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There is historical evidence that a man named Jesus existed at the time. Not quite 100% conclusive, but probably as good as it will get when looking for evidence from 2000 years ago.
Whether that human was also divine is a matter of faith, of course. Most scholars who are serious about this make a distinction between the historical Jesus and the divine one from Christian beliefs. The only two events that have this general historical consensus are that the historical Jesus was baptized, and that Pontius Pilate (who most definitely did exist) had him executed. Everything else around Jesus from the Bible can't really be verified one way or another.
Yeah, I got most of this from a Wiki link. So what. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
*Yeshua
There most certainly was nobody named Jesus in Judaea at the time.
Which comes from the expression "god saves" an expression that was aspirational for the people to be saved from their Roman rulers.
What are the odds that a man who would be the supposed saviour would be named that? About the odds of someone named Dr. Octavious would get 8 limbs.
Actually pretty good since like one out of every six dudes in Judaea was named that at the time.
Even if true that would mean 5/6 were not.
There is more evidence of Bigfoot and yet I doubt you believe in it.
.>The only two events that have this general historical consensus are that the historical Jesus was baptized,
Paul didn't mention that. Why not? It would have certainly helped his case.
And yet for no reason whatsoever didn't kill the rest of the 12 and let them openly operate.
You're kind of going off the rails a bit here. The case for the historical Jesus doesn't come out of Paul or any other part of the Bible, but rather out of accounts from ancient historians that have been validated as best as those sources can be.
And if you are an Atheist, why do you seem so troubled by the idea that the man might have existed? Why couldn't there have been a subversive Rabbi talking truth to power in Judea, who got on the wrong side of the local government , leading to his death, and further leading his followers to do a bit of (literal) hero worship? None of that requires any belief in his divinity, and fits all the available historical sources.
Actually, most of the evidence of a historical Jesus comes precisely from the Bible. The earliest mention of Jesus outside of the Gospels comes from Josepheus, who was not a contemporary of Jesus, and the oldest surviving manuscripts are early medieval Christian copies.
Those who argue for the historicity of Jesus base the claim mostly in the early preserved copies of the gospels and historical accounts of early Christians. There is a little more to it, but it basically comes down to the presumed works of those who were presumably contemporaries of Jesus.
Such as who? Tell me the name of these historians, how they knew what they reported was the truth, what they said, and prove that what they said hasn't been tampered with.
I am an atheist. And I am not troubled by it. I am upset that people are believing in something that they do not have good evidence for and using that to alter their lives. It is not an academic question.
There could have been but that isn't the claim that is you weakening the claim so very much that you hope I will concede it is possible. The exact opposite of what we do in other branches of knowledge. Superstitions shrink in claims as time goes on. Which is why horoscopes went from predicting the fate of empires to telling you if you should break up with your cheating partner.
Put another way how is what you are doing now any different than people who have reduced skydaddy to a diest god and demand that since I can't know what happened in the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang I have to concede magic?
I follow evidence where it leads, I don't look for a way to sneak a claim in by watering it down to nothing.
It does? Josphius, even if everything we have from him was unaltered, doesn't say that he was a subversive Rabbi. Tactius doesn't say that either. Plus it doesn't really fit in. We aren't told by those historians why he was executed, what the nature of the trial was, and most importantly why he alone was instead of the 12.
If it was because he was going against Judaism we know that the Phrariess had a secret police and a rule against handing over heretics to secular authorities (see the Talmud). If it was because Jesus was going against Rome, well the Romans had a way of dealing with that and making sure that anyone even remotely connected to it was taken care of. And yet we are told that both groups acted in a contrary way. Joint probability here.
This is what people mean when they keep bringing up that even a minimum historical Jesus requires so many crazy things to happen in a precise sequence of events.
Didn't you just make my point for me? You are debating why Josephus mentioned Jesus's execution, not whether he did or not. True, we don't really know whether his account had been altered before we got to it, but we're never going to have that certainty.
No. I conceded a point to show how your idea still doesn't work "even if everything we have from him was unaltered,".
We have two passages from this man.
