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What did Jesus really look like? (2015)

93 points by gpvos 8y ago

dvh 8y ago
Do we even know he was a real person and not combination of 2 or 3 men with similar fate?
- croisillon 8y ago
  you might like this article: http://www.adamgopnik.com/what-did-jesus-do http://www.adamgopnik.com/what-did-jesus-do
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  No, although typically the opposite claim is made. That people named “Joshua son of Joseph” lived at that time, that various revolts and religious upheavals occurred is pretty certain. That one guy fitting the rough description of Jesus was behind it is not. The history of Christianity doesn’t really start in earnest for hundreds of years after the supposed death of Christ in any case. People today can’t even agree on the details of Elvis’ life... now imagine if Elvis had lived a few hundred years ago, and we’re all working from quaternary+ sources. Then fast-forward a thousand or so years of very intentional document editing and re-editing, translations and re-translations, and all of the incredible wealth and power hinging on it for centuries. How accurate would accounts from those times be expected to be?
  - vibrolax 8y ago
    Loved your comparison to the historical Elvis. Whenever I saw news articles reporting on artifacts purportedly related to the historical Jesus, I always thought how little we know about the historical Shakespeare.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      Or indeed, some people don’t even believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays! As passionate as people can be about Shakespeare, it’s nothing compared to religion, and record keeping and sources of information on Shakespeare are a lot easier to come by than anything from a couple of millennia ago.
      - sjwright 8y ago
        All we can say is that Shakespeare was credited for his plays. It's functionally impossible to know who wrote them, at best we can hypothesise based on an analysis of his writing—and such analysis doesn't bode well for Shakespeare as the author...
        djur 8y ago
        Your initial point is true about just about anyone who wrote more than a certain amount of time ago. It's true of Jonson and Spenser and Marlowe, too. The latter point is just false -- textual analysis is entirely consistent with the historical evidence (such as the writings of his contemporaries) that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare.
        sjwright 8y ago
        Interesting; I was led to the impression that Shakespeare's writings showed a level and stratum of life experience that would have been beyond his reach or means.
  - vivekd 8y ago
    >although typically the opposite claim is made. That people named “Joshua son of Joseph” lived at that time, that various revolts and religious upheavals occurred is pretty certain. That one guy fitting the rough description of Jesus was behind it is not That doesn't seem quite fair because it's almost certain that the guy named Jesus was not behind the upheavals of that time. That was about the Jewish revolt against the Romans which Jesus was not involved in at all. Also, while Christianity didn't start in earnest until about two hundred years after Jesus' death, stories of his life were written down as early as 60 years after his death. It's very difficult in a society like ancient Israel to fake the existence of a person, people had clan allegiances, they kept track of genealogies and would be able to tell right away if the writings concerned someone who didn't exist. There were translations but that's irrelevant because we have the original dead sea scrolls with the earliest ones dating to a few decades after his death. A time when wealth and power did not hinge on this. We're not solely working with edits and re-translations. I think there's a bias against religious figures that inform people's arguments when they say it's all uncertain - when in reality the evidence is pretty good that he did exist.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      Details of his life may have been written down then, but the sources we have aren’t those sources, just edited and translated retellings of those supposed stories with about 1800 years of politically and religiously motivated games of telephone between us and them. I have to ask, the Dead Sea Scrolls date from between about a century before Jesus’ purported life, to about a century after his death and as far as I know make no mention of him. I wasn’t claiming that the language is somehow untranslatable, but that we don’t have anything like contemporary sources, only people who hundreds of years later claim to have access to those sources.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - grumpydba 8y ago
    > The history of Christianity doesn’t really start in earnest for hundreds of years after the supposed death of Christ in any case There are several Christian writings dated from the first century after his death. Paul's letters, the didache, Flavius Joseph, some talmudic writings, John's disciples writings to name a few.
- jonawesomegreen 8y ago
  I really enjoyed this book on the topic: “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Iranian-American writer and scholar Reza Aslan. It is a historical account of the life of Jesus and analyzes the various religious perspectives on Jesus as well as the creation of Christianity.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_o...
  - 1over137 8y ago
    Probably not the most impartial author on the topic though, as as he is a theist and self-proclaims himself as a "genuinely committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views
    - idontpost 8y ago
      Who could possibly be considered an impartial author on the topic? Surely not any Christian or any atheist. Not any Muslim either. I suppose Buddhists wouldn't have any particular stake in whether a historical Jesus existed.
      - 1over137 8y ago
        Why not an atheist? Not believing in his divinity doesn't preclude objective analysis of whether a human named Jesus existed. But, yes, surely not any Christian, who by definition believes Jesus exited.
        amatthew 8y ago
        Why not either? For both the Christian and the Atheist, honest scholarship is inseparable from their beliefs. It's hard to imagine either changing their beliefs from the evidence they could find. The consequences of being able to prove with certainty either that Jesus existed and is who Christians claim him to be, or did not exist or was not divine would have tremendous consequences on the lives of hundreds of millions people who do not ascribe to the proven belief. They could say "I am intellectually honest and will change my beliefs depending on the evidence," but we both know that 1. Concrete evidence strong enough to convince someone to change their beliefs, beyond what is already known, likely does not exist. And 2. Their current beliefs already match their known evidence so any additional information is unlikely to radically change their beliefs, only be accounted for and integrated into their current belief system. I'm not trying to say all scholarship is biased or we shouldn't believe anything. In all likelihood, most people are not deliberately lying or falsifying anything. What does that mean about which scholarship to trust? I have no idea.
- reindeerer 8y ago
  The historical accounts seem to support the idea that the story is a combination of multiple people. But the guy who got nailed to a cross was an actual historical event and became the focal point for the amalgam.
  - SpikeDad 8y ago
    Where's the historical evidence for your claim that the guy who got nailed to a cross was indeed the source of the "Jesus" mythology?
    - reindeerer 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Historicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Historici...
    - coldtea 8y ago
      You seem to confuse the religious story of Jesus (miracles, resurrection, etc, the "mythology" in your terms) with the actual person who had followers and inspired a religion. There's little doubt among scholars that there was a specific person at the start of this (and not some BS "Dan Brown"-like conspiracy).
      - betterunix2 8y ago
        Scholars who live in societies where the vast majority of people follow religions that consider Jesus to be a prophet or even a god. I have yet to see a good argument for why we should assume the Jesus of the bible was a single person leading a religious movement -- there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers.
        krapp 8y ago
        >there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers. Yes, but to play... eh, Messiah's advocate... this doesn't discount the possibility of Jesus having been one of those claimants leading one of those movements, he just wouldn't have been the only one. It doesn't lend credence to anything either, but it's not impossible that Jesus happened to lead the cult that won out, thanks eventually to Rome and the British Empire.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  I have often wondered about this; I have read in various places that scholars believe there was a historical Jesus but this always seems like a pragmatic stance to take in societies where the vast majority of people believe that he was either a prophet or a God (which covers almost everywhere where this question would be considered worthy of any serious study). Yet there are some issues that I see: 1. "Yeshua" or "Yeshu" were relatively common Jewish names at that time (it is just "Joshuah" in Aramaic), so vague references in non-Christian writings to a "Jesus" of some kind may not refer to the same person. How many people named "Joshuah" might have led a group of disciples during a period where dozens of messianic claimants were trying to rally followers to one cause or another? 2. It is well known that the bible was subject to extensive editing prior to its official canonization, which makes it somewhat questionable as a historical document. At best we can only derive vague information about big social movements IMO -- no doubt there were Jews who taught the things attributed to Jesus, but I personally hesitate to go further and claim that the bible is an accurate account of a single person's movement. 3. The chaotic schisms in the early centuries of Christianity makes me doubt that useful historical information about the founders of the movement actually survived. The different Christian movements preserved the documents that best supported their cause. Who knows what historical information is not available today that would totally change our views on the topic.
  - Casseres 8y ago
    > 2. It is well known that the bible was subject to extensive editing prior to its official canonization, which makes it somewhat questionable as a historical document. I've never heard this claim before. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that written copies made through the centuries were accurate copies. The only editorialization of the Bible was church councils deciding which books/letters to include in the Bible, not to edit them.
    - betterunix2 8y ago
