Why don't contemporaries make mention of him?

Cleansing of the Temple, sermon on the mountain didn't make it to the books?

...

Josephus makes mention of him but some of the account was obviously doctored by early Christians. However, it is generally agreed that the initial account was genuine.

This pretty much. Not to mention, all of the disciples were actually adolescent boys and completely illiterate.

Why would it? It's not like either of those two were historical events from the point of view of contemporaries.

Shilbot 3000 Script Error [24:901][thread/2090181#p2090648]: Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier 'cuck' not found

Most of the Sermon of the Mount is lost. What we have left are artistic renditions of the general ideas he was conveying.

Also, him fucking things up at the Temple was considered a capital offense and is largely what got him executed, not for claiming to be the Messiah. You see, the Romans discovered that the kikes are very sensitive when people fuck with their Temple. When Herod put up a golden eagle near the entrance, some 50 odd youths and teachers similar to Jesus and Co. tore it down and hacked it up. They were executed with extreme prejudice. Jerusalem during Passover was a powder keg of religiosity and zealotry. The Roman garrison there was heavily outnumbered would have been unable to contain a full scale riot. Best policy was to nip it in the bud.

source pls

>backwater
>Pliny the Elder, writing of Herod's achievements, called Jerusalem "the most famous by far of the Eastern cities and not only the cities of Judea.

Why do people love to jump to extremes with history. It's either the center of the world or a backwater. Judea wasn't central nor was it a backwater like Gaul or Spain. Jerusalem had a population of about 200,000 at the time and about a million would make pilgrimage at passover. The number of Jews in the empire was between 10%-20% and it was a well known province and culture. Herod was the sponsor of the olympic games and other nobels from there were well known figures in the empire, Mariamne-I was bff with Cleopatra, Agrippa-I was Calligulas best body etc..

For which claim?

Tbh the only reason the Romans ever took Judea was to prevent sand nigs from sweeping down the Sinai and disrupting the grain supply from Egypt. It offers little else in the way of resources or trade goods.

>Judea wasn't central nor was it a backwater like Gaul or Spain

Sorry man, it was a backwater. Your figure for Jerusalem is straight up horrifically inaccurate. The only cities that had 200,000 people or more were Rome, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria etc. Gaul was not a backwater, becoming by the early Empire a pretty prosperous region due to the massive number of troops stationed there stimulating the local economy. Spain was very also very prosperous in the early Empire. Judea was pretty third rate and only had any strategic significance at all because of its proximity to the wealth of Egypt.

>Pliny the Elder, writing of Herod's achievements, called Jerusalem "the most famous by far of the Eastern cities and not only the cities of Judea.

Well unfortunately Pliny talks a whole heap of shit. I don't think Jerusalem was even the most important city in the tiny province, with Caesarea being more prominent.

>The number of Jews in the empire was between 10%-20%

Are you high or something? Or are you Jewish?

Not the other dude you replied to but I believe during the Passover holiday, the city swelled to those numbers, and then once the holiday was over, everyone went back home. The Temple was still a huge deal in the Judaism of late antiquity.

Because he was a hobo in a largely illiterate society in a time from which little direct reference to anything survives.

There are evidence of Aramaic Gospels which may be precursors to the Synoptics, which aren't even that much later than Jesus themselves-the oldest parts of Mark dating from c.64 AD.

Pontius Pilate himself is only historically attested from one rock he dedicated, and he was the prefect of Judea.

The notion that Jesus as a man was fabricated is hilariously uninformed

Don't forget Philo and Josephus, who both thought he was a giant prick.

Christ Myth theorists will discard Philo and Josephus for being too far away, despite 60 years not really being that long.

They Christ myth theory is so bizarre in general, to an extent that I can't believe a historian could have come up with it.

Why make up Jesus-so you can be horribly ostracized for 300 years before an Emperor decides you were actually pretty cool? Talk about playing the long game,

Maybe he didn't exist.
Or if he did, not enough literate people gave enough of a shit about him.

All of those people were writing decades, if not centuries, after Christ's death.

Hell, Peter even makes it a point of pride in his writing that he never met the Messiah, but instead was contacted and told to spread his word, by God, through dreams and visions.
"I dreamed it" doesn't fly in modern history scholarship.

Scripture doesn't qualify as reliable historical sources.

