I think Lemmy has a problem with history in general, since most people on here have degrees/training in STEM. I see a lot of inaccurate “pop history” shared on here, and a lack of understanding of historiography/how historians analyze primary sources.
The rejection of Jesus’s historicity seems to be accepting C S Lewis’s argument - that if he existed, he was a “lunatic, liar, or lord,” instead of realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
People think that if it’s not recorded, it didn’t happen. That line of thinking ignores that entropy of historical documents. Records are lost in fires, floods, looting, improper care, and more. There is also the issue of conflicting information from different sources. Is the document written by Ancient Person A about Ancient Event correct or is it Ancient Person B’s version correct.
STEM people are trained with principles that are consider absolute until a paradigm shift happens.
It’s why historians have the 5 C’s: context, change over time, causality, complexity, and contingency.
The profession what would under historical evidence and historical thinking would be lawyers. Lawyers get cases all the time were you don’t have direct evidence. For example, it’s a murder case. There is no murder weapon and no eye witness. The victim was found with multiple stab wounds. There’s a suspect in custody.
How do lawyers prove the suspect did the murder? Lawyers bring in collaborative evidence, such as: the suspect was seen with the victim before the murder, the suspect was seen in the area after the estimated time of death, the suspect had blood on their shirt, the suspect had a motive, etc.
To circle back to Jesus. There is no fundamental law of physics nor experiment to prove Jesus. Historians have to apply the five C’s to prove the existence of Jesus. Collaborating documents, events, archeological evidence, carbon dating of physical evidence, etc.
Of course as soon as religion is mentioned, people’s biases go into overdrive.
STEM people are trained with principles that are consider absolute until a paradigm shift happens.
That’s inaccurate at the very least for scientists. Scientists are trained to test and retest everything. We tend to give them names like “positive controls” when we run experiments on things we’re pretty sure are going to work, but we still test them.
realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
Maybe nothing unusual about his existence, since it is historically proven anyway. But what about the stories of healing and even resurrecting? Would you also think that these were not unusual?
“Miracle workers” were not that uncommon during the era - see Apollonius of Tyana who lived around roughly the same time.
I think OP was asking if the particular miracles ascribed to Jesus were common.
For resurrection from the dead, Empedocles was said to have thrown himself into volcano to ascend to Godhood. He would have existed about four centuries before Jesus, but this story would have probably been popular at the time of Jesus.
Elijah raises a boy from the dead in the Hebrew Bible.
In a pre-modern medicine world, how do you actually tell if someone is dead or not? How do you explain things like a remission from cancer? Even in the modern world, at faith healing ceremonies people will walk out of their wheelchairs or claim to be healed of a variety of ailments. It’s not impossible to imagine scenarios where someone appeared to be dead but was not, or had some chronic condition that they appeared to temporarily recover from.
Excellent reply! Had not thought on much of that, especially the last phrase. Seen that IRL when dad was dying of lung cancer, many have told tales of sudden lucidity at death, all that.
Just want to add a couple of things
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There were no extra-Biblical references to Pontius Pilate until 1961. Now imagine how much documentation must have surrounded the Roman prefect of Judea. All of it gone, except for a bit of limestone.
Also an argument (I think I heard it from Hitchens, but not sure): We know that the Nativity story is bogus because the Census that was supposed to bring Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem is anachronistic. And we know that it’s important that Jesus be from Bethlehem (City of David) because the Messiah was prophesized to be from there.
So the question is: if were making up Jesus from whole cloth, why not just make him Jesus of Bethlehem? Why go to the trouble unless Jesus of Nazareth was something people were already familiar with?
I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding your 1961 statement, but from Wiki on Pontius Pilate:
Surviving evidence includes coins he minted and the Pilate Stone inscription. Ancient sources such as Josephus, Philo, and
the Gospel of Lukedocument several incidents of conflict between Pilate and the Jewish population, often citing his insensitivity to Jewish religious customs. The Christian gospels, as well as Josephus and Tacitus, attribute the crucifixion of Jesus to Pilate’s orders.The Pilate Stone is where his 1961 date comes from. The Josephus bit that mentions Pilate is the “Testimonium Flavianum” which is the reference to Jesus in Josephus that was likely edited by a later source. It does look like the numismatic evidence (coins) are ridiculously common though.
