Don’t they have his foreskin saved as a religious artefact? Like in some church somewhere because it performs miracles?
Relics are almost always fake, and there are usually multiples of them at any given time. A lot of people have had Jesus’ foreskin throughout the years, and I think there are 5 or 6 heads of John the Baptist floating around right now.
LOL, basically, yeah.
and I think there are 5 or 6 heads of John the Baptist floating around right now
This man is hallucinating, so take whatever else he’s saying with a grain of salt.
Girl gets married
Girl gets shitfaced and sleeps with someone other than her husband
Girl is pregnant!
Girl makes up some dumb shit to avoid jealous rage
Shit gets waaaaay out of hand.
There are many Jesus’s in the world.
I’m by no means an expert but I was briefly obsessed with comparative religion over a decade ago and I don’t think anyone has given a great answer, I believe my answer is correct but I don’t have time for research beyond checking a couple of details.
As a few people have mentioned there is little physical evidence for even the most notable individuals from that time period and it’s not reasonable to expect any for Jesus.
In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus. Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus mentions him twice, once briefly telling the story of his crucifixion and resurrection. The second is a mention in passing when discussing the brother of Jesus delivering criminals to be stoned.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that a Jewish spiritual leader with a name something like Jesus Christ probably existed and that not long after his death miracles are being attributed to him.
It is also worth noting the historical context of the recent emergence of Rabbinical Judaism and the overabundance of other leaders who were claimed to be Messiahs, many of whom we also know about primarily(actually I think only) from Josephus.
In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus
Misinformation.
There’s Tacitus’s Annals (year 117), Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (93-94), Mara bar Serapion’s letter to his son.
Seutonius (Lives of the Twelve Cæsars) and Pliny wrote about the conflict between the Romans and the followers of Christ (or Chrestus) around that era.
You are the one who is doing the misinforming. All of the sources you mention, except Josephus, were written up to more than a century after his supposed existence. With Josephus being written around half a century after his existence.
And as mentioned, the specific quotes from Josephus are of a dubious nature.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here but both Suetonius and Pliny are talking about Christians in the 2nd century, Tacitus speaks about Christ only in the context of Nero blaming Christians for the great fire. These are literary evidence for the existence of Christians in the second century but are not direct literary evidence of the existence of Christ as an individual which was the question I was addressing.
I’d be delighted to be shown to be wrong but I believe my original post stands.
The part mentioning Jesus’s crucifixion in Josephus is extremely likely to have been altered if not entirely fabricated.
The idea that the historical figure was known as either ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ is almost 0% given the former is a Greek version of the Aramaic name and the same for the second being the Greek version of Messiah, but that one is even less likely given in the earliest cannonical gospel he only identified that way in secret and there’s no mention of it in the earliest apocrypha.
In many ways, it’s the various differences between the account of a historical Jesus and the various other Messianic figures in Judea that I think lends the most credence to the historicity of an underlying historical Jesus.
One tends to make things up in ways that fit with what one knows, not make up specific inconvenient things out of context with what would have been expected.
There most likely were a bunch of people called Yeshua back then.
Christianity exists. Religions don’t tend to spring up from nowhere. Every myth has its nugget of truth. Was there a preacher back then whose followers later spread around the world? Almost certainly. Where else could Christianity have come from?
Was he the son of god though? Was he capable of all the miracles the bible claims? Is the god he preached even real? There is no evidence that the answer to these three questions is anything but no I’m afraid.
What do you mean by physical proof?
Some history is known by digging up physical stones n bones. Some is known by digging up texts.
There are multiple texts dated to the 1st century that all corroborate the story that a person called Jesus was crucified around 33AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
The article you provided (if you read it) should actually serve to cast more doubt on the idea; it does not “answer the question to the affirmative.”
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
That implies each source says: “A man called Jesus was crucified”. The article you provided (if you read it) should have told you otherwise.
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Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, year 93-94: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
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Tacitus’s Annals, year 117: 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
I didn’t provide any article. I read the one you linked.
In this most recent response, you are annotating sources from 93, and 117. Those years are notably (at minimum) 60 years after the supposed resurrection; and as such are not first hand accounts.
They very likely was someone named Jesus, because there were many people with that name. There was very likely someone named Jesus that was crucified, because many people were crucified. There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
They very likely was someone named Jesus, because there were many people with that name.
The second one doesn’t use that name. Read the sources.
There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
Well of course, but that’s common sense. Dead people stay dead as a rule.
I didn’t say the second one used “that name.” Read what I wrote.
There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
The question in question was “Is there any real physical proof that Jesus christ ever existed?”
