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]

[dgruber]

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?

Is it really that hard to see? Many people base their entire existence and stake their afterlife on Jesus. They see Jesus as the one who guides them through everyday life and watches over all of their decisions. The same ones tend to be in circles where non believers are non existent. I have talked to many Christians who have never talked to an atheist before so they are not exposed to that type of thinking every day. In their circles, God, Jesus, the Bible are all a given, an automatic, a requirement in fact. So when they run into someone who says, Jesus does not exist, it takes them aback and they are shocked.

People are emotional by nature and the things that are important to people often have emotional responses associated with them. That's life.

[Goat]

Does anyone have any evidence for his existence?

The evidence we have for Jesus are the four canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, and the works of other early Christian writers, most notably Paul.

Yet, when we take a look at those works, we see not only items that were written down decades latter, but works that were written down with the motivation to teach a religion , not history. Not only that, the later the book was written, the more detailed it was, something you would get in the development of a myth or legend, not of a history.

This makes the New Testament weak evidence at best, and highly suspect when it comes to historical veracity.

[FallentoReason]

Is it really that hard to see? Many people base their entire existence and stake their afterlife on Jesus. They see Jesus as the one who guides them through everyday life and watches over all of their decisions. The same ones tend to be in circles where non believers are non existent. I have talked to many Christians who have never talked to an atheist before so they are not exposed to that type of thinking every day. In their circles, God, Jesus, the Bible are all a given, an automatic, a requirement in fact. So when they run into someone who says, Jesus does not exist, it takes them aback and they are shocked.

No, it's not obvious to see because the friend I was talking about is a non-believer. There's absolutely no reason why a lack of Jesus should affect him yet he seemed irrationally attached to the idea that Jesus could have been around. Why? There's no corrolation between his beliefs and the beliefs of Christianity so I don't see his irrational attachment other than the fact that Jesus is western society's mascot.

[historia]

Poor choice by the Son of the Almighty Father. What a bummer that he went with illiterate people right?

Whether Jesus of Nazareth existed or not is a fairly simple and straight-forward historical question -- and ostensibly the topic of this thread. I fail to see how the above has any meaningful bearing on our conversation.

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.

First, Paul doesn't refer to James as the "brother of Christ," but rather the "brother of the Lord," i.e., Jesus (Galatians 1:19).

Second, Paul and James are at odds in the early Church. Among our sources, it is not some vague "churches" or "cults" who claim that James is the brother of Jesus, but rather one of his opponents.

Third, Josephus also mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" (Antiquities of the Jews 20.9).

Finally, it's very easy to dream-up ad hoc hypotheses to explain the past -- this is why conspiracy theories are so popular. But in so far as your hypothesis requires us to believe quite a few new suppositions (the early christians lied about Jesus' existence, freely invented family members, and were vying cults) makes it a weak hypothesis.

The more plausible explanation here is the simpler one: Jesus actually existed and James was his brother. We have no good reason to doubt that.

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?

You aren't. We cannot recreate the past, and therefore can never have complete and absolute knowledge about it.

The purpose of any historical inquiry is not to "prove" what happened, but to identify and critically analyze the available sources, and reason toward the best explanation. That is what historians do.

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?

You should not assume that it is historically correct. Rather, you should recognize that it is the best hypothesis to explain the available information.

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

I'm not sure what you mean by "form of proof." But it seems to me that, if we are going to engage in an historical inquiry, we might look to see what actual scholars and historians have to say about it. Because, you know, they are experts and we are not.

That there is an overwhelming consensus among scholars that Jesus existed is certainly a strong argument in favor of that position.

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.

Of course we do. The gospel authors collected and edited the written and oral accounts of Jesus' earliest followers into the final texts that we see today. That is why the gospels are our chief source of information for Jesus himself.

Listen, Jospehus wasn't an eyewitness to everything he wrote about. Tacitus wasn't an eyewitness to the events he wrote about. And yet you call them "historians."

But when Luke compiles earlier written and oral accounts about Jesus into a final text -- just as Jospehus and Tacitus and other ancient "historians" did for their respective histories -- all of a sudden it's mere "hearsay" and can't be trusted?

Why the double standard?

[historia]

The evidence we have for Jesus are the four canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, and the works of other early Christian writers, most notably Paul.

