Jesus never existed

[DieselDaisy]

In fact this just proves my point: If the manuscripts we know to have existed, still exist, how much more knowledge would be passed down to us? Whole wars probably happened which we do not know of. After all, we only know of the Boudicea revolt because of Tacitus and Cassius Dio.

So that is your point now? Well, I can't disagree with the statement that we would know more about the past if so much books hadn't got lost

As for Jesus, like most historians I don't consider the gospels to be trustworthy, at least not in their entireties

Most historians do not discount the gospels either!!

You didn't see I made a point of "in their entireties"? As I said earlier, most historians don't accept the gospels as gospel. It is very difficult to extract parts of the gospels that are historically credible and which aren't, since they are so obviously made with a clear agenda and so suffused with obvious errors, inaccurancies and blatant fiction. This doesn't mean that historians don't agree on parts that are thought to be factual, just that these parts are quite few:

Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed,[8][9][10][11] but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts of Jesus,[12] and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.[13][14][15] Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels

So this only gives us a handful of facts about Jesus' life that we can be confident are factual, which is much less than for all the people I mentioned earlier as well as hundreds of additional people, especially from Roman and Chinese 1st century history. As an example I randomly decided to provide some information that we are confident are correct about Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (which I listed from my brainstorming earlier):

- We know when he was born (+/- 1 year)

- We know when he died (+/- 1 year)

- We knew about his family (names of relatives including father and siblings and information on their lives)

- We know details about his career (including when he entered the various positions in the cursus honorum)

- We know about his political and military alliances and conflicts

The primary sources for all the wealth of information, which would comprise many, many pages of text, about Lepidus include Cicero, Decimus Brutus and Valeius Paterculus, and although all of these had agendas for what they wrote, there is no reason to not trust the basic facts I have presented above, and these facts vastly surpass what little we know for certain about Jesus' life.

So again, it is remarkable that we have information on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but we do and we can be relatively certain he is a real historical person, but many other people's lives from that period is much more well-documented. The quote from Ehrman is just embarassing.

'Nonsense' is relative.

When I use the term "nonsense" it must surely be understood in the contemporary, elighetened, modern context we live in, i.e. as a description of something that clearly doesn't make sense when logically investigated.

But we have analogous information of Crassus (I assume you mean the Triumvir here) to Jesus Christ!

- We know when he was born (+/- three years) [dating his birth is one of the problems with Gospel research]

- We know when he died

- We know of his family, and, his close confederates

- We know his career, as a carpenter, and his travels.

- And obviously there is no information on military affairs, but we do have a lot of detail about his Ministry.

That the Gospels throw forward inconsistencies is a given, but you are presupposing classical texts do not throw forward similar inconsistencies. In fact Suetonius' entire methodology is, merely to list every rumour, every bit of court gossip, and leave it to the reader to decide if it is true or not. This is hardly less reliable than the chronological inconsistencies in the four gospels. Classical historians were very different from modern historians. They often, for example, resorted to constructing first-person speeches for the historic participants'.

[Ace Nova]

I don't think estrangedtwat believes that they lived 2,000 ago. I think he probably believes...you know...science.

Actually, I think he does...or at least doesn't understand the chronology of the world all too well....he stated this:

"So why in the fuck would anyone believe in ANYTHING that one caveman may or may not have said to another caveman thousands of years ago? It's all myth, legend, fairy tales, and hearsay.

There is no evidence that "Jesus Christ" ever existed and is anything other than a tall tale.

Just like feathers on dinosaurs. We can speculate all we want but we will never, ever, EVER know what those things really looked like other than as a stack of bones.

Oh...wait. There weren't any dinsosaurs in the bible, so I guess you don't believe they ever existed."

He uses cave men, dinosaurs, the Bible and Jesus Christ interchangeably, as if they all existed at the same time. Sad but true.

[Lithium]

I don't think estrangedtwat believes that they lived 2,000 ago. I think he probably believes...you know...science.

Actually, I think he does...or at least doesn't understand the chronology of the world all too well....he stated this:

"So why in the fuck would anyone believe in ANYTHING that one caveman may or may not have said to another caveman thousands of years ago? It's all myth, legend, fairy tales, and hearsay.

There is no evidence that "Jesus Christ" ever existed and is anything other than a tall tale.

Just like feathers on dinosaurs. We can speculate all we want but we will never, ever, EVER know what those things really looked like other than as a stack of bones.

Oh...wait. There weren't any dinsosaurs in the bible, so I guess you don't believe they ever existed."

He uses cave men, dinosaurs, the Bible and Jesus Christ interchangeably, as if they all existed at the same time. Sad but true.

