8 ms·

The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic. There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there).

by RC_ITR 4y ago

The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic. There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there). However, unless you are a follower of his (or potentially some related religions), there are obviously mystical things associated with him that you likely do not believe to actually have happened. Even followers disagree about the veracity of certain stories. So where does that leave us? There is undoubtedly a “real” Jesus, but was he anything like the person we think we know? 2000 years of being one of the most famous people ever is certain to leave a skewed perception of who you are. Hell, we don’t even know the true story of celebrities and religious figures today. Unfortunately, much of the discourse about this seems to be heavily biased, cloistered (literally), or commercial (Nat Geo and History seem to butter their bread with this topic each spring). And ultimately does it matter? How many of the attributes stories would need to be proven false to make Jesus seem “not real”?

abosherid 4y ago
[flagged]
- tadfisher 4y ago
  The Book of Mormon was written by a grifter in the 19th century.
  - peterfirefly 4y ago
    Weren't Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Q grifters from the 1st century? I see no reason to consider Joseph Smith any worse than the others. (Except for his abuse of power maybe.)
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Whereas we know almost nothing about Paul, Matthew, etc., we do know quite a bit about Smith: he lived only 190 years ago.
    - tadfisher 4y ago
      I completely agree. They are all grifters.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  You know... some religious stuff is beyond proof. Did Jesus perform miracles? Was he the Son of God? It comes down to faith. However, ancient Israelites who came to the Americas? Is there any evidence at all, genealogical, archaeological, myths and legends of indigenous peoples, anything for that? The article does note that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Still, you would think something would have turned up by now.
themitigating 4y ago
Besides the bible what other source is there? Maybe Josephus? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus I'm not a historian but it says most accept the authenticity of the name mentioned and being persecuted but that it's been manipulated over time. At best you can argue Jesus existed. So what? At the time there were a number of apocalyptic preachers, hence the format of the book of Revelation. I'm shocked that a religion didn't form around this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhb Who actually formed a sorta Jewish state for three years after beating the romans. I wonder if his story isn't as good because he created the promise land but failed to maintain it. Almost like it's better to be vague like Jesus and avoid doing anything that you could end up losing. Though they could have just said it was on purpose, like Jesus. People talk about the actions of Jesus and quotes as if it's historical certainty because of how long and how many people believe
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Did you actually read the article? Or any of the other historical scholarship?
  - delecti 4y ago
    I did read the article, and it seems to be entirely things like "there's no evidence Jesus was there, but historians say he could have been" or "according to the Gospels". Neither of those rise remotely to the level of what I'd call "evidence". The former establishes that the historical Jesus is plausible, but that could just as easily mean that the authors who invented Jesus were aware of the real-world setting their character occupied. The whole article reads much more like a believer going on a quest to develop a more personal connection to events which they have faith occured. That's fine, and I'm sure is interesting to believers, but it did nothing to convince me of the historical Jesus.
    - 4y ago
nonethewiser 4y ago
> And ultimately does it matter? How many of the attributes stories would need to be proven false to make Jesus seem “not real”? Like you said, he clearly was a real person even if all the controversial stuff is proven false.
abraxas 4y ago
The scholarly consensus is that there was a historical Jesus but what bothers me is that the same unbiased scholars reject just about every event of the New Testament as being improbable (eg the Jesus Seminar). This leaves me with a real hunger for what his story was really like. Just knowing that a preacher man named Yeshua lived in the ancient Judea 2000 years ago is really unsatisfying.
pyuser583 4y ago
Look at this from the perspective of a believer: historians agree Jesus existed, and was a prophet type figure who was executed. But they don’t know much more. They’re constantly trying add to that bare outline, but the additions are no more than speculation. This speculation changes frequently. The changes are based in trends in historical methodology unrelated to the Christian faith. Was Jesus a Buddhist? Did he travel to India? In the 1960s he did. Are these historians actually adding anything? It doesn’t seem they are. Historians can provide missing context. For example, when the demon says “I am legion”, it was probably not a reference to Roman legions. But there really isn’t a historical Jesus.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Notovitch and Kersten have nothing to do with 1960s.
justanotherjoe 4y ago
Well according to our understanding, on stories like these they usually embelish on the 'origin' part. In the case of the bible, the story of the archangel gabriel visiting Mary is number one on the suspect of being an embelishment. And speaking of being 'historical', as in written down by a witness, there are things in the bible that strikes me as 'filled in'. I only go to church during easter, so it I had it read to me very recently. Like the story of Jesus praying in Getshemane, it was supposed to be jesus' personal prayer, who witnessed that? Or Jesus personal discussion with pontius pilate, again, who wrote that down? Maybe someone interviewed pilate again later, I don't know, that doesn't seem too plausible, as I never heard the name pilate written down again as one of the accounts. Or when Jesus got tempted by the devil, again he was supposed to be alone. Did he tell his disciples afterwards, or is this completely creative writing (or oral as the first christians did it)? These are just some of the thoughts I had while listening to the sermon. My point is I think that there was some artistic license in the whole mythology of Jesus. Maybe 'to make it flow better' or something like that.
- krapp 4y ago
  None of the gospels (out of the hundreds that existed before canon was decided on) were written by actual eyewitnesses, much less by the apostles. All of them are embellishments written years or decades after the fact. The Religion for Breakfast has some interesting videos on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyI1XOselI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyI1XOselI - Introduction to Biblical Archaeology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc - How Did the New Testament Form? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV9VPM7lIoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV9VPM7lIoQ - Did the Gospels copy each other? Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ - Who Wrote the Bible (Useful Charts) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo - 10 Changes Made to the Bible (part 1, Trey the Explainer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX62bRIG-OI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX62bRIG-OI - 10 Changes Made to the Bible (part 2, Trey the Explainer)