Yet, when we take a look at those works, we see not only items that were written down decades latter, but works that were written down with the motivation to teach a religion , not history.

Nobody in this time period wrote objective history for the simple purpose of teaching history. That is a modern idea developed during the Enlightenment.

We customarily refer to people like Josephus and Tacitus as "historians," but by modern standards we would call their works political propaganda. Every source we have from the ancient world is chock full of bias and agenda. The gospels are no different in this regard.

Not only that, the later the book was written, the more detailed it was, something you would get in the development of a myth or legend, not of a history.

This makes the New Testament weak evidence at best, and highly suspect when it comes to historical veracity.

If your point here is that we cannot simply take the gospels at face value (any more than we can take the works of Josephus and other ancient writers at face value) than I agree completely. We have to critically analyze all of our sources.

[FallentoReason]

First, Paul doesn't refer to James as the "brother of Christ," but rather the "brother of the Lord," i.e., Jesus (Galatians 1:19).

It's the same deal. 'Brother of the Lord' is the Catholic version of saying 'brother in Christ'.

I did some further research on this and here's what I found:

When trying to understand these verses, note that the term "brother" (Greek: adelphos) has a wide meaning in the Bible. It is not restricted to the literal meaning of a full brother or half-brother. The same goes for "sister" (adelphe) and the plural form "brothers" (adelphoi). The Old Testament shows that "brother" had a wide semantic range of meaning and could refer to any male relative from whom you are not descended (male relatives from whom you are descended are known as "fathers") and who are not descended from you (your male descendants, regardless of the number of generations removed, are your "sons"), as well as kinsmen such as cousins, those who are members of the family by marriage or by law rather than by blood, and even friends or mere political allies (2 Sam. 1:26; Amos 1:9).

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/brethren-of-the-lord

Clearly the religious term 'brother of the Lord' was intentionally misused in order to gain that advantage over the other early churches.

Second, Paul and James are at odds in the early Church. Among our sources, it is not some vague "churches" or "cults" who claim that James is the brother of Jesus, but rather one of his opponents.

That's trivial and irrelevant. Friend or foe, how does one determine the truth from a rumour that has taken off the ground? Given that they were foes, the false claim of being the literal brother of Jesus would help James' cause. This actually makes your case worse.

Third, Josephus also mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" (Antiquities of the Jews 20.9).

You should know that apologists have long discarded Josephus entirely because it's a known forgery by Eusebus in the 4th century. Also, early church fathers never quoted any of what Josephus said about Jesus so the paragraph must not have existed. Nothing to see here.

Finally, it's very easy to dream-up ad hoc hypotheses to explain the past -- this is why conspiracy theories are so popular. But in so far as your hypothesis requires us to believe quite a few new suppositions (the early christians lied about Jesus' existence, freely invented family members, and were vying cults) makes it a weak hypothesis.

No, I don't believe they lied about him at all. What we have left over is hearsay. What you need to understand about the nature of hearsay is this:

Let's suppose we have miracle worker M, witness W and person P. Now, a hearsay account would be one you hear from P which got his source from W. This is hearsay because your source wasn't a direct witness. The troubling thing for the Gospels is that because they were written ~40 years after the events, how do you know the 'degree of separation' from W to P? What I mean by that is that the story could very easily have gone from W to P... to P to P to P to P. As soon as this happens, then whose to say that the story is anything like W told it?

The damning fact about it all is that the witnesses didn't even write anything themselves. Why did the Qur'an get produced during the lifetime of Muhammad by people he knew directly and a supposed Jesus character get his life written down by gossip 40 years later? Maybe because a non-existent person's profile needs to be drawn up over 40 years of rumours?

See, the Gospels are a rumour gone out of hand and you can see how the story evolves over time and with the help of the political conditions between the early churches. You see the evolution of Jesus and how everything gets divine all of a sudden. The most compelling fact for this is the omission of his resurrection in Mark as the resurrection account (16:9-20) is foreign to Mark.

You aren't. We cannot recreate the past, and therefore can never have complete and absolute knowledge about it.

The purpose of any historical inquiry is not to "prove" what happened, but to identify and critically analyze the available sources, and reason toward the best explanation. That is what historians do.

