what are peoples thoughts on Jesus?

[KebertX]

Jesus was a great guy, and I will now tell his story, realistically.

In Nazareth, the Jews were basically the peasants, with the Roman ruling-class owning the vast majority of the wealth and property.  So along comes Jesus, a God-loving Jew who is a real man of the people.  When a town is hungry, he feeds them with fish and bread.  When people felt poor and over-taxed, he gave them wine, and made them feel more rich.  And where people were sick, he cared for them.

It's not that he literally turned water into wine, but by bringing people together, he could make the poor feel good about themselves (It's sort of a high-class thing, like giving a homeless man a lobster platter.  Also, alcohol isn't a half bad distraction if your life reallysucks :crazy: .  The Romans just want to kill him anyway, he's bringing the proletariat dangerously close to rising up, and now he's vulnerable, so they capture and crucify him.

His disciples take his story, and run with it.  Paul, I think it was, just wants to amass followers.  He claimed to have seen the "Messiah" rise from the grave.  He lied to rally people behind his cause.  He wanted power, which is sad because when he turned Jesus' cause into a religion, he defied everything Jesus stood for.  It wasn't until 350 years after his death that these stories were compiled into scripture.  I hardly think any of his magical powers, or speeches about being the son of God, had been properly documented, except as a game of Telephone.

Historically, Jesus definitely existed.  It's ignorant to say he didn't.  That being said, it's not an original story.  I think that Mithra is the first "Jesus" story in history, dating back to ancient Persia.  Mithra was the son of a Persian God, born of a virgin on the Winter Solstice, baptized in a river, healed the sick, fed the hungry, had 12 disciples, was crucified, and ascended to paradise on the Spring Equinox (Eostre.)

This tells me that Paul wasn't being creative when he decided to turn Jesus into a superhero.  He had a cause, and he taught things that must of had actual substance and meaning (otherwise no one would have given a shit.)  Based on the subtext of the story, I think Jesus was a Gandhi-esque peaceful revolutionary, who wanted to change the world for the better.

This is just what I get when I read the bible.  They say you need to take this stuff with a grain of salt, this is the story I get reading between the lines on the New Testament.

[i_am_i]

Jesus definitely existed.  It's ignorant to say he didn't.

Ignorant of what exactly?

[pinkocommie]

Jesus definitely existed.  It's ignorant to say he didn't.

Yes, we are well aware of the assertion.  Now please provide some evidence.

The funny thing is, it doesn't even matter.  It really doesn't.  Zombies obviously aren't real and neither is magic, so the fundamental biblical Jesus certainly didn't exist.  If some other kind-of-fits-the-bill Jesus existed, does that really matter?  I mean, it could do nothing but injure the credibility of the Christian religion, right?

[KebertX]

Jesus definitely existed.  It's ignorant to say he didn't.

Yes, we are well aware of the assertion.  Now please provide some evidence.

The funny thing is, it doesn't even matter.  It really doesn't.  Zombies obviously aren't real and neither is magic, so the fundamental biblical Jesus certainly didn't exist.  If some other kind-of-fits-the-bill Jesus existed, does that really matter?  I mean, it could do nothing but injure the credibility of the Christian religion, right?

Well yes, I suppose an objective look of the actual man who has been twisted into a God can't help the credibility of the religion that calls him god.  My point is just that the myths weren't just made up, they were stuck onto an actual person from that place and time.  "Jesus" (Assuming that was even his name) was an actual person, from a historical point of view, Jesus was real.  He just wasn't a magical Jewish Zombie.  He was a Socialist Revolutionary.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Also, why didn't any of the historians mentioned mention the earthquakes and zombie riots?

[pinkocommie]

Jesus definitely existed.  It's ignorant to say he didn't.

Yes, we are well aware of the assertion.  Now please provide some evidence.

