10 ms·

As an archeologist, what is your take on Jesus ? i have a suspicion that scholars have a massive dogmatic bias when they claim that historical Jesus existed. h

As an archeologist, what is your take on Jesus ? i have a suspicion that scholars have a massive dogmatic bias when they claim that historical Jesus existed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory am i the only one who keeps reading that scholars claim that no serious scholar thinks Jesus is a myth without producing a shred of evidence other than mythical gospels and other Christian sources? as an atheist i have no skin in the game whatsoever. i simply try to apply Occam's razor and will always always follow Sagan standard.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
It would be far more surprising if there were extensive documentation of someone the Romans thought of as "a random cultist who was convicted of heresy" than that the only surviving records of the historical Jesus were from his followers.
- jhawk28 4y ago
  What about Josephus?
  - geoduck14 4y ago
    I'm curious why people are so quick to dismis evidence of Jesus as contained in the gospels. From POV, we have between 4 and 6 (depending on your cannon) different people that record first hand records of Jesus. And it turns out that these same people were passionate followers of Jesus. What other response would you expect from someone who actually knew someone who actually died and was brought back to life?
    - defrost 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - trump_exists 4y ago
        [flagged]
        defrost 4y ago
        That should be evident by reading my comment, a comment that addressed the gospel of Jesus rather than Jesus himself.
    - krapp 4y ago
      None of the canonical Gospels were written by people who had firsthand knowledge of Jesus. All of them were written over a generation after the crucifixion, and those were only four out of many such Gospels in pre-Biblical Christian history. And none of them (not even the canon) agree on any but the most basic narrative, which you would expect at the very least for eyewitness, firsthand accounts. Since you seem to be a Christian working from a perspective of faith, I don't expect to convince you of anything, but you should at least study Biblical history a bit[0] before making as naive an argument as this. >What other response would you expect from someone who actually knew someone who actually died and was brought back to life? Many people are passionately convinced of things that aren't true. Passion is not a signifier of truth, rather it signifies a willingness to abandon objectivity. You're presenting the common Christian apologetic that the passion of the original Christians and the longevity of the religion is a sign of the validity of the resurrection, as no one would be expected to suffer for a known falsehood. This argument fails to take into account that every religion has its zealots, and people who suffer and die for their faith. That no more validates Christianity than it does the pagan faiths it replaced. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_...
      - geoduck14 4y ago
        Thanks! I am a Christian (though, that term has many inaccurate definitions). I'll look through the Wikipedia article. You mention that the Gospels don't agree on anything except the basic narrative. We actually only need a small number of facts to agree. The Wikipedia article you linked confirms Jesus was real and he was crucified. His crucifixion fulfilled a lot of prophesy in plenty of scripture. Jesus' resurrection is pretty hard to prove (there is no body!), but we see ancillary evidence: His followers gave up their lives for what Jesus taught. Luke-Acts was written "shortly after" the resurrection, when eye witnesses were still alive. Thomas ran off to India and started a church "before" early Christians had a chance to "fake" evidence I agree with you that passion alone is weak- every (most?) religion has zealots. The 4 Gospels and Paul's account are first hand accounts. They heard directly from Jesus who claimed to be God. Jesus might be crazy, but the original Apostles watched Jesus ascend into heaven - and then they died pursuing what Jesus taught. Paul was passionate about persecuting Christians (note the misplaced passion!), but then Jesus visited him directly and redirected Paul's passion and faith. People have definitely died for lesser causes. People have definitely pursued petty fights - but the decision of Jesus isn't petty - it is quite literally a decision that defines what happens after our short life here on earth. I appreciate you sharing the Wikipedia article. I'll read through it so I can better understand you and people like you. I wholeheartedly believe that the God of the Universe made you and loves you - and I want to show you that same love.
    - coliveira 4y ago
      First of all: the accounts are not first hand. They were in fact anonymous. Nobody put their names in these Gospel-style compositions, identifying themselves, until very late when the church decided to name them as we now have. Second of all: these accounts are not independent. There is the gospel of Mark, and them other authors went on copying most of the previous books, but adding sections that frequently contradict others. So, what we have are not 4 to 6 different accounts, we have a single story that has been copied and edited by several anonymous people.
  - Archelaos 4y ago
    Josephus has a single paragraph about Jesus. It had been debated whether this is a later Christian interpolation into the manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts of Josephus' works that survived are from the 9th or 10th century. It might be possible that all our text witnesses go back to a single intermediate "Christian" Josephus. What speaks against such a conclusion is a) that (if I remember it correctly, I didn't cross-check) the passage uses the non-standard spelling "Chrestos" instead of "Christos", a so called iotacism, caused by a shift in the pronounciation of Ancient Greek where the sound of iota and eta morphed into each other, and b) that the paragraph appears in the context of Roman religious scandals, a quite unfavourable location. The counter-argument is that a clever forger has deliberately made a spelling mistake and chosen an unfavourable context to make his interpolation seem all the more credible. Be that as it may, another aspect from Josephus is much more interesting, because it provides us with some context we would have otherwise missed: He tells us about other pretenders of the Messiah from that time, inluding the Roman suppression of this movements, and about John the Baptist in some detail. These passages are usually considered original.