      The Gospels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis This all would have happened before the various councils decided what would be considered canonical, and the councils themselves probably had no idea that it had happened. As for the dead sea scrolls, all it shows is that the final forms of the books in the Hebrew bible and related extrabiblical works existed prior to the canonization. It is pretty clear that the Hebrew bible was edited in prior centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Isaiah#Authorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Isaiah#Authorship etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 8y ago
  Yes. The first major bunch of followers were not that far removed from his death, and we have a couple of historical accounts (exactly a couple, to be precise).
  - eponeponepon 8y ago
    One of those accounts uses a different name for him ("Crispus"? Maybe? You'll have to forgive me not looking it up, but it eludes me and I don't want to disappear down a wiki-rabbithole when I should be wrapping presents..!) and has later been interpreted as referring to him; the other account is a focus of great controversy as to its genuine age. I'm not necessarily trying to pull your point apart, just pointing out that it's not clear-cut. Personally I've never really made my mind up, but at the moment I lean more towards a conglomeration of folk-tales and the lives of several men. I'll probably change my mind again soon.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > One of those accounts uses a different name for him I think you are probably remembering a (disputed) claim based on an edit made in a particular later copy that Tacitus (one of the earliest independent sources on both Christ and the early Christian community, particularly in Rome) referred to the Christian community in Rome as “Chrestians”, immediately before using the standard rendering of Jesus title as “Christus”. Even if Tacitus did use “Chrestians”, that name for the early community is attested in other sources (and even tied and used alongside Christian in some inscriptions from that community, IIRC), his reference to Christ did not use any alternate title,
      - owens99 8y ago
        Have you heard that "Christus" is also believed to be an interpolation? https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/65072-richard-carrier-christ-in-tacitus-may-be-interpolated/ https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/65072-richard-carrier-chr...
        8y ago
- nikbackm 8y ago
  I found this a good overview for that question. https://www.quora.com/Do-credible-historians-agree-that-the-man-named-Jesus-who-the-Christian-Bible-speaks-of-walked-the-earth-and-was-put-to-death-on-a-cross-by-Pilate-Roman-governor-of-Judea/answers/863434 https://www.quora.com/Do-credible-historians-agree-that-the-...
  - burlesona 8y ago
    I agree, the Quora explanation is pretty good. TLDR; the evidence that Jesus was a real person is very strong, and stronger than many other historical figures (the article mentions Hannibal), whose existence is not considered controversial. As a religious figure Jesus is inherently controversial, which is what probably attracts the skepticism and interest in trying to cast doubt on his existence.
    - owens99 8y ago
      I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M Richard Carrier actually counters each argument in the Quora post pretty convincingly.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Well, here is why I think Jesus very likely existed and taught: The Church today follows the teachings of Paul, that the Law is obsolete, nailed to the cross and no longer binding. The Church teachings give the Chuch great authority in determining what people should do, church leaders are called Father etc. The Church was supposed to be for all nations. And yet... Jesus is described in the gospels exactly saying the opposite! “I came to save the lost sheep of Israel.” When a young man asked how to be saved, Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion. Why would the Church invent a person so inconvenient to their own dogma? It is the ultimate criterion of embarrassment — of the very canonizers themselves! They only would have done it if the original founder of the Way realy existed and was a Jewish teacher who taught Jews. Why else would they invent something so seemingly at odds with their own teachings that people throughout the centuries (like Thomas Jefferson) called Paul “the great corruptor of Christianity”? I would further say that the original Church of Jesus existed in Jerusalem and was led by his brother James and also by Peter. They told Paul that rumors have come that he is teaching Jews to turn away from the Law, and told him to pay for some purification rites to show this is not true. Paul obliged. They also penned a letter to Gentile Believers which Paul was to take to them, invoking the Holy Spirit and instructing them in essentially the Noahide Laws. Paul in his letter to the Galatians however said they had “nothing to add” to his message excep that he “remember the poor, something I have been eager to do all along”. In short, the founder existed, the Church existed, and would have been the dominant Church if not for the Judaic wars and the destruction that happened as a result. I think that Christianity as we know it today, came from those beginnings and then spread to other churches.
  - grumpydba 8y ago
    > Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion He said the law would not change until all is accomplished. After drinking the vinegar, before dying, he said "all is accomplished". Paul's teachings are thus consistent with this.
    - EGreg 8y ago
      No, that's only if you read the English translation. In the original Greek, the two words are very different. The original context is from Matthew 5:18, which could potentially have been written in Hebrew: "17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one [a]jot or one [b]tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." Notice a few things: 1) Heaven and Earth have not yet passed away, many Christians ignore this part completely, but it needs to be explained why it was mentioned. It would seem the obvious reason is that "all will be accomplished" around the time that Heaven and Earth will pass away, including spreading the gospel to everyone. In another place Jesus says "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." 2) Notice that even those who ARE in Heaven will be called Least if they set aside even the smallest commandment and teach others to do so. Thus, even Christians need to be concerned with the Law. Literally nowhere did Jesus even bring up the idea that the Law will be obsolete. That is an idea originated by Paul.
- Theodores 8y ago
  The most eye opening discussion and research on this topic for me came from what Dr Richard Carrier has to say. He got down to the task of just doing the research like how a historian might, or how a scientist might. His standpoint is clearly atheist, but don't let that put you off. He uses logic, reason and applies that to how he weighs the factiness of the story. Any of his talks on YouTube are a good introduction, if you want to learn more and are willing to have your opinion and assumptions challenged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier You don't have to 'believe' in the guy, however his methodology, knowledge of history and enthusiasm for the subject is not something you find in the priesthood. He does not rate the probability of Jesus being a real person as that high, neither does he rate the existence of Ned Ludd as that high. He does trace where ideas were borrowed from and has read the bible extremely thoroughly. If you are interested in Christianity because it is part of our culture and history then I highly recommend taking time to hear what Dr Richard Carrier has to say.
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    > You don't have to 'believe' in the guy, however his methodology, knowledge of history and enthusiasm for the subject is not something you find in the priesthood. It's not something you find among any credible scholar in the field. Carrier is fringe for a reason.
    - Theodores 8y ago
      Credible to whom? After 2000 years of the indoctrination the defenders of the bible have got the art of defending the make-believe that is the bible down to a fine art. I did not say that everything that has ever came out of Richard Carrier's mouth is tantamount to the word of god and definitely to be believed. My point was that he asks the right questions, has done a lot of research that the bible bashers of this world haven't bothered to do and he has ways of discussing things in a non-black-and-white dualist way, going for probability and giving a value to how likely something is likely to be true. Anyone with a serious interest in questioning assumptions long held by them about the bible needs to hear him out, to believe him or not, it is that questioning of faith that matters. There are plenty of atheists that believe that Jesus really did exist but he was an ordinary guy rather than of virgin birth and the son of god, an 'anti-capitalist rebel' of sorts. What Richard Carrier does is to open up the idea that the whole bible is a contrivance, that this Jesus character did not exist and that his story was weaved together by religions that had gone before. Logical fallacies are something we are all capable of. Your 'where there is smoke there must be fire' comment does not stand up to scrutiny. Just twenty years ago it was not possible to talk about climate change in the world of weather forecasting and meteorology. That was actually way to controversial, and I am talking from being in the field twenty years ago. Yet by that point in time the idea had some scientific credibility for twenty years, and a century before that some had wondered what the consequences of pumping ever increasing quantities of carbon dioxide into the air might lead to, positing the 'crazy' global warming idea. With the agreement of the Paris Accords the other week we have moved on from that, the 'fringe' view that was not considered 'credible' has moved on. Yet a mere twenty years ago people were saying 'climate change is fringe for a reason'. There may be much to dislike about Richard Carrier, but to dismiss him without at least a link to a decent review of his work by one of these italicised credible scholars is a poor show.
- jimmytucson 8y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus Pretty interesting: > Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain ... with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed.
  - owens99 8y ago
    Virtually all is an overstatement. Perhaps the vast majority, but the vast majority are also practicing Christians. See Richard Carrier's youtube videos on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M There's not compelling evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Yet there's compelling motivation for early Christians to say he was a man who lived and not simply a god. Being related to someone who knew him in real life actually could bestow power and influence in the early Christian community.
    - UncleMeat 8y ago
      Youtube videos aren't exactly the best example of scholarly work. Look at the people who are respected by academics rather than trying to evaluate the contents of a field that you aren't trained in.
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        Neither are Wikipedia articles.
        owens99 8y ago
