I thought it was like 33 BCE, which counted down to 0, which is when Jesus died…and then waited 2000 years to come back as Y2K, but we stopped that from happening by updating all the computers before they caused the apocalypse. So instead we got hats that counted down to another year.
Then a year and 9 months later 9/11 happened. And nobody cared anymore about bearded arabic guys from the middle east. I can’t speak for other countries, but here in America people went full racist mode. Sept 10th 2001, if you asked an average white guy what they thought of arabs, he’d probably just shrug. Sept 12th? He’s calling for death.
So I guess the real question isn’t whether he was born in 33 BCE, or 7 BCE or 0 AD. The real question is "What the fuck are we even doing on this planet, if it’s nothing more then a revolving door or racism? Who’s going to be the next target? Black people? The Irish? Mexicans? Jews? Arabs? The Dutch? Oh who can keep up anymore…It’s all one big pile of “FUCK ALL OF THIS SHIT!!!”
Always another day. Always another group to hate. Never an answer to the question “Why can’t we all just get along on a planet together?”
He was probably an amalgamation of many mystics and prophets.
What’s more likely? That his story is historically factually written, decades after his death, by a myriad collection of sources, people that also wrote “Holy books” during the same period that were rejected by Christianity as a whole? (like the apocrypha and Gnosticism).
Or that he’s a combination of many different holy men, which were pretty common at the time?
Or that He was the super-powered son of God, and there was a total eclipse for hours after His crucifixion that nobody else noticed, and He promised that He would come back in His apostle’s lifetime, but then He forgot for 2,000 years?
Iirc the current consensus among critical/secular Bible scholars is that he was probably a real guy, but the stories about him in the Bible are mostly fictional (eg, he was probably born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, did not have any supernatural abilities, and did not resurrect after being executed). Pretty sure Josephus, a historian who wrote a few decades after the historical Jesus would have died mentioned him, and iirc there’s at least one or two other mentions of him in non-Christian sources (or non Christian adjacent, Christian orthodoxy hadn’t really formed yet) from the first century CE.
Imo the most likely scenario is that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who publicly opposed the Roman state and was executed for it, and most of what we consider modern Christianity was invented by Paul and his clique.
They aren’t binary options.
For example, it’s also possible that there was a real person, but that then a lot of biographical details were added in and made up.
But it’s quite unlikely that the entire story is made up, in large part because of how much of the narrative is dealing with trying to claim that other people are wrong about it.
The earliest records are from a guy known to his audience as persecuting Jesus’s followers. Who then complains that his audience has accepted a different version of Jesus.
The earliest canonical narratives in Peter’s own tradition are trying to explain why he was present in the area where a trial that required bringing witnesses before the accused where two or more needed to agree for testimony to be considered was reportedly denying him there.
You simply don’t see details like that with made up supernatural narratives. Where’s the story about Mithras keeping his status secret and only making claims of being a promised savior in private? In the story where Dionysus is captured by pirates is there a weird line about someone running down the street butt naked?
The earliest texts in the Christian corpus have very odd nuances compared to pretty much all other fully fictional traditions we’re aware of, but those nuances are in line with what we see with more modern cults around a figure who ends up dead or imprisoned where there’s then competing splits thereafter.
It is very, very unlikely the accounts are 100% true, even in matters separate from the magic stuff. They are even outright at odds with each other. For example, John 18:20 makes a claim nothing was said in secret but the Synoptics all have secret explanations for at least the sower parable.
But the idea there was no historical individual at the kernel of it all is quite unlikely as well. There’s too much evidence the first century tradition is battling over the details of a record regarding a real centralizing figure that does not occur with synecretized or fabricated mythos.
Just because L Ron Hubbard was not a great war hero as Scientology claims does not imply there was no historical person named L Ron Hubbard founding the tradition that later made stuff up about him.
For example, it’s also possible that there was a real person, but that then a lot of biographical details were added in and made up.
I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, I’m sure there were real people. I just don’t see why anyone would insist it’s one person, this being quite common at the time (in name and deeds and prophecy).
Do I think that they (or one of them) had real powers to raise the dead and heal the sick? No. I also don’t think that the moon was cut in half by Mohamed, or that Moses parted the Red Sea; I don’t think any of these Abrahamic tales are real actual events…
But I would love to see any evidence to the contrary, and am always trying to learn more.