    - yyyk 4y ago
      >Josephus has a single paragraph about Jesus. It had been debated whether this is a later Christian interpolation into the manuscripts. Two different paragraphs to be exact. The first is accepted as at least a partial interpolation, while the second is usually accepted in full.
throw7 4y ago
> will always always follow Sagan standard. Is that not itself a dogmatic motivated bias?
- Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
  no..
sho_hn 4y ago
I think part of the problem is that a "massive dogmatic bias" isn't needed to arrive at a historical Jesus in conventional historic scholarship. To plenty of scholars, a "historic X" just means that X was recorded in history, and there's a set of techniques to perform critical reading of written history that is used to reject the incredible. It's fair to say that Biblical history is especially rich in designing such criteria however ... As I suspect most engineers do I do see values in systematic, critical approaches to dealing with human-made documents and artifacts, but have a hard time feeling certain without direct physical evidence. By implication this makes a lot of popularly-held history unknowable to me however (as in, the historicity of many people other than Jesus is believed without direct physical evidence as well, based on "records from the time show ...").
super_scooper 4y ago
The wikipeida article you linked to points to many many pieces of evidence that are not "mythical gospels and other Christian sources". Occam's razor would dictate that the simplest explanation for an extremely fast rise in numbers of dispersed communities evangelizing the teachings of a person is that such person existed and espoused those teachings, right? Also it's just incorrect to say "as an atheist I have no skin the game". If you are agnostic/atheist you range from questioning to non-beleif in god which necessitates that Christianity and other religions could be or are wrong. It seems ridiculous to me to hold a position that contradicts another and say you have no skin in deciding wheather the other one is right.
- torben-friis 4y ago
  Being an atheist does not imply stakes on the existence of historical Jesus. Atheists do not deny the existence of religious figures and leaders, they deny their divinity or supernatural qualities. Sure, atheists‘ beliefs are benefited by religions being wrong in general, but no smart atheist would choose the totally plausible existence of a person as a hill to die on, when there’s such a large surface area of unlikely claims to attack instead (miracles, etc).
  - bnralt 4y ago
    Sure, but Jesus mythicism is a fringe belief who's popularity exists almost entirely within the more activist atheist crowd, while just about no serious historian finds any validity in the theory. I agree that no atheist should have stakes in the theory, it's pretty clear that a lot of the more vocal types think they have some kind of stake in it (Bill Maher has been a big proponent of it, to give one prominent example).
    - skissane 4y ago
      I sometimes think there is "atheism" and then there is "atheism". There is "atheism" in the sense of its literal definition, and then there is "atheism" as a contemporary cultural phenomena, which involves many beliefs (even if only commonly rather than universally) which do not necessarily follow from that literal definition. "Jesus mythicism" is one of those later beliefs, even if a lot less than universal one. To give some other examples, I know someone who calls themselves an "atheist" – and indeed, they fit the literal definition, they think the existence of God is improbable – but they also believe in ghosts and a life after death, beliefs which are generally outside the bounds of "atheism" in that second sense. Similarly, the early 20th century British philosopher John McTaggart, was an atheist in the literal sense – he was convinced that the existence of God was impossible, and even believed that he had a proof of God's necessary non-existence – but he also believed that matter and time were mere illusions, and that all that really existed was timeless immortal souls and their eternal love for one another – beliefs radically incompatible with "atheism" in that second sense. Similarly, many Buddhists (especially Theravadins) are in some literal sense atheists, in that they deny the existence of any ultimate God (as is claimed to exist in the Abrahamic religions and in many Hindu sects), but they also have many beliefs (rebirth, past life memories, enlightened beings having psychic, even miraculous, powers) which are way outside "atheism" in that second sense. (Even though orthodox Theravada does believe in gods, including those of Hinduism, as mortal non-ultimate deities, I think that belief is somewhat peripheral, in that a person could interpret that belief in an essentially non-literal way, and not be that far from Theravadan orthodoxy; however, rebirth is a much more central belief, and to interpret that in an equally non-literal way, would be straying much further from that orthodoxy.)
felipeerias 4y ago
By the end of the 1st century we encounter a small group of devoted followers passing along a relatively consistent body of teachings that they assign to a concrete individual who would have died within living memory. Leaving all supernatural claims aside, assuming that such an individual really existed does seem a more plausible explanation than the idea that it was all fictional. It also helps explain many other elements in the gospels. For example, a purely mythical narrative would have him come straight from Bethlehem as prophesied. Instead, the gospels report that he comes from the unimportant village of Nazaret (likely true) and then feel the need to add the (fictional but lovely) Christmas narrative to have him fulfil the prophecies. Incidentally, these questions are not uncommon at all in ancient history, see also for example the Socratic problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem
- mbfg 4y ago
  it's also possible that the stories are a conglomeration of multiple itinerant rabbis of the time. There were obviously dozens of "gospels", but only 4 were officially selected several hundred years later.
  - bnralt 4y ago
    That theory doesn't fit any of the evidence, though. What we see in the first few decades of the movement is group that's come from a common source and is starting to split off as they argue over in what light their leader should be seen and how people should follow his teaching. It seems bizarre that the followers of multiple different preachers would somehow come together, unanimously decide to forget their leaders and create a fake composite leader who supposedly existed and was publicly executed a few years prior, as well as composite teachings. Somehow they get everyone on board for it (we don't see any evidence of other sects that didn't follow), but just as soon as this disparate groups all agree to create a fake founder they suddenly split apart again. But none of them ditch the idea of the fake founder. It's really bizarre when you think about it. There are figures that historians think might have been composite figures developed over centuries, but nothing like disparate groups suddenly creating a fake founding figure from a generation back (the Pauline letters are written a couple of decades after Jesus is supposed to have died). And the theory doesn't solve any problems. Instead of one preacher we have some evidence for, we now have multiple preachers we have no evidence for, multiple proto-Christian movements we have no evidence for, councils to unify the movements by falsify their origin we have no evidence for, etc.
sweettea 4y ago
Tacitus was certainly not a Christian source, writing around 120 AD, and wrote of Christus: "Christus, from whom the name [of 'Christian'] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular." [1] One could cast doubt upon Tacitus, but he is one of the primary chroniclers of Rome, and much more of what we know of Rome would be in doubt also. [1]https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15#44 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15#...
- Archelaos 4y ago
  Single pieces of evidence, such as this passage from Tacitus, need to be critically evaluated in their context. Tacitus writes aprox. 90 years after the event. What were his sources? Christianity seems to have already achieved a certain notoriety, from which Tacitus quickly distances himself ("a most mischievous superstition"). But the story fits well to support his anti-imperial and specifically anti-Neronian stance. Therefore we do not need to expect a lot of deep research on his side before including this little remark into his Annals. And the mentioning of Pontius Pilatus sounds suspiciously canonically Christian. The most likely conclusion is that Tacitus is just repeating what his contemporary Christians have told everyone about the origin of their cult. This does not mean that what he tells us is incorrect, but that is account is probably based on a Christian and not an independent tradition.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Pontius Pilatus did exist and is a key player in the Christ story. There are records of his appointment as governor and coinage with his likeness. There’s also historical accounts that his administration was often at odds with the Jewish population. 90 years isn’t a long time and many contemporary primary and secondary sources no doubt existed. If I was speaking about US history, I could mention Gov Al Smith of New York contemporaneously and many people with context would understand me immediately. Tacitus wasn’t writing for an audience a millennia in the future.
tiahura 4y ago
A cult of personality forming around a person who never existed would be quite the miracle.
- chrchr 4y ago
  I don't know that I'd call it a cult of personality, but I know some really devoted fans of Spider-Man.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Forbidding writing in jedi as religion in the national census rolled forward 200 years with continuing uses, or spaghetti monster photo ID found by future archaeologists. Roll forward 2000 years and people discussing Spielberg and Lucas's accounts as conflicting along with palimpsest of Alex Guinness' Biography
Archelaos 4y ago
I don't like it that you have been downvoted. Your objections are valid ones, because dogmatic biases exist. However, I think that such a question does deserve more than a simple answer. (And as an aside, I find it a little amusing that you were refering to a theologian to make your point.) So let me try this: When we talk about a person we have been trained to apply implicit frameworks, which are typically quite vague, what gives us confidence that a certain character really existed and is related in such and such a way to what is said about this person. Saying that someone is a historical person means that we have a canonical body of knowledge related to that "person" that is considered (more or less!) being historically valid. For a mythical person the opposite is true: we have a canonical body of knowledge related to that "person" that is considered (more or less!) being ficitional. Some canonical truth about a historical person might turn out to be false; but such a discovery might not make this person suddenly fictional. Or we might discover that some narrative about a fictional character is rooted in an historic event; but this does not make this fictional character suddenly a historic person. However, this contrast between a historical and a fictional person marks only the ends of a spectrum. Many characters from the past are somewhere in between. You do not need to go back to antiquity for some interesting cases. Take for example the so-called Shakespeare authorship