>Hell, Peter even makes it a point of pride in his writing that he never met the Messiah, but instead was contacted and told to spread his word, by God, through dreams and visions."I dreamed it" doesn't fly in modern history scholarship.

Are you retarded, Peter was a Disciple.

Are you thinking of paul?

Very few people argue that Christ didn't really exist. Historians instead tend to argue that they don't know if he existed. This is a pretty subtle, but important, difference for a historian.

>he confused Peter with Paul
>he thinks a few decades casts significant doubt on writings describing events in late antiquity
>he adopts an authoritative tone while shitposting about a subject he has revealed himself to be ignorant about

Stop posting please.

>Scripture doesn't qualify as reliable historical sources

This is an antiquated 19th century notion, the kind of thing that claimed the Iliad and the Odyssey had no historical merit.

You're working off a modern bias where you inherently separate religion, tradition, and history where ancients wouldn't.

The plausible parts of the Gospels are likely a proper reflection of the times, with Mark probably being the most accurate life sketch of the Historical Jesus.

The Historical Jesus was, according to Mark: a miracle worker who came to prominence as a local preacher who went to Jerusalem, got arrested, and was executed under the roman prefect of Judea.

There's nothing inherently implausible or extraordinary in that, except the miracles.

It's important to remember that we still have "faith healers" today, so a person being called a miracle worker is not in itself extraordinary to the point of being fictional

Ah shit my bad, I was thinking of Paul. My point still stands though.

The authors of the Gospels fail to name themselves, describe their qualifications, or show any criticism with their foundational sources – which they also fail to identify. Filled with mythical and non-historical information, and heavily edited over time, the Gospels certainly should not convince critics to trust even the more mundane claims made therein.

The earliest sources only reference the clearly fictional Christ of Faith. These early sources, compiled decades after the alleged events, all stem from Christian authors eager to promote Christianity – which gives us reason to question them.

People have mentioned Josephus and Tacitus. These are likely the only sources which have any reasonable claim to be writing about Jesus within 100 years of his life.

And even those sparse accounts are shrouded in controversy, with disagreements over what parts have obviously been changed by Christian scribes (the manuscripts were preserved by Christians), the fact that both these authors were born after Jesus died (they would thus have probably received this information from Christians), and the oddity that centuries go by before Christian apologists start referencing them.

As others have said, he was an itinerant preacher from an uneducated backwater. The only time he ever spent in a metropolitan area (Jerusalem) was for less than a week, and during a time when the city was crowded with others like him. When it comes down to it, he was just one of many wandering apocalyptic preachers of the time that had a small following of illiterates. There really wasn't much remarkable about him, considering the historical circumstances.

There really isn't much reason to doubt he existed. He had a common name, was part of a popular religious trend, and preached in an area where someone like him wouldn't be out of the ordinary. Just because people came along later and added elements similar to earlier savior cult traditions doesn't mean there's anything implausible about the historical facts of his life.

and then later there were tons of saints who were said to have magic powers like christ. so why is jesus special?

tfw God makes it hard to believe in him but sends you to hell forever if you don't.

If Jesus was a ghost to history, then may he not as well have never existed?

This thread isn't about being special, it's about existing.

[shitposting heavily intensifies]

Because he was marginal, it was Peter who made him famous post mortem. And later Constantine who used the faith to unify the Empire again making Christianity one of the dominant religions of the world.

Jesus was a marginal guy when alive.

A shitpost. How wonderful.

>still hung up on one silly mistake
>shitposts about it because he's frustrated and angry that he can't make a counter argument

Stop posting please.

Sure, I guess, but there's no point in arguing for that unless you have evidence for his fabrication.

If you're going to argue for something like that, then why not also argue for the Cartesian Evil Genius?

>expects people to take him seriously when he can't get foundational facts right
>is probably jewish himself

stop posting please

Why is the cleansing of the temple supposed to be special? It happened during Passover, when the temple was full of people and lots of shit was going on. Jesus came in, shouted a bunch of apocalyptic stuff, got in people's faces, turned over a few tables, and left (according to Mark). It wasn't a big event, just a person getting out of hand during a gathering. Does ever bar fight get recorded on the national news?

>Why don't contemporaries make mention of him?
They do. They Apostles, Roman records, for starters.