Oh, and a fun story about the crucifixion darkness.
So in Luke, the easiest copies described as the sun being eclipsed. Which was a huge controversy. Origen claimed it was the work of “agents of Satan.”
Why? Because the Passover occurs on a full moon and solar eclipses cannot happen at those times.
What can happen are lunar eclipses. In fact they are pretty common on Passover. And those actually match a lot of the details. Last for hours and not minutes. Seen around the world vs a small band.
The problem is that this was in the middle of the day, so it would not have been visible in the area.
What a lot of people don’t know is that at the time this was written, people knew how to calculate eclipses in the same Saros cycle. The Greeks even built a clockwork computer centuries earlier that did so.
As well, at the time the leading explanation was the (correct) one that lunar eclipses occurred because the Earth eclipsed the sun. Lucretius in 50 BCE wrote that it was so common it was basically presumed and he was encouraging keeping a more open mind for alternative explanations.
And there was a historical lunar eclipse on Passover in 33 CE, which would not have been visible in Judea. But importantly, this eclipse was in the same Saros cycle as a very famous lunar eclipse when Herod died.
It is not all that implausible that people, particularly Greek or Chaldean astronomers, would have known that there was a several hour long eclipse of the sun during the day on Passover in 33 CE.
My guess is that knowledge of a calculated lunar eclipse ended up incorporated into the early Synoptic circles (potentially even by the author of Luke given the mention of the Joel blood moon prophecy in Acts) and then further mythologized having lost the original context as if an eyewitness event like in Matthew where the author added earthquakes and zombies.
TL;DR: There probably was a daytime lunar eclipse on a Passover around that time which would have been fairly trivially calculable as having occurred given its very famous earlier visible occurrence in the cycle at the death of Herod.
Soooo flat earthers wrote our dominant religious texts?
This is very interesting, thank you. Any links would be appreciated, I love this kind of weirdness.
Added links!
Thank you! Learn something new every day
TIL Jesus was real and he was a combination of mystics and prophets and other holy men that were all transmutated into an evil chimera homonculus with alchemy and he had 8 arms and 7 legs and 3 heads and it was really gross and creepy.
Could be both tbh. He is literally described as man and God at the same time.
And so am i
Sure
He is literally described as man and God
So were thousands of other historical figures.
And who are we to say they’re all wrong, or any of them are?
We just have to square ourselves with the fact that every religious text written by our long dead ancestors is literal truth and that some malevolent super being has the power to write time and space the way we might write a grocery list.
hOW dARe yOu jEsUs wAs a WHiTe AmERiCaN mAn anD thE BIbLe IS tHE wORd Of GOD!!!
Wouldn’t it be funny if somebody went backin time and found our that he was just some toothless guy Northern India.
How would a white guy have ended up in Northern India at the time?
A white guy?
By technical definition. You can look into why Arabs are considered white by US definitions.
You want me to google “are Arabs considered white in the US in 2026?”?
As far as the census department is concerned, yes they still are. There is a reason the select race option says white/caucasion instead of separating them. That reason is Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States
I mean just look at his image:
Funny, I use that exact example as evidence that Dionysius Exiguus is full of shit. They didn’t know we’d have access to radio carbon dating and stylomotry.
The earliest texts were written 300-400 years after Jesus allegedly lived.
It’s far more likely someone in the 4th century wanted to start a cult and needed to come up with some lore to give them credence. Which exactly lines up with the fact that this whole Jesus dude didn’t actually fulfill any fucking prophecies, but instead the already ancient Jewish messianic texts were used as metaphors because they had to be. He didn’t exist.
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AfaIk, it’s undisputed that he was a real person.
It is not undisputed. We have no contemporary evidence of his existence, but scholars agree on a consensus that he most likely existed, based on a range of secondary conjectural evidence.
It cannot be undisputed though, since we have no certainty, and the scholars involved in the consensus are freely admitting to that.
It is extremely disputed that he was a real person.
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Sure, there were lots of guys named Jesus. It was a very common name at the time.
