Jesus Never Existed

[FallentoReason]

The Gospels portray him as someone that was often walking around in public performing miracles. One would think that contemporary historians would take note of what was going on and comment on Jesus in their work. There's not a single contemporary historian mentioning Jesus though.

The closest it gets is a few paragraphs from the Testimonium Flavinium by Josephus which reads:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus]

It is rather strange that Josephus, an observant Jew, would write things such as 'He was the Christ'. Because of this, historians suspect that a Christian got a hold of his work a few centuries later and added in these lines.

I don't think Jesus ever existed. I can only find him in the NT which is rather strange considering he was the Son of God walking amongst men. I would have thought that he was worth mentioning.

Does anyone have any evidence for his existence?[/quote]

[Thatguy]

1. How do we verify whether or not "Matthew" was indeed a first hand observer? All we have currently are the words in the book and the general stance of historians/scholars today. How could we ever actually know if he was or he wasn't? I'm not aware of enough concrete evidence to sway me either way. So does that mean we divert to the stance of we don't know enough for sure so lets default to "he probably wasn't an observer"?

2. I have seen this in other threads before but I think its at least worth mentioning that the detailed scrutiny that the Gospels have received over the past...well "forever"....seems to exceed greatly that of other ancient historical works. By ancient I mean any documents written soon after or around the time the Bible was first taken down. Under the same level of scrutiny as the Bible, would other works throughout human history hold up consistently better?

1. It's traditionally claimed that the author was Matthew, that Matthew was an eyewitness, so the book's an eyewitness account. It's the general consensus of scholars today that, given the evidence available to them, the author was someone other than Matthew. This would leave us without support for the view that it was an eyewitness account. It might have been an eyewitness account, but how would we know? Is there anything in there that only an eyewitness could know? If the author himself was trying to pose as Matthew to gain authenticity that would indicate to me that he wasn't an eyewitness but needed to try to simulate authenticity by posing as one. If someone else attributed the text to Matthew then that wouldn't factor in. In any event, I could see how an eyewitness might conceivably pretend he was a different, more respected, eyewitness. It just doesn't seem likely. Absent evidence that it was written by an eyewitness I'd be more inclined to believe it wasn't, though I couldn't rule the possibility out.

2. It's hard to compare this to other works. There isn't the long history of people first having faith that those other works are historically true and inspired by God. So the Bible has, from many of the observers, gotten a free pass. Other authors have received a lot of scrutiny and their facts have been doubted and called into question. To what extent, for instance, were Plato's words attributed to Socrates the actual ideas of Socrates as opposed to Plato's putting words into his mouth? Last I checked, we don't know and can't know and have to live with the uncertainty. To a large extent the question of whether the views were really those of Socrates is irrelevant. For most of the ancient authors we recognize that some of what they wrote might have been made up, some accurate, but we don't stake our afterlives on them or suggest that we write laws based on the inerrant accuracy of those texts, so we can easily accept that the literal truth is unknown and unknowable at this point.

I'm trying to think of any parallels that are even roughly close. I guess Atlantis comes to mind. Some point to Plato and say that he was writing a literal history based on mostly unknown, but factually accurate sources. Most scholars would, I'm sure, not be Atlantean literalists. They'd reach the conclusion that the story was metaphor and reach different conclusions about what the metaphor meant. (was it, for instance, a cautionary tale about the folly of Athens pursuing sea power?)

Could they prove that it was entirely a metaphor and not based on any nubbin of truth? No. But they'd scoff at the idea that it was a literal history of a specific place, each word of which is to be taken as Gospel truth. Archaeologists could dig up ancient cities later covered by the sea and speculate that maybe this gave rise to the story of Atlantis. But the origins of the story will have to remain unknown and unknowable. Most of us can live with that. We might form opinions (some more, some less informed) about whether Atlantis was all metaphor, all historically true, or some mixture thereof. We'll never know, but we can be reasonably sure that people who base their lives (and there are such people) on their claimed knowledge about a literal Atlantis are barking up the wrong tree.