Often, coins are the only evidence of historical figures. Lots of petty kings that never have anything written about them, but do have coins.
As you indicated, this isn’t an unpopular opinion in the wider world. There are records outside of Christian scripture that mention Jesus. No legitimate historians doubt that he existed.
All legitimate historians doubt that. You’re referring to RELIGIOUS SCHOLARS, who are just lying priests and followers, desperate to make any bullshit into something more than bullshit. You’re fucking delusional.
Is Bart Ehrman a “religious scholar”?
Modern biblical scholarship starts with a prima facie assumption that miracles and god are not real. It’s a very rich field, with many people with a variety of religious beliefs and non beliefs.
Your ignorance and rejection of an entire academic field is no different from a creationist rejecting the academic consensus of biologists.
Please give me an example of “legitimate historian.” Do you read much academic history? Do you have a degree or any formal training in history on which to make the claim that you can distinguish “legitimate” historians from illegitimate ones?
Things we don’t understand happen. When we like the happening, it’s a “miracle,” when we don’t, a “catastrophe.”
I’m so puzzled by this insistence that all who analyze religious history must be religious nutcases. Even if you write off all the scholars who are religious, religion still exists as a concept in the world, and in the same way you don’t have to be a virus to study virology, you don’t have to be religious to study religion. There are plenty of atheists who are deeply interested in religion, if for no other reason than the massive impact it has on all our lives.
All legitimate historians doubt that
Who ? When ? What part of their argument makes them more credible than other historians ?
Yeah - it is an unpopular opinion on Lemmy though. I’ve been accused of being Christian for making this argument, as if accepting the historicity of the figure inherently means accepting the claim that he was a divine being.
historicity
I think you’re looking for the word “history”
edit: sorry… I try not to be that guy, but I couldn’t help myself
I stand corrected, TIL!
That’s because nobody goes around claiming jebus was real except christians. Way to troll, asshole.
Ehrman has said that he is both agnostic and atheist but that “I usually confuse people when I tell them I’m both”. “Atheism is a statement about faith and agnosticism is a statement about epistemology”, he said.
Ehrman argues that Jesus of Nazareth existed historically, and has summarized the claim in popular form “he did exist, whether we like it or not”. His position on Christology is historical rather than confessional. In summarizing How Jesus Became God, NPR recorded his judgment that “Jesus himself didn’t call himself God and didn’t consider himself God”. He has also written that Jesus did not teach postmortem reward and punishment as popularly conceived. In a 2020 essay he argued that Jesus proclaimed resurrection and the coming kingdom rather than eternal torment.
Adults are discussing history. Whatever they did to you in Sunday school class is not relevant here.
Going from memory here, I heard it years back. Robert M. Price’s podcast The Bible Geek covered the argument against a historical Jesus in an episode, noting that a major pillar in the argument is an obituary written by Josephus. Wikipedia has a page on Josephus’s account.
Price’s argument, such that I remember, has to do with the fact that Josephus’ account outright calls Jesus the Messiah, despite supposedly being written in the first century CE when this would have been a niche argument, suggesting that this account was not actually written when it purports to be. But I haven’t listened to Bible Geek in a long time, all of this could be a misrepresentation.
Yeah afaik the earliest record of the gospels and Jesus date to 90AD, which is of course beyond the memory of a single generation. Either the stories were passed down orally that long (telephone game), or the whole thing was really invented around that time, since there are multiple written records suddenly appearing in the early 2nd century.
The creation of Christianity around 90-120AD makes more sense than anything to me, given the geopolitics of the time.