Jesus Christ is very specific. Jesus Christ, the son of God, who was crucified and rose again on the third day… that is fake.
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The evidence isn’t even that strong, there i just aren’t that many people willing to risk becoming a pariah to dispute them.
If you are a Christian, there is no doubt Jesus existed. Any oblique reference to a rabbi who was persecuted hundreds years ago is considered evidence that Jesus existed. But no contemporaneous documentation exists.
If you’re not a Christian, debunking all of those vague references that might be proof of a Jewish leader named Jesus just isn’t particularly important, won’t persuade anyone who believes Jesus was(is) God, and will paint a target on your back for terrorists.
Wait… you mean to tell me there’s not a collective of atheist Wikipedia writers that have dedicated their lives to the absence of religion and citing themselves on refuting evidence on Wikipedia?!?
Wouldn’t it be weird of every Wikipedia article on the historical validity of Jesus was written by Christian scholars that have dedicated their lives to their religion? It would be wild if they were just citing themselves in these Wiki articles in order to sell some books, wouldn’t it?
No, there arent a lot of texts from the 1st century AD about him. The majority by far stems from the second century or later.
It’s weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.
There’s even a link to a well cited article examining the skepticism of the historicity of Jesus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
I don’t feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.
Yeah there are plenty of historians who have done good work studying this and the academia is mostly settled. Not to say there’s no controversy, but there’s definitely an orthodox opinion.
In my experience, when it comes to debating the validity of religion, people tend to get far more emotional than other topics. People who are normally level-headed and quite logical tend to completely lose their ability to think rationally. And I mean both the people who argue for religion and against it.
Pretty clear that’s the case here in the comments on this post.
I don’t feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.
but then
It’s weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.
Well cited article aren’t proof of existenceof a man. Is spiderman real if enough people cite the comics? A group of influential people could gather and make their own circle of these myths and present it as a fact. And it isn’t fucking new.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-dark-world-of-citation-cartels
Religions and all their influence could force a lot of heavily studied subject to be skewed for their benefit. Hell, there were studies that were treated as standard making sugar and alcohol heavily beneficial for human beings. And we’re talking about a person.
I didn’t say which side I come down on. I just said that there is lots of information with plenty of high quality citations.
I’m really happy that everyone is a winner.
Yep. This is one of those posts that should have just been a web search instead.
A literature search. The web is full of rubbish.
It’s almost like Christian Scholars (people that have dedicated their entire lives to this idea) have access to write for Wikipedia too…
The citations are from the same people we see over and over again on this topic (specifically on Wikipedia).
Kinda cringey.
I shouldn’t bother responding to this, but I have to point out that this weird assumption that scholars of Christianity are all Christian partisans seems pretty similar to people who say that climatologists are all biased in favor of a global warming hoax.
You don’t think anyone goes into studying a field to challenge the orthodoxy? That’s the fastest way to get famous. Even if the rest of your field hates you, you can make an incredibly lucrative career out of being “the outsider”. I literally linked to a collection of experts who agree with you.
If you don’t believe the experts, I guess it’s fine. But it’s weird when people use expertise on a subject as proof of bias to discredit expertise. It’s just such a silly thing to do.
I think it’s a weird to assume the wiki-link that you posted is in support of the “Christ Myth Theory” (as they call it).
Read the contents of the wiki link you sent and check all of the citations, you’ll see that the Christian Scholars that contributed to writing the article aim to dismiss the theory by citing their own books.
Nope
Yes there is, here is his mugshot shortly after he was booked. Looks like he spent the evening turning water into wine.
Physical proof? No. But if that’s the criterion for proof that someone existed, then that mean 90% of historical figures can’t be proven to have existed. We don’t have the remains of Alexander the Great or any artefacts we can be sure are his. We have no remnants of Plato, none of his original writings remain.
Did a person name Jesus live sometime during the first century AD? Scholars are fairly certain of that. We do have textual evidence other than the bible that points to his existence.
It is highly unlikely that he was anything like the person written about in the bible. He was likely one of many radical apocalyptic prophets of the time.
We don’t have too many details about his life but because of something called the criterion of embarrassment we have good reason to believe he was baptized by a man named John the Baptist and was later crucified. (i.e. most burgeoning religions seeking legitimacy don’t typically invent stories that are embarrassing to their deity)
then that mean 90% of historical figures can’t be proven to have existed
Well for most of those we tend to use independent verification for their existence. And in the case of jesus, we have literally zero Credible examples of independent verification.
If you mean Jesus as described word for word in the bible? Yes you are right. Such a mythical figure never existed.
