Did he actually exist?

30 years isn't that long, besides, they were written by his contemporaries....

>Gospels weren't written anywhere close to the time Jesus would have lived
They were written a few decades after. Matthew was written by a first-hand witness, Mark was dictated by a first-hand witness. Luke probably talked to first-hand witnesses. John was also a first hand witness, but in tradition he lived to be pretty old and didn't write his Gospel until much later.

>They were written a few decades after
That is, excluding Matthew, which might have been written much earlier.

carm.org/when-was-acts-written

Imagine someone writing about Hitler.

Our scribe is
- born in 1972
- has no acces first hand records or archives
- has to rely on hearsay and testimony from the elderly

How much faith do you have in his writings?

This is why I don't think the Holocaust happened (well in a nutshell)

Matthew
John Mark
Peter
John
Paul (met for years with the risen Christ Jesus in Arabia)
James
Jude
Luke (Acts)

>Gospels weren't written anywhere close to the time Jesus would have lived, and Paul explicitly sates that he never met Jesus.

You're a fucking lying son of a bitch, you know that?

Not a single historian specialising in the period believes he didn't exist. People who deny the existence of Jesus are the historical equivalent of creationists or flat earthers.

>b-but no contemporary evidence
There's no contemporary writing for Boudicca or Sulla or Stilicho either but I never hear their existence being denied.

The fact is, in the ancient world, contemporary accounts of people are very hard to come by.

Thank you for completely missing the point

>Not a single historian specialising in the period believes he didn't exist
But what is the basis for that belief?

>There's no contemporary writing for Boudicca or Sulla or Stilicho either but I never hear their existence being denied.

There's no reason to, since their existence carries no actual implications and geopolitics of the following time make no sense without them. Whereas a mythological Jesus doesn't completely fuck up the ensuing years.

Personally for me, all points like this do is shake any confidence I have in the concept of history itself.

But that isn't even close to what we see with the Gospels.
They were first written approx. 30 years after Christs death at the earliest and 50 years at the latest.
They had first hand knowledge.

>I don't like how people think the Gospels and Paul are somehow unreliable.

But they are unreliable. Considering that they fail basic tests of stuff that native Judeans ought to know (for instance, John twice calls words in Chapter 19 Hebrew when they're in fact Aramaic), they almost certainly written anywhere near the time and place they're purported to have been written.

Holy fuck. Talking about straining at a gnat and swallowing a fucking camel!

>muh hebrew
>muh people don't believe in hell
>muh surprise when I get to hell

So then answer me boys, say John really is a native Judean. Why does he make such a basic mistake about a language that is probably the one he grew up speaking? Why does he not know basic ritual law, like when he claims priests didn't want to go into Pilate's home for fear of impurity and inability to bring the paschal offering?

If 2,000 years from now, in some post-apocalyptic future, someone is trotting out a book which claims, from a real staffer and everything, that Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan was

>liberte egalite fraternite

Don't you think that raises a few questions about its authenticity?

Why do you have to imagine? You can buy Hitler's bodyguard's fucking book.

You think maybe the bodyguard knew something about Hitler, you dense fuck?

>it'd be strange indeed for him to describe Jesus as such.

But he still treats Jesus as a historical person regardless. This thread is about Christ's historicity; not his divinity.

It is likely that Josephus' original language did not describe Jesus as the messiah but the mainstream academic consensus is that three historical facts can be deduced from the Testimonium Flavianum:

1. A miracle worker named Jesus was baptized

2. He was crucified by Pontius Pilate

3. His disciples believed that he rose from the dead

>Paul explicitly sates that he never met Jesus.

No he literally states that he met him on the road to Damascus...

Was Pilate's home SCRUBBED OF ALL LEAVEN???

WAS IT THE PASSOVER???

Holy shit you're dense.

He stated more than that, as well.

Galatians 1
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days.

How did Paul know Jesus and the New Covenant better than all the other apostles combined?

Galatians 1:12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And what did Peter say about Paul?

2 Peter
... and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

> Was Pilate's home SCRUBBED OF ALL LEAVEN???

Sinful, not impurfiying. Not the same thing. And even then, it's eating or owning, neither of which would apply.

To create an impurity that they'd be unable to remove in time, he'd need a corpse in the house. And while I suppose that's theoretically possible, you'd really think someone would have mentioned a detail like that.

>WAS IT THE PASSOVER???

It quite explicitly wasn't, since you know, Passover starts AFTER they bring the paschal offering.

And you're calling other people dense?

Holy shit.

No REAL JEW is going to MISS PASSOVER by making himself UNCLEAN by going into a fucking GENTILE BUILDING FULL OF LEAVEN on the FUCKING DAY of the FUCKING PASSOVER.

YOU FUCKING FAKE JEW.

>Passover starts AFTER they bring the paschal offering.

Jesus Christ. Literally.

PASSOVER STARTS THE NIGHT BEFORE, LIKE ALL FUCKING JEW DAYS START. AT FUCKING SUNDOWN. THEY WERE AT PILATE'S ON FUCKING NISAN 14. FUCKING PASSOVER. YOU FUCKING JEW.

He existed, but the historical Jesus would have been completely different from the mythical Jesus.

Just some Jewish preacher, completely unremarkable.
That his cult grew so large was a combination of coincidence and pious (or truly malicious?) fraud.

Please learn the difference between תמאה and חיט . They're not the same thing.

In any case, being around bread almost a day before the actual start of pesach is neither sinful nor impurifying. So, yeah, minor problem.

You have your days mixed up there, user. The Passover sacrifice is slaughtered on the afternoon of the thirteenth, with Passover proper starting that evening, on the 14th, and you eating your unleavened bread and bitter herbs with the sacrifice.

This is of course before the sacrifice. Morning of the 13th is nothing special.

Do you know why Christians have trouble converting Jews? Because we actually know shit instead of getting mad. By the way, you still haven't dealt with the rather central issue of John not knowing Aramaic. Or is that just another oops or you guys gloss over in your own ignorance?

Have you actually studied Mediterranean history in the period of the 1st centuries BC and AD?

There are quite a few very good reasons why Christianity, in particular, grew from a small cult into such an important religion.

That the "King of Kings" filled a particular power vacuum is only one of them...

>"power vaccuum"

I'd turn the tables on you: have YOU studied history of the time and place? Because there was no "power vaccuum" for anyone. Syncretic paganist traditions and mystery religions very much fulfilled the needs of people, and some rivaled Christianity in number.

Combination of coincidence (it only takes one influential person to adopt the religion for whatever trivial reason to make a change) and fraud (Paul taking advantage of the Greeks who could not have known of the specifics and finer details of Jewish thought and theology).

Does anyone really exist?

>Paul taking advantage of the Greeks

Oh wow.

>Yes you see, the Greeks who converted to Christianity didn't actually want to convert! They thought they wanted to but in reality they were tricked into it but they just didn't know that but lucky for them, I've figured it out for them thousands of years later! Heh stupid Greeks.

Jesus died and rose again, but [spoiler]Tupac lives.[/spoiler]