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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 histori

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
        It does not discount that possibility, but it does leave open the possibility that "Jesus" is a legendary figure representing a fusion of various religious leaders over a long period of time.
        coldtea 8y ago
        It wasn't a "long period of time" between Jesus and the first christians.
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Maybe the legends developed over multiple generations before the first century. The first "Christians" would have just looked like another Jewish messianic cult, and would have looked more like the earlier messianic cults the existed before Jesus supposedly led his disciples than anything we think of as "Christian."
      - bhaak 8y ago
        > thanks eventually to Rome and the British Empire The British Empire? How so? Rome obviously was instrumental for the success of Christianity, spreading along the roads of the Roman Empire, having a large population with the same language so you could reach lots of people with one translation Although Christianity wasn't alone in using these advantages. It eventually won out but Mithraism was a similar positioned religion. After the rise of the Islam reduced the area of Christianity, European colonialism spread it over the whole world. If I had to single out one European nation with the most influence, I would have said it was the Spanish Empire and not the British.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >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. For one, the burden of proof would be on proving it was "multiple" people. Second, we have a couple of references to a single person (Josephus, Tacitus). Third, we know many other cases of a single founder, from Mohamed to Joseph Smith, Jr. >there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers. How is that relevant. There were many, but one of them got off the ground. Why should there be 2 or 6 of them getting popular simultaneously?
      - betterunix2 8y ago
        The point is not that there were necessarily multiple movements that merged into one; rather, it is that there is no reason to rule it out. It is entirely possible that Jesus is a legendary figure based on various Jewish religious leaders with similar messages. The teachings attributed to Jesus are for the most part variations on Jewish precepts and religious themes; even the baptism, which scholars seem to insist was historical, is just a variation on Jewish bathing rituals (mikvah). So we have a man with a relatively generic Jewish name (i.e. Joshua, which in Aramaic is Yeshua or Yeshu, which in Greek is Jesus), who led one of a large number of Jewish cults based on variants of common Jewish religious themes, engaged in common Jewish practices, and was executed by an oppressive occupying force known for its cruel executions of Jewish leaders (see e.g. the "ten martyrs" of the Talmud). Why are we assuming that is a story about specific and real person? Tacitus makes a vague reference to a "cristus" that could have referred to any messianic claimant (as "christ" is just a Greek word for "messiah"), and Josephus makes a similarly vague reference to people with very common Jewish names (Joshua i.e. Jesus, Jacob i.e. James). In both cases there are reasons to doubt that the references refer to the specific Jesus in the biblical or quranic accounts (the latter unquestionably having been written centuries after Jesus supposedly lived). In both cases the claims are not based on the authors' first-hand knowledge and the authors based their writings on what the earliest Christians had told them, something that may have already been merely a legend. Again, it is possible that Jesus was really a person who led a religious movement two thousand years ago. I am only saying that other explanations cannot be ruled out because there is almost no evidence at all. At best all we can say is that the earliest Christians lived about two thousand years ago and by that point believed some version of the Jesus narrative. Beyond that I am not seeing the evidence for a historical Jesus.
Retric 8y ago
Lots of people where nailed to a cross. So, even that is not really very specific.
- reindeerer 8y ago
  Yeah absolutely, it's just this one guy's nailing that happened to become central around biblical retellings.
  - betterunix2 8y ago
    Why should we believe that there is "one guy" whose crucifixion became central? Maybe crucifixion was just a well-known Roman execution method (remember that Christianity emerged during a period of Roman oppression).
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      It would have only been ~100 years after Spartacus and his merry band were crucified along the road to Rome after the Third Servile War. Even if that was the only notorious crucifixion (and it was not), I think would be highly memorable around a century later.
      - idontpost 8y ago
        Crucifixion was to Roman society what telling brown-skinned people to "go back to their own country" is to American society: a common pastime.
        dang 8y ago
        Please don't unsubstantive comments, and especially not racial or nationalistic flamebait, to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - anjbe 8y ago
      Crucifixion was a degrading and viscerally disturbing form of execution, with connotations not unlike hanging or the electric chair today. It was not the kind of thing to centralize one’s messianic cult around. The fact that it happened once is already so bizarre that the crucifixion is considered by historians to be one of the most certain truths of Jesus’ life story.
coldtea 8y ago
>The historical accounts seem to support the idea that the story is a combination of multiple people Which "historical accounts" support this idea? I've never such those among what we know...

