Did Jesus really exist?

Discussion in 'History' started by aaqucnaona, Jun 12, 2012.

  1. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Was Jesus an actual historical person? Maybe a spiritual teacher, maybe a counter-cultural hippie whose followers later embellished his tales and teachings and combined it with material from the torah between the time of his death and the early documents that would form the gospels? Or was he just a character adopted from earlier mythologies and unified with the Jewish mythology for cultural or political purposes?

    What kind of research is available on this? Can the negative here be proven at all? And what is the current status on this by the christian institutions and what would further discoveries on this either way mean/affect culturally, instituationally and politically?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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  5. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    There is no evidence of a historical Jesus, and the stories left behind are so fantastic and so full of holes that they cloud historicity even further. So much myth and religiosity has been piled on that it's hard to distinguish fact from fiction. For me the issue is this: why and how did this story arise in the first place? Here are some of the main issues that I find relevant:

    1. Conflict with Rome. There is evidence of tensions beginning in the year 6 with a tax issue, with executions of rebellious Jews in the 40s and the war of 66-73 with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70. Crucifixion served as a deterrent.

    2. Factionalism. Christianity defies Judaism because it's prohibited to equate Yahweh with any god much less a man. There were at least 4 factions mentioned by Josephus: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots. The Pharisees and Sadducees seem to be competing for control of Judaism while the Essenes left and settled in the desert at Qumran. The Zealots were freedom fighters who terrorized their Roman overlords and probably initiated most of the reprisals and the war. John the Baptist has the marking of Essenes who apparently invented Baptism as Jewish purification ritual. By his cucifixion Jesus seems identified with Zealotry.

    3. Hellenism/Stoicism. The Greeks had subjugated Judaea 300 years before. Hebrew had already fallen into disuse and the second language Aramaic would now be replaced by Greek. With the language came Greek culture and lore. The Stoics used the term logos not to mean "The Word" but substance or cause of reality. The Apocrypha are the Old Testament books written in Greek, rejected by Protestants.

    4. Syncretism. A melding of archetypes from Greek, Egyptian and Persian mythology is apparent in the Jesus story. Mithra had 12 disciples who had a Last Supper with him before he was executed. The trial of Socrates for belief in Theos, the cup and suicide, are striking parallels.

    5. Gnosticism. The Gnostic versions of Jesus are strikingly different. How and why the Gnostics took root seems to parallel the question of how and why Christianity ever arose.
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    I think he was the carpenters son. Maybe in those days they prayed for the Christ, so he came. He most likely had disciples. What came of Christ, who existed supposedly between 20 b.c. 30 a.d? I believe there is a good reason those stories were thought and shared. However, I do not believe Christ is a fool of a church.

    What would suggest of the Christ being crucified?

    I believe in a man, not a church.
     
  8. Epictetus here & now Registered Senior Member

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  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The Romans were compulsive recordkeepers. It's beyond belief that the fantastic, newsworthy events that are claimed to have occurred at that time could have actually taken place and no scribe bothered to write about them.

    If it happened today it would be the only thing on TV.
     
  10. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Its hard to say. He wasn't a Jew, or a Christian. The Romans hunted him down? Its hard to say when the bible is clearly just off.
     
  11. Extrovert39 Registered Member

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    It was just 2000 years ago bud.
     
  12. Saturnine Pariah Hell is other people Valued Senior Member

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    Really? No. Seriously?(sighs and shakes head)
     
  13. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    So what? What point are you trying to make?
     
  14. Gremmie "Happiness is a warm gun" Valued Senior Member

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    I doubt he/she, has a point...

    Just a troll...

    I'm willing to bet this poster doesn't make 5 more posts.

    Unless it's just spam or ad homs.

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    Then again, it could just be a sock... But, I'm guesing it will still go away soon...(or be banned)
     
  15. superstring01 Moderator

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    An excellent point.

    ~String
     
  16. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Any records if they existed have either been purged to stop anti-semantics towards religions based on them or are likely under lock and key somewhere in the Vatican so no controversy or reinterpretations can be made.

    It's basically a way to put the blinkers on the whole world so they only see one carrot as a destination rather than seeing the fields of them to either side.
     
