I think Lemmy has a problem with history in general, since most people on here have degrees/training in STEM. I see a lot of inaccurate “pop history” shared on here, and a lack of understanding of historiography/how historians analyze primary sources.
The rejection of Jesus’s historicity seems to be accepting C S Lewis’s argument - that if he existed, he was a “lunatic, liar, or lord,” instead of realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
Because of the destruction of the Temple and the Judean rebellion there were probably a lot of messianic figures.
Jesus is just the one who achieved the necessary memetic virulence to be remembered.
Saul/Paul definitely helped this.
ETA: Also, stories attributed to Jesus may have happened to other messianic preachers.
See “the Egyptian” and Simon bar Kokhba..
It makes sense - I mean, Pompey literally went into the Holy of Holies and didn’t die. It must have felt as if there was something cosmically wrong.
The entire myth was also borrowed from Zoroastrianism, but let’s just pretend that never happened I guess
Christianity is like English in that it will appropriate and assimilate words/ideas that help it survive
I mean, I guess… But they stole like, the entire fucking thing from an existing religion. Christianity would not exist without the parts they took from Zoroastrianism.
Didn’t they rip off a lot of Hinduism too?
Uh… how?
The Zoroastrian “borrowing” is more along the lines of there’s a perfect good force versus a perfect evil force.
But I don’t know how there would be any Hinduism influence. There’s lot of Greek influence, but India was really far away.
All the similarities to Krishna.
The Zoroastrian influence is generally speculated to have occured to the Jews, hundreds of years before the advent of Christianity.
The Jews of Judea and Israel actually historically were conquered by the Babylonians, many of them were taken captive back to Babylonia, around 586 BCE.
Then around 539 BCE, Persia defeated Babylon, and Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Judea and Israel, as basically a new vassal kingdom, a significant improvent from being basically a slave caste in Babylon.
It is around this time period where the nature of Yahweh in texts begins to become much more monotheistic… prior to that, the proto-Judaism was actually pretty much the Canaanite polytheism.
Yahweh worship had been something of a splinter group / dedicated cult within Canaanism prior to the Babylonian scouring of Judea and Israel, but it seems that the survivors set free by the Persians had strong Zoroastrian influences on the later development of Yahweh into a monotheistic single God.
So… while there may have been Hindu influence on Zoroastrianism, there does not appear to be much direct Hindu influence on Judaism, as… you would expect maybe the concept of an avatar to show up at that point, not ~ 575 years later, roughly around 50 CE, with the advent of Christinanity, or you would expect maybe more polytheism, not less, maybe a very famous story or character archetype to get translated over into Canaanism/Proto-Judaism.
To the best of my knowledge, there is 0 evidence of interfaith influence between Hinduism and Christianity for say, the first centuries of the existence of Christianity.
All of the “Jesus’ missing years are from when he went on a spritual/religious pilgrimage across Asia” type stories, those are all much, much more modern inventions, mostly made up within the last 200ish years, often by some kind of esoteric/syncretic occultist types in the mid to late 1800s.
Christians were basically a contentious, squabbling group of ‘Gnostic’ cults/sects for their own first roughly 150 to 200 years, in Judea, Greece, modern day Turkey, Egypt, eventually Rome…
And all these groups had widly, dramatically different interpretations of Jesus, Yahweh/God, and to what extent and how they tried to incorporate mainly the ideas of famous Greek philosophers into their new cults/religions… and they famously got into huge disagreements over this, over which texts were legit and not legit.
Some believed Jesus was basically an avatar of Yahweh.
Some believed he was fundamentally a human man, but maybe blessed or sort of adopted, favored and elevated by Yahweh.
Some believed he was an incarnation from an alternate realm of reality, meant to deliver to humans a way out of a fundamentally evil reality, which had created as basically a prison by a fundamentally evil version of Yahweh.
Some believed Jesus’ true form was something like a 700 foot tall floating ghost giant.
I am not aware of any Christian arriving anywhere near, or having a discourse with India untill … what, over a thousand years after its founding, after the advent of Islam?