I hope you realize that he used a rhetorical device known as an "exaggeration". Similar to a hyperbole, it is commonly used to emphasize a point and create a strong impression. As for the dinosaur feather comment, he uses it as another example of something in the past we can't be 100% certain of because he does not believe that the evidence provided of Jesus as a historical figure is adequate.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Lithium

[Ace Nova]

I don't think estrangedtwat believes that they lived 2,000 ago. I think he probably believes...you know...science.

Actually, I think he does...or at least doesn't understand the chronology of the world all too well....he stated this:

"So why in the fuck would anyone believe in ANYTHING that one caveman may or may not have said to another caveman thousands of years ago? It's all myth, legend, fairy tales, and hearsay.

There is no evidence that "Jesus Christ" ever existed and is anything other than a tall tale.

Just like feathers on dinosaurs. We can speculate all we want but we will never, ever, EVER know what those things really looked like other than as a stack of bones.

Oh...wait. There weren't any dinsosaurs in the bible, so I guess you don't believe they ever existed."

He uses cave men, dinosaurs, the Bible and Jesus Christ interchangeably, as if they all existed at the same time. Sad but true.

I hope you realize that he used a rhetorical device known as an "exaggeration". Similar to a hyperbole, it is commonly used to emphasize a point and create a strong impression. As for the dinosaur feather comment, he uses it as another example of something in the past we can't be 100% certain of because he does not believe that the evidence provided of Jesus as a historical figure is adequate.

It certainly didn't come across that way.

He's basically saying anyone who lived during biblical times were cave men and then states the reason we won't know for certain what was said, is the same reason we won't know if dinosaurs ever had feathers....

[AxlisOld]

I don't think estrangedtwat believes that they lived 2,000 ago. I think he probably believes...you know...science.

Actually, I think he does...or at least doesn't understand the chronology of the world all too well....he stated this:

"So why in the fuck would anyone believe in ANYTHING that one caveman may or may not have said to another caveman thousands of years ago? It's all myth, legend, fairy tales, and hearsay.

There is no evidence that "Jesus Christ" ever existed and is anything other than a tall tale.

Just like feathers on dinosaurs. We can speculate all we want but we will never, ever, EVER know what those things really looked like other than as a stack of bones.

Oh...wait. There weren't any dinsosaurs in the bible, so I guess you don't believe they ever existed."

He uses cave men, dinosaurs, the Bible and Jesus Christ interchangeably, as if they all existed at the same time. Sad but true.

I hope you realize that he used a rhetorical device known as an "exaggeration". Similar to a hyperbole, it is commonly used to emphasize a point and create a strong impression. As for the dinosaur feather comment, he uses it as another example of something in the past we can't be 100% certain of because he does not believe that the evidence provided of Jesus as a historical figure is adequate.

It certainly didn't come across that way.

He's basically saying anyone who lived during biblical times were cave men and then states the reason we won't know for certain what was said, is the same reason we won't know if dinosaurs ever had feathers....

[Lithium]

It certainly didn't come across that way.

He's basically saying anyone who lived during biblical times were cave men and then states the reason we won't know for certain what was said, is the same reason we won't know if dinosaurs ever had feathers....

[Ace Nova]

It certainly didn't come across that way.

He's basically saying anyone who lived during biblical times were cave men and then states the reason we won't know for certain what was said, is the same reason we won't know if dinosaurs ever had feathers....

Believe what you want, that's what he meant.

[Ace Nova]

Most "believers" in this thread: "There's more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is against, historians agree, whether you believe in God or not is irrelevant."

Most atheists in this thread: "No there isn't. Show me the evidence." (Evidence shown). "Well, you're still stupid for believing in fairy-tales then. Ha!"

Edited October 6, 2014 by Kasanova King

[AdriftatSea]

Jesus walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey close the door. Were you born in a barn?"

What's the difference between Jesus and a picture of Jesus?

You only need one nail to hang a picture of Jesus.

That one could get me struck by lightning!

[Ace Nova]

Jesus walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey close the door. Were you born in a barn?"

What's the difference between Jesus and a picture of Jesus?

You only need one nail to hang a picture of Jesus.

That one could get me struck by lightning!

No, it wouldn't. Jesus has a sense of humor too.

[AxlisOld]

Jesus walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey close the door. Were you born in a barn?"

What's the difference between Jesus and a picture of Jesus?

You only need one nail to hang a picture of Jesus.

That one could get me struck by lightning!

No, it wouldn't. Jesus has a sense of humor too.

Is that why he and his father burn people for all eternity for not enabling tbeir own vanity through daily worship?