Like trying to prove that all of the “Mike” stories in the 80s refer to the one true Michael (Mike Tyson, of course).
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How many? I don’t know, ask the historians who say it was a common name at the time, with dozens of graves of dead guys named Jesus at the time of Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
The Hebrew/Aramaic name was common among Judean Jews at the time of Jesus’s birth,[32]
He is one of the best documented historical figures ever
If that were true then this thread would be full of people providing citations to that excellent documentation, but you will notice a complete absence of that here.
The closest we’ve come in this thread is the Wikipedia page with citations to several historians saying “yeah we mostly think he was probably real based on it would be weird if he wasn’t”
That is a waaaay lower level of certainty than you’re presenting here.
The consensus is that he probably existed, but he’s far from one of “the best documented historical figures ever”, there’s like 2 or 3 mentions of him in sources outside of the early proto-Christian movement from the first century CE. That’s better documented than most, which is why he probably was a real guy, but we can’t really say more than that with any level of confidence. Calling him one of the best documented historical figures ever is genuinely unhinged imo.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.[7][8][9][10][11] Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: his baptism and his crucifixion.[12][13][14][15]
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your exceptional claim lacks exceptional evidence to support it.
think about all the records in the region, and wonder: if someone was miracling around, wouldn’t the romans have noted it?
if someone was miracling around
I don’t remember having said anything about “miracles” or sky-daddy stuff.
it’s kinda central to the whole jesus thing.
No, that’s religion, but not history.
Look at the sources, they have dissent amongst themselves…
“Robert M. Price, an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.”
A fun excerpt…
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists, from the late 19th century (Oskar Panizza[279][280][281]), through the 20th century (including Emil Rasmussen, George de Loosten, Charles Binet-Sanglé, William Hirsch,[282][283] Władysław Witwicki[284]) to the early 21st century (Evan D. Murray, Miles G. Cunningham, Bruce H. Price[285][286][287]), have suggested that Jesus had a mental disorder or psychiatric condition.[288]
Christians are the majority religion, so I would say “of course the majority agree”. It’s the very easiest position to take in the Bible scholar field, regardless of their personal beliefs.
It’s one of the black-and-white irreconcilable contradictions in the Bible. The gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew puts Jesus birth during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. The gospel traditionally attributed to Luke puts Jesus birth during the census of Quirinius. Quirinius wasn’t Herod’s successor, he was Herod’s successor’s successor, and his reign didn’t begin until around 6 CE. The other canonical gospels don’t have nativity accounts.
It’s an early form of a 419 scammer’s typo-riddled email or letter. Filter out anyone who pays attention to inconsistencies and you can squeeze some easy money from the gullible leftovers.
There’s also a lot of stuff that’s not meant to be taken literally. The text is full of similes and metaphors that are a lot less clear today than they were at time of writing. For example, many numbers in there are just used to convey a vague serve of size. Sometimes concrete numbers just mean “many”, which was well-understood back then.
On top of that we have later edits for various reasons and assorted other sources of imprecision. The Bible makes a lot more sense as a book that’s not meant to be taken literally in it’s entirety. Of course figuring out what’s really meant isn’t very easy all this time later.
Plus what you pointed out. That’s also in there, probably especially by means of edits.
Numbers were often imbued with a mystical significance. For example, 40 with spans of time indicated that the time was chosen by God. 40 days and nights of the flood, the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years, Jesus going into the desert for 40 days.
People in groups of 12 were chosen by God. 12 tribes of Israel, 144,000 (12x12x1000) saved in the Rapture, 12 apostles, etc.
3 and 7 were similarly associated with God. Tions of examples.
My understanding is that any sort of a census of the sort described in Luke (requiring males to return to the towns of their birth for registration) probably did not actually occur, as it would have created impractical logistical issues.
searches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius
Most critical biblical scholars agree that the Gospel of Luke is erroneous.[10] Its author seems to have invoked the census as Joseph and Mary’s motivation for departing “their own city”[11] of Nazareth, Galilee, for Bethlehem.[12][13][14] Additionally, the author may have wished to contrast Joseph and Mary’s obedience to the Roman edict with the rebelliousness of the Zealots, and also to find a prophetic fulfilment of Psalm 87:6: “In the census of the peoples, [princes] will be born there.”[12][b][c] (Luke and Matthew also give different accounts of the family’s departure from Bethlehem.)[17][d] Catholic priest and biblical scholar Joseph Fitzmyer states:[20]
It is clear that the census is a purely literary device used by him to associate Mary and Joseph, residents of Nazareth, with Bethlehem, the town of David, because he knows of a tradition, also attested in Matthew 2, that Jesus was also born in Bethlehem. He is also aware of a tradition about the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod, as is Matthew; Luke’s form of the tradition, unlike Matthew’s, tied the birth in a vague way to a time of political disturbance associated with a census.