question,[1] which might be summarized with the bon mont, that the works of Shakespeare have not been written by Shakespeare but by another person with the same name. But all joking aside, when discussing ancient characters which have a large fictional text corpus around them, scholarship typically differentiates between a historical X and a fictional X. Among scholars this difference is usually only made explicit, when one is contrasting the two, and left to the context if not, because it goes without saying. So we speak for example of the historical Socrates in contrast to the Platonic Socrates (as a character in Plato's dialogues). And of course there is a debate which features of the Platonic Socrates might be ascribed to the historical Socrates and which not. (And the closest sources about Socrates are from his biased desciples Platon and Xenophon -- aside from some jokes of Aristophanes.) Regarding Jesus, a similar distinction makes sense, between a historical Jesus and the Jesus of the gospels (and the Jesus of other sources). In its modern form this distinction has a very long and intense research history starting in the 18th century.[2] The complexity of this research history shows that it is all but easy to identify the historic Jesus behind the sources, but that we have nevertheless so much evidence, that some historic person takes shape behind the narratives. However, there is almost no substantial agreement about the individual features of the historical Jesus other than that he was a male that was cruxified during the reign of emperor Tiberus in Jerusalem. I personally think that much more can be said with good reason, but any other claim is at least a tiny bit dubious. In contrast, when we focus on characters like king David, Salomon, Josua or Moses there exist next to nothing that links their biographies from the bible to external evidence and a lot of evidence that contradicts the details. This does not mean that no connections can be made between these stories and some presumed historical events backed by other evidence. But this connection is not strong than, for example, the connection between the legend of king Arthur and the history of the dark ages and late Roman Britain and Brittany. >> As an archeologist, ... Biographical footnote: I studied philosophy, but had to chose a so-called "minor subject" that was (protestant) theology, which was methodically quite neutral. i.e. biblical sources were treated like any other historical source and being sensitive to once own potential biases was part of the methodology. In practice, this meant that there was a lively exchange between the theological department, historians, papyrologists, egyptologists, classical archaeology, philology etc. You were even required to take a certain amount of courses in other departments. As being a secularised student myself, it was no problem at all to study theology. I would estimate that only about half of the theology students at that time were "observant" Christians in the stricter sense. [1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_questio... [2] For an overview see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_the_historical_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_the_historical_Jesus
skissane 4y ago
New religious movements commonly make up all kinds of extraordinary claims about their founders. However, most of the time, the founder is a real person. While religions with entirely mythical founders are not unheard of, that appears to be significantly less common than a real founder whose life becomes heavily embellished. Given that, it seems reasonable to assume that for any religious founder, in the absence of more specific information, their real historical existence is more likely than not. Therefore, Jesus of Nazareth more likely than not existed. Furthermore, if we look at the more specific information we have, we find information which arguably increases that probability even further. Suppose, hypothetically, that the early Christian sources had disagreed about which century Jesus had lived in-that fact surely would have increased the odds that Jesus was mythical. But, conversely, the fact that all known early Christian sources which explicitly date his life, do so to the same period, give or take a few years at most, has to increase the odds that Jesus was historical. Conversely, Buddhist sources disagree (by decades, even centuries in some cases) about when Siddharta Gautama lived, which implies his odds of being mythical are greater than those of Jesus of Nazareth. There is nothing religious about these arguments - they are simply treating Christianity as one religion among many, trying to devise general criteria - applicable to any religion - to determine whether a religious founder is likely historical or mythical, and then applying those criteria to Christianity
- coliveira 4y ago
  > However, most of the time, the founder is a real person. Yes, the founder has necessarily to be a real person. But not the one from which the tales are made. For example, all greek mysteries purported to come from a real teacher, but in most cases these were gods, i.e., not real people. There is really no evidence of a christian sect forming in Jerusalem at the time of the supposed death of Jesus. Christianity appeared for all purposes in the Greek Asian Minor, pushed by someone who called himself Paul, and all the writings we have are from Greek-speaking composers. The idea that Christianity goes back to a Jesus and his followers in Judea seems to be a romantic idea used by the real founders of the movement to make it older than it really was.
  - skissane 4y ago
coliveira 4y ago
One can always point to a historical Jesus, because there were many in the first century according to historians like Josephus. So, it is always a safe bet to say (from a historical point of view) that Jesus existed. Otherwise, a serious historian has to reach for a mythicist theory, which is much more difficult to prove. But that doesn't mean that THE Jesus of the biblical stories existed, most probably not, what we have is the combination of many such characters.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