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
      It does not discount that possibility, but it does leave open the possibility that "Jesus" is a legendary figure representing a fusion of various religious leaders over a long period of time.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        It wasn't a "long period of time" between Jesus and the first christians.
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Maybe the legends developed over multiple generations before the first century. The first "Christians" would have just looked like another Jewish messianic cult, and would have looked more like the earlier messianic cults the existed before Jesus supposedly led his disciples than anything we think of as "Christian."
    - bhaak 8y ago
      > thanks eventually to Rome and the British Empire The British Empire? How so? Rome obviously was instrumental for the success of Christianity, spreading along the roads of the Roman Empire, having a large population with the same language so you could reach lots of people with one translation Although Christianity wasn't alone in using these advantages. It eventually won out but Mithraism was a similar positioned religion. After the rise of the Islam reduced the area of Christianity, European colonialism spread it over the whole world. If I had to single out one European nation with the most influence, I would have said it was the Spanish Empire and not the British.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >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. For one, the burden of proof would be on proving it was "multiple" people. Second, we have a couple of references to a single person (Josephus, Tacitus). Third, we know many other cases of a single founder, from Mohamed to Joseph Smith, Jr. >there were plenty of messianic claimants at the time and plenty of Jewish religious movements competing for followers. How is that relevant. There were many, but one of them got off the ground. Why should there be 2 or 6 of them getting popular simultaneously?
    - betterunix2 8y ago
      The point is not that there were necessarily multiple movements that merged into one; rather, it is that there is no reason to rule it out. It is entirely possible that Jesus is a legendary figure based on various Jewish religious leaders with similar messages. The teachings attributed to Jesus are for the most part variations on Jewish precepts and religious themes; even the baptism, which scholars seem to insist was historical, is just a variation on Jewish bathing rituals (mikvah). So we have a man with a relatively generic Jewish name (i.e. Joshua, which in Aramaic is Yeshua or Yeshu, which in Greek is Jesus), who led one of a large number of Jewish cults based on variants of common Jewish religious themes, engaged in common Jewish practices, and was executed by an oppressive occupying force known for its cruel executions of Jewish leaders (see e.g. the "ten martyrs" of the Talmud). Why are we assuming that is a story about specific and real person? Tacitus makes a vague reference to a "cristus" that could have referred to any messianic claimant (as "christ" is just a Greek word for "messiah"), and Josephus makes a similarly vague reference to people with very common Jewish names (Joshua i.e. Jesus, Jacob i.e. James). In both cases there are reasons to doubt that the references refer to the specific Jesus in the biblical or quranic accounts (the latter unquestionably having been written centuries after Jesus supposedly lived). In both cases the claims are not based on the authors' first-hand knowledge and the authors based their writings on what the earliest Christians had told them, something that may have already been merely a legend. Again, it is possible that Jesus was really a person who led a religious movement two thousand years ago. I am only saying that other explanations cannot be ruled out because there is almost no evidence at all. At best all we can say is that the earliest Christians lived about two thousand years ago and by that point believed some version of the Jesus narrative. Beyond that I am not seeing the evidence for a historical Jesus.

Retric 8y ago

Lots of people where nailed to a cross. So, even that is not really very specific.

reindeerer 8y ago
Yeah absolutely, it's just this one guy's nailing that happened to become central around biblical retellings.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  Why should we believe that there is "one guy" whose crucifixion became central? Maybe crucifixion was just a well-known Roman execution method (remember that Christianity emerged during a period of Roman oppression).
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    It would have only been ~100 years after Spartacus and his merry band were crucified along the road to Rome after the Third Servile War. Even if that was the only notorious crucifixion (and it was not), I think would be highly memorable around a century later.
    - idontpost 8y ago
      Crucifixion was to Roman society what telling brown-skinned people to "go back to their own country" is to American society: a common pastime.
      - dang 8y ago
        Please don't unsubstantive comments, and especially not racial or nationalistic flamebait, to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - anjbe 8y ago
    Crucifixion was a degrading and viscerally disturbing form of execution, with connotations not unlike hanging or the electric chair today. It was not the kind of thing to centralize one’s messianic cult around. The fact that it happened once is already so bizarre that the crucifixion is considered by historians to be one of the most certain truths of Jesus’ life story.

coldtea 8y ago

>The historical accounts seem to support the idea that the story is a combination of multiple people Which "historical accounts" support this idea? I've never such those among what we know...