        Please don’t jump to conclusions, I have looked at the actual research and also read the books. None of the common cited evidence for Jesus as a historical figure holds up to scrutiny. If you can give one example that can, it would help me a ton. I’d love to be wrong and understand Jesus as an actual historical figure.
- danielam 8y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/what-is-the-historical-evidence-that-jesus-christ-lived-and-died https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/what-is-the-hi...
- mattigames 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lqC8fvIspY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lqC8fvIspY
malvosenior 8y ago
Anyone interested in this should check out the podcast series Historical Jesus from Stanford: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-jesus/id38423... tldr; there probably wasn't a Jesus and there is no evidence to support his existence.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  That seems to contradict the consensus among historians [1]: > Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels. While scholars have criticized Jesus scholarship for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness, with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed. Can you point to where the podcast makes such a claim? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    The whole podcast is dedicated to going over what historical evidence might exist that documents Jesus. Just as per your link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Sources) there were no sources that mention him until after his death during the first push for Christianity.
    - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
      There is no sources that mention many, many figures in Antiquity until after their deaths. And yet, no one disputes that, say, Heraclitus, Hesiod, Plautus, or some of the Ten Thousand’s generals existed. Why hold Jesus to a different standard?
      - 8y ago
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cup 8y ago
Probably looked more like Osama bin Laden than white Jesus.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dorchadas 8y ago
  I had a white blonde hair, blue eyed student ask me what I thought Jesus looked like the other day. After first clarifying that Jesus wasn't a Christian, but a Jew, I proceeded to say he probably looked more like bin Laden than the student. Needless to say, this student from the backwoods American South was not happy with that, but I thought it was hilarious.
joseph8th 8y ago
According to John Allegro, of Dead Sea Scrolls fame (among other more recent scholars), he looked like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria
- freyir 8y ago
  From Wikipedia: Allegro argued that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient "sex-and-mushroom" cult. Critical reaction was swift and harsh: fourteen British scholars (including Allegro's mentor at Oxford, Godfrey Driver) denounced it. Sidnie White Crawford wrote of the publication of Sacred Mushroom, "Rightly or wrongly, Allegro would never be taken seriously as a scholar again."
  - joseph8th 8y ago
    Heh. Not saying Allegro was right, but it's worth noting that his critics were not just scholars of religion, but religious. He insulted their deity. As is usually the case with religious scholarship, the academics aren't exactly unbiased.
  - kmlx 8y ago
    much more probable than what various religions tell us.
sgt101 8y ago
Fun google - "jesus magic wand" because... for early Christians Jesus often had a magic wand!
- zozbot123 8y ago
  "On the eve of Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover. Ulla retorted: 'Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a Mesith [enticer], concerning whom Scripture says, Neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him? With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government."
  - goliatone 8y ago
    Where is that quote from?
    - gpvos 8y ago
      A quick web search reveals that it is from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a.
lifeformed 8y ago
I think depicting Jesus as attractive is a reasonable assumption. A young, charismatic leader seems more likely than the average person to be attractive, or at least distinct looking. But of course, not the blond hair blue eyes thing.
- luord 8y ago
  For what it's worth, I agree. Siddhartha is said to have been attractive, there's no reason to think his analogues like Muhammad or Jesus weren't.
bitforger 8y ago
Is it just me or does that last Jesus look like Shia Labeouf
- coldtea 8y ago
  He (Shia) is half-Jewish as well, and has several middle-eastern traits, so it makes sense a depiction of what people looked/look like in the region to have some common elements.
Mikeb85 8y ago
Considering there's plenty of traditional depictions of Jesus from middle eastern churches that date back to Greco-Roman Palestine, I don't see why we shouldn't assume those are relatively close to what he would have looked like, considering that's the culture and region he came from. Example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre#/media/File:Jerusalem_Holy_Sepulchre_BW_15.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulc... Slightly curly hair, dark hair, dark eyes, beard, seems about right for a Jew living in 1st century Greco-Roman Palestine.
- abrowne 8y ago
  Because not all art is intended to be accurate — it might be symbolic. The linked example shows blue/purple clothes, which were limited to the elite. Like the article says, this is used to show a royal status, not that it was what he actually wore.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    And the earliest Christian art was almost entirely symbolic - fish, lambs, wheel cross, chi-rho, etc... Even if elements of iconography are symbolic, they could have easily made Jesus look any way they want, yet the standard 'Byzantine' Jesus icon gives him dark features and slightly curled hair. Seems close enough, and none of the earliest art (either purely symbolic or very Roman - possibly to hide from persecution) seems any more accurate.
moneytide1 8y ago
Not sure what he looked like, but it doesn't matter to me. I see him as a philosopher before the Gutenberg press that was not associated with the Pharisees (established philosophical order). There have been many Jesus personalities throughout history, every religion has one as a voice to convey useful advice. He gave such good advice about how to navigate hardships without the pressure of tithing that he has since been revered as supernatural. --5,000 fed with 5 loaves and 2 fish: I used to think everyone was fed "magically" with whole portions. Now I realize it was a communal exercise, and the lesson learned was how to share and make sure everyone gets an equal piece (even though everyone just got a small crumb). --Water to wine Once again, as a child I thought he violated laws of physics. Alcohol is a depressant and excessive use can hinder productivity of the citizenry. Under the advisement of Jesus, the man without ties to the Church, word spread to replace wine with water. Water to wine; pez to Xanex. --The poor woman and the blind man I recall one story where there was a poor woman without food, and Jesus was able to scrounge up enough flour from her own storage containers to produce a meal. Once again, thought it was magic. But he came into her home and helped her assess her resources. Mud on the blind mans eyes? Impossible to cure blindness like that - but he wasn't literally blind. Unfortunate circumstances likely provoked a depression that pushed him into pretending to be blind and beg - free money. Not the way an able bodied citizen should behave. The revered Jesus came to him and performed a ceremony with the audience consisting of locals that had walked by the blind beggar every day. Now he is "cured" in front of all and he can end the act safely using Jesus' supernatural status as a catalyst. Probably got a job the same day - no more begging. Productivity of the village slightly improved. Lazarus "raised from dead" is another example of this - a depressed guy shutting out the world could be considered dead. Jesus brings him back to the tribe. Another able-bodied person returning to the economy. If we assume religion is an early form of software engineering used to instill practical economic ideals and morals into society through simple parables and metaphors: Jesus was the software update everyone was ready for, but had to be killed off because embezzlement-prone-tithing-proceeds were probably being threatened. This kind of sacrifice effectively locked in his doctrines.
- perfmode 8y ago
  It’s interesting that you think of Jesus in economic terms. In a way, economics is its own spirituality.
scoot_718 8y ago
Not a historical figure, so good luck.
johnny313 8y ago
Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill wrote a decent book on the question of whether or not there was a historical Jesus. He does a good job talking through the arguments on both sides, and covers the history of the argument. He did an interview about the topic on NPR a few years ago: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-historian-makes-his-case https://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-h...
- jaypeg25 8y ago
  I'm currently reading Zealot by Reza Aslan, which doesn't really debate whether or not there was a historical Jesus, but discusses the differences in fact vs the bible. I highly recommend it.
  - analog31 8y ago
    I read it, and was disappointed. The book could only get so close to Jesus as to speculate what a person living during that time period might have been like, and what some of the prevailing social issues were.
    - Synaesthesia 8y ago
      I thought it was a good book, as he says, he's not presenting anything new or controversial to biblical scholars, but I (as a layperson) learned a lot about Christianity, and now understand it better - how it went from being a weird Jewish sect to the imperial religion of Rome. Just finished The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey, which documents the destruction of statues, temples and artworks by Christians in the years 300-500AD in Europe. Also recommended!
      - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
        Unfortunately Nixey’s book is terrible. As a classisist she should know better than to regurgitate ideas from Gibbon, ignoring 200 years of scholarship. Instead she goes for sensationalism, “evil Christians destroying classical culture” and links to ISIS and such. Which isn’t needed because the period she describes is interesting enough on its own. The book is so terrible a collection of reviews from historians can be found here: https://gegrammena.wordpress.com/2017/10/22/reactions-reviews-to-catherine-nixeys-the-darkening-age-eeuwen-van-duisternis/ https://gegrammena.wordpress.com/2017/10/22/reactions-review... . I especially like this article (https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/10/21/hunting-the-wild-misquotation-again-the-perils-for-the-author-of-not-verifying-your-quotations/ https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/10/21/hunting-the-w...), focusing on how she misused a quote from Chrysostom by removing all context, which completely changed the meaning to fit her narrative. Not only that, she clearly didn’t read the original source but borrowed the interpretation from another author, who also misread it.