The funny thing is, it doesn't even matter.  It really doesn't.  Zombies obviously aren't real and neither is magic, so the fundamental biblical Jesus certainly didn't exist.  If some other kind-of-fits-the-bill Jesus existed, does that really matter?  I mean, it could do nothing but injure the credibility of the Christian religion, right?

Well yes, I suppose an objective look of the actual man who has been twisted into a God can't help the credibility of the religion that calls him god.  My point is just that the myths weren't just made up, they were stuck onto an actual person from that place and time.  "Jesus" (Assuming that was even his name) was an actual person, from a historical point of view, Jesus was real.  He just wasn't a magical Jewish Zombie.  He was a Socialist Revolutionary.

Again, these are all assertions I've heard before.  Assertions honestly don't interest me very much.  Evidence interests me.  From my standpoint you are sharing your belief regarding a historical Jesus, but you seem to have mistaken your own belief for being a fact.  Facts have evidence that back them up.  So let's see that evidence.

[Lapsed Lurker]

"Faith, you see, can only come from hearing the message, and the message is the word of Christ.” (Rom 10:17)

What translation is that?

J.B.Phillips Translation of the New Testament

The word you emphasize isn't even implied in Greek.

It is implied in the Greek and English by reading the entire passage, which asserts that the faith that saves only comes through hearing the word of Christ (believing the gospel when you hear it/read it) and not from human wisdom that relies on reason and evidence. This same attitude can be found elsewhere in Paul's letters, such as in 1 Corinthians 1:17, 20-24 â€"

“For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospelâ€"not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
[...]
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Thomas received a report that Jesus was alive, but he refused to believe (pistis). He demanded evidence, a personal experience that he could not deny. Jesus gave it to him, and upon receiving that evidence, he believed (pistis). Jesus then said that he believed on the basis of seeing Jesus, but people who believed without seeing would be more greatly blessed (same word in both cases: pistis). John then comments that he recorded this story, among others, so that the reader would believe (same word again: pistis). In other words, John has provided evidence for his case in the form of eye-witness testimony.

And an eye-witness testimony that alone supports such an extraordinary claim is no evidence at all. That’s the attitude we see (and some of us will relate to) in Thomas’s doubting. He represents what Paul refers to as worldly wisdom, which wants solid evidence before it can accept such fantastical claims as true, regardless of the testimony of others. But it is those who accept the claim on faith alone ("believe without seeing") that are the ones blessed by Jesus, the ones who are doing right. So the passage is an attempt to encourage this level of (what I would call) childlike gullibility and to discourage skepticism and maturity in our approach to truth and knowledge.

Don’t put the Lord to the test is another device to stop the skeptical enquirer from devising experiments that can help establish sound evidence that would demonstrate that there is in fact a supernatural entity out there, looking out for us, demanding our worship like a needy narcissist, threatening to smite us if it doesn't eventually get its own way. But no, we are not permitted to conduct such experiments because of the importance of believing on faith alone.    

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” (Matt 11:25)
“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 18:3)

And, that this emotional appeal is the basis for the believer's faith is also revealed in 2 Thes 2:10-11, where it is claimed -

“They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie.”  

In that verse we see the writer revealing his true reasons for believing the gospel by projecting onto the disbeliever the same reliance on emotion to reject the gospel that he has for accepting it.

Religious faith is all about the emotion - the warm fuzzies caused by belief in a heavenly afterlife and in a powerful alpha male who has your best interests at heart. Facts, on the other hand, are often cold and hard, and It takes maturity to accept them when they're unpleasant. Children are often protected from them because it is thought they can't cope with them. Some children invent fictions to protect themselves from them. ...and some children never grow up.

[KebertX]

Again, these are all assertions I've heard before.  Assertions honestly don't interest me very much.  Evidence interests me.  From my standpoint you are sharing your belief regarding a historical Jesus, but you seem to have mistaken your own belief for being a fact.  Facts have evidence that back them up.  So let's see that evidence.