[Ace Nova]

Is that why he and his father burn people for all eternity for not enabling tbeir own vanity through daily worship?

Him and His Father don't burn anyone. They do that to themselves.

[AxlisOld]

Is that why he and his father burn people for all eternity for not enabling tbeir own vanity through daily worship?

Him and His Father don't burn anyone. They do that to themselves.

Well as long as they can laugh about it I guess that's all that matters.

[Ace Nova]

Is that why he and his father burn people for all eternity for not enabling tbeir own vanity through daily worship?

Him and His Father don't burn anyone. They do that to themselves.

Well as long as they can laugh about it I guess that's all that matters.

No one's laughing about anything. Quite the opposite. But anyway, this isn't about that. If we want to go there, we should start a thread about it.

[AdriftatSea]

Jesus walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey close the door. Were you born in a barn?"

What's the difference between Jesus and a picture of Jesus?

You only need one nail to hang a picture of Jesus.

That one could get me struck by lightning!

No, it wouldn't. Jesus has a sense of humor too.

Is that why he and his father burn people for all eternity for not enabling tbeir own vanity through daily worship?

I don't think they do that. Lot's of people do though. I don't think they are people. I think the Holy Spirit is something inside of us. I've had people in my life die, really very close to me, I just refuse to believe they ceased to exist. There has to be something more. With that said, I don't won't to debate this, just not going to. Death is too painful for me. I'm sticking with the jokes! I've got more!

[DieselDaisy]

He is wrong about us having little evidence for feathers on dinosaurs also. Birds are essentially, dinosaurs, evolutionary. When you see a sparrow or a pigeon, it is basically a dinosaur - a small sub-flight specie which survived the extinction event. Analysis on T-Rex DNA confirms that they are far closer to birds than, reptiles. Also (and this shocked the world),

NB the feather marks.

It is indeed very plausible that dinosaurs had feathers - more plausible than reptilian skin which you see in monster films such as Jurassic Park.

[Dazey]

I don't think estrangedtwat believes that they lived 2,000 ago. I think he probably believes...you know...science.

Actually, I think he does...or at least doesn't understand the chronology of the world all too well....he stated this:

"So why in the fuck would anyone believe in ANYTHING that one caveman may or may not have said to another caveman thousands of years ago? It's all myth, legend, fairy tales, and hearsay.

There is no evidence that "Jesus Christ" ever existed and is anything other than a tall tale.

Just like feathers on dinosaurs. We can speculate all we want but we will never, ever, EVER know what those things really looked like other than as a stack of bones.

Oh...wait. There weren't any dinsosaurs in the bible, so I guess you don't believe they ever existed."

He uses cave men, dinosaurs, the Bible and Jesus Christ interchangeably, as if they all existed at the same time. Sad but true.

I hope you realize that he used a rhetorical device known as an "exaggeration". Similar to a hyperbole, it is commonly used to emphasize a point and create a strong impression. As for the dinosaur feather comment, he uses it as another example of something in the past we can't be 100% certain of because he does not believe that the evidence provided of Jesus as a historical figure is adequate.

It certainly didn't come across that way.

He's basically saying anyone who lived during biblical times were cave men and then states the reason we won't know for certain what was said, is the same reason we won't know if dinosaurs ever had feathers....

Of all the topics at the heart of the creation-evolution debate, perhaps none better encapsulates the issue than the question of dinosaurs. These fascinating animalsknown mostly from fossil evidenceinspire awe and wonder in almost everyone; they sell millions of books and DVDs; and they captivate children like nothing else. But the question is this: did dinosaurs really live and die out millions of years before humans existed?

Many think that the existence of dinosaurs and their demise is shrouded in such mystery that we may never know the truth about where they came from, when they lived, and what happened to them. However, dinosaurs are only a mystery if you accept the evolutionary story of their history.

In truth, we know from Gods Word given to humanity (the Bible) that dinosaurs were created on the same day as humans and lived with us. Most of them were destroyed in the worldwide Flood that God sent to judge the earth, but two of each kind survived to inspire the dragon legends that permeate most cultures of the world.

These legends (mostly embellished encounters with real dinosaurs), pictographic evidence, and remaining dinosaur soft tissue show us that the Bible is correct. Dinosaurs lived recentlynot millions of years ago.

To read more about the true history of dinosaurs, please see What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? (also available in Chinese, Portuguese, and French).

http://creationmuseum.org/yellowbook/

[Ace Nova]

I don't think estrangedtwat believes that they lived 2,000 ago. I think he probably believes...you know...science.