mirimir 8y ago
> That Jesus was a Jew (or Judaean) is certain in that it is found repeated in diverse literature, including in the letters of Paul. And, as the Letter to the Hebrews states: "It is clear that our Lord was descended from Judah." True enough, it seems. But what about Muhammad? From what little I know, he was neither Jewish nor Christian. Before founding Islam, I mean. But it seems pretty clear that he worshiped the same god. In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam? I'm guessing that it was something like Judaism. Indeed, maybe there were many forks.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam? What was the main European religion before Christianity? In both cases, there's not one unique answer. In terms of pre-Islamic Arab religion, Christianity (of a couple different major flavors), Judaism, Zoroastrianism, varieties of local polytheisms, and some others were significant.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  More likely it looked like the religion from which Judaism emerged, the ancient Semitic religion (polytheist, idol-worshipping). IIRC this is mentioned in the Quran regarding the inhabitants of Mecca.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    This makes the most sense to me. As others note, there were many polytheistic traditions. Including, as you say, the ancient Semitic religion. As a biologist, I imagine it as a phylogenetic tree. One of the major monotheistic branches of the Semitic religion that's survived is Judaism. With its Christian fork, and the various Protestant forks. The other is Islam, with early forks (e.g., Shabakism and Druze) and later ones (e.g., Bahá'í and Bábism). Two other surviving monotheistic branches of the Semitic religion are Samaritanism and Yazdânism (among Kurds). I gather that they forked about the same time as Judaism, and before Islam. So I'm guessing that it was a similar fork that became Islam. It was rereading Matthew Woodring Stover's Jericho Moon that got me thinking about this. It focuses on an attack by Habiru raiders (aka Hebrews, led by Joshua) on the Semitic Jebusites in Jerusalem (led by Adonizedek). This was several years after the sacking of Jericho. The Habiru worshiped "Yahweh Sabaoth, El Shaddai", and considered him to be the only God (although he did have angels/aspects/avatars/personas, which could be summoned individually by sacrifice). I gather that the Jebusites (and other Canaanites) were also descended from Noah's Exodus, but worshiped other Goddesses and Gods, in addition to El (El Elyron). Which is, in part, why the Hebrews attacked them. Or at least, justified taking their land and stuff.
starbeast 8y ago
He looked like a mushroom, obviously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr... But an actual mushroom, not a human shaped mushroom like Lenin became. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom
thrifter 8y ago
I've been fascinated with how the countenance of Christ has been a tool for racial (and racist) propaganda. As a Jew from the Middle East, He certainly wasn't the fair-skinned, blue eyed, blond hair rock star depicted by some Christian denominations. I also doubt He was black, although some Rastafarians believe He was because it says so in Jeremiah 8:21. I discussed "Black Jesus" and the Rastafari on my podcast : https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks/black_jesus_rastafarian_religion https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks/black_jesus_rastafarian_... and for those who want to deep-dive into the topic, I highly recommend The Color of Christ by Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum. It's a knockout book.
- combatentropy 8y ago
  > I also doubt He was black, although some Rastafarians believe He was because it says so in Jeremiah 8:21. That's an odd interpretation. The word in Hebrew stems from qadar, which does mean dark, but is often used to indicate mourning (https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6937.htm https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6937.htm). And that follows the context of the verse: "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn (qadarti), and horror grips me" (NIV). As far as I recall, the Bible never uses skin color to indicate race. It always goes by ancestry ("Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, . . . "). Speaking of which, it spends a great deal of time, across several books, to tell us that Jesus is Jewish. Most Jews I know of are fair skinned. Skin color doesn't mean any kind of superiority to me. I'm just talking about the accuracy of paintings. > He certainly wasn't the fair-skinned, blue eyed, blond hair rock star depicted by some Christian denominations. I've been a Christian all my life, and visited churches of many denominations. Most depictions show him with brown hair and brown eyes. I can't remember seeing any depiction with blond hair. Now blue eyes I have occasionally seen, but isn't it possible for any race to have any eye color?
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    > Most Jews I know of are fair skinned. It has been a while since Jesus’ time, and chances are most Jews you know work inside, unlike Jesus. Sarcasm aside, all of the Jews I know can trace their lineage through Europe after the diaspora in the early second century. One would expect that a pre-diaspora Jew in Judea and a modern Jew who’s family had traveled through Northern Europe for 1800 years would have significantly different skin tones.
mgamache 8y ago
Richard Carrier has made a decent case against a historical Jesus, but I'm not a scholar. On the other side, Bart D. Ehrman is an atheist who backs a historical Jesus. If he was based on a real person, The Jesus we know is like a Hollywood biography where the story was 'based on actual events' but was exaggerated beyond recognition for rhetorical impact. It's allegorical fiction.
- mgamache 8y ago
  I am not sure why I got downvoted. Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. The others, especially Matthew and Luke are just derivative works. They are anonymous embellishments of anonymous writing that was never meant as historical record. They were meant to convey the basic ideas to a non-christian populations.
  - owens99 8y ago
    People fighting back because the truth hurts.
- ttonkytonk 8y ago
  Wikipedia says Bart Ehrman is "agnostic atheist".
  - mgamache 8y ago
    Right, I think the most common atheist is the agnostic or 'weak' position. Like Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot, a God is possible but the burden of proof is on proving God exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
barberousse 8y ago
Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though? We know that the gospels are likely younger than Paul's letters and that Paul is one of the earliest missionaries to the Gentile world. And when we read Paul's letters, they're far more direct and practical in content than everything else in the NT. So is it that over time, as early Christian's earliest leaders died out, a fascination with just _who_ this Christ was vivified? As well, wouldn't this dating make Paul's letters the most authoritative liturgical documents?
- javagram 8y ago
  Paul’s letters were all written to previously established churches. If pre-gospel written or oral traditions about Jesus’ life had already been given to those churches, Paul had little need to repeat it in the short, practical letters that were written (except in a few cases for the sake of his argument, where he does quote the words of Jesus also written in similar form in the gospels). In general I think none of the epistles in the NT discuss biographical details of Jesus, even those scholars generally agree were written post-70 or not by Paul. They’re pretty short and focused on specific points they want to argue.
- gtycomb 8y ago
  > Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though? This comes to mind. In my early school years, a bunch of us kids were really close. We did so many things together at school and all summer in our neighborhood. However it is fascinating to me now that we didn't share anything about our Moms, Dads or Grandparents, the people in our background we were closest to. All of that was implicit, there were no need to discuss the daily lives of ones we knew intimately and loved us so much. So with Paul, I'd think. After all Paul studied under Gamaliel and he would have known how to research and share with the world the biographical details of a subject beyond what people just knew from the Gospels, or word of mouth, at least (they must have known more as they all lived closer to the events). What I am getting at is, he just preached what that really mattered for him.
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foofoo55 8y ago
I remember National Geographic Magazine had an article on exactly this, and reach the same conclusion, a decade or two ago. I'm not a subscriber so I can't search their archives (anyone?). However, they do have a nice list of depictions of Jesus: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/jesus-portrayals/grid/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/jesus-portrayals...
sigi45 8y ago
"What Jesus could have looked like?"
sigi45 8y ago
While we are talking about jesus, i'm wondering why so many pedophiles are in church.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
sigi45 8y ago
I never understood why people are so fascinated by some theories and spend so much time on it. Bermuda triangle, jesus and loch ness monster don't become more interesting when we decorate those stories with more theories which can't be proven. I'm always thinking that this might just be the reason why those stories are still around. People just don't stop. they continue to extend it small little piece by piece.
- dvt 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say.. that Jesus is comparable to the Loch Ness monster (an urban legend)? No serious historian (secular or otherwise) doubts the historicity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. His divinity is obviously a matter of faith, but Jesus was certainly a real human being that was born and eventually was crucified around 30 AD.
  - sigi45 8y ago
    Yes he is. There is no proof that the Jesus existed. We have more effidence on thousand real existing people. Less fames perhaps but propper people.
    - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
      There is no reason to assume Jesus was not real. This issue was closed by historians over a hundred years ago and never has there been thrown any new light that puts it into doubt. It’s only fringe people with specific agendas, who always seem to lack the skills and knowledge to work with the sources, who claim otherwise. For a good overview of why historians know Jesus existed you should read John P. Meier - A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume I: The Roots of the Problem and the Person.
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owens99 8y ago
A more important question is whether or not there is a historical Jesus at all. Richard Carrier has done some of the best work on questioning this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M Did Christianity really begin without a Jesus?