Let me start off by saying, my interpretation of things is nothing more than a story.  It's what I see when I shed away all the magic tricks in the bible, but it's doubtful that my idea of Jesus can account for anything that actually happened.  I just like to think about it that way, and it seems plausible enough that I don't see a reason to question it.  Honestly, I don't care who Jesus actually was.  He's like a speck of dirt somewhere in a mountain of myths.

It's just a nice story, like the Lord of the Rings, you don't need to think it actually happened.  So I say Jesus was a wise man, and a novel revolutionary. As for evidence, I have nothing concrete, I just picked between the lines of the bible to get a more secular story, and that's what I came up with.  I don't mean to assert my version of the history of Jesus as fact or anything. It just seems true to me.

~

That he existed, on the other hand, seems to be the historical consensus. If you don't mind Wikipedia as a source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus this is pretty heavily cited, scroll through if you're bored enough to do so.  There are a multitude of non-biblical references to Jesus, just as an ordinary human, dating back early enough to be within just a few decades of his death.

Critics of Jesus would write and call him a liar, intrigued citizens heard of his actions and wrote of him as a person, and his believers and followers of Paul write about him like he was the son of god.  But they all write of a man who was a champion among the Jews.  Basically, history of this time is too full of Jesus for him to have just been a rumor or a myth.  Someone was the center of all this attention.  In my view, there must have been an actual man who made a significant ripple in history for all of these records to just pop up about him at this time.

In terms of history, he's quite like a ghost.  His story went unchronicled until after he had died, and other than a couple hundreds written references about him from that time, there's no archaeological evidence of him doing anything.  Maybe he wasn't real (this seems unlikely to me, but...) maybe his entire story was just a fusion of myths that people mashed together as Jewish propaganda.  No one actually met him, they just heard of him.  It would be a massive conspiracy, coming from an organized network of people with an odd agenda of making people believe the Messiah had come.  Getting false news of Jesus' life out to the public convincingly enough that everyone thinks this fictional man is real, and start worshiping him and following his teachings, would be difficult to say the least.  But not impossible.

So what the hell do I know? Maybe he was fake, but I think the historical documents are more reliable than the alternative that it was all a conspiracy.  It all happened too quickly after his death to be a false history, like Adam and Eve.  Something happened at the turn of the millennium that got people writing about Jesus.  To me, that means there was probably a man out doing good things and spreading wisdom.  If not, well, there are worse lies people could believe in. Jesus is just all right with me.

[Sophus]

Jesus definitely existed.  It's ignorant to say he didn't.

Ignorant of what exactly?

The nonmagical Jesus may have existed, but to say it is certain he did, I don't believe it. "His" history is so very clouded.

[radicalaggrivation]

Again, these are all assertions I've heard before.  Assertions honestly don't interest me very much.  Evidence interests me.  From my standpoint you are sharing your belief regarding a historical Jesus, but you seem to have mistaken your own belief for being a fact.  Facts have evidence that back them up.  So let's see that evidence.

Let me start off by saying, my interpretation of things is nothing more than a story.  It's what I see when I shed away all the magic tricks in the bible, but it's doubtful that my idea of Jesus can account for anything that actually happened.  I just like to think about it that way, and it seems plausible enough that I don't see a reason to question it.  Honestly, I don't care who Jesus actually was.  He's like a speck of dirt somewhere in a mountain of myths.

It's just a nice story, like the Lord of the Rings, you don't need to think it actually happened.  So I say Jesus was a wise man, and a novel revolutionary. As for evidence, I have nothing concrete, I just picked between the lines of the bible to get a more secular story, and that's what I came up with.  I don't mean to assert my version of the history of Jesus as fact or anything. It just seems true to me.

~

That he existed, on the other hand, seems to be the historical consensus. If you don't mind Wikipedia as a source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus this is pretty heavily cited, scroll through if you're bored enough to do so.  There are a multitude of non-biblical references to Jesus, just as an ordinary human, dating back early enough to be within just a few decades of his death.