Actually, I think he does...or at least doesn't understand the chronology of the world all too well....he stated this:

"So why in the fuck would anyone believe in ANYTHING that one caveman may or may not have said to another caveman thousands of years ago? It's all myth, legend, fairy tales, and hearsay.

There is no evidence that "Jesus Christ" ever existed and is anything other than a tall tale.

Just like feathers on dinosaurs. We can speculate all we want but we will never, ever, EVER know what those things really looked like other than as a stack of bones.

Oh...wait. There weren't any dinsosaurs in the bible, so I guess you don't believe they ever existed."

He uses cave men, dinosaurs, the Bible and Jesus Christ interchangeably, as if they all existed at the same time. Sad but true.

I hope you realize that he used a rhetorical device known as an "exaggeration". Similar to a hyperbole, it is commonly used to emphasize a point and create a strong impression. As for the dinosaur feather comment, he uses it as another example of something in the past we can't be 100% certain of because he does not believe that the evidence provided of Jesus as a historical figure is adequate.

It certainly didn't come across that way.

He's basically saying anyone who lived during biblical times were cave men and then states the reason we won't know for certain what was said, is the same reason we won't know if dinosaurs ever had feathers....

Of all the topics at the heart of the creation-evolution debate, perhaps none better encapsulates the issue than the question of dinosaurs. These fascinating animalsknown mostly from fossil evidenceinspire awe and wonder in almost everyone; they sell millions of books and DVDs; and they captivate children like nothing else. But the question is this: did dinosaurs really live and die out millions of years before humans existed?

Many think that the existence of dinosaurs and their demise is shrouded in such mystery that we may never know the truth about where they came from, when they lived, and what happened to them. However, dinosaurs are only a mystery if you accept the evolutionary story of their history.

In truth, we know from Gods Word given to humanity (the Bible) that dinosaurs were created on the same day as humans and lived with us. Most of them were destroyed in the worldwide Flood that God sent to judge the earth, but two of each kind survived to inspire the dragon legends that permeate most cultures of the world.

These legends (mostly embellished encounters with real dinosaurs), pictographic evidence, and remaining dinosaur soft tissue show us that the Bible is correct. Dinosaurs lived recentlynot millions of years ago.

To read more about the true history of dinosaurs, please see What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? (also available in Chinese, Portuguese, and French).

http://creationmuseum.org/yellowbook/

The funny thing is.....it came from an atheist who has been ridiculing religion.....

[TeeJay410]

From somewhere on the internet that I forgot:

If Mary gave birth to Jesus, and Jesus was the lamb of God...

...Mary had a little lamb.

[Strange Broue]

Raptor Jesus is da man

[SoulMonster]

Soul,

Nope, not at all. When people realize that their opinions might actually be wrong, they slip into the insult mode.

If you think ad hominem attacks only come as a result of people realizing theur opinions might be wrong/to mask flawed arguments/to divert from the topic, then you are even more stupid than I thought!

In fact this just proves my point: If the manuscripts we know to have existed, still exist, how much more knowledge would be passed down to us? Whole wars probably happened which we do not know of. After all, we only know of the Boudicea revolt because of Tacitus and Cassius Dio.

So that is your point now? Well, I can't disagree with the statement that we would know more about the past if so much books hadn't got lost

As for Jesus, like most historians I don't consider the gospels to be trustworthy, at least not in their entireties

Most historians do not discount the gospels either!!

You didn't see I made a point of "in their entireties"? As I said earlier, most historians don't accept the gospels as gospel. It is very difficult to extract parts of the gospels that are historically credible and which aren't, since they are so obviously made with a clear agenda and so suffused with obvious errors, inaccurancies and blatant fiction. This doesn't mean that historians don't agree on parts that are thought to be factual, just that these parts are quite few:

Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed,[8][9][10][11] but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts of Jesus,[12] and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.[13][14][15] Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels

So this only gives us a handful of facts about Jesus' life that we can be confident are factual, which is much less than for all the people I mentioned earlier as well as hundreds of additional people, especially from Roman and Chinese 1st century history. As an example I randomly decided to provide some information that we are confident are correct about Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (which I listed from my brainstorming earlier):

- We know when he was born (+/- 1 year)

- We know when he died (+/- 1 year)

- We knew about his family (names of relatives including father and siblings and information on their lives)

- We know details about his career (including when he entered the various positions in the cursus honorum)

- We know about his political and military alliances and conflicts

The primary sources for all the wealth of information, which would comprise many, many pages of text, about Lepidus include Cicero, Decimus Brutus and Valeius Paterculus, and although all of these had agendas for what they wrote, there is no reason to not trust the basic facts I have presented above, and these facts vastly surpass what little we know for certain about Jesus' life.

