I've been fascinated with how the countenance of Christ has been a tool for racial (and racist) propaganda. As a Jew from the Middle East, He certainly wasn't the fair-skinned, blue eyed, blond hair rock star depicted by some Christian denominations. I also doubt He was black, although some Rastafarians believe He was because it says so in Jeremiah 8:21.
I discussed "Black Jesus" and the Rastafari on my podcast : https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks/black_jesus_rastafarian_... and for those who want to deep-dive into the topic, I highly recommend The Color of Christ by Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum. It's a knockout book.
> I also doubt He was black, although some Rastafarians believe He was because it says so in Jeremiah 8:21.
That's an odd interpretation. The word in Hebrew stems from qadar, which does mean dark, but is often used to indicate mourning (https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6937.htm). And that follows the context of the verse: "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn (qadarti), and horror grips me" (NIV). As far as I recall, the Bible never uses skin color to indicate race. It always goes by ancestry ("Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, . . . "). Speaking of which, it spends a great deal of time, across several books, to tell us that Jesus is Jewish. Most Jews I know of are fair skinned. Skin color doesn't mean any kind of superiority to me. I'm just talking about the accuracy of paintings.
> He certainly wasn't the fair-skinned, blue eyed, blond hair rock star depicted by some Christian denominations.
I've been a Christian all my life, and visited churches of many denominations. Most depictions show him with brown hair and brown eyes. I can't remember seeing any depiction with blond hair. Now blue eyes I have occasionally seen, but isn't it possible for any race to have any eye color?
It has been a while since Jesus’ time, and chances are most Jews you know work inside, unlike Jesus.
Sarcasm aside, all of the Jews I know can trace their lineage through Europe after the diaspora in the early second century. One would expect that a pre-diaspora Jew in Judea and a modern Jew who’s family had traveled through Northern Europe for 1800 years would have significantly different skin tones.
When you look at natives of the Levant they pretty much look like the depictions of an Mediterranean Jesus you will find most commonly in churches around the world. Fair skin and light eyes are not a unheard of trait in that region either. I have a Jordanien friend who has the bluest eyes and blonde hair. The Levant is not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, these people are well in the phenotypical spectrum of most Mediterranean people, like Greeks, Italians, Turks or Lebanese people.
Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill wrote a decent book on the question of whether or not there was a historical Jesus. He does a good job talking through the arguments on both sides, and covers the history of the argument. He did an interview about the topic on NPR a few years ago: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-h...
I'm currently reading Zealot by Reza Aslan, which doesn't really debate whether or not there was a historical Jesus, but discusses the differences in fact vs the bible.
I read it, and was disappointed. The book could only get so close to Jesus as to speculate what a person living during that time period might have been like, and what some of the prevailing social issues were.
I thought it was a good book, as he says, he's not presenting anything new or controversial to biblical scholars, but I (as a layperson) learned a lot about Christianity, and now understand it better - how it went from being a weird Jewish sect to the imperial religion of Rome.
Just finished The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey, which documents the destruction of statues, temples and artworks by Christians in the years 300-500AD in Europe. Also recommended!
Unfortunately Nixey’s book is terrible. As a classisist she should know better than to regurgitate ideas from Gibbon, ignoring 200 years of scholarship. Instead she goes for sensationalism, “evil Christians destroying classical culture” and links to ISIS and such. Which isn’t needed because the period she describes is interesting enough on its own.
I especially like this article (https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/10/21/hunting-the-w...), focusing on how she misused a quote from Chrysostom by removing all context, which completely changed the meaning to fit her narrative. Not only that, she clearly didn’t read the original source but borrowed the interpretation from another author, who also misread it.
I'm a fan of Bart Ehrman, but I think Richard Carrier's arguments on the Historicity of Jesus are superior. He also goes through the effort to quantitatively evaluate the evidence for and against, giving only a 1/3 probability that there was a historical Jesus.
Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though? We know that the gospels are likely younger than Paul's letters and that Paul is one of the earliest missionaries to the Gentile world. And when we read Paul's letters, they're far more direct and practical in content than everything else in the NT. So is it that over time, as early Christian's earliest leaders died out, a fascination with just _who_ this Christ was vivified? As well, wouldn't this dating make Paul's letters the most authoritative liturgical documents?
> Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though?
This comes to mind. In my early school years, a bunch of us kids were really close. We did so many things together at school and all summer in our neighborhood. However it is fascinating to me now that we didn't share anything about our Moms, Dads or Grandparents, the people in our background we were closest to. All of that was implicit, there were no need to discuss the daily lives of ones we knew intimately and loved us so much. So with Paul, I'd think. After all Paul studied under Gamaliel and he would have known how to research and share with the world the biographical details of a subject beyond what people just knew from the Gospels, or word of mouth, at least (they must have known more as they all lived closer to the events). What I am getting at is, he just preached what that really mattered for him.
Paul’s letters were all written to previously established churches. If pre-gospel written or oral traditions about Jesus’ life had already been given to those churches, Paul had little need to repeat it in the short, practical letters that were written (except in a few cases for the sake of his argument, where he does quote the words of Jesus also written in similar form in the gospels).
In general I think none of the epistles in the NT discuss biographical details of Jesus, even those scholars generally agree were written post-70 or not by Paul. They’re pretty short and focused on specific points they want to argue.
Considering there's plenty of traditional depictions of Jesus from middle eastern churches that date back to Greco-Roman Palestine, I don't see why we shouldn't assume those are relatively close to what he would have looked like, considering that's the culture and region he came from.
Because not all art is intended to be accurate — it might be symbolic. The linked example shows blue/purple clothes, which were limited to the elite. Like the article says, this is used to show a royal status, not that it was what he actually wore.
And the earliest Christian art was almost entirely symbolic - fish, lambs, wheel cross, chi-rho, etc...
Even if elements of iconography are symbolic, they could have easily made Jesus look any way they want, yet the standard 'Byzantine' Jesus icon gives him dark features and slightly curled hair. Seems close enough, and none of the earliest art (either purely symbolic or very Roman - possibly to hide from persecution) seems any more accurate.
"On the eve of Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover. Ulla retorted: 'Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a Mesith [enticer], concerning whom Scripture says, Neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him? With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government."
> That Jesus was a Jew (or Judaean) is certain in that it is found repeated in diverse literature, including in the letters of Paul. And, as the Letter to the Hebrews states: "It is clear that our Lord was descended from Judah."
True enough, it seems.
But what about Muhammad? From what little I know, he was neither Jewish nor Christian. Before founding Islam, I mean. But it seems pretty clear that he worshiped the same god.
In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam? I'm guessing that it was something like Judaism. Indeed, maybe there were many forks.
> In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam?
What was the main European religion before Christianity? In both cases, there's not one unique answer. In terms of pre-Islamic Arab religion, Christianity (of a couple different major flavors), Judaism, Zoroastrianism, varieties of local polytheisms, and some others were significant.
> In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam? I'm guessing that it was something like Judaism. Indeed, maybe there were many forks.
Pre-Islamic Arab society was largely polytheistic, with pockets of Jewish tribes and smatterings of individual Christian and Zoroastrian priests representing the monotheistic element, the latter largely either as immigrants to the Arabian peninsula or via the influence of foreign traders, etc.
When the prophet Muhammad emigrated from Makkah to escape economic and physical persecution at the hands of the Quraish Arabs, he moved with his followers (or rather, having already his sent his followers ahead of him) to Madinah (then known as Yathrib) which was home to, among others, two Jewish tribes.