  17. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    When you say 'Vatican' it implies a conspiracy. But there were hundreds of popes with many different agendas including pretenders who took the Vatican by force. Many popes were too busy with problems of the day to worry about manipulating documents. Also, up until the fall of Rome, the average Christian had very little access to books and records. Books wouldn't really become widespread until after the printing press. So there wouldn't be much point in it. Also, the early Vatican was politically weak, and often at odds with the rulers of the day. It would have been hard for most popes to seize records and hide or burn them. More than likely they would try to burn heretical writings, but even that wasn't an organized effort.

    The early church library wasn't in Rome, but in Alexandria. It contained what may have been the largest collection in the world, including a large number of writings discrediting Jesus. The early Church actually tried to preserve these writings for historical content even though they might now be seen as damaging to anyone trying to launch a propaganda campaign. It was the Roman army who destroyed most of the manuscripts when they burned the library. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History catalogues many of the works, with his anecdotes of what they contained, and the Vatican preserved his work. Also, don't forget that the Christian Church in that part of the world (Judaea and the Levant) wasn't subject to Vatican rule after the schism, so other factions, such the Greek, Syrian and Coptic Catholics had their own means of counteracting anything the Vatican might attempt to hide. I don't think any of them ever claimed that the Vatican was on a revisionism campaign.

    Also, consider the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are too any ways for people to squirrel their writings away.

    Today we still have the Gnostic Gospels which tell a different Jesus story. We have Josephus' Antiquities which practically disavows Jesus. It sees unlikely to me that if such a conspiracy existed, that any pope would allow these writings to survive.

    I think the real story is that Vatican scholars, and Catholic scholars in remote places like Hippo (St Augustine), Egypt and the Eastern world have struggled over the ages with the same question of historicity and even with authenticity
    of the New Testament writings themselves. You can see this in the way Eusebius and early leaders like Irenaeus and Origen wrestle with certain questions of what texts say and what they mean. And you see it the very late date that they finally get around to deciding what the scriptures actually are, and compiling them into the first Bible (the Vulgate).

    I think that there is a kind of conspiracy in Christianity that is more complex that this idea of secret vaults and hidden histories. I think it has more to do with direct mind control of the young and impressionable people, in order to convince them that their Jesus story is true.

    But the reason there are no historical records of this phenomenal character is more likely (I think) that he either never existed, or else he was some Zealot who was their Paul Revere or Johnny Appleseed.
     
  18. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Not really. They didn't have streaming media. Jesus' truth could have easily been concealed by the elite, easily.
     
  19. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Fabrication is an effective form of concealment.
     
  20. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    I don't what prophet said men are superior to women. That might be a clue.
     
  21. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Even when I fill in the missing word, I have no clue what you mean. You are doubly cryptic. Freudian slip?

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  22. keith1 Guest

    One could substantiate with their own eyes, and Google Earth Maps....

    An intelligent man who knew the Sea of Galilee area well, and had an entourage of fisherman at his disposal. And the law on his tail... could:

    Leave Tiberius City by boat, in a panic, to go to the furthest remote northern end of that sea, and not rest until he climbed the hill there.
    From that hill on Google Earth, one can get low enough to the hilltop, to imagine setting there, looking back toward Tiberius and beyond, all the way to the Nazareth suburbs. One could make out the torches of riding Roman infantry many hours away...Had they been there, he had his escape route to the North...this speaks volumes.

    Having breathed a sigh of relief that the "coast was clear", he could turn his attention to the boat of fishermen he left, out on the tidal flats...tidal flats that could be detailed from the hilltop, to distinguish the "walkable" areas from the deep.

    --Always ready for the available "prophet grandstanding opportunity", mixed with careful protective defensive movement--.

    He could further have time that evening for his fisherman cohorts to setup another act of prestidigitation, by unearthing that stash of fish, to magically feed a crowd...

    A man this intelligent (and egotistical) is going to eventually slip away to the out-lands, and leave a "rabbit in a hat" to take his place on the cross (Maybe a rube named Jesus also). A guy that intelligent and careful, must have been that good of a...showman.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 16, 2012
  23. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Damn I am stupid. But I am curious too, which is a good way to become less stupid. So then, what missing word and what freudian slip?
     

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