93 points by gpvos 8y ago

dvh 8y ago

Do we even know he was a real person and not combination of 2 or 3 men with similar fate?

croisillon 8y ago
you might like this article: http://www.adamgopnik.com/what-did-jesus-do http://www.adamgopnik.com/what-did-jesus-do
toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
No, although typically the opposite claim is made. That people named “Joshua son of Joseph” lived at that time, that various revolts and religious upheavals occurred is pretty certain. That one guy fitting the rough description of Jesus was behind it is not. The history of Christianity doesn’t really start in earnest for hundreds of years after the supposed death of Christ in any case. People today can’t even agree on the details of Elvis’ life... now imagine if Elvis had lived a few hundred years ago, and we’re all working from quaternary+ sources. Then fast-forward a thousand or so years of very intentional document editing and re-editing, translations and re-translations, and all of the incredible wealth and power hinging on it for centuries. How accurate would accounts from those times be expected to be?
- vibrolax 8y ago
  Loved your comparison to the historical Elvis. Whenever I saw news articles reporting on artifacts purportedly related to the historical Jesus, I always thought how little we know about the historical Shakespeare.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    Or indeed, some people don’t even believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays! As passionate as people can be about Shakespeare, it’s nothing compared to religion, and record keeping and sources of information on Shakespeare are a lot easier to come by than anything from a couple of millennia ago.
    - sjwright 8y ago
      All we can say is that Shakespeare was credited for his plays. It's functionally impossible to know who wrote them, at best we can hypothesise based on an analysis of his writing—and such analysis doesn't bode well for Shakespeare as the author...
      - djur 8y ago
        Your initial point is true about just about anyone who wrote more than a certain amount of time ago. It's true of Jonson and Spenser and Marlowe, too. The latter point is just false -- textual analysis is entirely consistent with the historical evidence (such as the writings of his contemporaries) that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare.
        sjwright 8y ago
        Interesting; I was led to the impression that Shakespeare's writings showed a level and stratum of life experience that would have been beyond his reach or means.
- vivekd 8y ago
  >although typically the opposite claim is made. That people named “Joshua son of Joseph” lived at that time, that various revolts and religious upheavals occurred is pretty certain. That one guy fitting the rough description of Jesus was behind it is not That doesn't seem quite fair because it's almost certain that the guy named Jesus was not behind the upheavals of that time. That was about the Jewish revolt against the Romans which Jesus was not involved in at all. Also, while Christianity didn't start in earnest until about two hundred years after Jesus' death, stories of his life were written down as early as 60 years after his death. It's very difficult in a society like ancient Israel to fake the existence of a person, people had clan allegiances, they kept track of genealogies and would be able to tell right away if the writings concerned someone who didn't exist. There were translations but that's irrelevant because we have the original dead sea scrolls with the earliest ones dating to a few decades after his death. A time when wealth and power did not hinge on this. We're not solely working with edits and re-translations. I think there's a bias against religious figures that inform people's arguments when they say it's all uncertain - when in reality the evidence is pretty good that he did exist.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    Details of his life may have been written down then, but the sources we have aren’t those sources, just edited and translated retellings of those supposed stories with about 1800 years of politically and religiously motivated games of telephone between us and them. I have to ask, the Dead Sea Scrolls date from between about a century before Jesus’ purported life, to about a century after his death and as far as I know make no mention of him. I wasn’t claiming that the language is somehow untranslatable, but that we don’t have anything like contemporary sources, only people who hundreds of years later claim to have access to those sources.
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- grumpydba 8y ago
  > The history of Christianity doesn’t really start in earnest for hundreds of years after the supposed death of Christ in any case There are several Christian writings dated from the first century after his death. Paul's letters, the didache, Flavius Joseph, some talmudic writings, John's disciples writings to name a few.
jonawesomegreen 8y ago
I really enjoyed this book on the topic: “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Iranian-American writer and scholar Reza Aslan. It is a historical account of the life of Jesus and analyzes the various religious perspectives on Jesus as well as the creation of Christianity.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_o...
- 1over137 8y ago
  Probably not the most impartial author on the topic though, as as he is a theist and self-proclaims himself as a "genuinely committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views
  - idontpost 8y ago
    Who could possibly be considered an impartial author on the topic? Surely not any Christian or any atheist. Not any Muslim either. I suppose Buddhists wouldn't have any particular stake in whether a historical Jesus existed.
    - 1over137 8y ago
      Why not an atheist? Not believing in his divinity doesn't preclude objective analysis of whether a human named Jesus existed. But, yes, surely not any Christian, who by definition believes Jesus exited.
      - amatthew 8y ago
        Why not either? For both the Christian and the Atheist, honest scholarship is inseparable from their beliefs. It's hard to imagine either changing their beliefs from the evidence they could find. The consequences of being able to prove with certainty either that Jesus existed and is who Christians claim him to be, or did not exist or was not divine would have tremendous consequences on the lives of hundreds of millions people who do not ascribe to the proven belief. They could say "I am intellectually honest and will change my beliefs depending on the evidence," but we both know that 1. Concrete evidence strong enough to convince someone to change their beliefs, beyond what is already known, likely does not exist. And 2. Their current beliefs already match their known evidence so any additional information is unlikely to radically change their beliefs, only be accounted for and integrated into their current belief system. I'm not trying to say all scholarship is biased or we shouldn't believe anything. In all likelihood, most people are not deliberately lying or falsifying anything. What does that mean about which scholarship to trust? I have no idea.
reindeerer 8y ago
The historical accounts seem to support the idea that the story is a combination of multiple people. But the guy who got nailed to a cross was an actual historical event and became the focal point for the amalgam.
- SpikeDad 8y ago
  Where's the historical evidence for your claim that the guy who got nailed to a cross was indeed the source of the "Jesus" mythology?
  - reindeerer 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Historicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Historici...
  - coldtea 8y ago
    You seem to confuse the religious story of Jesus (miracles, resurrection, etc, the "mythology" in your terms) with the actual person who had followers and inspired a religion. There's little doubt among scholars that there was a specific person at the start of this (and not some BS "Dan Brown"-like conspiracy).
    - betterunix2 8y ago
      Scholars who live in societies where the vast majority of people follow religions that consider Jesus to be a prophet or even a god. I have yet to see a good argument for why we should assume the Jesus of the bible was a single person leading a religious movement -- there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers.
      - krapp 8y ago
        >there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers. Yes, but to play... eh, Messiah's advocate... this doesn't discount the possibility of Jesus having been one of those claimants leading one of those movements, he just wouldn't have been the only one. It doesn't lend credence to anything either, but it's not impossible that Jesus happened to lead the cult that won out, thanks eventually to Rome and the British Empire.
betterunix2 8y ago
I have often wondered about this; I have read in various places that scholars believe there was a historical Jesus but this always seems like a pragmatic stance to take in societies where the vast majority of people believe that he was either a prophet or a God (which covers almost everywhere where this question would be considered worthy of any serious study). Yet there are some issues that I see: 1. "Yeshua" or "Yeshu" were relatively common Jewish names at that time (it is just "Joshuah" in Aramaic), so vague references in non-Christian writings to a "Jesus" of some kind may not refer to the same person. How many people named "Joshuah" might have led a group of disciples during a period where dozens of messianic claimants were trying to rally followers to one cause or another? 2. It is well known that the bible was subject to extensive editing prior to its official canonization, which makes it somewhat questionable as a historical document. At best we can only derive vague information about big social movements IMO -- no doubt there were Jews who taught the things attributed to Jesus, but I personally hesitate to go further and claim that the bible is an accurate account of a single person's movement. 3. The chaotic schisms in the early centuries of Christianity makes me doubt that useful historical information about the founders of the movement actually survived. The different Christian movements preserved the documents that best supported their cause. Who knows what historical information is not available today that would totally change our views on the topic.
- Casseres 8y ago
  > 2. It is well known that the bible was subject to extensive editing prior to its official canonization, which makes it somewhat questionable as a historical document. I've never heard this claim before. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that written copies made through the centuries were accurate copies. The only editorialization of the Bible was church councils deciding which books/letters to include in the Bible, not to edit them.
  - betterunix2 8y ago
    The Gospels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis This all would have happened before the various councils decided what would be considered canonical, and the councils themselves probably had no idea that it had happened. As for the dead sea scrolls, all it shows is that the final forms of the books in the Hebrew bible and related extrabiblical works existed prior to the canonization. It is pretty clear that the Hebrew bible was edited in prior centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Isaiah#Authorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Isaiah#Authorship etc.
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coldtea 8y ago