Scholars point out that there was no single census of the entire Roman Empire under Augustus and the Romans did not directly tax client kingdoms; further, no Roman census required that people travel from their own homes to those of their ancestors. A census of Judaea would not have affected Joseph and his family, who lived in Galilee under a different ruler; the revolt of Judas of Galilee suggests that Rome’s direct taxation of Judaea was new at the time.[21] Catholic priest and biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown postulates that Judas’s place of origin may have led the author of Luke to think that Galilee was subject to the census.[22][e] Brown also points out that in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist (the traditional author of both books) dates Judas’s census-incited revolt as following the rebellion of Theudas, which took place four decades later.[22][f][g] Protestant theologian and biblical scholar E. P. Sanders concedes that, because revolts followed both Herod’s death and the census, Luke’s author may have “decided to elaborate the event [as] a reason for Joseph to travel … to Bethlehem”, calling this “a relatively slight historical error for an ancient author”.[8]
Also Luke was written ~20 years after Matthew. The oldest copy of Matthew 1-16 predates our oldest copies of the other gospels by a long time IIRC. Kind of circumstantial but it is indirect evidence that the Matthew account might be older and less embellished.
Just picking a small nit: Matthew is not considered the oldest gospel, Mark is. There may be fragments of Matthew that are the oldest, but it is generally agreed that the writer of Matthew was influenced by the already-written gospel of Mark. Luke was written around the same time as Matthew, or a few (5-10) years later.
I also like how Jesus has two different lineages depending on which gospel you read. Apologists try to say one of them is about Mary’s parents and not Joseph’s, but the text is explicit.
Matthew 1: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus…”
Luke 3: “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli.”
So was Joseph’s father Jacob, or Heli?
There are many more. The bible is literally unbelievable. Chapter 2 lists a different creation order from chapter 1. Anyone claiming it contains no contradictions is drinking the kool-aid. It would be funny if people weren’t dying for it.
This feels like one of those riddles where the answer is that the doctor is a woman. Today, Heli is considered a feminine name.
However, the biblical figure was male.
A slightly longer quote from the verse makes that clearer
Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi […]
Luke I’m Your Fatha… sorry wrong fake story.
So on average our calendar is mostly close enough
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Well, not so much. Because the bible doesn’t mention the dates of life and rule of the two figures, so you have to go outside the bible to find the problem - so it’s not a contradiction in the bible but a contradiction between the bible and other sources.
(And for biblical literalists, there is no contest of course!)
It’s not really about “what should be year 0,” it’s that the gospels can’t both be right. The date ranges they give do not even come close to overlapping. Either one of them is wrong, or both of them are.
Wrong. He was never born because he didn’t fucking exist.
Historians and biblical scholars disagree with you. Perhaps your edgelord reddit Atheism isn’t doing you much good.
Why are .ml’ers regurgitating right wing talking points in every single discussion? “edgelord reddit Atheism” is a thought cancelling sentence used by right wingers when confronted with critcism that questions their very foundational beliefs.
I’m not a Christian dumbass, Jesus didn’t do all that magic shit, but historians, experts in their field, all agree that there was a Jewish guy named Jesus of Nazareth who had religious followers.
I’m not “Spouting a rightwing talking point” I’m dressing you down for denying a historical reality, as you walk around smugly thinking yourself superior to religious people for their incorrect beliefs. It’s a real ‘pot meet kettle’ kinda deal.
And while we’re at it, that “edgelord Reddit Atheism” that I’m making reference to was itself deeply reactionary and conservative.
