a personal bugaboo whatever that is. Requiring external verification is to eliminate bias, it isn’t a bias, it is standard practice. The credibility and verifiability of any historical account are always weighed against all the external corroboratory or contradictory information, this is crucial to piece together accurate historical information, and without it historical information is anecdotal at best and is much less reliable. It is a good thing to challenge these ideas and look for additional information, if they are true they will only benefit from such scrutiny.
(a) there are not millions of theologians in the UK but some much smaller number.
(b) whereas Episcopalians and some others require their clergy to learn theology, Greek and Hebrew, the majority of Protestant sects don’t. Their ideas are not based on theology but “Bible study”, which is quite different (the difference between physics and washing machine repair).
Interestingly, the Jewish leaders that did have an impact outside their countries were the Omris, Omri and his descendants. But they appear little in the Bible because they were not Jahwists; their state religion was that of Ba’al. Where they do appear it is to show the righteous supporters of Jahweh overcoming them, e.g. Jezebel. Nobody in their right mind would regard the Bible as any kind of historical document in the modern sense.
Modern historians are finding out how unreliable history was in the recent past, let alone 2000 years ago and more.
I think it’s quite possible that Jesus was a real person who saw himself as a teacher, told parables, gained followers and was tried and crucified. I also think that a lot of things were ascribed to him such as miracles and his divinity that were fabrications. Furthermore, I think many elements of his story were altered to fit the beliefs of his followers about the Jewish messiah. In the same way, I think St. Patrick was a real person but even his own accounts of his life are unreliable.
Here are four references, although they are references to his fame rather than primary sources and there are various questions as to their reliability (for example, Josephus’ writings were edited by Christians, but there is some consensus on the original writings). One of the interesting things is that people like Tacitus considered Chrisianity to be a superstition, but not that the story was made up out of whole cloth.
The census is definitely problematic, as not only is there no reference to him in the census, there isn’t an easy fit between the census as described in Luke and the Roman practices at the time (for example, only Joseph would have had to register on behalf of his household and he wouldn’t have had to travel to his ancestors’ home town.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think it’s important to differentiate between miracle-performing God in human flesh and human folk teacher Jesus. As far as I’m concerned, the second one is fairly plausible, while the first one, well…
As far as I’m concerned, there’s enough evidence for me to believe that there was a person called Jesus who lived about that time and was crucified. I think we’re a long way from the kind of evidence that would require me to live my life in a certain way or believe that he came back to life.
This is one of the reasons I find it a little odd when Christians get a lot of criticism from Jews or Muslims for the inaccuracies in the New Testament. As far as I can tell, their stories all start with some pretty major artistic licence and the emphasis on accurate reproduction happens after the damage has been done.
Are you mad?
I have absolutely no idea how you arrive at that conclusion.
Historical Jesus refers to an actual person whom the scriptures are loosely based on. For this there is no evidence whatsoever.
Magical Jesus refers to the same, only magic. Again, no evidence.
Fine, I’ll leave this quote from an actual expert, which I suspect you are not since you have not engaged any of the numerous arguments here,
…there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.
-Source: Bart D Ehrman (Wiki Biography)
This is also for you, @redesigned. While you have engaged the arguments, I completely disagree with you with regards to external verification. External verification is not a thing in and of itself. Historians certainly compare sources, but that only applies to sources that conflict. The reason external verification is not a “thing” is because “external” is not a thing. You can’t define externality in a methodologically rigorous way. The earlier you are in Christian history, the more “external” they are to the concept of Christianity. There are criteria such as embarrassment, plurality of independent sources (which means from different people, not different diaspora) that are part of sound methodology that kind of get at what you’re saying, but the fact is, if the Ancient Egyptians say that they defeated someone in battle (and we know they were horrendous liars about this sort of thing) we believe them until there is reason not to. Because fundamentally, there is a science to analyzing the stuff people make up. There are patterns in folklore, and historians tend to be familiar with that pattern.
If we apply the extreme criteria that Christ-Myth people want to apply, we end up not believing in a lot of people whose historicity is never ever questioned. This is a ridiculous idea. I live with someone who is a folklorist with a PhD who has studied the Bible and biblical mythology. I had to stop him last night to confirm, that yes, I am in fact right. There is a strong consensus in the community of people who study the Bible that Jesus is at very least a plausible figure. But I refrain from argument from authority because this is the Internet, and I have never seen an Internet discussion where even the most ignorant novice doesn’t feel uncomfortable arguing the experts are wrong. Worse than that are the people who know just enough to dig themselves a nice hole.
To be fair, I think religious people are just as flummoxed by atheists/agnostics.
I think it’s more about meaningful community, which I think in modern society, lots of people feel they are lacking. Lots of people like going to Quaker or Unitarian churches for that reason - you generally aren’t required to hold onto any sort of dogmatic belief (including a belief in god), and both congregations tend to be strongly communal, geared toward attempting to create an egalitarian community.
That’s fair enough I think and it’s sometime that some religious people tend to be assholes about. Which is sad.
My own upbringing was similar (my dad was catholic, lapsed and came back at the end of his life and my mom was nominally methodist). My sister is a born again, and her family is very religious and I’m an agnostic with a secular humanist family… I think people do things because they are culturally expected and they can provide important moments of tradition, which connect you to an older generation. I don’t think you discount that. We’re not Christians, but we still celebrate christmas for example.