> Quraish was the name of our Holy Prophet’s tribe. Makkah did not possess cultivable land. It lay in a valley surrounded by barren hillsides — a land that was devoid of food and so its livelihood depended on trade. ...
> As they were the guardians of the Ka‘bah they were treated with great respect by all Arabia.
And from Wikipedia:[1]
> Ibn Kathir, the famous commentator on the Quran, mentions two interpretations among the Muslims on the origin of the Kaaba. One is that the shrine was a place of worship for Angels before the creation of man. Later, a house of worship was built on the location by Adam and Eve which was lost during the flood in Noah's time and was finally rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael as mentioned later in the Quran. Ibn Kathir regarded this tradition as weak and preferred instead the narration by Ali ibn Abi Talib that although several other temples might have preceded the Kaaba, it was the first "House of God", dedicated solely to Him, built by His instruction and sanctified and blessed by Him as stated in Quran 22:26–29. A Hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari states that the Kaaba was the First Mosque on Earth, and the Second Mosque was the Temple in Jerusalem.
More likely it looked like the religion from which Judaism emerged, the ancient Semitic religion (polytheist, idol-worshipping). IIRC this is mentioned in the Quran regarding the inhabitants of Mecca.
This makes the most sense to me. As others note, there were many polytheistic traditions. Including, as you say, the ancient Semitic religion.
As a biologist, I imagine it as a phylogenetic tree. One of the major monotheistic branches of the Semitic religion that's survived is Judaism. With its Christian fork, and the various Protestant forks. The other is Islam, with early forks (e.g., Shabakism and Druze) and later ones (e.g., Bahá'í and Bábism).
Two other surviving monotheistic branches of the Semitic religion are Samaritanism and Yazdânism (among Kurds). I gather that they forked about the same time as Judaism, and before Islam. So I'm guessing that it was a similar fork that became Islam.
It was rereading Matthew Woodring Stover's Jericho Moon that got me thinking about this. It focuses on an attack by Habiru raiders (aka Hebrews, led by Joshua) on the Semitic Jebusites in Jerusalem (led by Adonizedek). This was several years after the sacking of Jericho.
The Habiru worshiped "Yahweh Sabaoth, El Shaddai", and considered him to be the only God (although he did have angels/aspects/avatars/personas, which could be summoned individually by sacrifice). I gather that the Jebusites (and other Canaanites) were also descended from Noah's Exodus, but worshiped other Goddesses and Gods, in addition to El (El Elyron). Which is, in part, why the Hebrews attacked them. Or at least, justified taking their land and stuff.
I remember National Geographic Magazine had an article on exactly this, and reach the same conclusion, a decade or two ago. I'm not a subscriber so I can't search their archives (anyone?). However, they do have a nice list of depictions of Jesus:
> Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain ... with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed.
There's not compelling evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Yet there's compelling motivation for early Christians to say he was a man who lived and not simply a god. Being related to someone who knew him in real life actually could bestow power and influence in the early Christian community.
Youtube videos aren't exactly the best example of scholarly work. Look at the people who are respected by academics rather than trying to evaluate the contents of a field that you aren't trained in.
Please don’t jump to conclusions, I have looked at the actual research and also read the books. None of the common cited evidence for Jesus as a historical figure holds up to scrutiny. If you can give one example that can, it would help me a ton. I’d love to be wrong and understand Jesus as an actual historical figure.
I cannot verify it all right now, I'm more of a practical guy when it comes to Christinanity, but a few of the writers from the new testament were followers, and two (?) were his step (if you belive in it like me) brothers.
For a common bloke from 2000 years ago multiple written sources from people who met him first hand should count as pretty well documented.
I'm not saying you should believe everything they wrote (although I do) I'm just pointing out that the basic facts are very well documented given the circumstances.
TLDR; the evidence that Jesus was a real person is very strong, and stronger than many other historical figures (the article mentions Hannibal), whose existence is not considered controversial.
As a religious figure Jesus is inherently controversial, which is what probably attracts the skepticism and interest in trying to cast doubt on his existence.
Yes. The first major bunch of followers were not that far removed from his death, and we have a couple of historical accounts (exactly a couple, to be precise).
One of those accounts uses a different name for him ("Crispus"? Maybe? You'll have to forgive me not looking it up, but it eludes me and I don't want to disappear down a wiki-rabbithole when I should be wrapping presents..!) and has later been interpreted as referring to him; the other account is a focus of great controversy as to its genuine age.
I'm not necessarily trying to pull your point apart, just pointing out that it's not clear-cut. Personally I've never really made my mind up, but at the moment I lean more towards a conglomeration of folk-tales and the lives of several men. I'll probably change my mind again soon.
> One of those accounts uses a different name for him
I think you are probably remembering a (disputed) claim based on an edit made in a particular later copy that Tacitus (one of the earliest independent sources on both Christ and the early Christian community, particularly in Rome) referred to the Christian community in Rome as “Chrestians”, immediately before using the standard rendering of Jesus title as “Christus”. Even if Tacitus did use “Chrestians”, that name for the early community is attested in other sources (and even tied and used alongside Christian in some inscriptions from that community, IIRC), his reference to Christ did not use any alternate title,
I wasn't familiar with Carrier’s claim to that effect, but it doesn't seem to have widespread acceptance and seems (from the secondhand description you provide) to ignore what seems to be generally accepted from outside evidence about the term “Chrestianos”.
There’s evidence to the contrary as well. The jury is still out on who the Chrestianos refers to. Honestly, I need to look into it more myself. But it asks the question, why would someone change it in the first place? Not to mention the word Christus is also a forgery. I am open to being wrong, just thought you should know these are forgeries.
No, although typically the opposite claim is made. That people named “Joshua son of Joseph” lived at that time, that various revolts and religious upheavals occurred is pretty certain. That one guy fitting the rough description of Jesus was behind it is not. The history of Christianity doesn’t really start in earnest for hundreds of years after the supposed death of Christ in any case.
People today can’t even agree on the details of Elvis’ life... now imagine if Elvis had lived a few hundred years ago, and we’re all working from quaternary+ sources. Then fast-forward a thousand or so years of very intentional document editing and re-editing, translations and re-translations, and all of the incredible wealth and power hinging on it for centuries.
How accurate would accounts from those times be expected to be?
>although typically the opposite claim is made. That people named “Joshua son of Joseph” lived at that time, that various revolts and religious upheavals occurred is pretty certain. That one guy fitting the rough description of Jesus was behind it is not
That doesn't seem quite fair because it's almost certain that the guy named Jesus was not behind the upheavals of that time. That was about the Jewish revolt against the Romans which Jesus was not involved in at all. Also, while Christianity didn't start in earnest until about two hundred years after Jesus' death, stories of his life were written down as early as 60 years after his death.
It's very difficult in a society like ancient Israel to fake the existence of a person, people had clan allegiances, they kept track of genealogies and would be able to tell right away if the writings concerned someone who didn't exist.
There were translations but that's irrelevant because we have the original dead sea scrolls with the earliest ones dating to a few decades after his death. A time when wealth and power did not hinge on this. We're not solely working with edits and re-translations.
I think there's a bias against religious figures that inform people's arguments when they say it's all uncertain - when in reality the evidence is pretty good that he did exist.