The best evidence as considered by historians is people saying things in an unbiased manner; offshoot comments which aren't adding anything to the person's point per se. Different points of view would also help them to determine the climate of things I'm sure. With the Gospels though, we have a one-sided argument which seems to be heavily biased at times. From Mark's 'young man' to Matthew's 'angel' in the tomb, we clearly see that the motive here is to add the 'wow' factor, and of course we would expect that from a biased source.

I personally don't see the point of trying to reconstruct history from the Gospels. Given that no historian ever speaks of Jesus or his Apostles you're just reconstructing a one-sided story. Why bother.

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?

You should not assume that it is historically correct. Rather, you should recognize that it is the best hypothesis to explain the available information.

Yeah but backed up in what way? Why don't you recognize that Hercules, Son of Jupiter was real? We have the biased texts that mention him.

I'm not sure what you mean by "form of proof." But it seems to me that, if we are going to engage in an historical inquiry, we might look to see what actual scholars and historians have to say about it. Because, you know, they are experts and we are not.

That there is an overwhelming consensus among scholars that Jesus existed is certainly a strong argument in favor of that position.

Even then you get most of them saying that nothing about Jesus can really be known. I agree, no secular evidence for him, so I can't really know if he existed. Based on the mystery cults and Hercules, we see that the idea of Jesus has been recycled over and over even before Christianity, so why should Jesus be any more real than the rest?

Of course we do. The gospel authors collected and edited the written and oral accounts of Jesus' earliest followers into the final texts that we see today. That is why the gospels are our chief source of information for Jesus himself.

And your evidence for this is...?

Chief source from people that never saw him. Hearsay.

Listen, Jospehus wasn't an eyewitness to everything he wrote about. Tacitus wasn't an eyewitness to the events he wrote about. And yet you call them "historians."

But when Luke compiles earlier written and oral accounts about Jesus into a final text -- just as Jospehus and Tacitus and other ancient "historians" did for their respective histories -- all of a sudden it's mere "hearsay" and can't be trusted?

Why the double standard?

Historians I'm sure would give priority to witness accounts and contemporary historians of the time. The Gospels on the other hand can't be verified in any way because they're the only texts making positive claims for something. And yes, they are hearsay as I have pointed out because there are many clues within the Gospels that show the authors weren't witnesses.

I find it intriguing that anyone directly related to Jesus, including Jesus himself, never left anything behind. Paul never claimed to have met Jesus and coincidentally he wrote his own texts. The Apostles on the other hand were in the middle of it all yet they left nothing behind. That makes 13 people which had nothing to say for themselves, nor did any secular sources ever see them apparently. Doesn't all of this tell you something?

[historia]

It's the same deal. 'Brother of the Lord' is the Catholic version of saying 'brother in Christ'.

What are you talking about? Throughout Paul's letters he regularly refers to all Christians as brethren in Christ. But James -- and only James -- is referred to as the brother of Jesus. This is not the "Catholic version" of anything.

The Catholic site you quoted is eager to show that the term 'brother' in Greek can have a wider meaning of 'cousin' or other close kinsmen (to protect the Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity). But that doesn't fundamentally change the issue. If Jesus didn't exist, he would not have had a mother or kinsmen of any kind.

Clearly the religious term 'brother of the Lord' was intentionally misused in order to gain that advantage over the other early churches.

Clearly? How so? Just because you can invent a motive doesn't mean you can now operate as if that motive is true. You've given us no good reason to believe this at all.

Given that they were foes, the false claim of being the literal brother of Jesus would help James' cause.

Okay, so now we're making some progress.

Up until this point, you've been saying that some vague set of "churches" and "cults" made the claim that their "founder" was the "brother of Christ."

But what you're now saying is that James himself must have made this claim. So James intentionally lied about this? This is not "decades" after Jesus lived, but years. Wouldn't his opponents know that Jesus didn't exist? Wouldn't they know that he therefore couldn't have had been his literal brother?

Third, Josephus also mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" (Antiquities of the Jews 20.9).

You should know that apologists have long discarded Josephus entirely because it's a known forgery by Eusebus in the 4th century. Also, early church fathers never quoted any of what Josephus said about Jesus so the paragraph must not have existed. Nothing to see here.

You're confused here.