So again, it is remarkable that we have information on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but we do and we can be relatively certain he is a real historical person, but many other people's lives from that period is much more well-documented. The quote from Ehrman is just embarassing.

'Nonsense' is relative.

When I use the term "nonsense" it must surely be understood in the contemporary, elighetened, modern context we live in, i.e. as a description of something that clearly doesn't make sense when logically investigated.

But we have analogous information of Crassus (I assume you mean the Triumvir here) to Jesus Christ!

- We know when he was born (+/- three years) [dating his birth is one of the problems with Gospel research]

- We know when he died

- We know of his family, and, his close confederates

- We know his career, as a carpenter, and his travels.

- And obviously there is no information on military affairs, but we do have a lot of detail about his Ministry.

That the Gospels throw forward inconsistencies is a given, but you are presupposing classical texts do not throw forward similar inconsistencies. In fact Suetonius' entire methodology is, merely to list every rumour, every bit of court gossip, and leave it to the reader to decide if it is true or not. This is hardly less reliable than the chronological inconsistencies in the four gospels. Classical historians were very different from modern historians. They often, for example, resorted to constructing first-person speeches for the historic participants'.

But the amount of information we have and the associated confidence level, is much, much smaller for Jesus than for any of the people I have mentioned. We just know a few facts about Jesus, as we can construe from the non-religious texts and the little that we can be certain about from the gospels, whereas we can fill many pages with data for any of the guys I have mentioned.

Of course classical historians made errors, had agendas, etc, but they are still in general more trustworthy than the writers of the gospels, or at least that is how most historians conclude.

The only two widely accepted historical facts about Jesus is that he was baptized and that he was crucified. Then there are eight more historical elements that might be true but where no consesus has been reached among historians: Jesus called disciples, Jesus caused a controversy at the Temple, Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was born between 7 and 2 BC and died 30–36 AD, Jesus lived only in Galilee and Judea, Jesus spoke Aramaic and that he may have also spoken Hebrew and Greek, and after his death his disciples continued, and some of his disciples were persecuted.

Contrast this meager information to ALL the information for Lepidus and the other guys I have mentioned, which go in great detail about their lives, their families, etc. Much more than a couple of facts for Jesus. Do you want me to write out all the events in Lepidus' life historians agree are historical so that we can compare with Jesus' by counting words and sentences? It should be overwhelmingly clear to everyone that although we do know a lot more about Jesus than most people who lived 2000 years ago, there are still hundreds of contemporaries to him that we know a whole deal more about.

Edited October 7, 2014 by SoulMonster

[wasted]

It's just funny to think that in those times there was this Jesus guy wandering around and saying all these cool things and doing those magic tricks. At the same time no electricity, like carrying messages on mules. Nobody can read or write, everyone dies before 40 years old. No toilets, cup noodles or xboxs. Then since he died no one like this, everyone else has just been a douchebag. Just seems like every other figure in history, presented as awesome but ultimately still skidded his boxers after a heavy session.

[SoulMonster]

I did a little research into DieselDaisy's statement that no plebians are more well-documented than Jesus, because I thought it would be strange if that was true when plebians did occasionally rise up to affect the history of Rome and as such should be fairly well-documented in Livy et al. I have to admit I can't remember myself, it's been too long since I read Livy and books on the history of Rome, but a quick google gave me the Gracchi brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi

Admittedly, they did exist a couple of hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth, but that shouldn't really subtract from the fact that we conidently know more about them than what we can safely say we know about Jesus. So not only do we know more about the lives of many patricians, nobles, statesmen, foreign dignataries, etc, than Jesus (and I am not even going into Chinese history), we also have examples of everyday Joe's who rise to become influential persons and who made it into history books for eternity.

[DieselDaisy]

The Gracchi were nobiles, novi homines. Some of Rome's leading statesmen came from ennobled plebeian families (e.g. Cicero, Pompeius). Their mother however was patrician, the daughter of Scipio Africanus no less. I perhaps should have been more specific in stating that, by plebeian I meant the mass amount of people who remained outside the senatorial and equestrian orders and did not acquire nobilitas - basically, the urban poor.

[SoulMonster]

They were born as plebians (the patrician mother didn't affect their status as plebians) who rise to become nobles through their actions. And that's is partly why they are famous today.

Still, no wonder but the unwashed masses got little attention by Roman historians not the least because the system prevented them from making their mark on history. That being said, I am certain I would find "true plebians" mentioned in Livy et al with more historical detail than what we can safely say we know about Jesus' life.

Edited October 7, 2014 by SoulMonster