Did he known as 'Jesus Christ' exist?

[bernee51]

It would seem that the True Christian® believes that salvation can only be found through Jesus Christ. What if he didn't exist?

To the best of my knowledge there is no contemporary accounts of the life of the man known as Jesus. Nor is there any reference to events that allegedly occured around the time of his supposed life. This despite the fact that the Romans and Greeks were both avid chronicle keepers.

In all the writings extant from that time Jesus is not mentioned. Also not mentioned - and you would think that such an event would be rather newsworthy - is the so called 'Massacre of the Innocents" - Herod's attempt to circumvent a rumour that a king had been born. No reference to major earthquakes, graves opening, the sun turning dark and so on.

Perhaps the whole thing was a myth. The similarities between the Christ story and others (e.g. Mithra) are startling. Paul, an educated man, would have been familiar with these and it is possible that the whole Christ story was a clever way for him to spread his favourite doctrine.

So True Christians®, what real evidence is there of the existence of said man?

Hint: the bible does not count as evidence - I would like to know of contemporary writings.


regards

Bernie

[ST88]

If you read your bible you will see that Paul has next to nothing to say about Jesus' life. He didn't know and he didn't care. What did interest him was the ressurected messiah, and Jesus fit the bill as far as he was concerned.

Could you provide some examples of this?

I might be off, but I'm a bit curious as to how one can provide an example of something not being said....

Lotan claims that we would be able to see that Paul didn't care about Jesus as an actual person if we were to read the Bible. I'd like to know how to read it in this way, because I've read a good deal of it, and I haven't come to that conclusion. So I would think there would be textual examples.

[Lotan]

I guess you could argue that Paul was interested in the events of Jesus' life but it is rather difficult to see how. In his instruction of the early gentile churches does he relate Jesus sayings or parables? Does he recount Jesus' healings and miracles? No, he does not. Paul's focus was on the coming Kingdom of God.

This quote (interestingly from an article that proposes that Jesus was a myth) gives a general idea of the 'silence of Paul' as I have understood it from my reading:

Strangely, Paul mentions very little about the life of the historical Jesus. The Jesus of whom Paul writes is a disembodied, spiritual Christ, speaking from the sky. He never talks about Jesus's parents or the virgin birth or Bethlehem. He never mentions Nazareth, never refers to Jesus as the "Son of man" (as commonly used in the Gospels), avoids recounting a single miracle committed by Jesus, does not fix any historical activities of Jesus in any time or place, makes no reference to any of the twelve apostles by name, omits the trial, and fails to place the crucifixion in a physical location (Jerusalem). Paul rarely quotes Jesus, and this is odd since he used many other devices of persuasion to make his points. There are many places in the teachings of Paul where he could have and should have invoked the teachings of Jesus, but he ignores them. He contradicts Jesus's teachings on divorce (I Corinthians 7:10) allowing for none while the Gospel Jesus permitted exceptions. Jesus taught a trinitarian baptism ("in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost"), but Paul and his disciples baptized in Jesus's name only, which makes perfect sense if the concept of the trinity was developed later.

From Jesus: History or Myth?
Commentary by Lewis Loflin


BTW, my apologies for suggesting that anyone should read their bible. It would have been more accurate to say that the information could be found there, or not, as the case may be:)

[dangerdan]

Paul, the earliest of which were written only 12 years or so after Jesus' death. Although Paul has little to say about Yeshua of Nazareth and everything to say about Jesus Christ, still he provides valuable historical information. For example, he mentions the early church in Jerusalem, a family business run by Jesus' brother James, Mary, and Peter.
The later Gospels, although hardly objective history, contain useful information too. For example, the fact that Jesus was for a time a disciple of John the Baptist. Embarrassing for the evangelists, but apparently too well known to omit.

Hey, you’ve been reading Encarta online haven’t you Busted.

[nikolayevich]

I'm always fascinated by the scores of people who have spent good portions of their lives trying to disprove the existence of Christ. Not just His miracles but his very life. Why is His life such a threat? His miracles, I can understand, but why is there this longing to remove Him from a place in history?

Has any other person in all of time drawn so many detractors?

[Corvus]

I'm always fascinated by the scores of people who have spent good portions of their lives trying to disprove the existence of Christ. Not just His miracles but his very life. Why is His life such a threat? His miracles, I can understand, but why is there this longing to remove Him from a place in history?

Has any other person in all of time drawn so many detractors?