A stroll through any necropolis back then would reveal many tombs marked Yeshua and Miryam and Yosef. Just common names. If someone were to invent myths around that time, they might just pick names like that, especially given the hebrew meaning of Yeshua (salvation through god).
I not a biblical scholar so grains of salt.
The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written about 70 CE. (There’s also evidence that a “Q source” and a “sayings source” were floating around earlier - the commonalities in Luke and Matthew) Paul’s epistles are even earlier; Galatians was written somewhere 40-60 CE. Paul’s epistles are written to communities of Christians, meaning that that Christianity has already spread by then.
It’s not quite certain that Jesus and Paul actually met in person. So all his writing might be apocryphal. His word might have become christian canon, but he is not really a source one can trust.
Price is specifically referring to the “Testimonium Flavianum“ there, which most scholars agree was altered. The part of The Antiquities that refers to “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” most scholars think is original, and I don’t know if Price has made an argument about that quote.
Price is probably the only person with enough background to be a mythicist, but his arguments still just don’t seem to match how people act. “Oh, the Egyptians have Osiris, let’s make up our own god who gets resurrected!”
The evidence just seems more likely to show that the man existed, and had more elaborate details added to his biography as time went on. You can see a much higher “Christology” as you read each Gospel in the order they were written (details in the resurrection story, how many angels were at the tomb) until you get to John which makes Jesus the logos itself. The story needs to start with some sort of nucleus, something real, that has things added to it step by step.
“Oh, the Egyptians have Osiris, let’s make up our own god who gets resurrected!”
Isn’t that pretty much the whole origin of the roman pantheon? They heard about the cool greek gods and made their own copies.
That’s a common misunderstanding/simplification. It’s more “wow, these gods are kinda similar to ours, so they must be the same.” Portable Orange on YT has a good and well sourced video, and I think reading Dr. Devereaux’s blog posts is a good way to understand some ideas about ancient polytheism. Neither of these are published journal articles or books, but they both thoroughly cite their sources.
I’ve always understood historical Jesus as a concession, and not a reflection of confirmed existence.
Who fucking cares?
Why do we care about history in general?
It provides us with some patterns in human behavior, things that cannot really be studied in a lab. You could approach early Christianity as a way to better understand mass movements, or the different coping strategies of an oppressed/conquered people. You could read the text of the New Testament and ask yourself why these ideas were appealing and what that might say about human nature.
As part of the study of ideas, Christianity is a really interesting expression of how Hellenistic thought mixed with Judaism. There’s a reason a lot of Neoplatonists were Christian.
The early conflicts with Judaism as Christianity developed its own identity have pretty far reaching impacts, with the death of Jesus being placed on all Jews and being used to justify atrocities to this current day.
Or, as a guy that thinks about the Roman Empire at least a couple times a day, it’s a great window into the experience of a backwater Roman province that eventually revolted and was absolutely crushed.
Jesus is not history in general, and I still don’t fucking care.
Because people made religion out of it? A religion from a Canaanitic people, who never set food in the desert they claim to have walked in for 40 years, but hey, we can’t all worship the same Canaanitic Storm God Elohim, amirite?
Yeah, cults are gonna cult. People made religion out of spaghetti and comets. I still don’t care if Jesus ever existed.
It’s quite possible, but the waters are muddied since every legendary facet was treated as fact, so the historical record is relatively less reliable given how much of it was manipulated in the name of faith.
Celsus, a second century author and critic of Christianity, did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Early Roman and Jewish critics of Christianity did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Instead, their claims were that he was the son of a Roman soldier (no virgin birth) and that his miracles were attributable to the same common magic that everyone believed in at that time.
If I were writing in 170 CE, and wanted to prove that Christianity was false because Jesus was made up, then I would probably say that.
Historians are aware of the fact that texts can be altered or manipulated or untrue. That’s part of the process of reading a primary source - thinking critically about what your source is saying, what biases they might have, and yes, if there were alterations or manipulations. There is ample study and linguistic analysis to determine those kinds of changes.