Details of his life may have been written down then, but the sources we have aren’t those sources, just edited and translated retellings of those supposed stories with about 1800 years of politically and religiously motivated games of telephone between us and them. I have to ask, the Dead Sea Scrolls date from between about a century before Jesus’ purported life, to about a century after his death and as far as I know make no mention of him. I wasn’t claiming that the language is somehow untranslatable, but that we don’t have anything like contemporary sources, only people who hundreds of years later claim to have access to those sources.
> The history of Christianity doesn’t really start in earnest for hundreds of years after the supposed death of Christ in any case
There are several Christian writings dated from the first century after his death. Paul's letters, the didache, Flavius Joseph, some talmudic writings, John's disciples writings to name a few.
Loved your comparison to the historical Elvis. Whenever I saw news articles reporting on artifacts purportedly related to the historical Jesus, I always thought how little we know about the historical Shakespeare.
Or indeed, some people don’t even believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays! As passionate as people can be about Shakespeare, it’s nothing compared to religion, and record keeping and sources of information on Shakespeare are a lot easier to come by than anything from a couple of millennia ago.
All we can say is that Shakespeare was credited for his plays. It's functionally impossible to know who wrote them, at best we can hypothesise based on an analysis of his writing—and such analysis doesn't bode well for Shakespeare as the author...
Your initial point is true about just about anyone who wrote more than a certain amount of time ago. It's true of Jonson and Spenser and Marlowe, too. The latter point is just false -- textual analysis is entirely consistent with the historical evidence (such as the writings of his contemporaries) that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare.
Interesting; I was led to the impression that Shakespeare's writings showed a level and stratum of life experience that would have been beyond his reach or means.
I have often wondered about this; I have read in various places that scholars believe there was a historical Jesus but this always seems like a pragmatic stance to take in societies where the vast majority of people believe that he was either a prophet or a God (which covers almost everywhere where this question would be considered worthy of any serious study). Yet there are some issues that I see:
1. "Yeshua" or "Yeshu" were relatively common Jewish names at that time (it is just "Joshuah" in Aramaic), so vague references in non-Christian writings to a "Jesus" of some kind may not refer to the same person. How many people named "Joshuah" might have led a group of disciples during a period where dozens of messianic claimants were trying to rally followers to one cause or another?
2. It is well known that the bible was subject to extensive editing prior to its official canonization, which makes it somewhat questionable as a historical document. At best we can only derive vague information about big social movements IMO -- no doubt there were Jews who taught the things attributed to Jesus, but I personally hesitate to go further and claim that the bible is an accurate account of a single person's movement.
3. The chaotic schisms in the early centuries of Christianity makes me doubt that useful historical information about the founders of the movement actually survived. The different Christian movements preserved the documents that best supported their cause. Who knows what historical information is not available today that would totally change our views on the topic.
> 2. It is well known that the bible was subject to extensive editing prior to its official canonization, which makes it somewhat questionable as a historical document.
I've never heard this claim before.
The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that written copies made through the centuries were accurate copies.
The only editorialization of the Bible was church councils deciding which books/letters to include in the Bible, not to edit them.
This all would have happened before the various councils decided what would be considered canonical, and the councils themselves probably had no idea that it had happened.
As for the dead sea scrolls, all it shows is that the final forms of the books in the Hebrew bible and related extrabiblical works existed prior to the canonization. It is pretty clear that the Hebrew bible was edited in prior centuries:
“Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Iranian-American writer and scholar Reza Aslan. It is a historical account of the life of Jesus and analyzes the various religious perspectives on Jesus as well as the creation of Christianity.”
Probably not the most impartial author on the topic though, as as he is a theist and self-proclaims himself as a "genuinely committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth".
Who could possibly be considered an impartial author on the topic?
Surely not any Christian or any atheist. Not any Muslim either. I suppose Buddhists wouldn't have any particular stake in whether a historical Jesus existed.
Why not an atheist? Not believing in his divinity doesn't preclude objective analysis of whether a human named Jesus existed. But, yes, surely not any Christian, who by definition believes Jesus exited.
Why not either? For both the Christian and the Atheist, honest scholarship is inseparable from their beliefs. It's hard to imagine either changing their beliefs from the evidence they could find.
The consequences of being able to prove with certainty either that Jesus existed and is who Christians claim him to be, or did not exist or was not divine would have tremendous consequences on the lives of hundreds of millions people who do not ascribe to the proven belief.
They could say "I am intellectually honest and will change my beliefs depending on the evidence," but we both know that 1. Concrete evidence strong enough to convince someone to change their beliefs, beyond what is already known, likely does not exist. And 2. Their current beliefs already match their known evidence so any additional information is unlikely to radically change their beliefs, only be accounted for and integrated into their current belief system.
I'm not trying to say all scholarship is biased or we shouldn't believe anything. In all likelihood, most people are not deliberately lying or falsifying anything.
What does that mean about which scholarship to trust? I have no idea.
Christians (ignoring some defunct or very rare forms) have it as an article of faith that Jesus was a real historical human who was also divine.
Atheists would deny that Jesus or anyone else was God, but there is nothing about atheism that is opposed to duly considering possibly trustworthy evidence that the Jesus whom Christians believe on faith was/is God may have indeed existed as a real historical human.
At the same time, unlike (for example) Muslims who believe Jesus was a human prophet but not himself divine, atheists don't have any specific belief about Jesus's human historical reality at all. If the evidence shows that he was made up by combining bits of multiple people's teachings, atheism is unaffected.
Therefore, an atheist's writing about this question is, all things being equal, more likely to neutrally consider all the available the secular observable facts about the question, without influence from religious motivations, than a Christian's.
However, that italicized precondition is usually false.
Real writers vary in their approach to scientific and historical rigor, being imperfect humans themselves and not abstractions. So an individual Christian could well be a more trustworthy source on this than an individual atheist, or vice versa.
amatthew: by definition, being Christian means one believes Jesus existed. How does one objectively consider the non-existence of Jesus if one has already arrived at a conclusion? That's some serious cognitive dissonance.
Given that Aslan describes outspoken atheists as "fundamentalists" I would take anything he says about religion with an enormous grain of salt. Aslan claims to speak about religion while choosing to remain willfully ignorant about irreligion; therefore you can't expect his views to be academically rigorous or well thought through.
As for his book, I realise that book publishers like to give their products sexy titles, but the title can't possibly be paid out in any non-fiction sense as we have exactly zero contemporaneous written accounts of Jesus' life. Anything he has written could only be a further digestion of the already contentious writings haphazardly collected into the book we now know as the Christian bible.
If you were to read the book, you might find it more about
the times than about the man. The context of the time and
the place and the various social and religious movements
in the few decades before, during, and after the life
of Christ informs the reader, and is worth a reading.
Given that it's all bunch of vague speculation based on writings—and given the character of Jesus is certainly fictional—this would be a more interesting digestion of the material:
Well, here is why I think Jesus very likely existed and taught:
The Church today follows the teachings of Paul, that the Law is obsolete, nailed to the cross and no longer binding. The Church teachings give the Chuch great authority in determining what people should do, church leaders are called Father etc. The Church was supposed to be for all nations.
And yet... Jesus is described in the gospels exactly saying the opposite! “I came to save the lost sheep of Israel.” When a young man asked how to be saved, Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion.