  - justanotherjoe 4y ago
warent 4y ago
The important thing it seems is that his myth a part of our stories, and who we are, throughout a large part of the world. Myths tell us about ourselves. The sad thing is when people distort or weaponize myth to control others for personal egocentric agendas. Ultimately many of his apparent teachings seem to be timeless: finding joy in living simply; understanding that heaven is within; etc. Lots of overlap with Buddhist teachings on cessation of suffering. I'm not religious and still try to incorporate the beauty of these ideals!
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  If you think Jesus being a 'good guy' is the most important part of Jesus, that's absolutely missing the point of Christianity.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    Jesus being a "good guy" is fundamental to the role he plays in Christianity. How could you see it any other way?
    - nathan_compton 4y ago
      From some Christians' points of view the important part of the Jesus story is that he is sacrificed by God as a way of dealing with a fundamental break between humanity and God having to do with the Jewish priesthood.
      - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        That is the other important aspect of the Jesus story. He was the son of God in human flesh, exemplified by the manner in which he lived ("good guy") and by his teachings. Yet he was betrayed by one of his disciples, and died a distinctly "low death". I think it's more correct to say that God sent Jesus down to Earth and Jesus sacrificed himself / God forsake him, than "he is sacrificed by God". This is probably a bit nitpicky from your perspective. My main point is that there is no Christians that do not hold the following two aspects of Jesus as extremely important: (1) The life of Jesus: how he lived and what he taught (2) Jesus sacrificed on the cross Frankly, I think you're not familiar with Christian teachings if you claim otherwise, i.e. by disagreeing with a person who says that Jesus being a "good guy" is an important aspect of the Christian faith. It is important, unequivocally.
mbfg 4y ago
It's also possible that the stories were an amalgamation of several itinerant preachers. It might explain some of the conflicts between different gospels. But that there were real people at the basis of these stories is a pretty mundane claim, and so the mundane parts of the story i'm willing accept without much evidence. That a preacher had followers, gave sermons, pissed off the wrong people and got crucified is pretty mundane for the time, i'm willing to accept that those things are likely true.
throw0101c 4y ago
> The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
GalahiSimtam 4y ago
Uhm, if you are interested so, you should realize it is these false narratives that are used most convincingly in support of Jesus historicity. Consider that passage from Flavius referencing Jesus. It is somewhat different in the Arabic translation version. Some people goes as far as to doubt if this passage is altogether an insertion of later christian scribes. On the other hand, they usually argue that Jesus being born in Bethlehem is made up to match some old prophets, and then they accept that if Jesus was completely made up he would not be from Nazareth. (*) There are more analyses like that in "Gospel of Afranius" by Kirill Eskov (who is known for "The Last Ringbearer"), and I found out only today that it was translated to English recently, wikipedia says Dec 2022. Enjoy! (*) it is relatively rare that someone will observe that there could have been another settlement called Bethlehem just closer to Nazareth.
nathan_compton 4y ago
As a secular person I can understand Jesus as an important historical figure, but it seems to me his "historicity" is a pretty uninteresting question. I know this can be hard for a person who was raised in Christianity to understand, but from an outside perspective, the guy is pretty boring. His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier (and they were better explained an examined by them). From this perspective, its hard to care about detailed historical questions about the guy except purely as history, which is full of a lot of other arguably more interesting questions.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  The more interesting way to approach I think is not so much through great man-style history like that about what he did or why, or even why him. But what was it about that time and place that produced so many of these movements, of which his was one (notably john the baptist who had a similar thing going first/with some overlap, and whose movement was almost certainly more popular than the jesus movement in their time)? What made rome react to these movements the way they did, were they able to identify the real risk they posed (it did end up becoming a massive source of unrest and radicalism in the empire), did they understand the risks inherent in martyring apocalyptic religious leaders? It's also a good entry point for understanding the process of history as a practice and discipline. For example we can be pretty sure jesus was from nazareth because it's mentioned in mark, the earliest gospel, and nazareth was a nothing place nowhere, there's no reason to fabricate an important figure being from there. Similarly his nativity story is probably a later attempt to link him to bethlehem, a city of deep significance to jews at the time. That's an interesting technique! There are lots of those, historians aren't just people who know facts about history, they are practitioners of this discipline. It's one of the most researched, most discussed subjects in history and the movement that started there is one of the most impactful regardless of your personal relationship to it. So it's a good place to get an understanding of the concepts and techniques of history and historicity.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Although "show us some citations" is getting to be a pretty boring response, I would like to see some elaboration on "His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier." I don't think so. The pagan "religions" were not very big on "everyone, even the poor, the sick, and the lame, is equal." Slavery was accepted almost everywhere. Women were very definitely second-class citizens. "Giving charity" was not a central concept in the Greek moral universe. I mention the last one especially because in the pre-Constantine era, the notion that other Christians were your brothers and would take care of you was pretty powerful. That was not a common thing back then.
thomasahle 4y ago
It can probably also teach us a lot about how to start successful movements today. Though the part where you get your ideology integrated into the ligitimacy of large countries is maybe hard to achieve. Perhaps Marx and socialism is the closest analog.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there). Josephus is the only one I've heard put forth (and I am aware that many believe the one mention of Jesus by Josephus was a more recent edit). It wasn't clear to me that it was an open and shut case that there was a man from Nazareth named Jesus.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus) Tacitus talks abut Jesus in The Annals, and if we don't take that collection at face value, a lot of our understanding of Rome becomes shaky.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    I had not heard of that one. Personally, while atheist, I believe there likely was a Jesus of Nazareth. I just reason that if they were going to invent someone out of whole cloth they would have made up someone more interesting than a carpenter from Nazareth. It's kind of the coolest part of Jesus to me, how ordinary and humble his beginnings are.