You can stand here in 2025 and look backward, and project similarities you see onto different parts of the past, but this is the most egregious sin a historian can commit, to try to understand historical eras and places not from within them themselves, but from the standpoint of our modern cultural and material landscape.
If you have actual historical evidence that Hinduism did actually directly influence the development of Judaism or Christianity, I’d love to see it, but I don’t think any of that actually exists.
What similarities to Krishna? Please give me some examples, and a plausible explanation of how those ideas would have crossed the continent?
The Zoroastrian “borrowing” is more along the lines of there’s a perfect good force versus a perfect evil force.
This is far from the only thing. They also had the concept that everyone has free will to choose between good and evil. I believe they also had a concept of final judgement and heaven/hell (or an analogue).
Were those solely present in Zoroastrianism? From what I understand of Egyptian religion, there’s the whole Thoth “weighing your heart to see if it’s lighter than a feather” thing. I think free will has always been a “popular” idea, but even then, there are passages in the Bible that contradict free will - to the point that Calvinists much later discarded it.
I read this as “Sean Paul” and now my mind won’t stop with “so me go so”
It’s quite possible, but the waters are muddied since every legendary facet was treated as fact, so the historical record is relatively less reliable given how much of it was manipulated in the name of faith.
Celsus, a second century author and critic of Christianity, did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Early Roman and Jewish critics of Christianity did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Instead, their claims were that he was the son of a Roman soldier (no virgin birth) and that his miracles were attributable to the same common magic that everyone believed in at that time.
If I were writing in 170 CE, and wanted to prove that Christianity was false because Jesus was made up, then I would probably say that.
Historians are aware of the fact that texts can be altered or manipulated or untrue. That’s part of the process of reading a primary source - thinking critically about what your source is saying, what biases they might have, and yes, if there were alterations or manipulations. There is ample study and linguistic analysis to determine those kinds of changes.
I mean… maybe. He was writing about events 150 years ago in another country. He may not have had direct knowledge of them. Think about how contentious history can be today with the benefit of modern documentary evidence, professional historians, etc. and think about how uncertain things under such distance would be back then.
You can’t just assume something is true because historians didn’t say it wasn’t. That’s not how it works.
What Jesus are they talking about? That needs to be defined first. Not the one depicted in the bible that’s for sure.
A Jesus who had an apocalyptic ministry, some amount of followers, was executed by the Roman state and said at least some of the things recounted in the Gospels. Matthew and Luke are clearly pulling from some sort of earlier source, which likely had at least some accurate accounts of his teaching.
Could also be teachings of some of the other messianic cults just misattributed to Jesus, but either way he was clearly the only one that managed to maintain relevance much past their death.
TLDR: “The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source”
The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source
Have you ever read a document from before 1400? Just curious, because you seem to be under the illusion that reading primary sources means that you either take everything they say literally, or dismiss them as entirely made up. This is exactly what I mentioned with regard to ignorance of historiography and method earlier.
Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes all say contradictory things about Socrates. Will you argue that Socrates was fictional?
Plato (indirectly via fabricated self insert character) describes Atlantis as a story he read from his great great uncle Solon, who himself apparently heard about the story from ‘Egyptians’…
… therefore, Atlantis is 100% confirmed real, lol.
The letter J wasn’t even invented until the year 1524, so formally speaking, Jesus, Jews, Judges, January, June, July, and every other word including the letter J did not exist in the 1400s or before.
Therefore, Jesus never existed.
Lower case letters are medieval too, so only IESUS existed. Case closed.
His name in Aramaic, which was what he almost certainly would have actually spoken, was almost certainly Yehoshuah, which was a common name at the time.
It was often shortened to Yeshua, sometimes to Yeshu.
(This is still a common surname in Hebrew to this day.)
When translated into Greek, this became IESUS.
This is because Greek doesn’t really have a representation of Y as consonant, and because Greek also doesn’t really do the ‘sh’ sound, that got changed to just an ‘s’.
The earliest Gospels that we have are largely (entirely?) written in Greek, because:
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Most people of the time were illiterate or functionally illiterate, and most people who learned how to write, well they were taught Greek, because it was the most common shared language of business and governance in the eastern Mediterranean.