Why would the Church invent a person so inconvenient to their own dogma? It is the ultimate criterion of embarrassment — of the very canonizers themselves!
They only would have done it if the original founder of the Way realy existed and was a Jewish teacher who taught Jews. Why else would they invent something so seemingly at odds with their own teachings that people throughout the centuries (like Thomas Jefferson) called Paul “the great corruptor of Christianity”?
I would further say that the original Church of Jesus existed in Jerusalem and was led by his brother James and also by Peter. They told Paul that rumors have come that he is teaching Jews to turn away from the Law, and told him to pay for some purification rites to show this is not true. Paul obliged. They also penned a letter to Gentile Believers which Paul was to take to them, invoking the Holy Spirit and instructing them in essentially the Noahide Laws. Paul in his letter to the Galatians however said they had “nothing to add” to his message excep that he “remember the poor, something I have been eager to do all along”.
In short, the founder existed, the Church existed, and would have been the dominant Church if not for the Judaic wars and the destruction that happened as a result.
I think that Christianity as we know it today, came from those beginnings and then spread to other churches.
> Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion.
I've always interpreted those conversations to be Jesus attempting to spread an idea that the religious institutions of the time had lost sight of the message of love and peace in return for control and power.
If you read it with Jesus speaking knowing that members of his audience are members of those power groups, you get the sense that he is very, very carefully choosing his words.
If you were a maximally powerful being and wanted to explain important concepts to all mankind, would you use such incredibly nuanced wording to do that (if you are even right)? That seems like a horribly terrible plan and implementation.
> Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion
He said the law would not change until all is accomplished. After drinking the vinegar, before dying, he said "all is accomplished". Paul's teachings are thus consistent with this.
No, that's only if you read the English translation. In the original Greek, the two words are very different.
The original context is from Matthew 5:18, which could potentially have been written in Hebrew:
"17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one [a]jot or one [b]tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."
Notice a few things:
1) Heaven and Earth have not yet passed away, many Christians ignore this part completely, but it needs to be explained why it was mentioned. It would seem the obvious reason is that "all will be accomplished" around the time that Heaven and Earth will pass away, including spreading the gospel to everyone. In another place Jesus says "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."
2) Notice that even those who ARE in Heaven will be called Least if they set aside even the smallest commandment and teach others to do so. Thus, even Christians need to be concerned with the Law. Literally nowhere did Jesus even bring up the idea that the Law will be obsolete. That is an idea originated by Paul.
That is a distinction made later, it's nowhere in the Bible even. Certainly never mentioned by Jesus. He explicitly said people who don't follow even the smallest commandment are to be called least in the kingdom of Heaven. No distinction between moral law or not. And look at James 2:10 he says the same thing, written AFTER Jesus was on the cross!
It actually means "it is finished". But even "paid in full" is very different from "all the prophecies have been fulfilled". There are still prophecies coming up. As I said, Heaven and Earth did not pass away. What was the point of mentioning them, in your view? It's pretty clear Jesus was talking about the end times.
The historical accounts seem to support the idea that the story is a combination of multiple people. But the guy who got nailed to a cross was an actual historical event and became the focal point for the amalgam.
The various books in the bible aren't even consistent, and we know that many people were running around claiming to be God or affiliated with God. If he existed, he was just one of many such people.
Meanwhile, bible scholars acknowledge that the books weren't written by people who had personally met Jesus, and don't even know precisely who the authors were—they are in fact anonymous—the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are just traditional.
Why should we believe that there is "one guy" whose crucifixion became central? Maybe crucifixion was just a well-known Roman execution method (remember that Christianity emerged during a period of Roman oppression).
It would have only been ~100 years after Spartacus and his merry band were crucified along the road to Rome after the Third Servile War. Even if that was the only notorious crucifixion (and it was not), I think would be highly memorable around a century later.
Crucifixion was a degrading and viscerally disturbing form of execution, with connotations not unlike hanging or the electric chair today. It was not the kind of thing to centralize one’s messianic cult around. The fact that it happened once is already so bizarre that the crucifixion is considered by historians to be one of the most certain truths of Jesus’ life story.
Crucifiction was a common form of execution at the time. One of the really bizarre things from our perspective is just how many people where executed back then.
Crucifixion was indeed common. What I’m referring to as bizarre is the idea of the Messiah being subject to such a degrading, humiliating, torturous death, which ran totally counter to Jewish thought at the time (and indeed Jewish thought ever).
It runs counter to the mainstream Jewish thought of the past 1800 years regarding the messiah, but we are talking about a movement that was divergent from what ultimately became "mainstream Judaism" (i.e. the Pharisees). I would also point out that it is not so unique for a messianic claimant to be humiliated yet retain devoted followers:
It is also not as "bizarre" as you might think. Judaism two thousand years ago was highly fragmented, with many different movements all competing for followers and converts; there was no single body of "Jewish thought" at the time. There were different interpretations of the prophecies, and the earliest Christians followed one tradition of interpretations (this is clearly reflected in the gospels -- e.g. Matthew follows the Greco-Jewish tradition and the Septuagint).
You seem to confuse the religious story of Jesus (miracles, resurrection, etc, the "mythology" in your terms) with the actual person who had followers and inspired a religion.
There's little doubt among scholars that there was a specific person at the start of this (and not some BS "Dan Brown"-like conspiracy).
Scholars who live in societies where the vast majority of people follow religions that consider Jesus to be a prophet or even a god. I have yet to see a good argument for why we should assume the Jesus of the bible was a single person leading a religious movement -- there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers.
>I have yet to see a good argument for why we should assume the Jesus of the bible was a single person leading a religious movement -- there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers.
For one, the burden of proof would be on proving it was "multiple" people.
Second, we have a couple of references to a single person (Josephus, Tacitus).
Third, we know many other cases of a single founder, from Mohamed to Joseph Smith, Jr.
>there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers.
How is that relevant. There were many, but one of them got off the ground. Why should there be 2 or 6 of them getting popular simultaneously?
The point is not that there were necessarily multiple movements that merged into one; rather, it is that there is no reason to rule it out. It is entirely possible that Jesus is a legendary figure based on various Jewish religious leaders with similar messages. The teachings attributed to Jesus are for the most part variations on Jewish precepts and religious themes; even the baptism, which scholars seem to insist was historical, is just a variation on Jewish bathing rituals (mikvah). So we have a man with a relatively generic Jewish name (i.e. Joshua, which in Aramaic is Yeshua or Yeshu, which in Greek is Jesus), who led one of a large number of Jewish cults based on variants of common Jewish religious themes, engaged in common Jewish practices, and was executed by an oppressive occupying force known for its cruel executions of Jewish leaders (see e.g. the "ten martyrs" of the Talmud). Why are we assuming that is a story about specific and real person?
Tacitus makes a vague reference to a "cristus" that could have referred to any messianic claimant (as "christ" is just a Greek word for "messiah"), and Josephus makes a similarly vague reference to people with very common Jewish names (Joshua i.e. Jesus, Jacob i.e. James). In both cases there are reasons to doubt that the references refer to the specific Jesus in the biblical or quranic accounts (the latter unquestionably having been written centuries after Jesus supposedly lived). In both cases the claims are not based on the authors' first-hand knowledge and the authors based their writings on what the earliest Christians had told them, something that may have already been merely a legend.