A man name Jesus from the first century AD? Who preached in the Levant? Who was baptized by a man named John and was later crucified? There is good enough evidence of such a person existing. This isn’t even a debated question among new testament scholars anymore.
I see you are familiar with Bart Ehrman, Even he doesn’t dispute that a historical Jesus existed.
Here’s an even deeper dive from Bart Ehrman.
And in the case of jesus, we have literally zero independent verification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
Even assuming the passage is totally genuine, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents Tacitus had to work with and it is unlikely that he would sift through what he did have to find the record of an obscure crucifixion, which suggests that Tacitus was repeating an urban myth whose source was likely the Christians themselves,[3]:344 especially since Tacitus was writing at a time when at least the three synoptic gospels are thought to already have been in circulation.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tacitus
According to Bart Ehrman, Josephus’ passage about Jesus was altered by a Christian scribe, including the reference to Jesus as the Messiah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
Scholars have differing opinions on the total or partial authenticity of the reference in the passage to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate.[15][30] The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic.
Respected Christian scholar R. T. France, for example, does not believe that the Tacitus passage provides sufficient independent testimony for the existence of Jesus [Franc.EvJ, 23] and agrees with G. A. Wells that the citation is of little value
A. The first line of the Tacitus passage says Chrestians, not Christians.
Suetonius says Chrestus was personally starting trouble in Rome during the reign of Claudius.
Suetonius is writing years after Tacitus yet doesn’t mention that Chrestus died.
So Chrestus can’t be Jesus because it’s the wrong decade, wrong continent and missing a death.
B. The second line in Tacitus that mentions Christ and his death was never noticed until after the mid-fourth century. So this second line is fake.
P.S. Even if the second line was somehow authentic, the information would have come from Christians. This would be the equivalent of deriving Abraham’s biography by talking to Muslims.
This is why Bart Ehrman specifically dismisses Tacitus and Josephus. As do most other biblical scholars.
In the immortal words of Christopher Hitchens, if this is all you got, you are holding an empty bag.
Even assuming the passage is totally genuine, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents Tacitus had to work with and it is unlikely that he would sift through what he did have to find the record of an obscure crucifixion
Why? If it was a popular myth, why assume he wouldn’t try to confirm/deny it
According to Bart Ehrman, Josephus’ passage about Jesus was altered by a Christian scribe, including the reference to Jesus as the Messiah
So? I’m not presenting evidence for him being a Messiah. I am saying there is some independent evidence of him existing.
B. The second line in Tacitus that mentions Christ and his death was never noticed until after the mid-fourth century. So this second line is fake.
I agree that is bizarre, but not proof of it being fake. Though should be taken with a grain of salt.
This is why Bart Ehrman specifically dismisses Tacitus and Josephus. As do most other biblical scholars.
Who is Bart Ehrman and why relay his beliefs rather than speak for yourself?
We do have textual evidence other than the bible that points to his existence.
Idk why you would need textual evidence besides the Bible to be certain the guy existed. It’s not like these are magical books that sprung from the earth. They have historical reasons for existing and the most likely reason includes the existence of the dude.
Jesus never led an army or ruled a country, so we cannot have coins bearing His face or remnants of an army, etc. However, there is plenty of physical proof of the early Church. There is evidence of pilgrimages to Bethlehem early on and Jerusalem as well, such as the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is a plausible candidate for Jesus’ actual tomb.
It is said that the foreskin of Jesus still exists…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce
For all I know it could be just an ancient dried up piece of bacon 🤷♂️
There’s a bunch of old texts about a Jewish “prophet” called Jesus, who was gathering some followers. As far as I understand, there’s no really reason not to believe the person existed.
Then again, all the Jesus lore, there’s no reason to believe his miracles were real as those made no sense and there’s no real proof besides those same texts written after Jesse’s death
This. There is evidence that a preacher called Jesus existed, was crucified, and was well-regarded enough to start a following that persisted even after his death.
There isn’t, however, strong historical evidence for any of the magical parts of it.
There are zero contemporary primary sources for his existence.
Primary sources? No, but there are independent secondary sources by people with no skin in the game.
Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (circa 93–94 CE).
Annals by Tacitus (circa 116 CE)
The earliest Christian writings are also more about the teachings of a disruptive Jewish preacher who was then crucified, than they are about magic.
I don’t think anyone is talking about the miracles when they refer to the historical Jesus.
Every Christian takes an historical proof of Jesus as affirmation of the stories within the New Testament.
Let’s not do the ‘every Christian’ thing. It’s worth remembering the US has a very ‘unique’ type of Christian.