People not claiming he wasn’t real is not evidence that he was real. Presumably they were making statements acceptable for their period in time in their location. Was it acceptable for them to proposition that he may not have existed? Is that even useful?
If the goal is to convince people to not follow that religion, and they currently do, they’re much more likely listen if you agree they have a basis in reality but are slightly incorrect. It’s part of the reason Christianity has been so successful —it meets people where they are and adapts to their beliefs.
If you want to convince people that they’re wrong, you don’t say that. You say “you’re right about this, but this part is wrong.” If you say their entire belief system is built on lies then they double down. It’s been shown time and time again with doomsday cults. The more they’re proven wrong the more strongly the followers believe in it.
You can’t just assume something is true because historians didn’t say it wasn’t. That’s not how it works.
I mean… maybe. He was writing about events 150 years ago in another country. He may not have had direct knowledge of them. Think about how contentious history can be today with the benefit of modern documentary evidence, professional historians, etc. and think about how uncertain things under such distance would be back then.
Okay, now do Atlantis.
The “evidence” for Atlantis is Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, which is pretty clear in context to be a myth Plato is using to make a philosophical point. He’s not claiming it is historical, and it connects to Plato’s ideal of a “Noble Lie.”
…there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
I bet he was a member of the Judean People’s Front.
Fuck off! He’d definitely have been a member of the Peoples front of Judea
Splitters
I think you’re both wrong. I think he just always looked on the bright side of life.
I never understood the problem with Jesus existing. Like, duh, you think the Roman Empire, the America of the time, the Big Satan, would just be randomly coerced into changing their state religion by, well, nothing? A group of loud folks that followed the teachings of… no one? Even without much historical knowledge, Jesus existing seems like the most reasonable conclusion, lol.
I think those who had bad experiences with religion often go all out… but just because some religious ideologies might be internally inconsistent or just because your parents forced you to go to church instead of letting you play Pokémon Emerald and you resent them for it does not mean that nothing behind Judeo-Christianity happened. 🤷
Just because Jesus could have existed, doesn’t necessarily mean that he did
I mean, he did leave a big mark in the world but yeah, sure, although we’re about two millennia late for visual confirmation, lol.
Yeah, so did Zeus
I think you misunderstand this post: Jesus is a dude who lived. Just a dude. No one is making any more claims.
And that’s not an agreed upon fact among historians.
Except a guy called (roughly translated and modernized) Jesus did exist and was associated with messianic cults and seems to have been crucified. Which wasn’t particularly uncommon, either the name, the messianic cults, or the crucifixions. Basically there’s no reason not to accept a guy that seems to be who Christianity is based on actually existed and probably said and did some of the (non miraculous, obviously) things that were written about him.
But then what prompted an apocalyptic political and religious movement to spring forth from the Levant at the time, with missionaries going round the world to share the message of one Yeshu from Galilee ?
I mean sure maybe it was a conspiracy and they lied about their founder but what’s the point of that ? Occam’s Razor tells you that most of the time when a group of people start repeating the exact same message claiming it comes from person X, then person X existed.
What’s baffling to me is that theories where Jesus doesn’t exist are generally more convoluted and less explicative. What’s the point ?
Chiming in here with no degrees or STEM training to say that I exist, but it’s unlikely there will be any record of me in a couple thousand years. Though I haven’t given the whole water to wine thing a go so don’t count me out just yet.
Jesus was in no way a historical figure.
Very convincing argument./s
Can you provide evidence of a 1st century conspiracy to make such a figure up? What was the purpose of that conspiracy?
Can you show some evidence he existed? We’ll wait
The onus is not on them to find you anything. The onus is on you to prove that he’s real.
Uhhh… no. Let’s use Occam’s razor here.
We have evidence of a group of followers of Jesus within a few decades of his death. Paul’s letters are probably the earliest written examples, written in the 60’s, where he is writing to groups of early Christians. We have independent confirmation in Josephus of “Jesus, who was called Christ” as well as the existence of John the Baptist.