GauntletWizard 4y ago

It would be far more surprising if there were extensive documentation of someone the Romans thought of as "a random cultist who was convicted of heresy" than that the only surviving records of the historical Jesus were from his followers.

jhawk28 4y ago
What about Josephus?
- geoduck14 4y ago
  I'm curious why people are so quick to dismis evidence of Jesus as contained in the gospels. From POV, we have between 4 and 6 (depending on your cannon) different people that record first hand records of Jesus. And it turns out that these same people were passionate followers of Jesus. What other response would you expect from someone who actually knew someone who actually died and was brought back to life?
  - defrost 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - trump_exists 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - defrost 4y ago
        That should be evident by reading my comment, a comment that addressed the gospel of Jesus rather than Jesus himself.
  - krapp 4y ago
    None of the canonical Gospels were written by people who had firsthand knowledge of Jesus. All of them were written over a generation after the crucifixion, and those were only four out of many such Gospels in pre-Biblical Christian history. And none of them (not even the canon) agree on any but the most basic narrative, which you would expect at the very least for eyewitness, firsthand accounts. Since you seem to be a Christian working from a perspective of faith, I don't expect to convince you of anything, but you should at least study Biblical history a bit[0] before making as naive an argument as this. >What other response would you expect from someone who actually knew someone who actually died and was brought back to life? Many people are passionately convinced of things that aren't true. Passion is not a signifier of truth, rather it signifies a willingness to abandon objectivity. You're presenting the common Christian apologetic that the passion of the original Christians and the longevity of the religion is a sign of the validity of the resurrection, as no one would be expected to suffer for a known falsehood. This argument fails to take into account that every religion has its zealots, and people who suffer and die for their faith. That no more validates Christianity than it does the pagan faiths it replaced. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_...
    - geoduck14 4y ago
      Thanks! I am a Christian (though, that term has many inaccurate definitions). I'll look through the Wikipedia article. You mention that the Gospels don't agree on anything except the basic narrative. We actually only need a small number of facts to agree. The Wikipedia article you linked confirms Jesus was real and he was crucified. His crucifixion fulfilled a lot of prophesy in plenty of scripture. Jesus' resurrection is pretty hard to prove (there is no body!), but we see ancillary evidence: His followers gave up their lives for what Jesus taught. Luke-Acts was written "shortly after" the resurrection, when eye witnesses were still alive. Thomas ran off to India and started a church "before" early Christians had a chance to "fake" evidence I agree with you that passion alone is weak- every (most?) religion has zealots. The 4 Gospels and Paul's account are first hand accounts. They heard directly from Jesus who claimed to be God. Jesus might be crazy, but the original Apostles watched Jesus ascend into heaven - and then they died pursuing what Jesus taught. Paul was passionate about persecuting Christians (note the misplaced passion!), but then Jesus visited him directly and redirected Paul's passion and faith. People have definitely died for lesser causes. People have definitely pursued petty fights - but the decision of Jesus isn't petty - it is quite literally a decision that defines what happens after our short life here on earth. I appreciate you sharing the Wikipedia article. I'll read through it so I can better understand you and people like you. I wholeheartedly believe that the God of the Universe made you and loves you - and I want to show you that same love.
  - coliveira 4y ago
    First of all: the accounts are not first hand. They were in fact anonymous. Nobody put their names in these Gospel-style compositions, identifying themselves, until very late when the church decided to name them as we now have. Second of all: these accounts are not independent. There is the gospel of Mark, and them other authors went on copying most of the previous books, but adding sections that frequently contradict others. So, what we have are not 4 to 6 different accounts, we have a single story that has been copied and edited by several anonymous people.
- Archelaos 4y ago
  Josephus has a single paragraph about Jesus. It had been debated whether this is a later Christian interpolation into the manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts of Josephus' works that survived are from the 9th or 10th century. It might be possible that all our text witnesses go back to a single intermediate "Christian" Josephus. What speaks against such a conclusion is a) that (if I remember it correctly, I didn't cross-check) the passage uses the non-standard spelling "Chrestos" instead of "Christos", a so called iotacism, caused by a shift in the pronounciation of Ancient Greek where the sound of iota and eta morphed into each other, and b) that the paragraph appears in the context of Roman religious scandals, a quite unfavourable location. The counter-argument is that a clever forger has deliberately made a spelling mistake and chosen an unfavourable context to make his interpolation seem all the more credible. Be that as it may, another aspect from Josephus is much more interesting, because it provides us with some context we would have otherwise missed: He tells us about other pretenders of the Messiah from that time, inluding the Roman suppression of this movements, and about John the Baptist in some detail. These passages are usually considered original.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    >Josephus has a single paragraph about Jesus. It had been debated whether this is a later Christian interpolation into the manuscripts. Two different paragraphs to be exact. The first is accepted as at least a partial interpolation, while the second is usually accepted in full.

throw7 4y ago

> will always always follow Sagan standard. Is that not itself a dogmatic motivated bias?

Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
no..

sho_hn 4y ago

I think part of the problem is that a "massive dogmatic bias" isn't needed to arrive at a historical Jesus in conventional historic scholarship. To plenty of scholars, a "historic X" just means that X was recorded in history, and there's a set of techniques to perform critical reading of written history that is used to reject the incredible. It's fair to say that Biblical history is especially rich in designing such criteria however ... As I suspect most engineers do I do see values in systematic, critical approaches to dealing with human-made documents and artifacts, but have a hard time feeling certain without direct physical evidence. By implication this makes a lot of popularly-held history unknowable to me however (as in, the historicity of many people other than Jesus is believed without direct physical evidence as well, based on "records from the time show ...").

super_scooper 4y ago

The wikipeida article you linked to points to many many pieces of evidence that are not "mythical gospels and other Christian sources". Occam's razor would dictate that the simplest explanation for an extremely fast rise in numbers of dispersed communities evangelizing the teachings of a person is that such person existed and espoused those teachings, right? Also it's just incorrect to say "as an atheist I have no skin the game". If you are agnostic/atheist you range from questioning to non-beleif in god which necessitates that Christianity and other religions could be or are wrong. It seems ridiculous to me to hold a position that contradicts another and say you have no skin in deciding wheather the other one is right.

torben-friis 4y ago
Being an atheist does not imply stakes on the existence of historical Jesus. Atheists do not deny the existence of religious figures and leaders, they deny their divinity or supernatural qualities. Sure, atheists‘ beliefs are benefited by religions being wrong in general, but no smart atheist would choose the totally plausible existence of a person as a hill to die on, when there’s such a large surface area of unlikely claims to attack instead (miracles, etc).
- bnralt 4y ago
  Sure, but Jesus mythicism is a fringe belief who's popularity exists almost entirely within the more activist atheist crowd, while just about no serious historian finds any validity in the theory. I agree that no atheist should have stakes in the theory, it's pretty clear that a lot of the more vocal types think they have some kind of stake in it (Bill Maher has been a big proponent of it, to give one prominent example).
  - skissane 4y ago
    I sometimes think there is "atheism" and then there is "atheism". There is "atheism" in the sense of its literal definition, and then there is "atheism" as a contemporary cultural phenomena, which involves many beliefs (even if only commonly rather than universally) which do not necessarily follow from that literal definition. "Jesus mythicism" is one of those later beliefs, even if a lot less than universal one. To give some other examples, I know someone who calls themselves an "atheist" – and indeed, they fit the literal definition, they think the existence of God is improbable – but they also believe in ghosts and a life after death, beliefs which are generally outside the bounds of "atheism" in that second sense. Similarly, the early 20th century British philosopher John McTaggart, was an atheist in the literal sense – he was convinced that the existence of God was impossible, and even believed that he had a proof of God's necessary non-existence – but he also believed that matter and time were mere illusions, and that all that really existed was timeless immortal souls and their eternal love for one another – beliefs radically incompatible with "atheism" in that second sense. Similarly, many Buddhists (especially Theravadins) are in some literal sense atheists, in that they deny the existence of any ultimate God (as is claimed to exist in the Abrahamic religions and in many Hindu sects), but they also have many beliefs (rebirth, past life memories, enlightened beings having psychic, even miraculous, powers) which are way outside "atheism" in that second sense. (Even though orthodox Theravada does believe in gods, including those of Hinduism, as mortal non-ultimate deities, I think that belief is somewhat peripheral, in that a person could interpret that belief in an essentially non-literal way, and not be that far from Theravadan orthodoxy; however, rebirth is a much more central belief, and to interpret that in an equally non-literal way, would be straying much further from that orthodoxy.)