by RC_ITR 4y ago

abosherid 4y ago

[flagged]

tadfisher 4y ago
The Book of Mormon was written by a grifter in the 19th century.
- peterfirefly 4y ago
  Weren't Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Q grifters from the 1st century? I see no reason to consider Joseph Smith any worse than the others. (Except for his abuse of power maybe.)
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Whereas we know almost nothing about Paul, Matthew, etc., we do know quite a bit about Smith: he lived only 190 years ago.
  - tadfisher 4y ago
    I completely agree. They are all grifters.
AlbertCory 4y ago
You know... some religious stuff is beyond proof. Did Jesus perform miracles? Was he the Son of God? It comes down to faith. However, ancient Israelites who came to the Americas? Is there any evidence at all, genealogical, archaeological, myths and legends of indigenous peoples, anything for that? The article does note that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Still, you would think something would have turned up by now.

themitigating 4y ago

Besides the bible what other source is there? Maybe Josephus? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus I'm not a historian but it says most accept the authenticity of the name mentioned and being persecuted but that it's been manipulated over time. At best you can argue Jesus existed. So what? At the time there were a number of apocalyptic preachers, hence the format of the book of Revelation. I'm shocked that a religion didn't form around this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhb Who actually formed a sorta Jewish state for three years after beating the romans. I wonder if his story isn't as good because he created the promise land but failed to maintain it. Almost like it's better to be vague like Jesus and avoid doing anything that you could end up losing. Though they could have just said it was on purpose, like Jesus. People talk about the actions of Jesus and quotes as if it's historical certainty because of how long and how many people believe