>unless you have evidence for his fabrication.

My proof is that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

That's great bud.
Let me know when you make any sort of rebuttal or argument for this , otherwise, you're going to just keep shitposting and I'm going to start ignoring you, as you seem to have nothing to say beyond "HAHA HE CONFUSED THE NAMES ONCE"

Okay, bud, pick any of his miracles then.

Well, that puts you at odds with the greatest bulk of Historical minds everywhere, but okay.

That's also an easy claim to make when everything that traditionally constitutes evidence is not evidence

>Roman Records
>written in 90AD

>Apostles
>eager to spread Christianity
>never really identify themselves
>no qualifications as historians
>never even identify or show criticism of their own sources
>let's take the mythical and magical things they espouse as legitimate historic sources

I don't think so friend.

Look. There are no records that Mongolia was once ruled by a giant goat, doesn't mean there isn't any reason to assume so.

Most of Jesus' miracles are minor things that hokey Faith Healers get away with TODAY.

The big things like the transfiguration and the calming of the sea happen when no one is around aside from the apostles.

The most significant public miracle Jesus performs is the multiplication of the loaves, and that may be false too.

No historian is claiming that the whole of the Gospels is fact. In fact, most historians trim the life of the Historical Jesus down to the Baptism of Christ and the Crucifixion, with everything else being various degrees of uncertainty.

What are you talking about? People brought up the cleansing of the temlple's absence in records as a reason to doubt that Jesus was a historical figure. I point out that it was a minor scuffle in a crowded place which probably wouldn't have warranted notice.

Miracles have nothing to do with this. We're talking about whether a historical figure existed or not, and why mentions of him are sparse. It's entirely possible to think Jesus existed, but didn't perform miracles; the cleansing (especially as recorded by Mark) isn't even a miraculous event, Just Jesus yelling and turning over a few tables.

Now you're resorting to Family Guy tier argumentation

This was still far from the period where Christianity would become popular enough for imperial acceptance. This is around the time when learned people actually start to convert, rather than just poor dirt farmers.

Paul mentions the disciples and James the Brother of the Lord in the genuine epistles. He specifically states that he had come to an irreconcilable disagreement with them about church doctrine. Why would someone write about dissent in the early church, especially if it disagrees with the people who received the gospel directly from Jesus?

>and the oddity that centuries go by before Christian apologists start referencing them
>mfw they're now the most reliable sources Christians have

You can't make this shit up.

There's no argument it's just you dismissing the Gospels out of hand because they don't meet your absurd criteria for historicity. Can you point to any biographies from late antiquity where the authors "describe their qualifications, or show any criticism with their foundational sources?" But hey, even if you want to double down on the necessity for an author to describe their qualifications in order to be credible here's John doing precisely that:

>That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

- 1 John 1:1

Now can skip the part where you find some excuse to discredit this and jump to the part where you stop shitposting? Please and thank you.

Actually, I believe he was probably real. If he was fake then why didn't the authors completely write it as they saw fit? Why write some convoluted story about how he connects to Bethlehem, why not just have the whole story take place there? My point is he's a ghost, good luck finding anything about him.

In scripture he's a literary vehicle for the views of the authors.

You're dumb and you should feel dumb.

Wouldn't this logic also call into question the existence of Muhammad, Moses, and even a bunch of other historical events/people/etc that have been written about?

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I think you're missing the point.
>absurd criteria for historicity
That is literally the point of much of historic studies in academia. Historians decide what to believe, and what not to believe, based on strict criteria like that.
And under that criterea, you can't prove (or disprove, infact) the existence of Christ. That's the point. Not that he didn't exist, but that we don't know if he did or not.
And you're quoting John when it's been said, over and over again, that the words of the Apostles cannot be interpreted as proof.

>There's no argument it's just you dismissing the Gospels out of hand because they don't meet your absurd criteria for historicity. Can you point to any biographies from late antiquity where the authors "describe their qualifications, or show any criticism with their foundational sources?" But hey, even if you want to double down on the necessity for an author to describe their qualifications in order to be credible here's John doing precisely that:

Not him, but we can verify the authors and their credentials of many historic texts, we cannot conclusively do the same with the gospels, which also have a clear agenda for representing events and people as they do.