Again, it is possible that Jesus was really a person who led a religious movement two thousand years ago. I am only saying that other explanations cannot be ruled out because there is almost no evidence at all. At best all we can say is that the earliest Christians lived about two thousand years ago and by that point believed some version of the Jesus narrative. Beyond that I am not seeing the evidence for a historical Jesus.
"With ultra-violet examination of the Second Medicean manuscript 'the alteration was conclusively shown', even though it wasn't possible to say 'who altered the letter e into an i'. The examination was made by Dr. Ida Giovanna Rao of the Laurentian library in Florence, in 2008. The alteration is also visible in an ultra-violet photograph."
>there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers.
Yes, but to play... eh, Messiah's advocate... this doesn't discount the possibility of Jesus having been one of those claimants leading one of those movements, he just wouldn't have been the only one.
It doesn't lend credence to anything either, but it's not impossible that Jesus happened to lead the cult that won out, thanks eventually to Rome and the British Empire.
> thanks eventually to Rome and the British Empire
The British Empire? How so?
Rome obviously was instrumental for the success of Christianity, spreading along the roads of the Roman Empire, having a large population with the same language so you could reach lots of people with one translation Although Christianity wasn't alone in using these advantages. It eventually won out but Mithraism was a similar positioned religion.
After the rise of the Islam reduced the area of Christianity, European colonialism spread it over the whole world. If I had to single out one European nation with the most influence, I would have said it was the Spanish Empire and not the British.
It does not discount that possibility, but it does leave open the possibility that "Jesus" is a legendary figure representing a fusion of various religious leaders over a long period of time.
Maybe the legends developed over multiple generations before the first century. The first "Christians" would have just looked like another Jewish messianic cult, and would have looked more like the earlier messianic cults the existed before Jesus supposedly led his disciples than anything we think of as "Christian."
The most eye opening discussion and research on this topic for me came from what Dr Richard Carrier has to say. He got down to the task of just doing the research like how a historian might, or how a scientist might. His standpoint is clearly atheist, but don't let that put you off. He uses logic, reason and applies that to how he weighs the factiness of the story.
Any of his talks on YouTube are a good introduction, if you want to learn more and are willing to have your opinion and assumptions challenged.
You don't have to 'believe' in the guy, however his methodology, knowledge of history and enthusiasm for the subject is not something you find in the priesthood.
He does not rate the probability of Jesus being a real person as that high, neither does he rate the existence of Ned Ludd as that high. He does trace where ideas were borrowed from and has read the bible extremely thoroughly. If you are interested in Christianity because it is part of our culture and history then I highly recommend taking time to hear what Dr Richard Carrier has to say.
> You don't have to 'believe' in the guy, however his methodology, knowledge of history and enthusiasm for the subject is not something you find in the priesthood.
It's not something you find among any credible scholar in the field. Carrier is fringe for a reason.
Look, that’s not the point. Consensus undoubtably can change. The majority of historical scholars in this field are religious. I would love it if better evidence could verify the historical Jesus, rather than appeals to authority like you are using. There is compelling lack of evidence to prove Jesus as a historical figure. I never personally questioned it until seeing the lack of evidence.
Except there isn't a lack of evidence unless you require more evidence for Jesus than every other historical figure. Are you going to say there's now no evidence for Alexander the Great? What about Socrates? What about Pythagoras? That's the exact point so many people have tried to make -- there's just as much evidence, if not more, for Jesus than for these other people.
Furthermore, if it's an appeal to authority to rely on scholars in a given field (many of whom are agnostic or atheist, yet still realize that there probably was a historical Jesus), I hope you don't believe in anything science says. After all, saying you believe in global warming is just an "appeal to authority". And so is trusting Carrier. Speaking of which here's one (of many) sources detailing why Carrier's ideas fail [0] and are basically dogmatically motivated -- which is hilarious since it's exactly what you accuse religious scholars of.
Also, Galileo did not believe it was flat, and there's plenty of sources during the Late Middle Ages that basically state they knew the earth was a sphere.
> Except there isn't a lack of evidence unless you require more evidence for Jesus than every other historical figure. Are you going to say there's now no evidence for Alexander the Great? What about Socrates? What about Pythagoras? That's the exact point so many people have tried to make -- there's just as much evidence, if not more, for Jesus than for these other people.
It's the exact point so many (apologists) make. Unfortunately it's not true.
> Furthermore, if it's an appeal to authority to rely on scholars in a given field (many of whom are agnostic or atheist, yet still realize that there probably was a historical Jesus)
Exactly how what percent are atheists?
> After all, saying you believe in global warming is just an "appeal to authority". And so is trusting Carrier.
Yes, but the difference is we have evidence for global warming, but we don't for Jesus.
> Speaking of which here's one (of many) sources detailing why Carrier's ideas fail [0] and are basically dogmatically motivated -- which is hilarious since it's exactly what you accuse religious scholars of.
Did you link to the right article? This is a religious website, which merely shows one journal disagreed with Carrier. It has no mention of evidence against Carrier's claims nor does it show Carrier is dogmatically motivated. Is this all you got?
> Also, Galileo did not believe it was flat, and there's plenty of sources during the Late Middle Ages that basically state they knew the earth was a sphere.
FYI Galileo was imprisoned in the 1600s by the Roman Inquisition for promoting the idea that the earth was a sphere that revolved around the sun. Just because plenty of sources knew the earth was a sphere doesn't mean it was consensus. Plenty of scholars believe Jesus is made up, yet here we are.
After 2000 years of the indoctrination the defenders of the bible have got the art of defending the make-believe that is the bible down to a fine art. I did not say that everything that has ever came out of Richard Carrier's mouth is tantamount to the word of god and definitely to be believed. My point was that he asks the right questions, has done a lot of research that the bible bashers of this world haven't bothered to do and he has ways of discussing things in a non-black-and-white dualist way, going for probability and giving a value to how likely something is likely to be true.
Anyone with a serious interest in questioning assumptions long held by them about the bible needs to hear him out, to believe him or not, it is that questioning of faith that matters. There are plenty of atheists that believe that Jesus really did exist but he was an ordinary guy rather than of virgin birth and the son of god, an 'anti-capitalist rebel' of sorts.
What Richard Carrier does is to open up the idea that the whole bible is a contrivance, that this Jesus character did not exist and that his story was weaved together by religions that had gone before.
Logical fallacies are something we are all capable of. Your 'where there is smoke there must be fire' comment does not stand up to scrutiny.
Just twenty years ago it was not possible to talk about climate change in the world of weather forecasting and meteorology. That was actually way to controversial, and I am talking from being in the field twenty years ago. Yet by that point in time the idea had some scientific credibility for twenty years, and a century before that some had wondered what the consequences of pumping ever increasing quantities of carbon dioxide into the air might lead to, positing the 'crazy' global warming idea.
With the agreement of the Paris Accords the other week we have moved on from that, the 'fringe' view that was not considered 'credible' has moved on. Yet a mere twenty years ago people were saying 'climate change is fringe for a reason'.
There may be much to dislike about Richard Carrier, but to dismiss him without at least a link to a decent review of his work by one of these italicised credible scholars is a poor show.
Disappointing to see this downvoted. I've taken the time to watch hours of videos from people on both sides of this fence. Richard Carrier takes the most sober approach to analyzing the evidence without bias by giving an actual probability to each argument/element.