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There was very obviously a push to proselytize to Greek speakers, the Gentiles, to grow the movement outside of Judea, by many early Christians.
Anyway, yeah, you are correct that the harder J consonant did not develop until much, much later, in Europe.
So… if you were to do a more modern, direct translation of Yehoshuah, to a modern name in modern English, it would roughly be Joshua / Josh, not Jesus.
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You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That’s one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible. Shitloads of New Testament books are Apostles sending Jesus’ words to various churches and governments. Look up “epistle”.
Look at the Old Testament for more history. Books like Leviticus, where we can pick out loads of weird proscriptions, were the records of law as the Tribe of Levi saw it.
A scholar can spend a lifetime unpacking the Bible without believing in ghosts, holy or otherwise. You’re doing the “I’m too smart for this bullshit!” thing. Stop. You’re having the opposite effect.
You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That’s one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible.
Also the fact that modern scholars recognize that not all of the Epistles were even written by Paul! You’d think if all of these Bible scholars were fervent Christians hellbent on ignoring historical evidence, they wouldn’t be arguing that Paul didn’t write Ephesians or Colossians, or that the Pentateuch was probably a compilation from four different authors!
I never knew they had all been ascribed to Paul, always thought there was various authors.
Ephesians and Colossians explicitly claim to have been written by Paul.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. - Ephesians 1:1
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. - Colossians 1:1
I find it funny that you end up with a or multiple pseudo-Pauls, when… Paul is already not his original name, lol.
As you indicated, this isn’t an unpopular opinion in the wider world. There are records outside of Christian scripture that mention Jesus. No legitimate historians doubt that he existed.
Yeah - it is an unpopular opinion on Lemmy though. I’ve been accused of being Christian for making this argument, as if accepting the historicity of the figure inherently means accepting the claim that he was a divine being.
That’s because nobody goes around claiming jebus was real except christians. Way to troll, asshole.
Adults are discussing history. Whatever they did to you in Sunday school class is not relevant here.
Ehrman has said that he is both agnostic and atheist but that “I usually confuse people when I tell them I’m both”. “Atheism is a statement about faith and agnosticism is a statement about epistemology”, he said.
Ehrman argues that Jesus of Nazareth existed historically, and has summarized the claim in popular form “he did exist, whether we like it or not”. His position on Christology is historical rather than confessional. In summarizing How Jesus Became God, NPR recorded his judgment that “Jesus himself didn’t call himself God and didn’t consider himself God”. He has also written that Jesus did not teach postmortem reward and punishment as popularly conceived. In a 2020 essay he argued that Jesus proclaimed resurrection and the coming kingdom rather than eternal torment.
All legitimate historians doubt that. You’re referring to RELIGIOUS SCHOLARS, who are just lying priests and followers, desperate to make any bullshit into something more than bullshit. You’re fucking delusional.
Is Bart Ehrman a “religious scholar”?
Modern biblical scholarship starts with a prima facie assumption that miracles and god are not real. It’s a very rich field, with many people with a variety of religious beliefs and non beliefs.
Your ignorance and rejection of an entire academic field is no different from a creationist rejecting the academic consensus of biologists.
Please give me an example of “legitimate historian.” Do you read much academic history? Do you have a degree or any formal training in history on which to make the claim that you can distinguish “legitimate” historians from illegitimate ones?
I don’t think most serious scholars would swear that a Jesus existed at that time and place, but would say that it is much more likely than not based on the confirming evidence from outside of the Christian faith. At some point you need to decide how much evidence is enough for any ancient topic. There’s no particular reason that I’ve found credible enough to convince me that there WASN’T a historical figure there, even though I absolutely refuse to accept any magic or miracles.
I’ve always understood historical Jesus as a concession, and not a reflection of confirmed existence.
Hmm… let me get this straight.
Your unpopular opinion™ is that someone named Jesus may have existed around the same time that all the stories about Jesus Christ of Nazareth were written?
and that “most mainstream scholars of the era” agree with OP
Have you heard about this dude named Brian?
I’m Brian, and my wife is too!
There is a lot of historical evidence that a lot of historical figures claiming to be the second coming of the messiah existed at the time. Jesus was just the most popular one. He’s the crème de la crème of messianic figures of the time. That’s all.