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AlbertCory 4y ago
Did you actually read the article? Or any of the other historical scholarship?
- delecti 4y ago
  I did read the article, and it seems to be entirely things like "there's no evidence Jesus was there, but historians say he could have been" or "according to the Gospels". Neither of those rise remotely to the level of what I'd call "evidence". The former establishes that the historical Jesus is plausible, but that could just as easily mean that the authors who invented Jesus were aware of the real-world setting their character occupied. The whole article reads much more like a believer going on a quest to develop a more personal connection to events which they have faith occured. That's fine, and I'm sure is interesting to believers, but it did nothing to convince me of the historical Jesus.
  - 4y ago

nonethewiser 4y ago

> And ultimately does it matter? How many of the attributes stories would need to be proven false to make Jesus seem “not real”? Like you said, he clearly was a real person even if all the controversial stuff is proven false.

abraxas 4y ago

The scholarly consensus is that there was a historical Jesus but what bothers me is that the same unbiased scholars reject just about every event of the New Testament as being improbable (eg the Jesus Seminar). This leaves me with a real hunger for what his story was really like. Just knowing that a preacher man named Yeshua lived in the ancient Judea 2000 years ago is really unsatisfying.

pyuser583 4y ago

Look at this from the perspective of a believer: historians agree Jesus existed, and was a prophet type figure who was executed. But they don’t know much more. They’re constantly trying add to that bare outline, but the additions are no more than speculation. This speculation changes frequently. The changes are based in trends in historical methodology unrelated to the Christian faith. Was Jesus a Buddhist? Did he travel to India? In the 1960s he did. Are these historians actually adding anything? It doesn’t seem they are. Historians can provide missing context. For example, when the demon says “I am legion”, it was probably not a reference to Roman legions. But there really isn’t a historical Jesus.

selimthegrim 4y ago
Notovitch and Kersten have nothing to do with 1960s.

justanotherjoe 4y ago

Well according to our understanding, on stories like these they usually embelish on the 'origin' part. In the case of the bible, the story of the archangel gabriel visiting Mary is number one on the suspect of being an embelishment. And speaking of being 'historical', as in written down by a witness, there are things in the bible that strikes me as 'filled in'. I only go to church during easter, so it I had it read to me very recently. Like the story of Jesus praying in Getshemane, it was supposed to be jesus' personal prayer, who witnessed that? Or Jesus personal discussion with pontius pilate, again, who wrote that down? Maybe someone interviewed pilate again later, I don't know, that doesn't seem too plausible, as I never heard the name pilate written down again as one of the accounts. Or when Jesus got tempted by the devil, again he was supposed to be alone. Did he tell his disciples afterwards, or is this completely creative writing (or oral as the first christians did it)? These are just some of the thoughts I had while listening to the sermon. My point is I think that there was some artistic license in the whole mythology of Jesus. Maybe 'to make it flow better' or something like that.

krapp 4y ago
None of the gospels (out of the hundreds that existed before canon was decided on) were written by actual eyewitnesses, much less by the apostles. All of them are embellishments written years or decades after the fact. The Religion for Breakfast has some interesting videos on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyI1XOselI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyI1XOselI - Introduction to Biblical Archaeology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc - How Did the New Testament Form? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV9VPM7lIoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV9VPM7lIoQ - Did the Gospels copy each other? Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ - Who Wrote the Bible (Useful Charts) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo - 10 Changes Made to the Bible (part 1, Trey the Explainer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX62bRIG-OI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX62bRIG-OI - 10 Changes Made to the Bible (part 2, Trey the Explainer)
- justanotherjoe 4y ago

warent 4y ago

The important thing it seems is that his myth a part of our stories, and who we are, throughout a large part of the world. Myths tell us about ourselves. The sad thing is when people distort or weaponize myth to control others for personal egocentric agendas. Ultimately many of his apparent teachings seem to be timeless: finding joy in living simply; understanding that heaven is within; etc. Lots of overlap with Buddhist teachings on cessation of suffering. I'm not religious and still try to incorporate the beauty of these ideals!

calvinmorrison 4y ago
If you think Jesus being a 'good guy' is the most important part of Jesus, that's absolutely missing the point of Christianity.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Jesus being a "good guy" is fundamental to the role he plays in Christianity. How could you see it any other way?
  - nathan_compton 4y ago
    From some Christians' points of view the important part of the Jesus story is that he is sacrificed by God as a way of dealing with a fundamental break between humanity and God having to do with the Jewish priesthood.
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      That is the other important aspect of the Jesus story. He was the son of God in human flesh, exemplified by the manner in which he lived ("good guy") and by his teachings. Yet he was betrayed by one of his disciples, and died a distinctly "low death". I think it's more correct to say that God sent Jesus down to Earth and Jesus sacrificed himself / God forsake him, than "he is sacrificed by God". This is probably a bit nitpicky from your perspective. My main point is that there is no Christians that do not hold the following two aspects of Jesus as extremely important: (1) The life of Jesus: how he lived and what he taught (2) Jesus sacrificed on the cross Frankly, I think you're not familiar with Christian teachings if you claim otherwise, i.e. by disagreeing with a person who says that Jesus being a "good guy" is an important aspect of the Christian faith. It is important, unequivocally.