I had a white blonde hair, blue eyed student ask me what I thought Jesus looked like the other day. After first clarifying that Jesus wasn't a Christian, but a Jew, I proceeded to say he probably looked more like bin Laden than the student. Needless to say, this student from the backwoods American South was not happy with that, but I thought it was hilarious.
A more important question is whether or not there is a historical Jesus at all. Richard Carrier has done some of the best work on questioning this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M
He (Shia) is half-Jewish as well, and has several middle-eastern traits, so it makes sense a depiction of what people looked/look like in the region to have some common elements.
I never understood why people are so fascinated by some theories and spend so much time on it.
Bermuda triangle, jesus and loch ness monster don't become more interesting when we decorate those stories with more theories which can't be proven.
I'm always thinking that this might just be the reason why those stories are still around. People just don't stop. they continue to extend it small little piece by piece.
You took this thread on a tedious religious flamewar tangent. That's a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say.. that Jesus is comparable to the Loch Ness monster (an urban legend)? No serious historian (secular or otherwise) doubts the historicity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. His divinity is obviously a matter of faith, but Jesus was certainly a real human being that was born and eventually was crucified around 30 AD.
There is no reason to assume Jesus was not real. This issue was closed by historians over a hundred years ago and never has there been thrown any new light that puts it into doubt. It’s only fringe people with specific agendas, who always seem to lack the skills and knowledge to work with the sources, who claim otherwise.
For a good overview of why historians know Jesus existed you should read John P. Meier -
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume I: The Roots of the Problem and the Person.
I guess you want proof like a physicist can deliver proof. If that is your standard than most of history does not exist due to lack of proof. Which is a ridiculous position to hold of course.
You'd think that having a hoard of dead people raising up at the same time as Jesus's ressurection and roaming through the streets of Jerusalem would have made 'secular news'. What happen to those people? Did they just continue there lives like nothing happened, or did they decide en mass, after they had they're night of frivolity to go back to there graves and die again?
The various miracles in the gospel narratives are obviously not given credence by secular historians. The existence and crucifixion of Jesus, on the other hand, is, primarily since there are non‐gospel and non‐Christian references to it within a few decades of the event in question.
That would seem to raise serious questions about the veracity of anything biblical, then. So if you discounted any evidence in the bible, based on the supposed dubiousness of other things there, what's left to build a case on.
Julius Caesar was a military and political leader of a whole empire. The contemporaries who discussed him (namely Cicero and Sallust) were themselves influential Roman politicians living at the heart of the empire. Why would you expect some no‐name cult leader in an ancillary province, executed with common robbers in the lowest and most humiliating way possible, whose followers (common folk, fishermen and prostitutes) remained underground for over a hundred years due to persecution from both the Jewish and Roman authorities, to have artifacts and texts of the same level as Caesar, or even an order of magnitude less?
No one expect it. But that doesn't mean the opposite; that there is nothing about Jesus doesn't become somehow a proof of his existence.
The first step must be to acknowledge that there is nothing about Jesus up until around the years 80~120. That simple FACT is uncontested by everybody, and it is also the only fact uncontested by everybody. That is nothing controversial, yet somehow here everyone that brings it up gets downvoted.
Most of the "evidence" is from the second century onwards and written only by christians. You would need to go a couple of centuries forward to find real third-party references about him. Most historians consider this as proof of existence of a person 100 years earlier, that is also true. But I don't know why christians clench so tightly around historians on this issue, when it is also the opinion of most historians that the accounts about Jesus are not historical, and that most of the events told about him historically never happened.
So, if we are gonna go with historians on this, then:
1) Jesus was a real person.
2) Nothing in the new testament about Jesus can be said to have happened except that he was born, that he was poor, and that he was crucified.
> But that doesn't mean the opposite; that there is nothing about Jesus doesn't become somehow a proof of his existence.
And nobody has argued otherwise, merely that we have the exact level of proof that we would expect of someone of Jesus’ position in Jesus’ geographic location and time period. In fact, we have non‐Christian sources from around the turn of the century, which is why the consensus of historians is that Jesus lived and was executed in that time period.
> Nothing in the new testament about Jesus can be said to have happened except that he was born, that he was poor, and that he was crucified.
Obviously, at least according to any scientific historic standard. But there are people who would deny even that, and can’t seem to accept the scholarly consensus that the man lived and died at all.
I’m not sure if you are a historian, but that Jesus existed is exceedingly accepted by Christian and Athiest scholars [0]. I have no evidence of my family existing prior to the early 1900s due to records being destroyed during WWII. But there is plenty of evidence that Otto Van Bismarck existed from the same time period.
Even Santa Claus, who is fictional, is derived from the historical figure Saint Nicholas (with some obvious differences).
I’m this case people seem to be fascinated by history. Simple as that. Regardless of what you believe about Jesus, the significance his history has had on the world is undeniable. It’s also very interesting that many people have paintings of a blond haired blue eyed surfer Jesus when the evidence suggests he looked different.
If you see it similar to Santa Claus history than yeah no proof is needed but than I would still find it strange to discuss something like this in so many facets.
If you see it more like Julius Cäsar History then my comment makes more sense.
Ironically, even Santa Claus is based on a real person, as others has pointed out.
The difference in belief (edit : about Jesus) between non believing historians and Christians is mostly about the miracles.
There is at least one written source who actually followed him and it is supported by a number of other writings from people who talked to people who met him (Paul and others).
Given the circumstances (he was born a carpenters son, huge demographic changes occurred shortly after his death and it all happened about 2000 years ago) I'd say that is pretty well documented. Plenty of people we know about are less documented than that.
As for the miracles that is another story. I believe, but I actually fully understand why people won't belive.
That seems to contradict the consensus among historians [1]:
> Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels. While scholars have criticized Jesus scholarship for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness, with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed.
Can you point to where the podcast makes such a claim?
> Wikipedia is not the absolute authority on everything.
Wikipedia is not (by design, one should note) an authority on anything. As a tertiary source, it summarizes and provided pointers to actual authority, when it's quality standards are being upheld. It is never more than that.
> What's the consensus view of homeopathy scholars on the efficacy of homeopathic "medicine"?
Near East historians have an agenda? News to me. What’s the proportion of Christians versus non‐Christians in that field?
Even if that group is replete with biased theists (something you seem to be suggesting but haven’t presented any evidence for), surely there is some scholarly group whose views on historical science you can agree would be worth listening to. So what’s their consensus on the historicity of Jesus?
Did you listen to the history podcast in my original comment? He presents a very strong case for there not being a Jesus. Everyone keeps saying there’s some sort of consensus on his existence yet I’ve posted a very thorough argument that argues the opposite. Last I checked, Stanford was pretty reputable.
See my top-level comment. There is a historical consensus on Jesus’ existence and some basic facts about his life (with wide disagreement beyond that).
And Thomas Sheehan, the philosopher and presenter of the podcast you linked to, accepts the historicity of Jesus.
If you look closer at the wikipedia pages, all that historians agree on is that a guy called Jesus lived around the time. That's not very convincing to me. "virtually" is a weasel-word. Elsewhere the claim is even stronger, but surely not all historians of the ancient near east are experts on--or even care about--this highly specific matter. The basic claim rests on two documents, Tacitus' chronicles of Rome and Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written more than half a century after the fact, rewritten (copied) many times. Both rather refer to early Christians and their believes, viz. "brother of Jesus" and that they were persecuted for spreading lies.
To quote from your link: "the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate." ... this solves nothing.