Critics of Jesus would write and call him a liar, intrigued citizens heard of his actions and wrote of him as a person, and his believers and followers of Paul write about him like he was the son of god.  But they all write of a man who was a champion among the Jews.  Basically, history of this time is too full of Jesus for him to have just been a rumor or a myth.  Someone was the center of all this attention.  In my view, there must have been an actual man who made a significant ripple in history for all of these records to just pop up about him at this time.

In terms of history, he's quite like a ghost.  His story went unchronicled until after he had died, and other than a couple hundreds written references about him from that time, there's no archaeological evidence of him doing anything.  Maybe he wasn't real (this seems unlikely to me, but...) maybe his entire story was just a fusion of myths that people mashed together as Jewish propaganda.  No one actually met him, they just heard of him.  It would be a massive conspiracy, coming from an organized network of people with an odd agenda of making people believe the Messiah had come.  Getting false news of Jesus' life out to the public convincingly enough that everyone thinks this fictional man is real, and start worshiping him and following his teachings, would be difficult to say the least.  But not impossible.

So what the hell do I know? Maybe he was fake, but I think the historical documents are more reliable than the alternative that it was all a conspiracy.  It all happened too quickly after his death to be a false history, like Adam and Eve.  Something happened at the turn of the millennium that got people writing about Jesus.  To me, that means there was probably a man out doing good things and spreading wisdom.  If not, well, there are worse lies people could believe in. Jesus is just all right with me.

There was a very similar thread on this a quite a few months ago where I addressed this same issue. Your Wikipedia link was clearly written by someone who wants to establish Jesus as historical. Unfortunately every extra-biblical source mentioned can be refuted or disputed. The source that interests me the most is Mara Bar-Serpapion, who makes a very interesting comparison. He essentially equates Jesus, Pythagoras, and Socrates. This is interesting because they all have similar historical treatments. In other words he is saying, if we consider Pythagoras and Socrates as historical, then why would we not consider Jesus historical as well. Socrates has no evidence of his existence but unlike Jesus, we have first hand accounts from his students Xenophon and Plato. He is also referenced by his contemporary Aristophanes, the play write. He is also spoken of by Plato's famous disciple Aristotle. So we have multiple, strong, first hand accounts that he lived. For Pythagoras we at least have is contributions to philosophy and mathematics. These are the reasons he is considered historical. Because he was credited with his known works and they have survived. No one else claims that his work was theirs, so there is no one else to attribute these contributions to. Jesus on the other hand, has no undisputed, firsthand or secondhand accounts of his life. No contemporaries to cooperate his deeds. He has no personal writings or works of carpentry. There is no evidence that Jesus was historical and only a few passing references to him through history. These references can be attributed to interpolations or people who are so far removed from his "life" that they have to be questioned critically.

All sources from Rome can be discounted because they are clearly using the gospels as their sources. The reason being, is because of their use of the word Christus. I address why this can be discounted below. The other name typically used to reference Jesus is Christos. This simply means "the anointed one" and is not a term that is exclusive to Jesus. There have been many "anointed ones" through ancient history. Being anointed could me being pious or very religious. It could be a reference to a person's spirituality. There is no reason to believe it is only a reference to Jesus.

The historicity of Jesus seems to be a pretty touchy subject so I will be as diplomatic about this as possible. To be brief, there is no reliable secular source that supports the existence of Jesus. It is likely that the man was a total concoction of early Christians in the same vein as Hercules. A hero myth figure used to advance religious ideas, that would have mass appeal to the largely pagan and Jewish beliefs of the time. The religion truly has many borrowed ingredients from many other systems of belief.

Usually when people point to extra biblical text to support the claim that Jesus was real they cite Josephus and Tacitus. I will address the one I feel more strongly makes a case for a secular source about Jesus; Tacitus. The particular passage that is typically quoted is from Tacitus’ The Annals, written around 109 CE. The Annals was Tacitus’ last work. It was intended to be a comprehensive history of the four Roman emperors that followed Augustus. Much of this work was lost, however, and what remains is the majority of Tiberius and Nero’s reign.