mbfg 4y ago

It's also possible that the stories were an amalgamation of several itinerant preachers. It might explain some of the conflicts between different gospels. But that there were real people at the basis of these stories is a pretty mundane claim, and so the mundane parts of the story i'm willing accept without much evidence. That a preacher had followers, gave sermons, pissed off the wrong people and got crucified is pretty mundane for the time, i'm willing to accept that those things are likely true.

throw0101c 4y ago

> The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

GalahiSimtam 4y ago

Uhm, if you are interested so, you should realize it is these false narratives that are used most convincingly in support of Jesus historicity. Consider that passage from Flavius referencing Jesus. It is somewhat different in the Arabic translation version. Some people goes as far as to doubt if this passage is altogether an insertion of later christian scribes. On the other hand, they usually argue that Jesus being born in Bethlehem is made up to match some old prophets, and then they accept that if Jesus was completely made up he would not be from Nazareth. (*) There are more analyses like that in "Gospel of Afranius" by Kirill Eskov (who is known for "The Last Ringbearer"), and I found out only today that it was translated to English recently, wikipedia says Dec 2022. Enjoy! (*) it is relatively rare that someone will observe that there could have been another settlement called Bethlehem just closer to Nazareth.

nathan_compton 4y ago

As a secular person I can understand Jesus as an important historical figure, but it seems to me his "historicity" is a pretty uninteresting question. I know this can be hard for a person who was raised in Christianity to understand, but from an outside perspective, the guy is pretty boring. His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier (and they were better explained an examined by them). From this perspective, its hard to care about detailed historical questions about the guy except purely as history, which is full of a lot of other arguably more interesting questions.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
The more interesting way to approach I think is not so much through great man-style history like that about what he did or why, or even why him. But what was it about that time and place that produced so many of these movements, of which his was one (notably john the baptist who had a similar thing going first/with some overlap, and whose movement was almost certainly more popular than the jesus movement in their time)? What made rome react to these movements the way they did, were they able to identify the real risk they posed (it did end up becoming a massive source of unrest and radicalism in the empire), did they understand the risks inherent in martyring apocalyptic religious leaders? It's also a good entry point for understanding the process of history as a practice and discipline. For example we can be pretty sure jesus was from nazareth because it's mentioned in mark, the earliest gospel, and nazareth was a nothing place nowhere, there's no reason to fabricate an important figure being from there. Similarly his nativity story is probably a later attempt to link him to bethlehem, a city of deep significance to jews at the time. That's an interesting technique! There are lots of those, historians aren't just people who know facts about history, they are practitioners of this discipline. It's one of the most researched, most discussed subjects in history and the movement that started there is one of the most impactful regardless of your personal relationship to it. So it's a good place to get an understanding of the concepts and techniques of history and historicity.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Although "show us some citations" is getting to be a pretty boring response, I would like to see some elaboration on "His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier." I don't think so. The pagan "religions" were not very big on "everyone, even the poor, the sick, and the lame, is equal." Slavery was accepted almost everywhere. Women were very definitely second-class citizens. "Giving charity" was not a central concept in the Greek moral universe. I mention the last one especially because in the pre-Constantine era, the notion that other Christians were your brothers and would take care of you was pretty powerful. That was not a common thing back then.

thomasahle 4y ago

It can probably also teach us a lot about how to start successful movements today. Though the part where you get your ideology integrated into the ligitimacy of large countries is maybe hard to achieve. Perhaps Marx and socialism is the closest analog.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

> There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there). Josephus is the only one I've heard put forth (and I am aware that many believe the one mention of Jesus by Josephus was a more recent edit). It wasn't clear to me that it was an open and shut case that there was a man from Nazareth named Jesus.

RC_ITR 4y ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus) Tacitus talks abut Jesus in The Annals, and if we don't take that collection at face value, a lot of our understanding of Rome becomes shaky.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  I had not heard of that one. Personally, while atheist, I believe there likely was a Jesus of Nazareth. I just reason that if they were going to invent someone out of whole cloth they would have made up someone more interesting than a carpenter from Nazareth. It's kind of the coolest part of Jesus to me, how ordinary and humble his beginnings are.