The whole podcast is dedicated to going over what historical evidence might exist that documents Jesus. Just as per your link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Sources) there were no sources that mention him until after his death during the first push for Christianity.
> there were no sources that mention him until after his death during the first push for Christianity.
There are no known sources that do so; concluding that there were no such sources is unwarranted. The thing is that that isn't all that uncommon for figures that are less controversially historical (IIRC, the nearest to contemporary documentation for Socrates is writings of other philosophers probably dating from shortly after his death, mainly his students Plato and Xenophon, but also Aristotle and a couple others.)
Even in ancient societies that were, comparatively, obsessive about documentation [0] the level of documentation was nothing like the modern developed world, and survival of documents over a couple of millenia is spotty, at best.
[0] And while Rome proper might have been, Roman Judea was, AFAIK, not, particularly (or even particularly administratively stable.)
> The nearest to contemporary documentation for Socrates is writings of other philosophers probably dating from shortly after his death
Socrates is lampooned in Aristophanes’ Clouds, so in this case we actually do have some contemporary documentation for him, not just after his death, even if Xenophon and Plato remain the main sources for him.
> That being said, since there is no known evidence of Jesus existing
That's untrue. There is plenty of evidence; there is no known contemporary (in the narrowest sense of “produced during his lifetime”) documentation, but that's not the only kind of evidence of a historical figure, and lots of historical figures are accepted as such without that form of evidence.
> it seems really strange and anti-academic to assume that he did.
It is really strange and anti-academic to adopt a higher standard of proof for the existence of Jesus than other ancient figures.
There is no sources that mention many, many figures in Antiquity until after their deaths. And yet, no one disputes that, say, Heraclitus, Hesiod, Plautus, or some of the Ten Thousand’s generals existed. Why hold Jesus to a different standard?
"The main source for the life of Heraclitus is Diogenes Laërtius, although some have questioned the validity of his account as "a tissue of Hellenistic anecdotes, most of them obviously fabricated on the basis of statements in the preserved fragments"."
Obviously some people do dispute the existence of these figures. If there is no proof that someone existed, it's safe to say their existence should be disputed.
You misunderstand the debate around Heraclitus. Scholars dispute the biography attributed to him. Yet virtually no one disputes that the author of the fragments existed. Heraclitus in this regard is little different from e.g. Jaufre Rudel, to whom is also ascribed a biography that is probably largely fictional in spite of historians’ certainty that the poet himself existed.
Of course not all of these figures have the same amount of historical evidence to back them up. Jesus in particular has literally no evidence for existing other than from people with very vested interests in promoting his existence as the basis for their religion.
If you can point to some evidence that suggests he actually did exist, I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
Not to mention that Jesus has more evidence to back up his historicity than most. Unless, of course, you just dismiss all of the Gospels and Pauline letters as not being evidence. And even then there still is quite a bit of evidence, really.
Actually, nowhere in the Gospels or Pauline letters does it say Jesus was a living person. These documents are written in the same way as the stories of Hercules or any other mythological figure.
Except Paul explicitly states he met James, brother of Jesus. And there's plenty of differences between how those documents are written and the ways myths are told. Try actually reading an introductory New Testament text, like Ehrman's (who himself is agnostic, and went through an atheist period), and you'll see.
I have read many translations and interpretations of the actual text.
There is significant debate about whether Paul is saying James is Jesus's biological brother. So this passage is far from rock solid evidence.
Many experts believe Paul is referring to James's name/tagline as a preacher, "Brother of the Lord." Meaning James was not Jesus's biological brother, but metaphorical. Any priest today could say he is the brother of the lord in a metaphorical sense. The idea that Jesus had siblings does not make sense in and of itself.
Overall, the evidence supporting Jesus as a historical person is very sparse and all evidence is contested (Josephus and Tacitus being forgeries, this example not mentioning James as a biological brother). One would think if he was living there would be many more examples to support it.
> The idea that Jesus had siblings does not make sense in and of itself.
How does it not? Nowhere does it say Jesus was Mary and Joseph's only child. It merely said he was born while she was a virgin, not that she ever had kids after. Even if you take the Roman Catholic approach, Joseph was older and easily could have had children from a previous marriage, which is what they contend.
> Josephus and Tacitus being forgeries this example not mentioning James as a biological brother
These are all minority views in scholarship, as I'm sure you're well aware; it's much easier to assume Paul meant Jesus's literal brother, since he used the term the Greeks often used for brothers. But, seeing as you refuse to accept any scholarship done by Christians, even if peer-reviewed and unbiased, it's not surprising; and, of course, it easily allows you to ignore sources that disagree with you simply because they were written by Christians, regardless of the quality of the scholarship. Your own dogmatic beliefs that Christians can't produce unbiased scholarship clearly inhibits you from seeing what you don't want to see. There's really no further point arguing with you since you'll only accept the evidence you agree with (Carrier, despite his minority views and often wrong claims) and ignore the ones you don't, often under the guise of it being "dogmatic", which is incredibly ironic.
It does a great job explaining in what situations consensus should be challenged.
The evidence for and against these three examples is contested to varying degrees. The Josephus example is 90% a forgery. Let's say Tacitus and James examples are each 50% likely to be valid evidence for a historical Jesus.
> it's much easier to assume Paul meant Jesus's literal brother, since he used the term the Greeks often used for brothers
It's not. We're not contesting the words, we're contesting the meaning. James was called by his followers "Brother of the Lord." This could mean biological brother, or it could mean he was metaphorically considered him to be the brother or the lord. It's not clear or explicit, we have to admit this.
> But, seeing as you refuse to accept any scholarship done by Christians, even if peer-reviewed and unbiased, it's not surprising
This is not the case at all. I am happy to consider all of the scholarship done by Christians. I have looked at tons of work by Christians.
> it easily allows you to ignore sources that disagree with you simply because they were written by Christians, regardless of the quality of the scholarship. Your own dogmatic beliefs that Christians can't produce unbiased scholarship clearly inhibits you from seeing what you don't want to see. There's really no further point arguing with you since you'll only accept the evidence you agree with (Carrier, despite his minority views and often wrong claims) and ignore the ones you don't, often under the guise of it being "dogmatic", which is incredibly ironic.
You may think this is the case, but it's not. I would love to see new research from anyone that can shed light on whether or not there was a historical Jesus. I just find Carrier's arguments and research superior to those that contest his points. I have read extensively through both points of view. I actually came into this search with an open mind under the assumption that Jesus was a historical figure. I was surprised to learn of Carrier's findings and even more surprised by all the people who try to discount his research merely on the basis of it being "not consensus." I haven't heard many good arguments used to contest his work, just appeals to authority.
If you have better evidence for Tacitus, Josephus, or James, I would love to see it.
Given that the 'first push for Christianity' occurred immediately after Jesus' death, is this really a fair objection? The earliest manuscript fragment of the gospel of John dates to the first century. Josephus' Antiquites recounts the stoning of Jesus' brother James by the High Priest he would serve with in the Jewish Revolt. These are only one generation after Jesus' death. People who knew Jesus were still alive.
> Josephus' Antiquites recounts the stoning of Jesus' brother James by the High Priest he would serve with in the Jewish Revolt.
The mention of James "brother of the Lord" does not actually refer to him as a biological brother. "Brother of the Lord" is believed to be the tagline/name for James as a priest.
> These are only one generation after Jesus' death.