[dgruber]

1. It's traditionally claimed that the author was Matthew, that Matthew was an eyewitness, so the book's an eyewitness account. It's the general consensus of scholars today that, given the evidence available to them, the author was someone other than Matthew. This would leave us without support for the view that it was an eyewitness account. It might have been an eyewitness account, but how would we know? Is there anything in there that only an eyewitness could know? If the author himself was trying to pose as Matthew to gain authenticity that would indicate to me that he wasn't an eyewitness but needed to try to simulate authenticity by posing as one. If someone else attributed the text to Matthew then that wouldn't factor in. In any event, I could see how an eyewitness might conceivably pretend he was a different, more respected, eyewitness. It just doesn't seem likely. Absent evidence that it was written by an eyewitness I'd be more inclined to believe it wasn't, though I couldn't rule the possibility out.

Given the circumstances you named above, I agree that is the general consensus and that would give us no verifiable support for the eye witness account. So the OP was written in such a way to say that Jesus did not exist and it was reiterated in a later post. Couple of scenarios to address given your reasonable assumption above that Matthew is traditionally claimed as the writer, but scholars today have made the educated guess that it was not him, there are few thing I'll point out:

1. If Matthew was not the writer, but it was a separate eyewitness (one of your question posed) claiming to be* Matthew, then you would have an eyewitness account. This is of course not verifiable at this time and is nothing more than assumption. Does that mean that we should automatically default to "he wasn't an eyewitness"? We're left somewhere in the middle on this one because we don't know either way. Why would you be more likely to believe it wasn't an eyewitness given the absence of evidence? What leads you to be able to make the jump to he probably wasn't an eyewitness? Like you indirectly hinted at there are multiple persons who the author could be, hell it could be anyone as far as we know, so how why do we default to, "the writer probably wasn't an eyewitness?"

2. It's hard to compare this to other works. There isn't the long history of people first having faith that those other works are historically true and inspired by God. So the Bible has, from many of the observers, gotten a free pass. Other authors have received a lot of scrutiny and their facts have been doubted and called into question. To what extent, for instance, were Plato's words attributed to Socrates the actual ideas of Socrates as opposed to Plato's putting words into his mouth? Last I checked, we don't know and can't know and have to live with the uncertainty. To a large extent the question of whether the views were really those of Socrates is irrelevant. For most of the ancient authors we recognize that some of what they wrote might have been made up, some accurate, but we don't stake our afterlives on them or suggest that we write laws based on the inerrant accuracy of those texts, so we can easily accept that the literal truth is unknown and unknowable at this point.

I'm trying to think of any parallels that are even roughly close. I guess Atlantis comes to mind. Some point to Plato and say that he was writing a literal history based on mostly unknown, but factually accurate sources. Most scholars would, I'm sure, not be Atlantean literalists. They'd reach the conclusion that the story was metaphor and reach different conclusions about what the metaphor meant. (was it, for instance, a cautionary tale about the folly of Athens pursuing sea power?)

Could they prove that it was entirely a metaphor and not based on any nubbin of truth? No. But they'd scoff at the idea that it was a literal history of a specific place, each word of which is to be taken as Gospel truth. Archaeologists could dig up ancient cities later covered by the sea and speculate that maybe this gave rise to the story of Atlantis. But the origins of the story will have to remain unknown and unknowable. Most of us can live with that. We might form opinions (some more, some less informed) about whether Atlantis was all metaphor, all historically true, or some mixture thereof. We'll never know, but we can be reasonably sure that people who base their lives (and there are such people) on their claimed knowledge about a literal Atlantis are barking up the wrong tree.

I would say for the sake of this discussion lets leave the faith part of it out because we're just dabbling in a whole separate "ball game" there. I was referring to it as an historical document. Your Plato and Socrates comments are common analogies, but how do we draw the line of what was actual truth and what was the "stuff of legend". If you treat the Bible like any other work historically, or more specifically Jesus, then I think he holds up fairly well. Its after that the we head into the fog. Divinity, miracles, and being raised from the dead, are all things we can't really verify even if they happened today so there's no way we could begin to scratch the surface of 2000 years ago. I know there are people who "base their lives" on Jesus and the Bible and that is their choice, but this OP specifically talks about Jesus and whether or not he existed at all.