All of New Atheism’s intellectual proponents, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, etc. Were all in on the US invasion of Iraq, because their Atheism was rooted in the idea that all religions were wrong, but that Islam was uniquely illiberal, and that we needed to civilize the Oriental savages.
So the Atheists and the Evangelicals walked hand-in-hand into one of the most significant imperial blunders of modern American history.
And then a bunch of those atheists started larping as tradcaths.
Cool country lol
You can be perfectly skeptical of the miraculous claims about Jesus, but he’s about as well attested in history as Alexander the Great.
It’s more or less impossible to come up with a standard of historical evidence that doesn’t allow Jesus “the guy from Nazareth who went around saying the end of the world was at hand” without throwing out… most everyone in history before maybe 200 CE?
You can be perfectly skeptical of the miraculous claims about Jesus, but he’s about as well attested in history as Alexander the Great.
This is an insane take. There’s like 2 or 3 references to him from the 1st century CE written by sources not affiliated with the early Christian/proto-Christian movement, which is enough to conclude he probably existed but not much more.
You can be perfectly skeptical of the miraculous claims about Jesus, but he’s about as well attested in history as Alexander the Great.
That is a blatant lie, and it shows great ignorance of the facts of the matter and the historical method in general since you chose as an example one of the best documented persons of the period. We have lots of contemporary direct evidence of the existence of Alexander the Great: epigraphy, coinage, archaelogy and transmitted written sources by contemporary authors.
We have no such contemporary evidence for Jesus at all. So no, your argument is nonsense and not how history works. The consensus of the existence of a Jesus is based on secondary evidence, which makes it very likely that he existed, but historians can never certify that with absolute certainty the way that they can with Alexander the Great.
I, uhhh… you got some sources for this that aren’t the bible? My spouse the religious studies major is here next to me saying that Jesus as real historical figure is extremely highly contested.
Josephus is like the only dude who maybe kind of mentioned a guy named Jesus.
Christians will literally believe anything that comports with their pre held beliefs.
Note 1 (not citation 1 because things have to be confusing) of Wikipedia’s Historicity of Jesus article lists ten different quotes of various sources (three of them are Bart Ehrman) reiterating that his existence as a normal guy is widely accepted, here’s one of them:
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.
~ Graham Stanton (2002). The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford Bible Series) (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 145.
You are not providing a non-biblical primary source though, which is what they asked for. You are just hiding behind an appeal to authority fallacy.
There are not going to be any primary sources of Jesus or any other average person who lived thousands of years ago.
Do you think it’s more likely that early Christian writers fabricated a totally fictional person rather than mythologizing one that people already knew existed?
There are not going to be any primary sources of Jesus or any other average person who lived thousands of years ago.
Hence the continued, likely irreconcilable, dispute about whether there was a real Jesus
Hence the creation of the term Before Common Era, or BCE
I do miss the way both terms hugged each other, though.
AD is both big spoons and BC is both little spoons. ABCD
After Dinner and Before Cake
ABCDE
Big spoon little spoon and the cat
A cult leader that supposedly started off as a carpenter, that was born from a virgin birth and “performed miracles.” You know what the real thing is, it’s the, “Well what if he is?,” feeling. I’m guessing that’s what scared the shit out of everyone back then too and throughout Christianity’s existence. That one fuckin’ feeling.
'Cause being scared, hopeless, in shambles or something of the sort is when people turn to religion or drugs… Or both…
It’s just comfort shit though and I don’t hate on it, it’s just something that I have no ability to truly put belief into.
No one in antiquity would have thought he was born of a virgin, the word used in the original greek is parthenos, which also just means young woman. The virgin reading is just a translation error afaik.
And it’s about a completely different woman than Mary anyway. The prophet says “Look, the woman is pregnant, it will be a boy named Emmanuel and before he is a few years old this war will be over” and some idiot was like “This is definitely talking about Jesus”
Who asked?
Bold of you to assume he existed at all.
Saying this as an atheist: we do know that this person existed. He’s been named Jesus Christ, do not know if that was his actual name.
In fact there hundreds of Messias in those days, some more popular then others.