Okay, now do Atlantis.
The “evidence” for Atlantis is Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, which is pretty clear in context to be a myth Plato is using to make a philosophical point. He’s not claiming it is historical, and it connects to Plato’s ideal of a “Noble Lie.”
Can someone share a link or two that confirms the existence of historical Jesus?
UsefulCharts just released a youtube video on the topic. The argument is basically “the earliest documents referencing Jesus aren’t explicit that he was real but on the other hand it wasn’t long before he was treated as real”. Basically there wasn’t a lot of time for myth to be reinterpreted as history.
Personally I’m ambivalent, Sherlock Holmes wasn’t real but he may have had a real effect on criminology. People may confuse his historicity. Compared to Houdini.
This passage in Josephus’s Antiquities would be the best evidence outside of the New Testament texts. Josephus refers to “Jesus, who was called Christ”’s brother James being executed, likely due to his role in leading an early group of Christians.
You can also read Bart Ehrman for some analysis and arguments from a professional historian.
I was under the impression that historians more didn’t have any evidence to discount the existence of the guy than so much as distinct records of him, so because of Christianity it’s generally accepted a guy existed. But it’s been a while since I looked into it and my memory is kinda shit, I’m getting old.
Just want to add a couple of things
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There were no extra-Biblical references to Pontius Pilate until 1961. Now imagine how much documentation must have surrounded the Roman prefect of Judea. All of it gone, except for a bit of limestone.
Also an argument (I think I heard it from Hitchens, but not sure): We know that the Nativity story is bogus because the Census that was supposed to bring Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem is anachronistic. And we know that it’s important that Jesus be from Bethlehem (City of David) because the Messiah was prophesized to be from there.
So the question is: if were making up Jesus from whole cloth, why not just make him Jesus of Bethlehem? Why go to the trouble unless Jesus of Nazareth was something people were already familiar with?
I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding your 1961 statement, but from Wiki on Pontius Pilate:
Surviving evidence includes coins he minted and the Pilate Stone inscription. Ancient sources such as Josephus, Philo, and
the Gospel of Lukedocument several incidents of conflict between Pilate and the Jewish population, often citing his insensitivity to Jewish religious customs. The Christian gospels, as well as Josephus and Tacitus, attribute the crucifixion of Jesus to Pilate’s orders.The Pilate Stone is where his 1961 date comes from. The Josephus bit that mentions Pilate is the “Testimonium Flavianum” which is the reference to Jesus in Josephus that was likely edited by a later source. It does look like the numismatic evidence (coins) are ridiculously common though.
Often, coins are the only evidence of historical figures. Lots of petty kings that never have anything written about them, but do have coins.
Saying Jesus existed but biblical events didn’t happen is meaningless. And since we know the bible is full of crap, it doesn’t really matter if a Jesus existed or not. That specific fairy tale Jesus is made up. Maybe it is a dramatization of real events, maybe it is a mix of stories and legends about several different people, maybe it was fabricated, it doesn’t really matter. Saying “Jesus existed” is just feeding the apologists, and there are so many Christian historians than I cannot take claims like that seriously.
Who fucking cares?
Why do we care about history in general?
It provides us with some patterns in human behavior, things that cannot really be studied in a lab. You could approach early Christianity as a way to better understand mass movements, or the different coping strategies of an oppressed/conquered people. You could read the text of the New Testament and ask yourself why these ideas were appealing and what that might say about human nature.
As part of the study of ideas, Christianity is a really interesting expression of how Hellenistic thought mixed with Judaism. There’s a reason a lot of Neoplatonists were Christian.
The early conflicts with Judaism as Christianity developed its own identity have pretty far reaching impacts, with the death of Jesus being placed on all Jews and being used to justify atrocities to this current day.
Or, as a guy that thinks about the Roman Empire at least a couple times a day, it’s a great window into the experience of a backwater Roman province that eventually revolted and was absolutely crushed.
Jesus is not history in general, and I still don’t fucking care.
Jesus doesn’t have to be a single historical person.
Never knew Jesus is plural from Jesu