*edited to add "be" in to the paragraph

[historia]

Let me get you started; what makes you think the 12 Apostles were real? It could have been plausible seeing as though they actually wrote stuff down, unlike Jesus who left nothing behind, but because you and I are in agreement that they in fact didn't write a thing, then that begs the question: why should we think they were actual people?

The vast, vast majority of people who lived in the ancient world didn't write anything. Of the texts that were written, very few survive to the present day, since preserving a text at that time meant copying it by hand at great expense.

It is not surprising, then, that we should not have writings from Jesus and every single one of his early followers. To suggest that this alone should call into question their very existence shows a lack of understanding about the nature of literacy and writing in the ancient world.

It's interesting how the early churches fought for power between their brothers in Christ. Saying that an 'original' Apostle was their founder adds more 'power' to them. But wait a minute.. What if we intentionally blur the line and say our founder was the brother OF Christ? That definitely is above the others! But to their disapointment, additions to teaching such as Mark 3:31-35 where Jesus ignores his own family kind of ruins the whole 'brother OF Jesus' thing.

I'm not sure how this addresses my point. Paul clearly knows that James is the brother of Jesus and refers to him (and only him) as that. As you just pointed out, the gospel authors also record that Jesus had a family.

If Jesus didn't actually exist, wouldn't people at this time know that there was no such person or family? Why should we assume that everyone here is lying?

I've only just gotten into researching this

Let me save you some time, then. The overwhelming majority of scholars and historians believe that Jesus was an historical figure.

The canonical gospels are mostly composed of Jesus sayings and teachings, too. Since, you know, he was a religious leader who went around saying and teaching things.

This is your response to what I said about the Gospel of Thomas. What do the canonical Gospels have to do with the GoT which has no narrative whatsoever?

You dismissed Thomas out of hand saying that it doesn't contain any narrative. But why should that discount it as a source for Jesus of Nazareth?

The point I'm making above is that all of the gospels (canonical or not) are primarily concerned with Jesus' teachings. That is the bulk of their text. This makes sense, since he was a religious teacher. How is this not evidence of the existence of Jesus?

And who exactly saw and heard Jesus say these things, as you yourself have stated that the Gospels aren't from witnesses?

His early followers.

Yep, so in other words it's mere hearsay. The 'recitation' or Qur'an does better than that. They quote Mohammad directly. But obviously their oral traditions don't count for anything right?

I would say that the oral traditions we have for Mohammad are probably quite accurate.

I wouldn't call either the Quran or the Gospels 'hearsay' -- this is not a court room. Rather, these are (to a great extent anyway), the remembrances of Jesus and Muhammad's earliest followers.

[FallentoReason]

Why do all self-appointed "free" thinkers, act exactly the same way on everything?

It's kind of creepy.

The "Jesus never existed" goofiness?

Serioulsy? C'mon now.

Ok, I'll give you my views as a Free Thinker and the logical problems I have with accepting the existence of Jesus.

The claim by Christians is that he was the Son of God. Ponder that for a second. We're being told that the Son of GOD i.e. the CREATOR of the universe wanted to contact us. What do we have to show for this? Gospel hearsay from the ones making the positive claim i.e. no witness accounts. Ok great... and how about secular references? Well we already know the answer to that and to be honest the silence is deafening. So the SON OF GOD set foot on this earth and somehow never got seen by any literate person??? I'm sorry but there's not logical reasoning that I could follow from any angle that would make this even half plausible.

The one that breathed life into you and me apparently wasn't important enough to be documented and all the controversy he caused during his time here. Can you see how something doesn't add up?

The thesis that Jesus never existed has hovered around the fringes of research into the New Testament for centuries but never been able to become an accepted theory. This is for good reason, as it is simply a bad hypothesis based on arguments from silence, special pleading and an awful lot of wishful thinking. It is ironic that atheists will buy into this idea and leave all their pretensions of critical thinking behind. I will adapt what has become popular usage and call people who deny Jesus' existence 'Jesus Mythologists'.

Baseless assertions and biased opinions until shown otherwise.