We also know that not all the stories we have was linked to this one dude. Probably not. Probably multiple different messias-sayings have been attributed to him
Nothing proves the existence of a god though. Just a couple of people back then wanting people to not be dicks and don’t get rich (that’s not a good person they said)… and somehow THOSE stories have not been followed…
In fact there hundreds of Messias in those days, some more popular then others.
Ah, I guess it’s time for another screening of The Life of Brian
we do know that this person existed.
No the fuck we don’t. The only scholars who concede this are those who want to appeal to people already convinced Jesus is linked to a real person.
What you’re saying is like “Harry Potter exists because there’s plenty of British boys who wanted to be a wizard”.
When you concede this point, you give legitimacy to an otherwise illegitimate claim to Jewish roots. While also claiming Jewish people started Christianity. It just isn’t true.
It’s not perfect, but a good book on this subject is Christ Before Jesus.
Ok, yeah I see your point. Crazy how stories just stay with you. I just read up on some stuff, and yeah, complete myth!
Damn jesus looking chopped as fuck in that pic
Turned his hair into weed and then did the fish trick on it.
“Just rose from the dead, feeling kinda zombie, might delete later.”
He is already sick of the bullshit happening at work. Roll on Friday 5pm.
He chose crucifixion over another team meeting because he was so sick of it all.
Jesus Christ was probably born… Never. No contemporary historical records support his existence.
Jesus is a pretty well-documented historical figured
If you disagree and have evidence no other scholar is privy to, I recommend a PhD in history as a strong avenue to correct the record.
Paul Bunyan is better documented lmao
so is xenu. by your logic if there’s documentation it’s gotta be evidence right?
I don’t think you read your own link:
There is no scholarly consensus concerning the historicity of most elements of Jesus’s life as described in the Bible, and only two key events of the biblical story of Jesus’s life have been widely accepted as historical, based on the criterion of embarrassment, namely his baptism by John the Baptist and his crucifixion by the order of Pontius Pilate,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] though even the baptism-narrative has been questioned.[15] Furthermore, the historicity of supernatural elements like his purported miracles and resurrection are deemed to be solely a matter of ‘faith’ or of ‘theology’, or lack thereof.[note 3]
Not sure what your argument is here. You own quote says that:
two key events of the biblical story of Jesus’s life have been widely accepted as historical
Nobody here is arguing that everything ever written about him is historical, just that he existed.
You clearly didn’t read the link either bud.
The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has had no support in critical studies for more than a century, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement.[22][2][note 4]
Plenty of scholars believe he didn’t exist. Please check out Christ Before Jesus for more information.
There isn’t a single definition here that backs your use of plenty
Also, do you have a link? I’ve searched a few databases and don’t see a single paper called Christ Before Jesus. Or are you talking about the TikTok channel?
There is a TikTok channel as well as a book.
I think the mythicists are wrong (especially Richard Carrier who is a stupid asshole), I think there was probably a guy called Jesus who had followers, but we really don’t have much, if any, real evidence to back that up.
We have the Bible and 10 non Biblical mentions of Jesus. Unfortunately, every single one of the non-biblical writings are just describing Christians. They’re like “Christians are people who believe in a guy named Jesus who was killed by Romans.” While they prove that Christians existed when they were written, none of them lend any evidence to the existence of Jesus.
One of the most widely accepted arguments for believing he was real is that the Bible makes up a ridiculous census story that forces his parents to go to Bethlehem in order to fulfill the (misinterpreted) prophesy that the messiah would be born there. The argument is that he must have been real and born elsewhere for them to make up this dumb story.
Ok. Is that Steve Buschemi?
Put a trucker hat with a random saying and it’s Judah Friedlander.
Edit: no, the eyes aren’t right.
He was so ahead of his time he was born before Christ.
Now, to be clear, I’m not really religious anymore and have my own belief system now. But I was raised Christian, and it annoys me how much of a voice “uneducated” Christians have for the narrative. One of the important things taught was: “regardless of the influence god had on bible writers, they were still human, so the bible is not a perfect record.” And for the four gospel writers, they still had different personalities and thought different details were more important than others. And really, it makes sense that it wouldn’t be 100% accurate at all times. I don’t expect any biography or memoir to be such. There would absolutely be embellishments and inferences, if not straight lies.
I had never thought of the Bible as Jesus’ memoir but that is a great way to put it