There is no doubt that Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities 18.3, as it exists today, cannot have been original to the text. (Note that a majority of scholars actually think Christian scribes expanded an original reference to Jesus in the text rather than invented the current text out of whole cloth.)

But that is irrelevant here. The reference to James above comes from a completely different section of Josephus' writing in Antiquities 20.9. This reference is universally accepted by scholars as authentic.

No, I don't believe they lied about him at all.

But you're saying they purposefully mislead people into thinking that Jesus was an actual human being. How is that not lying?

You see the evolution of Jesus and how everything gets divine all of a sudden.

But evolution from what? It's easy to see how legends can accrue around an historical person. We see that all the time in ancient and pre-modern texts.

But what you're arguing for here is that Jesus didn't exist at all. There is no evolution in that case. You're advocating parthenogenesis, the creation of a person and a religious movement out of nothing. That's very hard to believe.

[orthodox skeptic]

I've accepted that Jesus was a living, breathing, historical character...the original Billy Graham...he could draw a crowd. As for Josephus, he was way ahead of his time. He would have been a very successful press agent. As for that blurb, "those that loved him at the first did not forsake him"... a quick read of the Easter story will confirm that all twelve, including that low down Judas...were nowhere to be found at either his trial or crucufixion. When Jesus did make make that miraculous comeback he found them cringing in an attic afraid to even go out for a loaf of bread. Just for the record, Bart Ehrman, Chair of Theology at UNC has identified Jesus as a rabid, tradition spouting Rabbi, concerned with keeping the Judaic code alive in the hearts of all Jews...no gentiles welcome!!

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]

[historia]

The best evidence as considered by historians is people saying things in an unbiased manner; offshoot comments which aren't adding anything to the person's point per se. Different points of view would also help them to determine the climate of things I'm sure.

Absolutely. But we rarely have this luxury when it comes to ancient history.

Most of what we know about ancient history comes from sources (and in many, many cases just a single source) written decades, if not centuries, after the events they describe, by people who were not eyewitnesses (and therefore based on "hearsay").

You imagine that the sources that we have for Jesus are somehow unique and unusual in this regard, and therefore there is something suspicious about them. But this is the norm for ancient historical sources. This is what we expect to see.

You also imagine that Josephus is some kind of objective "secular historian," so that if he mentions something it's golden and we can trust it. But if Luke -- who is just as much an "historian" as Jospehus -- mentions something, it's now somehow biased, unverified, and must be doubted.

Scholars and historians don't take what Josephus and other "contemporary historians" have to say at face value. And they certainly don't discount what Luke and the other Christians have to say out of hand.

With the Gospels though, we have a one-sided argument which seems to be heavily biased at times. From Mark's 'young man' to Matthew's 'angel' in the tomb, we clearly see that the motive here is to add the 'wow' factor, and of course we would expect that from a biased source.

Yes, exactly. What you're missing, though, is that this cuts both ways. When the gospels record events that actually run counter to the bias of their authors (and they do), we can be reasonably certain that they are recording actual history.

I personally don't see the point of trying to reconstruct history from the Gospels. Given that no historian ever speaks of Jesus or his Apostles you're just reconstructing a one-sided story. Why bother.

Because we can apply a critical analysis to the text. This is precisely what historians have done to the gospels.

That there is an overwhelming consensus among scholars that Jesus existed is certainly a strong argument in favor of that position.

Even then you get most of them saying that nothing about Jesus can really be known.

This is simply not true. You clearly have not read the scholarly literature on the historical Jesus.

I find it intriguing that anyone directly related to Jesus, including Jesus himself, never left anything behind. Paul never claimed to have met Jesus and coincidentally he wrote his own texts. The Apostles on the other hand were in the middle of it all yet they left nothing behind. That makes 13 people which had nothing to say for themselves, nor did any secular sources ever see them apparently. Doesn't all of this tell you something?

Yes, it tells me that you haven't spent very much time looking at ancient historical sources.

This is par for the course for ancient history. It's simply a function of the great cost of producing and preserving ancient text. And nothing else. It certainly doesn't give us cause to doubt the existence of Jesus.

[historia]

The most compelling fact for this is the omission of his resurrection in Mark as the resurrection account (16:9-20) is foreign to Mark.

Mark mentions Jesus' resurrection in 16:1-8.