felipeerias 4y ago

By the end of the 1st century we encounter a small group of devoted followers passing along a relatively consistent body of teachings that they assign to a concrete individual who would have died within living memory. Leaving all supernatural claims aside, assuming that such an individual really existed does seem a more plausible explanation than the idea that it was all fictional. It also helps explain many other elements in the gospels. For example, a purely mythical narrative would have him come straight from Bethlehem as prophesied. Instead, the gospels report that he comes from the unimportant village of Nazaret (likely true) and then feel the need to add the (fictional but lovely) Christmas narrative to have him fulfil the prophecies. Incidentally, these questions are not uncommon at all in ancient history, see also for example the Socratic problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem

mbfg 4y ago
it's also possible that the stories are a conglomeration of multiple itinerant rabbis of the time. There were obviously dozens of "gospels", but only 4 were officially selected several hundred years later.
- bnralt 4y ago
  That theory doesn't fit any of the evidence, though. What we see in the first few decades of the movement is group that's come from a common source and is starting to split off as they argue over in what light their leader should be seen and how people should follow his teaching. It seems bizarre that the followers of multiple different preachers would somehow come together, unanimously decide to forget their leaders and create a fake composite leader who supposedly existed and was publicly executed a few years prior, as well as composite teachings. Somehow they get everyone on board for it (we don't see any evidence of other sects that didn't follow), but just as soon as this disparate groups all agree to create a fake founder they suddenly split apart again. But none of them ditch the idea of the fake founder. It's really bizarre when you think about it. There are figures that historians think might have been composite figures developed over centuries, but nothing like disparate groups suddenly creating a fake founding figure from a generation back (the Pauline letters are written a couple of decades after Jesus is supposed to have died). And the theory doesn't solve any problems. Instead of one preacher we have some evidence for, we now have multiple preachers we have no evidence for, multiple proto-Christian movements we have no evidence for, councils to unify the movements by falsify their origin we have no evidence for, etc.

sweettea 4y ago

Tacitus was certainly not a Christian source, writing around 120 AD, and wrote of Christus: "Christus, from whom the name [of 'Christian'] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular." [1] One could cast doubt upon Tacitus, but he is one of the primary chroniclers of Rome, and much more of what we know of Rome would be in doubt also. [1]https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15#44 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_15#...

Archelaos 4y ago
Single pieces of evidence, such as this passage from Tacitus, need to be critically evaluated in their context. Tacitus writes aprox. 90 years after the event. What were his sources? Christianity seems to have already achieved a certain notoriety, from which Tacitus quickly distances himself ("a most mischievous superstition"). But the story fits well to support his anti-imperial and specifically anti-Neronian stance. Therefore we do not need to expect a lot of deep research on his side before including this little remark into his Annals. And the mentioning of Pontius Pilatus sounds suspiciously canonically Christian. The most likely conclusion is that Tacitus is just repeating what his contemporary Christians have told everyone about the origin of their cult. This does not mean that what he tells us is incorrect, but that is account is probably based on a Christian and not an independent tradition.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Pontius Pilatus did exist and is a key player in the Christ story. There are records of his appointment as governor and coinage with his likeness. There’s also historical accounts that his administration was often at odds with the Jewish population. 90 years isn’t a long time and many contemporary primary and secondary sources no doubt existed. If I was speaking about US history, I could mention Gov Al Smith of New York contemporaneously and many people with context would understand me immediately. Tacitus wasn’t writing for an audience a millennia in the future.

tiahura 4y ago

A cult of personality forming around a person who never existed would be quite the miracle.

chrchr 4y ago
I don't know that I'd call it a cult of personality, but I know some really devoted fans of Spider-Man.
- ggm 4y ago
  Forbidding writing in jedi as religion in the national census rolled forward 200 years with continuing uses, or spaghetti monster photo ID found by future archaeologists. Roll forward 2000 years and people discussing Spielberg and Lucas's accounts as conflicting along with palimpsest of Alex Guinness' Biography