Shakespeare has had numerous ridiculous claims levelled at him throughout the centuries. That he didn't write his work, that he was Italian, that he was gay, etc, etc. But nothing on the scale of Christ. But then again, Shakespeare isn't worshipped by most of the world as the son of god, all of whom believe he committed a list of miracles as long as my arm, and nor did he have such a profound effect on Western culture, Harold Bloom be damned. Mohammed only got visited by an angel and never did anything so spectacular. It's only natural someone so singular, with such profound influence, would have so many detractors. It is a worrying thing when empires could possibly have been built on fabrications, lies or exaggeration of the truth.

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to Corvus in post #25]
I did some study on the thing and now can longer buy that Shakespeare wrote the works claimed to be his works.

Further I do think that the real author was not one but more than one person.

So much divergence in writing style among the different works.
Take " The Merry Wives of Windsor " or else " Titus Andronicus " for instance.


But in the matter of Christ; I think it a good Idea to bring this very thread forward and clear it from dust!

This thread, last time active 20 years ago, shows how badly believed and threatened Jesus Mythicists were back then.

And today?

Jesus Mythicism came out from the shadows and is now a more and more common view among scholars.

Peer reviewed academic books question Jesus historicism all the time.

It is a new dawn for Antichrists, it seems.

[TRANSPONDER]

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the supposed extra Biblical support for Jesus turned up with cut and paste Tacitus, Josephus, and Suetonius.

Friends, the only one of these with even a shred of validity is Tacitus.

Josephus is known to be spurious in part, and if in part, why not in all? Suetonius may not be talking about Jesus at all; Chreshtus was not an unknown name in Roman times. Pliny was only talking about how to deal with Christians. Bar- Serapeon was surely only referencing the Christian claim that the Jews killed their king. It is hardly his reporting anything he knew.

And this looks almost the same with Tacitus. Now I am willing to accept that there really was an actual Jesus, but is tacitus just reporting the Christian story or is he saying what he knows or has seen in the records?

I think the clue is in calling Pilate a procurator...hang on... Yes "suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate..." Pilate was not a procurator, he was a prefect (as shown by the Caesarea Pilate inscription. The point is that the early governors of Judea was Prefects (a military function) and were only procurator (a fiscal function) after Pilate's time. Thus in the time of Tacitus, Judea governors were all procurators and Tacitus assumed Pilate was, too. This shows he was not repeating reliable knowledge but just reporting the Christian claim.

As regards Paul, as has been noted, he has little to say about Jesus. What there is may reflect theology as much as factuality, and imaginary visions rather than actual encounters.

And yet I do think there are clues actually in the NT that do suggest that Jesus was real - but not at all like the Gospel Jesus. It is however, odd that Pliny mentions nothing about Jesus, even though he does mention Pilate.

[fredonly]

Am I the only one around here who's read Ehman's, Did Jesus Exist?

Probably the best reason to think so is the information we got from Paul. Paul met Jesus' brother, James, and other of his disciples. Paul also says he persecuted "Christians" within a few years of Jesus' death, and there's no record of this being some old cult - so it's best explained by there actually being such a man.

Josephus also references both James and Jesus (the corrupted Testimonium Flavianum notwithstanding).

[TRANSPONDER]

erratum I should of course have said 'Philo mentions nothing about Jesus, though he does reference Pilate', not "Pliny." Of course he doesn't mention the baptist either, while Josephus does and in a passage that nobody has doubted is genuine. The baptist at least was real and Josephus wrote about him. It's odd, then that he wouldn't write about Jesus, if the story is real. But, as said, the admiring Christian tone belies the claim that this is Josephus, though some argue that is later Christian editing.

But the fact is that it looks like an insert between two ''misfortunes' for the Jews.It is like someone had written this piece,fornd the reference to Pilate and thought 'This is a good place' and popped it in. I would much prefer that there were signs of a real Jesus being ripped out, but I haven't been ableto find (unlike John's temple cleansing' an obvious gap where the Jesus story would have fitted.

So is it all invention? Perhaps, but the bones of the story are so problematic for Christianity (and they had to work hard to excuse it) as welas Paul swearing that Jesus was a person the disciples at least knew and followed, that I have to credit reality.

But it does suggest that his Mission was so secretive and such a quick fail, that historians hardly noticed it, which sorta belied the claims that thousands followed him and listened to his teachings, even if (Mark implies) they had no idea what he was talking about, because the Jews were predestined not to listen, be converted and saved.

Which, if God already knew that, makes one wonder why he went ahead with it. apparently because the Jews had to be punishes for not listening to Jesus so God (like he did to Pharaoh) hardened their hearts so they wouldn't be saved. Pretty clear to me that the 'Jesus story' is all Christian propaganda and most of what Jesus supposedly did, and everything he supposedly said, is Christian invention. And the Historical Jesus is a minor and very different figure from Gospels Jesus.

In fact I think that clues to who he really was and what he did can be found in the references to Barrabbas. My Pet Theory.