Anyone claiming Jesus existed is chilling for Christianity. They try to use it as a fine pointed needle to try and wiggle their bullshit into the real world.
Simply put, you can’t separate the myth from any kind of grain of truth at this point, so any and all points of so called proofs are invalid. Once you mention Jesus, there is so much package it’s just over.
I think you’ll find pretty much all secular historians of the time and place will agree that there was probably an itinerant preacher by the name of Joshua going around in the area who was baptized by John, got in trouble with the local authorities, and got himself executed, but his followers eventually regrouped and built myths around him.
The gospels themselves, including the ones that didn’t make the cut in the Council of Rome, are a form of documentation, and Jesus is independently attested several other times within a century of his death and not always kindly. It’s pretty decent documentation for a non-elite of that era, though.
Anyone who claims much more than that likely is shilling for Christianity, but it’s wishful or even conspiratorial thinking to insist that Jesus was completely made up. Better to attack the notion of his being divine, because that actually is sky-daddy nonsense.
Concrete archaeological evidence is tremendously unlikely to ever surface. The afforementioned statement is a plausible conjecture based on what circumstantial evidence is apparent weighed against what we consider reasonable human behavior at the time. The purpose of the statement isn’t proof, but to be an academically sound conclusion to a mystery a lot of people take very seriously.
It would be just as foolish to declare the Jesus of the bible absolutely couldn’t exist as it would be to declare that he absolutely did.
and yet there’s concrete evidence for so many historical figures that predate this character; you can find engravings of profiles on coins, statues, the list is long for folks like pliny, archimedes, anthony and fucking cleopatra etc., but you’re asserting that there’s some guy running around performing MIRACLES - and we have to accept ‘well it would be foolish to declare this guy couldn’t exist’ without evidence.
ooh but scholars - yeah, well, scholars were sure dinosaurs were giant lumbering lizards, and we now know there were feathers, evidence of warm blood and coordinated hunts. evidence for a literal christ is all circumstantial / apocrypha / dogma.
sorry, I don’t think skepticism is in any way foolish, in fact, I think your adherence to the 2000 year old hearsay is foolish.
Historical, non-Christian, evidence about John the Baptist is pretty much nonexistent also, so there we go.
Let alone them ever even meeting another person named Joshua.
So claiming anything about Joshua/Jesus is just nonsense at best, at worst it’s about appeasing Christians and to be able to argue about more miraculous things than the guy just existing. Letting one falsehood slide to get around countering others.
Scholars aren’t called historians for a reason.
Anyone claiming Jesus existed is chilling for Christianity. They try to use it as a fine pointed needle to try and wiggle their bullshit into the real world.
Simply put, you can’t separate the myth from any kind of grain of truth at this point, so any and all points of so called proofs are invalid. Once you mention Jesus, there is so much package it’s just over.
I think you’ll find pretty much all secular historians of the time and place will agree that there was probably an itinerant preacher by the name of Joshua going around in the area who was baptized by John, got in trouble with the local authorities, and got himself executed, but his followers eventually regrouped and built myths around him.
The gospels themselves, including the ones that didn’t make the cut in the Council of Rome, are a form of documentation, and Jesus is independently attested several other times within a century of his death and not always kindly. It’s pretty decent documentation for a non-elite of that era, though.
Anyone who claims much more than that likely is shilling for Christianity, but it’s wishful or even conspiratorial thinking to insist that Jesus was completely made up. Better to attack the notion of his being divine, because that actually is sky-daddy nonsense.
That’s exactly what the shillers keep saying, but the evidence just doesn’t seem to be there.
Concrete archaeological evidence is tremendously unlikely to ever surface. The afforementioned statement is a plausible conjecture based on what circumstantial evidence is apparent weighed against what we consider reasonable human behavior at the time. The purpose of the statement isn’t proof, but to be an academically sound conclusion to a mystery a lot of people take very seriously.
It would be just as foolish to declare the Jesus of the bible absolutely couldn’t exist as it would be to declare that he absolutely did.
and yet there’s concrete evidence for so many historical figures that predate this character; you can find engravings of profiles on coins, statues, the list is long for folks like pliny, archimedes, anthony and fucking cleopatra etc., but you’re asserting that there’s some guy running around performing MIRACLES - and we have to accept ‘well it would be foolish to declare this guy couldn’t exist’ without evidence.
furthermore, exceptional claims require exceptional evidence.
ooh but scholars - yeah, well, scholars were sure dinosaurs were giant lumbering lizards, and we now know there were feathers, evidence of warm blood and coordinated hunts. evidence for a literal christ is all circumstantial / apocrypha / dogma.
sorry, I don’t think skepticism is in any way foolish, in fact, I think your adherence to the 2000 year old hearsay is foolish.
Historical, non-Christian, evidence about John the Baptist is pretty much nonexistent also, so there we go. Let alone them ever even meeting another person named Joshua.
So claiming anything about Joshua/Jesus is just nonsense at best, at worst it’s about appeasing Christians and to be able to argue about more miraculous things than the guy just existing. Letting one falsehood slide to get around countering others.