Not true, the first source was born more than one full life-span later, making it two generations after.
> People who knew Jesus were still alive.
This is also not true. There is no evidence of this.
Most of the scholars that study this are Christians with an obvious agenda of defending their faith. As has been stated elsewhere in this thread (even by you) there is no evidence of Jesus from when he was claimed to be alive.
There is no evidence for nearly any human being from that time period, barring descriptions of them after their death. And in contrast, there’s as much evidence of Jesus’ life within 100 years of his death as almost anyone else historians claim to have existed at that time period—frankly, there’s more.
Thus, correctly pointing out that there is no evidence “from when he was claimed to be alive” is not a very convincing argument that the vast majority of secular Biblical historians are wrong in their belief in a historical Jesus. Two elements of Jesus’ life story are nearly universally held to be historically accurate: that he was baptized by John the Baptist, and that he was crucified.
The “vast majority” doesn’t include the historian giving the talk at Stanford I posted. I’m honestly surprised to see so much support for Jesus with no data behind it on this site.
That's not true at all. The existence of a historical Jesus is totally incedental to their faith. There were tons of Messianic preachers at the time, what's so unbelievable about one of them getting deified? The hypothesis that one of those people was named "Jesus of Nazareth" does exactly nothing to prove Christianity.
> The existence of a historical Jesus is totally incedental to their faith.
True.
> There were tons of Messianic preachers at the time, what's so unbelievable about one of them getting deified?
It's actually quite believable, because we have not known any other story until now. The thing is there is more compelling evidence to suggest Jesus was more a character like Hercules than he was a living person.
> The hypothesis that one of those people was named "Jesus of Nazareth" does exactly nothing to prove Christianity.
Correct, but it's easy to see how the inverse is troubling for many many people.
That's what I took from it. He goes pretty exhaustively over all the "evidence" and in the end concludes that "you have to slice the baloney pretty thin" to see a historical Jesus.
Not sure what he looked like, but it doesn't matter to me. I see him as a philosopher before the Gutenberg press that was not associated with the Pharisees (established philosophical order). There have been many Jesus personalities throughout history, every religion has one as a voice to convey useful advice.
He gave such good advice about how to navigate hardships without the pressure of tithing that he has since been revered as supernatural.
--5,000 fed with 5 loaves and 2 fish:
I used to think everyone was fed "magically" with whole portions. Now I realize it was a communal exercise, and the lesson learned was how to share and make sure everyone gets an equal piece (even though everyone just got a small crumb).
--Water to wine
Once again, as a child I thought he violated laws of physics. Alcohol is a depressant and excessive use can hinder productivity of the citizenry. Under the advisement of Jesus, the man without ties to the Church, word spread to replace wine with water. Water to wine; pez to Xanex.
--The poor woman and the blind man
I recall one story where there was a poor woman without food, and Jesus was able to scrounge up enough flour from her own storage containers to produce a meal. Once again, thought it was magic. But he came into her home and helped her assess her resources.
Mud on the blind mans eyes? Impossible to cure blindness like that - but he wasn't literally blind. Unfortunate circumstances likely provoked a depression that pushed him into pretending to be blind and beg - free money. Not the way an able bodied citizen should behave. The revered Jesus came to him and performed a ceremony with the audience consisting of locals that had walked by the blind beggar every day. Now he is "cured" in front of all and he can end the act safely using Jesus' supernatural status as a catalyst. Probably got a job the same day - no more begging. Productivity of the village slightly improved.
Lazarus "raised from dead" is another example of this - a depressed guy shutting out the world could be considered dead. Jesus brings him back to the tribe. Another able-bodied person returning to the economy.
If we assume religion is an early form of software engineering used to instill practical economic ideals and morals into society through simple parables and metaphors: Jesus was the software update everyone was ready for, but had to be killed off because embezzlement-prone-tithing-proceeds were probably being threatened. This kind of sacrifice effectively locked in his doctrines.
This kind of exercise might be entertaining and maybe even useful for you as an individual, but I find it harmful for society as a whole.
There are plenty of arguments against creating ad hoc rationalization for this kind of stuff, but I truly hate that religion is treated like some academic or philosophical exercise where you could say "no, people didn't believed that Jesus performed miracles, it was just some kind of metaphor to teach [insert idea palatable to modern audiences]" ignoring the fact that even in this day, where we tried to have some basic universal education, there's still people who believe evolution is a sham, people who commit suicide based on some religious explanation or who believe in all kinds of ridiculous things that go against what we do know about the world.
Why should we assume that religion is an early form of "software engineering" to instill morals on society since we have evidence of a lot of developments, even in these earlier societies, in the area of ethics and philosophy outside religion?
you read those passages and reimagined their intent and delivery? I don't think any christian I've ever met has come to such conclusions. I think generally they see the miracles as proof of his divinity
The intent and delivery of my interpretation is to take a familiar person that is particularly sought out this time of year and bring up issues I've been noticing in the region I am currently exploring.
It's the lens through which I see religion in general. I used to reject it when I was younger in the authority-challenging phase, but now I realize that every religion is correct in the context of the society from which it was birthed:
Shiva is the Hindu deity and has several pairs of arms, therefore Indian culture values multitasking or a citizen having many skills using the hands.
Thor was a god of the Vikings and wielded the large hammer - therefore weapon and armor-smithing were highly valued skills that drove economic resilience (in a time when a considerable part of the economy was moving pillaged goods). Hammer could mean building things in general.
Christians have streets of gold when they get to heaven - therefore Roman society valued infrastructure.
Every god is a metaphor for a hive-mind of people.
I'm sorry but your examples are little more than fanciful projections. Also, the fact that your refer to Shiva as the Hindu deity with multiple pairs of arms makes me think you are woefully uninformed about the religions and cultures you're projecting onto.
I think depicting Jesus as attractive is a reasonable assumption. A young, charismatic leader seems more likely than the average person to be attractive, or at least distinct looking.
But of course, not the blond hair blue eyes thing.
Richard Carrier has made a decent case against a historical Jesus, but I'm not a scholar. On the other side, Bart D. Ehrman is an atheist who backs a historical Jesus. If he was based on a real person, The Jesus we know is like a Hollywood biography where the story was 'based on actual events' but was exaggerated beyond recognition for rhetorical impact. It's allegorical fiction.
I am not sure why I got downvoted. Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. The others, especially Matthew and Luke are just derivative works. They are anonymous embellishments of anonymous writing that was never meant as historical record. They were meant to convey the basic ideas to a non-christian populations.
Right, I think the most common atheist is the agnostic or 'weak' position. Like Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot, a God is possible but the burden of proof is on proving God exists.
Allegro argued that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient "sex-and-mushroom" cult. Critical reaction was swift and harsh: fourteen British scholars (including Allegro's mentor at Oxford, Godfrey Driver) denounced it. Sidnie White Crawford wrote of the publication of Sacred Mushroom, "Rightly or wrongly, Allegro would never be taken seriously as a scholar again."
Heh. Not saying Allegro was right, but it's worth noting that his critics were not just scholars of religion, but religious. He insulted their deity. As is usually the case with religious scholarship, the academics aren't exactly unbiased.
I discussed "Black Jesus" and the Rastafari on my podcast : https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks/black_jesus_rastafarian_... and for those who want to deep-dive into the topic, I highly recommend The Color of Christ by Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum. It's a knockout book.