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [or Chrestians; see below] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Annals

There is little doubt that Tacitus is referring to Jesus in this passage but this brings us to the most glaring issue with his reference. Jesus is believed to have died between 30 and 35 CE. Rome devastated Jerusalem at around 70 CE. Understanding that Tacitus wrote The Annals in 109 CE, we are left with 75 year gap between the time he authored his works and Jesus’ supposed death. We are also left with a 40 year gap between the authorship of The Annals and the time that Rome sieged Jerusalem.  Time is a key factor in determining the credibility of a source and there is no evidence that Tacitus was using a firsthand source at all. If he was writing 5, 10, or even 20 years after the fact we could be less critical but 75 years after the event is too much time to consider Tacitus a reliable secular source.

There is no argument that people lived much shorter lives and the vast majority of people were also illiterate. For ignorant people, who consider a 30 year old woman elderly, it is not hard to see the issues cropping up for the credibility of Tacitus’ excerpt about “Christus”. He is far from the range of any credible first had accounts. That fact alone creates a huge discrepancy in just how accurate Tacitus could possibly be. For those that would argue that the Romans destroyed all of the firsthand accounts of Jesus during the 70 CE siege, not only is that totally ridiculous (Romans kept the best records in antiquity, including their embarrassing campaign against Hannibal), it would go against every Roman historical tradition before and after this event.

Another glaring flaw in Tacitus’ account of Christian persecution is how he refers to Jesus. There is no doubt that he is referring to Jesus when he says “Christus”. The question is why did he use that term? Christus would not have been used in any Hebrew writing because it was a Latin word. If there were any firsthand accounts of Jesus life being written by those who witnessed him personally, it is more likely that this would have been translated from Hebrew or Greek, rather than Latin. Yeshu or Yeshua are the common Hebrew words used to refer to Jesus. Given the time The Annals were being written, it is strange that Tacitus did not use the Hebrew word or at the very least the Greek word for Jesus; Christos (the anointed one).

This may all seem trivial but it is very important to note that aside from a mistranslation, there is little other reason that Tacitus would have used the word Christus, instead of Christos or Yeshua. The reason for this mistake is likely because Tacitus was not using any first hand sources but possibly citing from the then widely circulated Gospels themselves. It is possible Tacitus was using some of the Vetus Latina (Old Latin Bible) or that he simply misread a Greek translation or that his particular translation had a textual mistake (which was very common). All of these scenarios are more likely than the word Christus being purposely used as a reference to Jesus in, what should have been, Greek or Hebrew text.

Another embarrassing issue with arguing for a historical Jesus is the fact that not one of Jesus’ contemporaries writes a single word of his existence. It is only after nearly 4 decades have passed that anyone mentions him at all. That is very strange considering there were a formidable amount of historians and scholars that lived around the time of his life and death.  This laundry list includes Justus of Tiberias, Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Younger, Valerius Maximus, Velleius Paterculus, and most notably Philo of Alexadria.

Philo deserves a special nod because not only did he live during the entire supposed lifetime of Jesus (between 20 BCE to 50 CE), he was most active during the time when Jesus supposedly died, he only lived a few hundred miles away from Jerusalem, and he wrote extensively about the persecution of Jews by Pontius Pilate! Nearly all of Philo’s work is preserved and yet he seems to never have heard of the King of the Jews, Jesus Christ! How strange for someone who was clearly invested in the plight of Jews and had every available opportunity to hear anything at all about Jesus and yet he never mentions then name. Surely Philo would have heard of a man who claimed to be the son of God, who challenged the very foundation of the Jewish practice in Jerusalem, and who was sentenced to die by a well known Roman leader Philo followed closely. Philo got everything else but somehow missed all of that.