Yes. The first major bunch of followers were not that far removed from his death, and we have a couple of historical accounts (exactly a couple, to be precise).
- eponeponepon 8y ago
  One of those accounts uses a different name for him ("Crispus"? Maybe? You'll have to forgive me not looking it up, but it eludes me and I don't want to disappear down a wiki-rabbithole when I should be wrapping presents..!) and has later been interpreted as referring to him; the other account is a focus of great controversy as to its genuine age. I'm not necessarily trying to pull your point apart, just pointing out that it's not clear-cut. Personally I've never really made my mind up, but at the moment I lean more towards a conglomeration of folk-tales and the lives of several men. I'll probably change my mind again soon.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > One of those accounts uses a different name for him I think you are probably remembering a (disputed) claim based on an edit made in a particular later copy that Tacitus (one of the earliest independent sources on both Christ and the early Christian community, particularly in Rome) referred to the Christian community in Rome as “Chrestians”, immediately before using the standard rendering of Jesus title as “Christus”. Even if Tacitus did use “Chrestians”, that name for the early community is attested in other sources (and even tied and used alongside Christian in some inscriptions from that community, IIRC), his reference to Christ did not use any alternate title,
    - owens99 8y ago
      Have you heard that "Christus" is also believed to be an interpolation? https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/65072-richard-carrier-christ-in-tacitus-may-be-interpolated/ https://www.ex-christian.net/topic/65072-richard-carrier-chr...
      - 8y ago
nikbackm 8y ago
I found this a good overview for that question. https://www.quora.com/Do-credible-historians-agree-that-the-man-named-Jesus-who-the-Christian-Bible-speaks-of-walked-the-earth-and-was-put-to-death-on-a-cross-by-Pilate-Roman-governor-of-Judea/answers/863434 https://www.quora.com/Do-credible-historians-agree-that-the-...
- burlesona 8y ago
  I agree, the Quora explanation is pretty good. TLDR; the evidence that Jesus was a real person is very strong, and stronger than many other historical figures (the article mentions Hannibal), whose existence is not considered controversial. As a religious figure Jesus is inherently controversial, which is what probably attracts the skepticism and interest in trying to cast doubt on his existence.
  - owens99 8y ago
    I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M Richard Carrier actually counters each argument in the Quora post pretty convincingly.
EGreg 8y ago
Well, here is why I think Jesus very likely existed and taught: The Church today follows the teachings of Paul, that the Law is obsolete, nailed to the cross and no longer binding. The Church teachings give the Chuch great authority in determining what people should do, church leaders are called Father etc. The Church was supposed to be for all nations. And yet... Jesus is described in the gospels exactly saying the opposite! “I came to save the lost sheep of Israel.” When a young man asked how to be saved, Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion. Why would the Church invent a person so inconvenient to their own dogma? It is the ultimate criterion of embarrassment — of the very canonizers themselves! They only would have done it if the original founder of the Way realy existed and was a Jewish teacher who taught Jews. Why else would they invent something so seemingly at odds with their own teachings that people throughout the centuries (like Thomas Jefferson) called Paul “the great corruptor of Christianity”? I would further say that the original Church of Jesus existed in Jerusalem and was led by his brother James and also by Peter. They told Paul that rumors have come that he is teaching Jews to turn away from the Law, and told him to pay for some purification rites to show this is not true. Paul obliged. They also penned a letter to Gentile Believers which Paul was to take to them, invoking the Holy Spirit and instructing them in essentially the Noahide Laws. Paul in his letter to the Galatians however said they had “nothing to add” to his message excep that he “remember the poor, something I have been eager to do all along”. In short, the founder existed, the Church existed, and would have been the dominant Church if not for the Judaic wars and the destruction that happened as a result. I think that Christianity as we know it today, came from those beginnings and then spread to other churches.
- grumpydba 8y ago
  > Jesus said “follow the Law”. He always taught to follow the law, and never once said it would be obsolete after his crucifixion He said the law would not change until all is accomplished. After drinking the vinegar, before dying, he said "all is accomplished". Paul's teachings are thus consistent with this.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    No, that's only if you read the English translation. In the original Greek, the two words are very different. The original context is from Matthew 5:18, which could potentially have been written in Hebrew: "17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one [a]jot or one [b]tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." Notice a few things: 1) Heaven and Earth have not yet passed away, many Christians ignore this part completely, but it needs to be explained why it was mentioned. It would seem the obvious reason is that "all will be accomplished" around the time that Heaven and Earth will pass away, including spreading the gospel to everyone. In another place Jesus says "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." 2) Notice that even those who ARE in Heaven will be called Least if they set aside even the smallest commandment and teach others to do so. Thus, even Christians need to be concerned with the Law. Literally nowhere did Jesus even bring up the idea that the Law will be obsolete. That is an idea originated by Paul.
Theodores 8y ago
The most eye opening discussion and research on this topic for me came from what Dr Richard Carrier has to say. He got down to the task of just doing the research like how a historian might, or how a scientist might. His standpoint is clearly atheist, but don't let that put you off. He uses logic, reason and applies that to how he weighs the factiness of the story. Any of his talks on YouTube are a good introduction, if you want to learn more and are willing to have your opinion and assumptions challenged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUYRoYl7i6U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier You don't have to 'believe' in the guy, however his methodology, knowledge of history and enthusiasm for the subject is not something you find in the priesthood. He does not rate the probability of Jesus being a real person as that high, neither does he rate the existence of Ned Ludd as that high. He does trace where ideas were borrowed from and has read the bible extremely thoroughly. If you are interested in Christianity because it is part of our culture and history then I highly recommend taking time to hear what Dr Richard Carrier has to say.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  > You don't have to 'believe' in the guy, however his methodology, knowledge of history and enthusiasm for the subject is not something you find in the priesthood. It's not something you find among any credible scholar in the field. Carrier is fringe for a reason.
  - Theodores 8y ago
    Credible to whom? After 2000 years of the indoctrination the defenders of the bible have got the art of defending the make-believe that is the bible down to a fine art. I did not say that everything that has ever came out of Richard Carrier's mouth is tantamount to the word of god and definitely to be believed. My point was that he asks the right questions, has done a lot of research that the bible bashers of this world haven't bothered to do and he has ways of discussing things in a non-black-and-white dualist way, going for probability and giving a value to how likely something is likely to be true. Anyone with a serious interest in questioning assumptions long held by them about the bible needs to hear him out, to believe him or not, it is that questioning of faith that matters. There are plenty of atheists that believe that Jesus really did exist but he was an ordinary guy rather than of virgin birth and the son of god, an 'anti-capitalist rebel' of sorts. What Richard Carrier does is to open up the idea that the whole bible is a contrivance, that this Jesus character did not exist and that his story was weaved together by religions that had gone before. Logical fallacies are something we are all capable of. Your 'where there is smoke there must be fire' comment does not stand up to scrutiny. Just twenty years ago it was not possible to talk about climate change in the world of weather forecasting and meteorology. That was actually way to controversial, and I am talking from being in the field twenty years ago. Yet by that point in time the idea had some scientific credibility for twenty years, and a century before that some had wondered what the consequences of pumping ever increasing quantities of carbon dioxide into the air might lead to, positing the 'crazy' global warming idea. With the agreement of the Paris Accords the other week we have moved on from that, the 'fringe' view that was not considered 'credible' has moved on. Yet a mere twenty years ago people were saying 'climate change is fringe for a reason'. There may be much to dislike about Richard Carrier, but to dismiss him without at least a link to a decent review of his work by one of these italicised credible scholars is a poor show.
jimmytucson 8y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus Pretty interesting: > Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain ... with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed.
- owens99 8y ago
  Virtually all is an overstatement. Perhaps the vast majority, but the vast majority are also practicing Christians. See Richard Carrier's youtube videos on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M There's not compelling evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Yet there's compelling motivation for early Christians to say he was a man who lived and not simply a god. Being related to someone who knew him in real life actually could bestow power and influence in the early Christian community.
  - UncleMeat 8y ago
    Youtube videos aren't exactly the best example of scholarly work. Look at the people who are respected by academics rather than trying to evaluate the contents of a field that you aren't trained in.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      Neither are Wikipedia articles.
      - owens99 8y ago
        Please don’t jump to conclusions, I have looked at the actual research and also read the books. None of the common cited evidence for Jesus as a historical figure holds up to scrutiny. If you can give one example that can, it would help me a ton. I’d love to be wrong and understand Jesus as an actual historical figure.
danielam 8y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/what-is-the-historical-evidence-that-jesus-christ-lived-and-died https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/what-is-the-hi...
mattigames 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lqC8fvIspY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lqC8fvIspY