A huge amount has been written on the web and elsewhere which you can find in the further reading section below. Not all Jesus Mythologists are lunatics and one at least, Earl Doherty, is extremely erudite and worth reading. Nevertheless, he is still wrong and, as I have seen myself, he reacts badly to those who demonstrate it. It is not my intention to study the minutiae of the argument but instead focus on three central points which are often brought up on discussion boards. These are the lack of secular references, the alleged similarities to paganism and the silence of Paul. Finally I want to bring all these together to show how ideas similar to those that deny Jesus' existence can be used on practically any ancient historical figure.

What's the point he's trying to make? How does it matter that these arguments can be used with other people from ancient history?

[Thatguy]

Like you indirectly hinted at there are multiple persons who the author could be, hell it could be anyone as far as we know, so how why do we default to, "the writer probably wasn't an eyewitness?"
...
Your Plato and Socrates comments are common analogies, but how do we draw the line of what was actual truth and what was the "stuff of legend". If you treat the Bible like any other work historically, or more specifically Jesus, then I think he holds up fairly well.

I fully agree with you that the OP overstated the case. The evidence isn't strong enough to conclude that Jesus never existed and was purely mythical. I'm inclined to believe that Jesus existed and was considered a teacher and was crucified. I just wouldn't bet the farm on it given the limited evidence available.

If the author of Matthew wasn't Matthew, I'd say that he (or they) (but not she) was probably not an eyewitness because most people weren't. A couple or a few decades after an event, most people weren't personally eyewitnesses to the event. Given the lack of evidence for the author being an eyewitness, I don't see any reason to take it as eyewitness testimony. I'm not so inclined to say that because it wasn't written in the first person it probably wasn't an eyewitness account. i don't know enough about the writing style of the day to say that first person narratives were in vogue. Again, i don't rule out that it was an eyewitness account but can't see any argument saying that the book provides us with eyewitness testimony. The evidence just ain't there (with the standard caveat: that I know of.)

Jesus holds up pretty well in what way? I'm not aware of a major historical figure with such a lack of independent sources to confirm he really existed. Holding up well as a compelling individual I can see, though.

The Plato/Socrates is a well worn comparison because of all the similarities, I claim no credit for original thought. The Atlantis comparison I was more interested in, but it's less relevant since the events of Atlantis were supposed to have happened ages before Plato lived.

[FallentoReason]

Please show your work. Confirm the extent of this "weak corrolation" so that its as clear as possible that the writer was not an observer. For the record I'm not disagreeing with you, but you are telling me here that you find it substantial enough and apparently I should too.

Matthew 9:9 he speaks of Matthew in 3rd person. That doesn't make any sense unless the author was someone apart from Matthew. Now everything he describes becomes hearsay because he wasn't an Apostle following Jesus around as he did his thing.

And so it must follow that because he wasn't an eye witness therefore Jesus didn't exist??

It means that his account becomes hearsay i.e. he says claim C is true because person P said it was. Why should I believe word of mouth?

Its hard to know much of anything from 2000 years ago except to take it from the few writings we have. Some people have done a lifetime's worth of research on the topic (not me) and to be honest they STILL have very little idea in my opinion what actually happened, because they are relying on what was written down so many years ago and what the "general thought" of the day is.

Yeah I agree to an extent, but we still have things to go from. We have the claims being made by Christians everyday and we have the manuscripts where they're getting this from. As I have already shown on this thread, there's evidence within the manuscripts themselves that show you no one had seen this Jesus guy. I mean think about it, we're talking about the 'infallible word of God' so even the uncertainty about certain things you mentioned already starts to show that these writings are unsupported wishful claims.

I wonder how many, if any on this forum are actually qualified to say with any real certainty or accuracy whether this man Jesus actually existed, and following that, what he actually did. Every single person on here is doing what they can, reading and listening to other people. Is any of it accurate? Some of it? All of it? There literally is no way to know until we get more information (which may or may not be coming).

We know enough to come to a pretty good conclusion I reckon. Given that we know of previous religions like Mithraism and other characters like Hercules the Son of Jupiter, you can see how Christianity isn't even original. So why give so much credit to Jesus and believe he existed? Why don't we accept that Hercules existed then? I can give you 25 names of historians that mentioned Hercules and some to the extent that mention him in their works of Roman history. It's just mindboggling that Jesus doesn't get any of this treatment. Why?????