I know that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence but this is just ridiculous. Some may dispute all of these coincidences but as a skeptic I cannot do that. There are simply too many more logical explanations, other than everyone who could have attested to Jesus caught amnesia or all of their records were destroyed. I would have no problem rejecting a real Jesus as the son of God but in this case Jesus is just as paper-thin as all the other heavily praised deities of history. Jesus was just lucky enough to be popular when movable type was invented, so his myth could be spread far and wide for pennies on the dollar.

Check out some of the links below for my sources and I have to give big props to R.G. Price, who has the most comprehensive argument against a historical Christ I have ever seen. If you do nothing else, check out his website radicalrevolution.net. Links below.

http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/ ... tory.htm#8 (if you are even fleetingly interested in the subject you need to check out this site. It is an amazing resource and he cites everything for us to use. This is the major source for my article. Props to R.G. Price again.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo
http://dictionary.babylon.com/christus/
http://www.biblestudy.org/question/how- ... jesus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetus_Latina

It is quaint and easy to just say that he was real. No one wants to admit that they were duped but the history does not add up. I cannot say with certainty that there was no Jesus but if we went just by the evidence and I knew nothing about the influence of Christian faith, I would be inclined to dismiss Jesus as historical.

[pinkocommie]

As for evidence, I have nothing concrete.

Its respectable that you would admit this, but...

That he existed, on the other hand, seems to be the historical consensus. If you don't mind Wikipedia as a source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus this is pretty heavily cited, scroll through if you're bored enough to do so.  There are a multitude of non-biblical references to Jesus, just as an ordinary human, dating back early enough to be within just a few decades of his death.

...this is not relevant.  If people began writing about a giant floating castle just a few decades after it was said to have disappeared, would that honestly compel you to believe that a giant floating castle actually existed?  Just because they're talking about a man and men existed during that time, that doesn't make the Jesus myth any more viable than the giant floating castle myth in my opinion.

Critics of Jesus would write and call him a liar, intrigued citizens heard of his actions and wrote of him as a person, and his believers and followers of Paul write about him like he was the son of god.  But they all write of a man who was a champion among the Jews.  Basically, history of this time is too full of Jesus for him to have just been a rumor or a myth.  Someone was the center of all this attention.  In my view, there must have been an actual man who made a significant ripple in history for all of these records to just pop up about him at this time.

I feel like you might be forgetting that these kinds of accounts are literally - for the lifespans of that time - generations after the death of the mythological Jesus.  Assuming anything about them is factually correct makes little sense to me.

In terms of history, he's quite like a ghost.  His story went unchronicled until after he had died, and other than a couple hundreds written references about him from that time, there's no archaeological evidence of him doing anything.  Maybe he wasn't real (this seems unlikely to me, but...) maybe his entire story was just a fusion of myths that people mashed together as Jewish propaganda.  No one actually met him, they just heard of him.  It would be a massive conspiracy, coming from an organized network of people with an odd agenda of making people believe the Messiah had come.  Getting false news of Jesus' life out to the public convincingly enough that everyone thinks this fictional man is real, and start worshiping him and following his teachings, would be difficult to say the least.  But not impossible.

Mmm...seems like a bit of a false dichotomy to me, though.  It seems like you're saying either he was a miraculous, intelligent man that existed and moved people enough to become a legend and then a god, or there was a huge conspiracy to create this figure and make him into a god for some secondary purpose.  From why I understand of the nature of human mythology and the evidence we have regarding Jesus, neither of those explanations make much sense.

So what the hell do I know? Maybe he was fake, but I think the historical documents are more reliable than the alternative that it was all a conspiracy.  It all happened too quickly after his death to be a false history, like Adam and Eve.  Something happened at the turn of the millennium that got people writing about Jesus.  To me, that means there was probably a man out doing good things and spreading wisdom.  If not, well, there are worse lies people could believe in. Jesus is just all right with me.