malvosenior 8y ago

Anyone interested in this should check out the podcast series Historical Jesus from Stanford: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-jesus/id38423... tldr; there probably wasn't a Jesus and there is no evidence to support his existence.

antidesitter 8y ago
That seems to contradict the consensus among historians [1]: > Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels. While scholars have criticized Jesus scholarship for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness, with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed. Can you point to where the podcast makes such a claim? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
- malvosenior 8y ago
  The whole podcast is dedicated to going over what historical evidence might exist that documents Jesus. Just as per your link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Sources) there were no sources that mention him until after his death during the first push for Christianity.
  - Mediterraneo10 8y ago
    There is no sources that mention many, many figures in Antiquity until after their deaths. And yet, no one disputes that, say, Heraclitus, Hesiod, Plautus, or some of the Ten Thousand’s generals existed. Why hold Jesus to a different standard?
    - 8y ago

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cup 8y ago

Probably looked more like Osama bin Laden than white Jesus.

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dorchadas 8y ago
I had a white blonde hair, blue eyed student ask me what I thought Jesus looked like the other day. After first clarifying that Jesus wasn't a Christian, but a Jew, I proceeded to say he probably looked more like bin Laden than the student. Needless to say, this student from the backwoods American South was not happy with that, but I thought it was hilarious.

joseph8th 8y ago

According to John Allegro, of Dead Sea Scrolls fame (among other more recent scholars), he looked like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria

freyir 8y ago
From Wikipedia: Allegro argued that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient "sex-and-mushroom" cult. Critical reaction was swift and harsh: fourteen British scholars (including Allegro's mentor at Oxford, Godfrey Driver) denounced it. Sidnie White Crawford wrote of the publication of Sacred Mushroom, "Rightly or wrongly, Allegro would never be taken seriously as a scholar again."
- joseph8th 8y ago
  Heh. Not saying Allegro was right, but it's worth noting that his critics were not just scholars of religion, but religious. He insulted their deity. As is usually the case with religious scholarship, the academics aren't exactly unbiased.
- kmlx 8y ago
  much more probable than what various religions tell us.

sgt101 8y ago

Fun google - "jesus magic wand" because... for early Christians Jesus often had a magic wand!

zozbot123 8y ago
"On the eve of Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of Passover. Ulla retorted: 'Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a Mesith [enticer], concerning whom Scripture says, Neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him? With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government."
- goliatone 8y ago
  Where is that quote from?
  - gpvos 8y ago
    A quick web search reveals that it is from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a.

lifeformed 8y ago

I think depicting Jesus as attractive is a reasonable assumption. A young, charismatic leader seems more likely than the average person to be attractive, or at least distinct looking. But of course, not the blond hair blue eyes thing.

luord 8y ago
For what it's worth, I agree. Siddhartha is said to have been attractive, there's no reason to think his analogues like Muhammad or Jesus weren't.

bitforger 8y ago

Is it just me or does that last Jesus look like Shia Labeouf

coldtea 8y ago
He (Shia) is half-Jewish as well, and has several middle-eastern traits, so it makes sense a depiction of what people looked/look like in the region to have some common elements.

Mikeb85 8y ago

Considering there's plenty of traditional depictions of Jesus from middle eastern churches that date back to Greco-Roman Palestine, I don't see why we shouldn't assume those are relatively close to what he would have looked like, considering that's the culture and region he came from. Example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre#/media/File:Jerusalem_Holy_Sepulchre_BW_15.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulc... Slightly curly hair, dark hair, dark eyes, beard, seems about right for a Jew living in 1st century Greco-Roman Palestine.

abrowne 8y ago
Because not all art is intended to be accurate — it might be symbolic. The linked example shows blue/purple clothes, which were limited to the elite. Like the article says, this is used to show a royal status, not that it was what he actually wore.
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  And the earliest Christian art was almost entirely symbolic - fish, lambs, wheel cross, chi-rho, etc... Even if elements of iconography are symbolic, they could have easily made Jesus look any way they want, yet the standard 'Byzantine' Jesus icon gives him dark features and slightly curled hair. Seems close enough, and none of the earliest art (either purely symbolic or very Roman - possibly to hide from persecution) seems any more accurate.

moneytide1 8y ago

Not sure what he looked like, but it doesn't matter to me. I see him as a philosopher before the Gutenberg press that was not associated with the Pharisees (established philosophical order). There have been many Jesus personalities throughout history, every religion has one as a voice to convey useful advice. He gave such good advice about how to navigate hardships without the pressure of tithing that he has since been revered as supernatural. --5,000 fed with 5 loaves and 2 fish: I used to think everyone was fed "magically" with whole portions. Now I realize it was a communal exercise, and the lesson learned was how to share and make sure everyone gets an equal piece (even though everyone just got a small crumb). --Water to wine Once again, as a child I thought he violated laws of physics. Alcohol is a depressant and excessive use can hinder productivity of the citizenry. Under the advisement of Jesus, the man without ties to the Church, word spread to replace wine with water. Water to wine; pez to Xanex. --The poor woman and the blind man I recall one story where there was a poor woman without food, and Jesus was able to scrounge up enough flour from her own storage containers to produce a meal. Once again, thought it was magic. But he came into her home and helped her assess her resources. Mud on the blind mans eyes? Impossible to cure blindness like that - but he wasn't literally blind. Unfortunate circumstances likely provoked a depression that pushed him into pretending to be blind and beg - free money. Not the way an able bodied citizen should behave. The revered Jesus came to him and performed a ceremony with the audience consisting of locals that had walked by the blind beggar every day. Now he is "cured" in front of all and he can end the act safely using Jesus' supernatural status as a catalyst. Probably got a job the same day - no more begging. Productivity of the village slightly improved. Lazarus "raised from dead" is another example of this - a depressed guy shutting out the world could be considered dead. Jesus brings him back to the tribe. Another able-bodied person returning to the economy. If we assume religion is an early form of software engineering used to instill practical economic ideals and morals into society through simple parables and metaphors: Jesus was the software update everyone was ready for, but had to be killed off because embezzlement-prone-tithing-proceeds were probably being threatened. This kind of sacrifice effectively locked in his doctrines.

perfmode 8y ago
It’s interesting that you think of Jesus in economic terms. In a way, economics is its own spirituality.

scoot_718 8y ago

Not a historical figure, so good luck.

johnny313 8y ago

Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill wrote a decent book on the question of whether or not there was a historical Jesus. He does a good job talking through the arguments on both sides, and covers the history of the argument. He did an interview about the topic on NPR a few years ago: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-historian-makes-his-case https://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-h...

jaypeg25 8y ago
I'm currently reading Zealot by Reza Aslan, which doesn't really debate whether or not there was a historical Jesus, but discusses the differences in fact vs the bible. I highly recommend it.
- analog31 8y ago
  I read it, and was disappointed. The book could only get so close to Jesus as to speculate what a person living during that time period might have been like, and what some of the prevailing social issues were.
  - Synaesthesia 8y ago
    I thought it was a good book, as he says, he's not presenting anything new or controversial to biblical scholars, but I (as a layperson) learned a lot about Christianity, and now understand it better - how it went from being a weird Jewish sect to the imperial religion of Rome. Just finished The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey, which documents the destruction of statues, temples and artworks by Christians in the years 300-500AD in Europe. Also recommended!
    - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
      Unfortunately Nixey’s book is terrible. As a classisist she should know better than to regurgitate ideas from Gibbon, ignoring 200 years of scholarship. Instead she goes for sensationalism, “evil Christians destroying classical culture” and links to ISIS and such. Which isn’t needed because the period she describes is interesting enough on its own. The book is so terrible a collection of reviews from historians can be found here: https://gegrammena.wordpress.com/2017/10/22/reactions-reviews-to-catherine-nixeys-the-darkening-age-eeuwen-van-duisternis/ https://gegrammena.wordpress.com/2017/10/22/reactions-review... . I especially like this article (https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/10/21/hunting-the-wild-misquotation-again-the-perils-for-the-author-of-not-verifying-your-quotations/ https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/10/21/hunting-the-w...), focusing on how she misused a quote from Chrysostom by removing all context, which completely changed the meaning to fit her narrative. Not only that, she clearly didn’t read the original source but borrowed the interpretation from another author, who also misread it.