The idea that a group of people in the mid first century all decided to collectively make up a guy who had supposedly died less than a few decades ago would require some kind of weird conspiracy. Lacking evidence of that conspiracy (or even evidence of a similar conspiracy?) the more reasonable explanation is that the guy existed. It’s not an extraordinary claim. We have about as much evidence for Socrates, who doesn’t automatically generate this kind of response.
The claim that the guy doesn’t exist has a lot more evidence than the claim that the guy does. The null hypothesis is that he existed, because it is the simplest way to explain the evidence we have, and doesn’t require a conspiracy that stretches over several communities and cities in the 1st century Roman Empire.
Again, the methodology of history is not the same as STEM. I want you to consider what you think the standard of evidence for providing someone exists is, and whether a personal dislike of the guy’s followers is coloring your interpretation of historical evidence.
I need you to stop patronizing people. I am well aware of how history works. People in STEM are capable of understanding other things. Wild, I know.
Historians do not agree on this, no matter how much you pretend that it’s a fact.
The onus is on you to prove that he’s real
gives a detailed and thoughtful answer that reflects modern historians consensus on the question
wtf bro stop patronizing people
You can’t make that shit up lmao
Historians do not agree on this, no matter how much you pretend that it’s a fact.
Who? Give me some historians that disagree. The free one I’ll give you is Robert Price, who will even admit that the mainstream historical consensus disagrees with him.
Yeah, people in STEM are capable of understanding other things, just like people in the humanities are capable of understanding other things. But if one’s background is in Asian history, and they start to claim that the mainstream academic consensus on general relativity is wrong, they’re going to need to provide some serious justification.
Have you read a text from before 1400?
Secular sources for his existence aren’t exactly abundant, but they’re fairly convincing. Certainly there are historical figures from that long ago with less evidence for their existence
I don’t think most serious scholars would swear that a Jesus existed at that time and place, but would say that it is much more likely than not based on the confirming evidence from outside of the Christian faith. At some point you need to decide how much evidence is enough for any ancient topic. There’s no particular reason that I’ve found credible enough to convince me that there WASN’T a historical figure there, even though I absolutely refuse to accept any magic or miracles.
That’s the thing though —you shouldn’t need convincing that he wasn’t real. You should need convincing the he was real. I don’t have any particular reason to doubt he existed, but equally I don’t have a good reason to believe it either, so I just don’t. That’s the default position.
I don’t need to doubt he existed to also not hold a belief that he did.
There’s a conspiracy theory that Jesus is a composite character plagiarised from half a dozen or more pre-Christian faiths, and in particular the key points of his life are actually personified versions of the Winter solstice and the movement of the sun and the stars (including the Zodiac in some versions of the theory).
It’s widely believed amongst atheists, but it’s simply not true on any level. He was a real dude and was really crucified, and the supposed earlier versions of Christ-like characteristics are either extremely tenuous coincidences or simply outright lies (with some honest mistranslations/misinterpretations). Bart Ehrman, an atheist himself but a world-renowned scholar on the history of Christianity, has several books which deal with this question to varying degrees, the main one being “Did Jesus Exist?”. It’s worth reading (or listening to) if you’re curious about it. He addresses the specific claims of proponents of the conspiracy theory directly, like those of Richard Carrier.
I’m atheist, but I respect history and historical scholarship. It’s one of the handful of disciplines that humanity can’t really afford to overlook or devalue in 2025 if we want to survive into the next millennia. Agreeing on reality is one of the hardest things to do in the current climate. Overeager atheism that plays fast and loose with historical fact is not helping us secularise the world. It’s making us seem like we’re debunkable, because in this specific case, we are. It’s like in a video game when you get to a boss fight and see that the boss has a glowing section on its body that you’re supposed to shoot. Pretending Jesus wasn’t a real person is like us placing a giant glowing chest plate on our efforts and watching helplessly as Christians fire directly at it. There’s no need for it.