I remember that one miracle closely resembles CPR. He put his hands on a body and brought it back to life.
No, Jesus never existed. He is a fictional character.
No.
There’s lots of ambiguous information. There is no firsthand, historically agreed upon data that supports his existence in the form we know him today. In other words, there was no magical guy doing magical things.
There is no Roman record of “nailed 3 prisoners to the posts today; Bill, Roger, and Jesus the magic guy who was a pain in the ass.”
However, like Arthurian Legend, it doesn’t mean some guy like Jesus didn’t exist, or an aggregate of characters weren’t assembled to be him on story. Arthur was possibly just a chieftain of a group who fought a couple of hefty battles and made a name for himself, but he ended up being an almost magical figure with wizards and witches in the story and - guess what, he will “rise again” from the dead when needed. And no, rising from the dead isn’t owned by Christian religious figures, Osiris of Egypt did it, Dionysius of the Greek Pantheon among many others. So maybe some dude, who probably wasn’t named Jesus, caused a stir and got a few people to take note. That grew over hundreds and even thousands of years to what we have now.
Want to know why King Arthur isn’t a competitor to Jesus? He a) doesn’t offer the opportunity to control people in this life for the hope of an afterlife, b) he isn’t profitable.
An interesting thing about what we have now in Christianity though is that it basically spawned as-is in the first century, with the Gospels and Paul’s letters being written decades apart, as well as Church Father’s writings being very consistent. Main differences has been the Roman Catholic Church developing their own doctrine such as Purgatory over time, while the Orthodox and the Protestants tend to reject such developments.
So if it is just a legend, something must have happened to cause a consistent story to develop fairly quickly in comparison to the likes of other legends.
What exactly changed, then?
You mean besides a couple dudes running around telling us to be cool to each other?
You didn’t even read the wiki entry, did you.
I did, and it’s already knowledge we know about the early church
You said:
An interesting thing about what we have now in Christianity though is that it basically spawned as-is in the first century
The article says:
Little is fully known of Christianity in its first 150 years; sources are few.
So you’re making a huge, sweeping statement that Christianity as we know it today is based on something…we don’t know much about? There are 6 major Christian denominations, not to mention hundreds of smaller ones. Which one is the “as-is” one? The one that is exactly “as-is” from CE 100?
You’re forgetting that denominations aren’t actually that different. They all ascribe to the fundamental beliefs in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We do have the Acts of The Apostles as well which documents the early church. The New Testament was written within 100 years of Jesus and all Christians still follow it
if you found a corpse it would cause a lot of problems for the religion.
Do you mean to say that there are actual remains of Jesus right now somewhere on Earth?
Ofc there are. Unless they got destroyed someway or another. There was a guy named Jesus that was crucified by the romans and all that. There is proof of that. It’s all the biblical stuff that there’s no proof of.
There was a guy named Jesus that was crucified by the romans and all that. There is proof of that
There isn’t actually. The proof is basically: it’s embarassing that their cult leader got painfully crucified, so the early Christians and writers of the new testament wouldn’t have made that shit up.
Personally I find it rather unconvincing.
Don’t believe in god either way, but if it’s good enough for the majority of historians , then it’s good enough for me. Not sure why you’d need more, but you do you.
if it’s good enough for the majority of historians
It isn’t. Historians would love to have independent evidence of the existence and crucifixion of Jesus, but there isn’t… so most historians refrain from taking a position one way or the other. The ones that do have to make do with what little objective information they have, and the best they can come up with is: well because of this embarassing thing, it’s more likely that he did exist and was crucified than that he didn’t, because why would they make that up?
That’s rather weak evidence, and far from “proof”.
Not sure why you’d need more
Well for one because the more prominent people who have studied this have a vested interest in wanting it to be true. For example, John P. Meier, who posited this criterion of embarassment that I outlined in my previous comment, isn’t really a historian but a catholic priest, professor of theology (not history) and a writer of books on the subject.
So instead of taking the glory for themselves like pretty much all other humans they decide to preach about an imaginary friend? Meh… Between “guy who got lost in history” and “bunch of guys that raved about that one gf that went to a different school”, I’ll go with the former as the more plausible one.
I’ll concede the fact that it’s not the same level of proof as other figures, but all these people writing about him is more than we have about others.
There are basically four positions you can take about this:
- Jesus existed and was crucified
- We can’t know, because there is no conclusive evidence, but I think (1) is more likely
- We can’t know, because there is no conclusive evidence, but I think (4) is more likely
- Jesus is a myth
I am on (2), as are most historians, and you put yourself on (1).
if there are then there are some issues with the new testament