Well, glad you're into it, but I just feel I should point out that what you're saying here is a pretty far cry from your initial comment to which I responded -

Jesus definitely existed. It's ignorant to say he didn't.

While I would agree that saying with certainty that some kind of Jesus guy never existed is an assumption, I feel it's no more ignorant than stating absolutely that some Jesus kind of guy did exist.

[i_am_i]

In terms of history, he's quite like a ghost.  His story went unchronicled until after he had died, and other than a couple hundreds written references about him from that time, there's no archaeological evidence of him doing anything.  Maybe he wasn't real (this seems unlikely to me, but...) maybe his entire story was just a fusion of myths that people mashed together as Jewish propaganda.  No one actually met him, they just heard of him.  It would be a massive conspiracy, coming from an organized network of people with an odd agenda of making people believe the Messiah had come.  Getting false news of Jesus' life out to the public convincingly enough that everyone thinks this fictional man is real, and start worshiping him and following his teachings, would be difficult to say the least.  But not impossible.

These were people living under an oppresive military occupation. Their "odd agenda" was to subvert that occupation. Using the Jesus myths to unify the people seems to me to be as good a tactic as any. And in the long run it worked, didn't it?

[KebertX]

In terms of history, he's quite like a ghost.  His story went unchronicled until after he had died, and other than a couple hundreds written references about him from that time, there's no archaeological evidence of him doing anything.  Maybe he wasn't real (this seems unlikely to me, but...) maybe his entire story was just a fusion of myths that people mashed together as Jewish propaganda.  No one actually met him, they just heard of him.  It would be a massive conspiracy, coming from an organized network of people with an odd agenda of making people believe the Messiah had come.  Getting false news of Jesus' life out to the public convincingly enough that everyone thinks this fictional man is real, and start worshiping him and following his teachings, would be difficult to say the least.  But not impossible.

These were people living under an oppresive military occupation. Their "odd agenda" was to subvert that occupation. Using the Jesus myths to unify the people seems to me to be as good a tactic as any. And in the long run it worked, didn't it?

Good point.  I have honestly learned a ton about the historicity of Jesus just today.  Maybe he was real, maybe he wasn't, It's not as concrete as I thought it was 12 hours ago.  It could go either way, and honestly, I don't care.  I still like the story. To me, it's just like all the myths about Krishna, The Buddha, Muhammad, and all these other "historical" religious figures.  Good stories, moral lessons, a lot of magic and untrue hocus-pocus, but probably have some grain of truth in them.

I don't know if he was real, but as it doesn't really matter, so I'd just as easily believe that there was actually a really good guy about 2,000 years ago. I also think Paul really fucked up everything he stood for by creating Christianity.  He did to Jesus' cause what Stalin did to Lenin's: After his death he mutilated it out of all it's meaning so that he could use it as a tool control people and gain power.

[lundberg500]

There are a multitude of non-biblical references to Jesus, just as an ordinary human, dating back early enough to be within just a few decades of his death.

KebertX, this is simply not true. You shouldn't put forth untruths like this and offer no backup at all. I can easily dispute anything related to Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny.

[Thumpalumpacus]

In terms of history, he's quite like a ghost.  His story went unchronicled until after he had died, and other than a couple hundreds written references about him from that time, there's no archaeological evidence of him doing anything.  Maybe he wasn't real (this seems unlikely to me, but...) maybe his entire story was just a fusion of myths that people mashed together as Jewish propaganda.  No one actually met him, they just heard of him.  It would be a massive conspiracy, coming from an organized network of people with an odd agenda of making people believe the Messiah had come.  Getting false news of Jesus' life out to the public convincingly enough that everyone thinks this fictional man is real, and start worshiping him and following his teachings, would be difficult to say the least.  But not impossible.

These were people living under an oppresive military occupation. Their "odd agenda" was to subvert that occupation. Using the Jesus myths to unify the people seems to me to be as good a tactic as any. And in the long run it worked, didn't it?

Not without an assist from the Goths.