First of all you can wave your hand in the air all you want calling points strawmen, but it doesn't take away from the point. My point was, if Mark was written first and he does not have a birth narrative in his story, does that mean Jesus did not exist?

No, it is a strawman because that wasn't ever my point. I just stated that nothing is known about the birth of Jesus. You were claiming that it was all well documented.

Either way, it's a trivial question. There's no point in discussing the actual events if it can be shown that eyewitnesses didn't write any of it. Then all you're doing is discussing the accuracy of wishful thinking. No point..

The truth is there are stories about Jesus' birth, they just don't lie within Mark. The truth/accuracy of those stories is something that I can't claim to know, but it is what we have and until someone can sufficiently show that those tales are myth, legend, fable, etc., it will be very difficult to convince believers that there was no Jesus.

Have you seen where the stories lie? In Matthew and Luke, which used Mark as their starting point. Clearly they saw that no birth story or resurrection story was probably not a good thing (the resurrection verses in Mark [16:9-20] were later additions. This isn't disputed by anyone), so they added them in. You can especially tell with Matthew that he liked to amp things up. He always seems to 'remember' these earthquakes that no one else deemed important at all. And the 'young man' who all of a sudden is an angel in the tomb? Clearly he grabbed Mark and turned it into what Christians now see as the miracle worker Jesus the Christ.

[FallentoReason]

The vast, vast majority of people who lived in the ancient world didn't write anything. Of the texts that were written, very few survive to the present day, since preserving a text at that time meant copying it by hand at great expense.

It is not surprising, then, that we should not have writings from Jesus and every single one of his early followers. To suggest that this alone should call into question their very existence shows a lack of understanding about the nature of literacy and writing in the ancient world.

Poor choice by the Son of the Almighty Father. What a bummer that he went with illiterate people right? If I wanted to get my message across, being all powerful and all knowing, I would have possibly befriended some sort of historian. Josephus maybe?

I'm not sure how this addresses my point. Paul clearly knows that James is the brother of Jesus and refers to him (and only him) as that. As you just pointed out, the gospel authors also record that Jesus had a family.

I just explained to you that getting people to wrongly understand brother in Christ as brother OF Christ was a good advantage to the early churches fighting for power. In other words, no, Jesus had no brothers. You're merely observing a biproduct of the early cults with differing views fighting for power via appeals to authority by claiming that their founder was not just a follower of Jesus but blood related.

If Jesus didn't actually exist, wouldn't people at this time know that there was no such person or family? Why should we assume that everyone here is lying?

How am I meant to know? Jesus or his family or his disciples or even Paul never got a mention by any historian. Why should we assume this is historically correct? Because hearsay says so? No, I personally believe that is an irrational view that I can't accept given that there isn't any evidence in favour of it.

Let me save you some time, then. The overwhelming majority of scholars and historians believe that Jesus was an historical figure.

Strawman. I was talking about the 'cult wars', not the historical side of Christianity in terms of Jesus and the manuscripts.

Either way, appeal to authority isn't a form of proof.

You dismissed Thomas out of hand saying that it doesn't contain any narrative. But why should that discount it as a source for Jesus of Nazareth?

If we're already struggling to show that the canonical Gospels count for anything, what makes you even consider that a book of the same sayings and nothing else will add any credibility to the existence of Jesus?

The point I'm making above is that all of the gospels (canonical or not) are primarily concerned with Jesus' teachings. That is the bulk of their text. This makes sense, since he was a religious teacher. How is this not evidence of the existence of Jesus?

Did anyone hear him say those things? The sources that you get these sayings from are from hearsay accounts remember?

And who exactly saw and heard Jesus say these things, as you yourself have stated that the Gospels aren't from witnesses?

His early followers.

And do we have anything from them? Nope.

I would say that the oral traditions we have for Mohammad are probably quite accurate.

I wouldn't call either the Quran or the Gospels 'hearsay' -- this is not a court room. Rather, these are (to a great extent anyway), the remembrances of Jesus and Muhammad's earliest followers.