One that refers to James the Brother and contains the exact turn of phrase that Matthew uses in 1:16 "legomenos Christos" "so-called Annoited one". Given the complete context of the passage and the exact quote of the Bible it is most likely a fraud. We know that there was a tradition that James was killed and we have a page that talks about a James and another guy named Jesus. To make it refer to James the Just would take a two words addition. It doesn't even make sense since it requires James to be very old, for a known hertic to be appointed head of the temple, and for the general population (who were hostile to James) to be upset that he died, and James to be descended from the temple priest clan which means he can't be from David line, a claim he would have had to defend for his brothers claim of son of god status. None of it works.
The second passage is so obviously fraud even religious scholars don't defend it. It expressed 2nd century Trinity ideas, it isn't in Josphius writing style, it doesn't fit in the context of the chapter, it goes against Messianic ideas that Josphius had, it isn't written the same way he describes other Messiahs, and describes Jesus in glowing terms that no religious Jewish person would use.
My point was even if we somehow someway accept that Josphius really did write this stuff in 71AD it still doesn't get us anywhere since he could have just been repeating what Christians told him without doing any work of verification.
I'm fascinated by the decolonization of Christianity, because it's clear that (at the time) the Jesus movement was revolutionary and political. The Jesus movement wasn't just a sectarian split from Judaism, it was a rebellion against both the Roman empire and the doctrine of an elite chosen people, presenting salvation universally to the masses. For the first time, everyone could be saved as long as they were faithful. That's why the ruling class killed him.
Really? Which text says that?
That was the whole point of the Jesus movement. I should clarify, "faithful" in the sense that they not only believe but also are loyal and trust God will save them. That's a radical message! No more was salvation only for the chosen people, it was for everyone.
Of course, Christians today don't seem to remember this passage lol
Noticed how my passages reinforce my point and yours did not? Consistent message in the NT is that authority is to be obeyed. That to use your mind or assert any dignity for yourself leads to hell. Instead you are to blindly obey. It is about as revolutionary as Stalinism.
Let me clarify something: I am not saying anyone should follow Jesus today. He was a man born over 2000ish years ago, obviously by today's standards it's not revolutionary at all. My only point was that the Jesus movement was radical at the time, which is why he was killed.
Also, what do you mean I didn't address your point? He said anyone who is "with god" can be saved, which contradicted the ruling class at the time. At the time salvation was reserved for the chosen people, essentially a caste system, so no matter how godly or faithful a gentile was they could not be saved. He broke those barriers and that, for the time, was a radical departure from mainstream religious teaching.
Why can't you tell me the year he was born? Also what city was he born in? What was the name of his dad?
In what way? And how do you know that? Because the only sources we have for him on what he supposedly said don't say what you are communicating.
Again. How do you know that? The only sources we have make it out that he was claiming the throne. King of the Jews. Wanting to be a dictator doesn't mean you have bold new ideas about society.
No. There are were multiple Jewish afterlife ideas at the time. Including that there was no afterlife, that there would be an afterlife someday but not now, that there was a vague sleeping like state afterlife, a more traditional heaven-hell afterlife system, and the one Judaism has today with temporary hell. All of this is documented in the works of Pliny, the Talmud, Josphius and you can even see the arguments when Paul was talking about the bodily resurrection in his letters. There is no strain of thought that put the chosen people as the only ones capable of going to heaven even amongst the minority of believers in heaven.
Plus full monotheism wasn't a thing yet for them, that would take another 3 centuries. The Jews had their God, and other tribes had their own.
So where did this idea of only choose people get to go to heaven come from? Christianity. We see James arguing that people have to convert first to Judaism and then become Christians while Paul arguing that you could bypass that step if you were hetro and cis.
If there were a historical Jesus, which again super unlikely, the only idea he invented was ideological purity as a means of salvation over acts of kindness or even just allowing a person to be a freethinker. He invented Stalinism. A society that rewards the ability to echo back the right ideas over character, thought, or merit and what's more he is very blunt about it.
You clearly care a lot more about this than I do, so congratulations! You win, stop crawling up my ass.
Ok?
Or its about a greedy guy who wanted to be a messiah, and promised people whatever they wanted to hear because he didnt care. We have very little evidence to be making such broad remarks about him.