Archelaos 4y ago

I don't like it that you have been downvoted. Your objections are valid ones, because dogmatic biases exist. However, I think that such a question does deserve more than a simple answer. (And as an aside, I find it a little amusing that you were refering to a theologian to make your point.) So let me try this: When we talk about a person we have been trained to apply implicit frameworks, which are typically quite vague, what gives us confidence that a certain character really existed and is related in such and such a way to what is said about this person. Saying that someone is a historical person means that we have a canonical body of knowledge related to that "person" that is considered (more or less!) being historically valid. For a mythical person the opposite is true: we have a canonical body of knowledge related to that "person" that is considered (more or less!) being ficitional. Some canonical truth about a historical person might turn out to be false; but such a discovery might not make this person suddenly fictional. Or we might discover that some narrative about a fictional character is rooted in an historic event; but this does not make this fictional character suddenly a historic person. However, this contrast between a historical and a fictional person marks only the ends of a spectrum. Many characters from the past are somewhere in between. You do not need to go back to antiquity for some interesting cases. Take for example the so-called Shakespeare authorship question,[1] which might be summarized with the bon mont, that the works of Shakespeare have not been written by Shakespeare but by another person with the same name. But all joking aside, when discussing ancient characters which have a large fictional text corpus around them, scholarship typically differentiates between a historical X and a fictional X. Among scholars this difference is usually only made explicit, when one is contrasting the two, and left to the context if not, because it goes without saying. So we speak for example of the historical Socrates in contrast to the Platonic Socrates (as a character in Plato's dialogues). And of course there is a debate which features of the Platonic Socrates might be ascribed to the historical Socrates and which not. (And the closest sources about Socrates are from his biased desciples Platon and Xenophon -- aside from some jokes of Aristophanes.) Regarding Jesus, a similar distinction makes sense, between a historical Jesus and the Jesus of the gospels (and the Jesus of other sources). In its modern form this distinction has a very long and intense research history starting in the 18th century.[2] The complexity of this research history shows that it is all but easy to identify the historic Jesus behind the sources, but that we have nevertheless so much evidence, that some historic person takes shape behind the narratives. However, there is almost no substantial agreement about the individual features of the historical Jesus other than that he was a male that was cruxified during the reign of emperor Tiberus in Jerusalem. I personally think that much more can be said with good reason, but any other claim is at least a tiny bit dubious. In contrast, when we focus on characters like king David, Salomon, Josua or Moses there exist next to nothing that links their biographies from the bible to external evidence and a lot of evidence that contradicts the details. This does not mean that no connections can be made between these stories and some presumed historical events backed by other evidence. But this connection is not strong than, for example, the connection between the legend of king Arthur and the history of the dark ages and late Roman Britain and Brittany. >> As an archeologist, ... Biographical footnote: I studied philosophy, but had to chose a so-called "minor subject" that was (protestant) theology, which was methodically quite neutral. i.e. biblical sources were treated like any other historical source and being sensitive to once own potential biases was part of the methodology. In practice, this meant that there was a lively exchange between the theological department, historians, papyrologists, egyptologists, classical archaeology, philology etc. You were even required to take a certain amount of courses in other departments. As being a secularised student myself, it was no problem at all to study theology. I would estimate that only about half of the theology students at that time were "observant" Christians in the stricter sense. [1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_questio... [2] For an overview see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_the_historical_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_the_historical_Jesus

skissane 4y ago

New religious movements commonly make up all kinds of extraordinary claims about their founders. However, most of the time, the founder is a real person. While religions with entirely mythical founders are not unheard of, that appears to be significantly less common than a real founder whose life becomes heavily embellished. Given that, it seems reasonable to assume that for any religious founder, in the absence of more specific information, their real historical existence is more likely than not. Therefore, Jesus of Nazareth more likely than not existed. Furthermore, if we look at the more specific information we have, we find information which arguably increases that probability even further. Suppose, hypothetically, that the early Christian sources had disagreed about which century Jesus had lived in-that fact surely would have increased the odds that Jesus was mythical. But, conversely, the fact that all known early Christian sources which explicitly date his life, do so to the same period, give or take a few years at most, has to increase the odds that Jesus was historical. Conversely, Buddhist sources disagree (by decades, even centuries in some cases) about when Siddharta Gautama lived, which implies his odds of being mythical are greater than those of Jesus of Nazareth. There is nothing religious about these arguments - they are simply treating Christianity as one religion among many, trying to devise general criteria - applicable to any religion - to determine whether a religious founder is likely historical or mythical, and then applying those criteria to Christianity

coliveira 4y ago
> However, most of the time, the founder is a real person. Yes, the founder has necessarily to be a real person. But not the one from which the tales are made. For example, all greek mysteries purported to come from a real teacher, but in most cases these were gods, i.e., not real people. There is really no evidence of a christian sect forming in Jerusalem at the time of the supposed death of Jesus. Christianity appeared for all purposes in the Greek Asian Minor, pushed by someone who called himself Paul, and all the writings we have are from Greek-speaking composers. The idea that Christianity goes back to a Jesus and his followers in Judea seems to be a romantic idea used by the real founders of the movement to make it older than it really was.
- skissane 4y ago

coliveira 4y ago

One can always point to a historical Jesus, because there were many in the first century according to historians like Josephus. So, it is always a safe bet to say (from a historical point of view) that Jesus existed. Otherwise, a serious historian has to reach for a mythicist theory, which is much more difficult to prove. But that doesn't mean that THE Jesus of the biblical stories existed, most probably not, what we have is the combination of many such characters.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]