How strong is the evidence that Jesus existed?

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From what I've heard, the main evidence is the Bible and the testimony of Josephus Flavius. There's nothing written (that we know of) about Jesus from his lifetime, which supposedly was from about 5 BC to 30-35 AD.

Of course, a lot of our knowledge of other ancient historical figures is similarly scant. But it still seems kind of suspicious to me. Yet even among atheists, it is seen as a radical view to think Jesus never even existed as a human being.

Do you think it's possible the guy never even existed at all?

Josephus was well known for his inaccuracy and exaggeration.

ruveyn

Its possible in the same sense that people debate whether Homer existed or was multiple writers. I tend to think he probably did live and was just a vocal Jewish philosopher who became a beacon for the downtrodden. It is not uncommon for myth and legend and exaggeration to exist in writings from the time period. Strangely most Christians will acknowledge this simple fact but will not scrutinize Jesus in the same light that they would Homer

Both of these are valid statements. However, from a personal perspective, I think that there is a reasonable margin for believing that a man named Jesus (or something like that) was born of a woman named Mary (or something like that), who claimed to be a virgin. Later in life, he preached a message of peace, love, and mercy while also speaking out against the hypocrisy of the religious leadership, and for this those same religious leaders set him up to be executed by the occupying military. Then he was crucified and died.

The validity of the rest of the stories - especially those detailing the alleged miracles - is left for the readers of the gospels to decide for themselves.

Most historians tend to question the references to "jesus" by Josephus due to the likelihood of corruption by Christians in later interpretations of his work (the originals were destroyed in a fire, and it is understood that these references did not exists in the originals), and also that there are no corroborating references from writers during the time we understand Jesus was supposed to have existed. Most references appear much later in history, and generally by christian writers. Interestingly there is no validated record of such a man in Roman records, which is curious because they tended to be very keen on documentation.

I also say historians, because study of the Gospels do not count as they are considered 3rd or 4th references (hearsay almost), and where it matters is the primary sources from writers at that time in question. This is where the issue of validating the story of Jesus lies, there is very little inthe way of primary sources, let alone corroborating stories, so the whole story is at best conjecture and interpretation.

Zero. The Jesus Christ story is a continuation of the old mystery school mythology that was going around for thousands of years around that time. The story of Christ is an allegory, that's how the wise men and the sages of ancient times encrypted wisdom, spiritual and philosophical messages and truths, through allegory and symbolism. This was done to keep the (as some authors put it) "profane" from misusing certain knowledge. Did anyone really think there was some guy named Jesus Christ who rose from the dead, ascended to heaven (outer space?), and is going to save the earth from some guy named Satan? This story is nothing more than a personification of spiritual and philosophical concepts, along with some astronomy, and astrology. You would be surprised, there is an enormous esoteric element to the Bible and that in itself is a very rarely known truth.

I do find it quite ironic and hypocritical how Christians slam and belittle the "pagans" for their belief systems, what they don't know is that Christianity IS paganism, it sprung right out of the tail of paganism. Then they tried to burn all the pagan books and establish Christianity as the supreme religion. Christianity has a long dark history of bigotry, murder, cruelty and destruction, all out of rabid fanaticism in the name of God (or Jesus), most people don't know this.

A lot of people read the Bible and learn about Christian doctrine and conclude it's a bunch of nonsense, and they become atheists and agnostics, or convert to some other religion, because their logic says the obvious, that these stories are not and can not be literal or factual. But most people leave it at that and don't bother to dig deeper, not knowing that there is much more to the Bible than what they have been led to believe. Christianity/catholicism today is nothing more than a perverse system devised to intellectually enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit. That is the truth as far as I could figure out and I know this post won't be very well received by some.

I think I'll close my post with a quote from Thomas Paine's Common Sense essay, "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and at first raises a formidable outcry in defense of custom."

Very well put! I kept nodding my head in agreement throughout the entire post. We'll probably never know for sure if Jesus Christ actually existed or not but when you look at the evidence for his existance . . . There really isn't any. Considering the incalculable numbers of people murdered in his name, it doesn't even seem to matter wether or not he was real; he IS real to many people and that is a scary thought!

It is just not credible from an academic perspective to deny the existence of the historical Jesus.

Bart Ehrman is one of the most radical fringe scholars on subject of historicity; this cute youtube clip shows that even he has to put up with the Christ Myth people. One of the most interesting things in the video is that the chap interviewing Ehrman actually thinks that Eherman ought to agree with him and even expects it; right up until he is show just how detached from the subject he really is.