The content of the Qur'an is straight from the man himself. The Gospels are the rumours from the man that no one saw apparently. There's a difference, and it makes all the difference.

[FallentoReason]

TO EVERYONE

I want to share a story because I find it applies directly to some of us.

After a month of contemplating whether I should finally tell a friend about my deconversion I finally did it (2 weeks ago actually). My circle of frends consists of 80% born again Christians so I played it safe and told a close non-Christian friend.

Throughout the years that I have known him, it was typical of him to make those 'Christian' light hearted jokes (being teenagers and now in our early 20s there's a lot to pick on if you don't follow the general 'trend'). I would always respectfully defend my beliefs.

After I finished telling him about my change of beliefs and how I didn't think Jesus ever existed, something completely unexpected happened. The tables turned. He started telling me that he would like to believe some sort of Jesus guy lived and that he sometimes prays in the hope that some kind of being is there listening.

Why is it that when the claim is made that western society's baby Jesus never existed people of all walks just about gasp in disbelief and horror for even suggesting that? And like my friend, turn to emotional appeals of defense?

[McCulloch]

The gospels and associated biblical writings depict fairly detailed accounts of his [Jesus] death and birth.

Let's look at the birth narratives. In all of scripture, they exist in only two places, Matthew and Luke. The accounts in Matthew and Luke have only a few items in common: the names of his parents; the city of his birth and the virgin bit. All of the other parts of these familiar stories; the magi, the shepherds, the star, the census, no room at the inn, the escape to Egypt, the slaughter of the innocents, the annunciation ... belong to one and only one of the two narratives. Now, some of these are not minor details. If a writer was setting down the tale of the Messiah's birth, one would be hard pressed to come up with a plausible reason for excluding some of these aspects. And combining the stories into a single plausible story is next to impossible. For these and other reasons, most scholars and other reasonable people conclude that much the fairly detailed accounts of Jesus' birth are somewhat mythic not literally true.

I don't think it is a stretch to say that a man, likely named Jesus, was the basis for the narratives that the Bible portrays.

For what it is worth, I tend to agree. It seems that it was likely that there was a man, or a few men, at least one named "Jesus" who's lives provided the starting point for the late first century Gospels.

[dgruber]

Let's look at the birth narratives. In all of scripture, they exist in only two places, Matthew and Luke. The accounts in Matthew and Luke have only a few items in common: the names of his parents; the city of his birth and the virgin bit. All of the other parts of these familiar stories; the magi, the shepherds, the star, the census, no room at the inn, the escape to Egypt, the slaughter of the innocents, the annunciation ... belong to one and only one of the two narratives. Now, some of these are not minor details. If a writer was setting down the tale of the Messiah's birth, one would be hard pressed to come up with a plausible reason for excluding some of these aspects. And combining the stories into a single plausible story is next to impossible. For these and other reasons, most scholars and other reasonable people conclude that much the fairly detailed accounts of Jesus' birth are somewhat mythic not literally true.

So they conclude that these must be, or are more likely not true because they (scholars) have decided that a writer would not eliminate those specific details 2000 years ago? Sure if I was sitting down today to write a story about a person's life I would want to include all the information that I could, and I probably could get quite a few details if I knew the right people to talk to, but can we say it was the same 2000 years ago? If we say that the Gospels were not taken down until at least 40 years later, according to who you talk to, would it not be possible, or even plausible that the author/s of the Gospels didn't have all the information and had a hard time finding people to discuss it with? How easy would it be to find those people? If one was an eyewitness to a certain event then he might have very specific insight into that event, but not so much to others that he was not present for. None of them may have been eyewitnesses which certainly lessens the validity of the story, but does not mean that it absolutely did not occur. It just means those that wrote it down weren't there.

What I'm getting at here is not trying to state that the accounts of his birth are absolutely accurate or even mostly accurate because the simple truth is I don't know. What I am saying is that I have yet to hear a convincing argument that should lead me to decide that Jesus did not exist or even that the birth narratives ARE false. No one has really put forth that information other than to essentially say that Gospels don't really corroborate themselves that well so we can dismiss them as fable.