mirimir 8y ago

> That Jesus was a Jew (or Judaean) is certain in that it is found repeated in diverse literature, including in the letters of Paul. And, as the Letter to the Hebrews states: "It is clear that our Lord was descended from Judah." True enough, it seems. But what about Muhammad? From what little I know, he was neither Jewish nor Christian. Before founding Islam, I mean. But it seems pretty clear that he worshiped the same god. In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam? I'm guessing that it was something like Judaism. Indeed, maybe there were many forks.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> In other words, what was the main Arab religion before Islam? What was the main European religion before Christianity? In both cases, there's not one unique answer. In terms of pre-Islamic Arab religion, Christianity (of a couple different major flavors), Judaism, Zoroastrianism, varieties of local polytheisms, and some others were significant.
betterunix2 8y ago
More likely it looked like the religion from which Judaism emerged, the ancient Semitic religion (polytheist, idol-worshipping). IIRC this is mentioned in the Quran regarding the inhabitants of Mecca.
- mirimir 8y ago
  This makes the most sense to me. As others note, there were many polytheistic traditions. Including, as you say, the ancient Semitic religion. As a biologist, I imagine it as a phylogenetic tree. One of the major monotheistic branches of the Semitic religion that's survived is Judaism. With its Christian fork, and the various Protestant forks. The other is Islam, with early forks (e.g., Shabakism and Druze) and later ones (e.g., Bahá'í and Bábism). Two other surviving monotheistic branches of the Semitic religion are Samaritanism and Yazdânism (among Kurds). I gather that they forked about the same time as Judaism, and before Islam. So I'm guessing that it was a similar fork that became Islam. It was rereading Matthew Woodring Stover's Jericho Moon that got me thinking about this. It focuses on an attack by Habiru raiders (aka Hebrews, led by Joshua) on the Semitic Jebusites in Jerusalem (led by Adonizedek). This was several years after the sacking of Jericho. The Habiru worshiped "Yahweh Sabaoth, El Shaddai", and considered him to be the only God (although he did have angels/aspects/avatars/personas, which could be summoned individually by sacrifice). I gather that the Jebusites (and other Canaanites) were also descended from Noah's Exodus, but worshiped other Goddesses and Gods, in addition to El (El Elyron). Which is, in part, why the Hebrews attacked them. Or at least, justified taking their land and stuff.

starbeast 8y ago

He looked like a mushroom, obviously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr... But an actual mushroom, not a human shaped mushroom like Lenin became. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom

thrifter 8y ago

I've been fascinated with how the countenance of Christ has been a tool for racial (and racist) propaganda. As a Jew from the Middle East, He certainly wasn't the fair-skinned, blue eyed, blond hair rock star depicted by some Christian denominations. I also doubt He was black, although some Rastafarians believe He was because it says so in Jeremiah 8:21. I discussed "Black Jesus" and the Rastafari on my podcast : https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks/black_jesus_rastafarian_religion https://soundcloud.com/jesusinbooks/black_jesus_rastafarian_... and for those who want to deep-dive into the topic, I highly recommend The Color of Christ by Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum. It's a knockout book.

combatentropy 8y ago
> I also doubt He was black, although some Rastafarians believe He was because it says so in Jeremiah 8:21. That's an odd interpretation. The word in Hebrew stems from qadar, which does mean dark, but is often used to indicate mourning (https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6937.htm https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6937.htm). And that follows the context of the verse: "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn (qadarti), and horror grips me" (NIV). As far as I recall, the Bible never uses skin color to indicate race. It always goes by ancestry ("Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, . . . "). Speaking of which, it spends a great deal of time, across several books, to tell us that Jesus is Jewish. Most Jews I know of are fair skinned. Skin color doesn't mean any kind of superiority to me. I'm just talking about the accuracy of paintings. > He certainly wasn't the fair-skinned, blue eyed, blond hair rock star depicted by some Christian denominations. I've been a Christian all my life, and visited churches of many denominations. Most depictions show him with brown hair and brown eyes. I can't remember seeing any depiction with blond hair. Now blue eyes I have occasionally seen, but isn't it possible for any race to have any eye color?
- village-idiot 8y ago
  > Most Jews I know of are fair skinned. It has been a while since Jesus’ time, and chances are most Jews you know work inside, unlike Jesus. Sarcasm aside, all of the Jews I know can trace their lineage through Europe after the diaspora in the early second century. One would expect that a pre-diaspora Jew in Judea and a modern Jew who’s family had traveled through Northern Europe for 1800 years would have significantly different skin tones.

mgamache 8y ago

Richard Carrier has made a decent case against a historical Jesus, but I'm not a scholar. On the other side, Bart D. Ehrman is an atheist who backs a historical Jesus. If he was based on a real person, The Jesus we know is like a Hollywood biography where the story was 'based on actual events' but was exaggerated beyond recognition for rhetorical impact. It's allegorical fiction.

mgamache 8y ago
I am not sure why I got downvoted. Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. The others, especially Matthew and Luke are just derivative works. They are anonymous embellishments of anonymous writing that was never meant as historical record. They were meant to convey the basic ideas to a non-christian populations.
- owens99 8y ago
  People fighting back because the truth hurts.
ttonkytonk 8y ago
Wikipedia says Bart Ehrman is "agnostic atheist".
- mgamache 8y ago
  Right, I think the most common atheist is the agnostic or 'weak' position. Like Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot, a God is possible but the burden of proof is on proving God exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

barberousse 8y ago

Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though? We know that the gospels are likely younger than Paul's letters and that Paul is one of the earliest missionaries to the Gentile world. And when we read Paul's letters, they're far more direct and practical in content than everything else in the NT. So is it that over time, as early Christian's earliest leaders died out, a fascination with just _who_ this Christ was vivified? As well, wouldn't this dating make Paul's letters the most authoritative liturgical documents?

javagram 8y ago
Paul’s letters were all written to previously established churches. If pre-gospel written or oral traditions about Jesus’ life had already been given to those churches, Paul had little need to repeat it in the short, practical letters that were written (except in a few cases for the sake of his argument, where he does quote the words of Jesus also written in similar form in the gospels). In general I think none of the epistles in the NT discuss biographical details of Jesus, even those scholars generally agree were written post-70 or not by Paul. They’re pretty short and focused on specific points they want to argue.
gtycomb 8y ago
> Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though? This comes to mind. In my early school years, a bunch of us kids were really close. We did so many things together at school and all summer in our neighborhood. However it is fascinating to me now that we didn't share anything about our Moms, Dads or Grandparents, the people in our background we were closest to. All of that was implicit, there were no need to discuss the daily lives of ones we knew intimately and loved us so much. So with Paul, I'd think. After all Paul studied under Gamaliel and he would have known how to research and share with the world the biographical details of a subject beyond what people just knew from the Gospels, or word of mouth, at least (they must have known more as they all lived closer to the events). What I am getting at is, he just preached what that really mattered for him.

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foofoo55 8y ago

I remember National Geographic Magazine had an article on exactly this, and reach the same conclusion, a decade or two ago. I'm not a subscriber so I can't search their archives (anyone?). However, they do have a nice list of depictions of Jesus: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/jesus-portrayals/grid/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/jesus-portrayals...

sigi45 8y ago

"What Jesus could have looked like?"

sigi45 8y ago

While we are talking about jesus, i'm wondering why so many pedophiles are in church.

dang 8y ago
Please don't do this here.

sigi45 8y ago

I never understood why people are so fascinated by some theories and spend so much time on it. Bermuda triangle, jesus and loch ness monster don't become more interesting when we decorate those stories with more theories which can't be proven. I'm always thinking that this might just be the reason why those stories are still around. People just don't stop. they continue to extend it small little piece by piece.

dvt 8y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to say.. that Jesus is comparable to the Loch Ness monster (an urban legend)? No serious historian (secular or otherwise) doubts the historicity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. His divinity is obviously a matter of faith, but Jesus was certainly a real human being that was born and eventually was crucified around 30 AD.
- sigi45 8y ago
  Yes he is. There is no proof that the Jesus existed. We have more effidence on thousand real existing people. Less fames perhaps but propper people.
  - FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
    There is no reason to assume Jesus was not real. This issue was closed by historians over a hundred years ago and never has there been thrown any new light that puts it into doubt. It’s only fringe people with specific agendas, who always seem to lack the skills and knowledge to work with the sources, who claim otherwise. For a good overview of why historians know Jesus existed you should read John P. Meier - A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume I: The Roots of the Problem and the Person.
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owens99 8y ago

A more important question is whether or not there is a historical Jesus at all. Richard Carrier has done some of the best work on questioning this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M Did Christianity really begin without a Jesus?