I fount it interesting that even Ehrman has to deal with these people also.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdqJyk-dtLs&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Bill Craig discussing the Jesus Seminar.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLKCvcg6M_4[/youtube]

this

For the most part, it is just taken as questionable to believe this. It isn't that the evidence that Jesus existed is so overwhelming that a person has to be an idiot to have question, it's really that any kind of story pieced together would have to contain a few unjustifiable absurdities in order to hold to it. So, the historically valid inference is Christ exists.


Not really, no. The most radical edge will include self-proclaimed mythicists, unless we are to invalidate them from the start. So, Robert Price, Richard Carrier, George A. Wells, and possibly a few others. Now, we can try to make the argument that none of the mythicists are real scholars, but they do write scholarly works, and they do participate in scholarly bodies, as well, the dividing line isn't as clear in history. We can easily say that mythicists are fringe though.

Those people you listed are just not credible, like Ian Plimer discussing climate change, no one takes them seriously in academia. Ehrman, while being someone on the fringe is still an accepted as a real scholar, those others you mentioned are not.

'Some skeptics have maintained that the best account of the biblical and historical evidence is the theory that Jesus never existed; that is, that Jesus' existence is a myth (Well 1999). Such a view is controversial and not widely held even by anti-Christian thinkers.'
Michael Martin, "Skeptical Perspectives on Jesus' Resurrection", in Delbert Burkett's The Blackwell Companion to Jesus, Oxford: Blackwell, 2011, p. 285

The thesis that Jesus never existed has hovered around the fringes of research into the New Testament for at least a century but it has never been accepted as a mainstream theory. This is for good reason. It is simply a bad hypothesis based on arguments from silence, special pleading, and an awful lot of wishful thinking. It is ironic that certain atheists will buy into this idea and leave all their pretensions of critical thinking behind.
James Hannam, "Is Jesus Christ a Myth?" (Part One), Patheos, 2010, para. 1

A phone call from the BBC’s flagship Today programme: would I go on air on Good Friday morning to debate with the aurthors of a new book, The Jesus Mysteries? The book claims (or so they told me) that everything in the Gospels reflects, because it was in fact borrowed from, much older pagan myths; that Jesus never existed; that the early church knew it was propagating a new version of an old myth, and that the developed church covered this up in the interests of its own power and control. The producer was friendly, and took my point when I said that this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese.
N. T. Wright, "Jesus' Self Understanding", in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 48

Last edited by 91 on 27 Nov 2011, 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

From what I understand, Richard Carrier had not invalidated his status as an actual scholar. Here's James McGrath on the matter: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringo ... icism.html

So, yes, mythicism is fringe, and I acknowledged this, but as I already stated, it's harder to draw standards in historical studies than it is in scientific studies. Frankly, Michael Martin's quote doesn't actually clear anything up, as I already acknowledged his claim: "We can easily say that mythicists are fringe though.", and acknowledge anything past this as mere quibbling on what "fringe" means, a debate I have no concern for.

That being said, Michael Martin is a mythicist last I checked.

Carrier has never held an academic position in his entire career. Never published his Christ myth position in any mainstream journal; though he has written on the idea that the body of Jesus was stolen. Not even his thesis was on the subject. By your standard of credibility you ought to also consider Kurt Wise to be a credible scholar.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKAHoYCWXF8[/youtube]

He's written on the historicity issue. He's published a number of books, and one of those books is being used as a textbook for a class at the University of Buffalo.

He's not currently planning on engaging the discipline using a journal, but rather he's working on writing books on historical methodology in which he also plans on developing the argument for mythicism because of the amount of ground that will have to be covered.

Even further, if Biblical Studies is not a hard science like geology is, then it is difficult to put someone as entirely without credibility as easily as with the hard sciences.

One question I have, if Jesus just sort of got invented as a person and a religion was started...why? The first issue I have is, why would people claim to be this man's apostles, and almost all die broke as martyrs? Why would so many people knowingly die and lose everything, and not even fight a resistance, if from the getgo they knew it was false? I mean, this is not really a "concrete" point, but still, something to consider... The apostles weren't making tons of dough and Christianity wasn't conquering the world and stuff until like 300 years after the religion was started. Even if at times it did divulge into evil conquest, etc, it certainly didn't start out that way the way other religions (by other religions I mean Islam) did.

Apostolic Succession, you can trace Christianity right back to around early 40s or early AD, without question, and we also know Nero persecuted Christians in the 50-60s AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pa ... Alexandria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pa ... of_Antioch

So basically, my point is, we have timelines of Christianity going back to when the Bible and other sources say Jesus lived, and we have a bunch of people that died for it. Basically, why would the founders of this new religion go through the trouble of dying and living in misery over it if they didn't think the person they're worshiping even was alive and a real person during that time, not even getting into why would they bother if they didn't think said founder's statements were true.