Le "The Bible™ is a single source and everything in it can be dismissed as a fairy tale" meme

He was a jew who said he was the messiah and then got executed in one of the shittiest Roman regions.

Why would they record it?

Also can you people imagine how many people there were who said they were some sort of messiah or prophet? Probably a few in every region, all throughout Roman history. They would have about as much incentive to record Jesus as some random preacher in Gaul with 20 followers.

>Wouldn't this logic also call into question the existence of Muhammad, Moses, and even a bunch of other historical events/people/etc that have been written about?

Yes. You can make the exact same arguments about alot of things, but with Jesus this gains more attention because, well, its Jesus.

But infact, the life of Christ is even better documented than the life of Muhammad.

Trying to decipher what is nonsense and what is real is what alot of historians try to do.

We would call that meme the academic study of history.

>Why write some convoluted story about how he connects to Bethlehem
That is an example of the authors writing it as they saw fit, though. It's fairly unlikely that Jesus had anything to do with Bethlehem, since no one really mentions it outside of the nativity accounts that are missing from half of the gospels, and he's always referred to as coming from Nazareth.

That posed a problem for the authors of Matthew and Luke who wanted to make Jesus the messiah, but needed to connect his to Bethlehem. So they came up with reasons to explain why, even though everyone knew he was from Nazareth, he had a connection to Bethlehem. The accounts contradict each other (and contain elements that are mutually exclusive), and contain elements of history which are false. If anything in the gospels can be seen as being made up, it's the nativity stories, since they don't make a lot of sense and were clearly added for a symbolic purpose.

The bible isn't dismissed out of hand in academia, it's just subject to scrutiny, criticism, and verification. This is part of what the tradition of textual criticism is about.

The point is that secularists suddenly become significantly more rigorous about what is acceptable evidence for the historicity of Jesus than they are about other historical figures. For example, no one disputes that Siddartha Hannibal or Confucius were historical despite the lack of contemporary sources mentioning them but of course Jesus doesn't get the same treatment and his lack of contemporary references casts "serious doubt" about Jesus' historicity.

Really makes you think.

Ever read the new testament?

I don't know if you're just writing this to be contrarian. That was the point of his post. Why bother writing a convoluted nativity for a person who is fictional? You can just have the dude be born in Bethlehem and stay in Bethlehem and not write anything at all about the shitty, economically depressed hamlet of Nazareth.

>Siddartha Hannibal or Confucius

Didn't all those big guys write things?

Hannibal is accepted because his existence is more or less required for Roman history (which is well-documented) to make sense. But Siddhartha and Confucius are both highly debated. Would you quit with the fucking victim complex already? Jesus gets more attention for two reasons the first is that Christianity is more prevalent in the west (what with there being a core of people that can't shut up about it because they're ideologically required to spread the "good news") and two there are actual ramifications to his existence. Whether Confucius or Siddhartha existed has no impact on their message, the same cannot be said for Jesus.

Fuck, I didn't read it carefully. Maybe I'm too used to Christian shitposting on this forum. I've seen people here make similar statements as proof that the narrative is historically accurate (I guess because it not making sense is proof that people wouldn't make it up?). My bad.

Nope.

Hmm... OP here. This point has changed my mind. This deduction is very sound, I do accept that he was real, but he may as well have been a spook. It would be like to try to write a biography about a guy who's only record is a birth certificate.

>If anything in the gospels can be seen as being made up, it's the nativity stories, since they don't make a lot of sense and were clearly added for a symbolic purpose

Which is also why they're only in the least historically important Gospels.

Mark and John both lack the Birth Narrative, despite John being very spiritual.

Mark even cuts off at the Empty Tomb

>secularists suddenly become significantly more rigorous about what is acceptable evidence for the historicity of Jesus than they are about other historical figures

That is not true at all.
See: You can make this argument about alot of shit in history, and indeed, you should. Sources, verification, evidence, etc, are all heavily scrutinized regardless of whether you were writing about ancient Egyptian basket weaving or Jesus Christ.

This one in particular just attracts more attention because its about Jesus.

>confucius
>highly debated

KEK

Yeah, all the Chinese philosophers of that time without hard details about their existence have their existences called into question. You see it with Lao Tzu and Lieh Tzu as well, just as examples.

>Hi, I'm user, I just read Bart Ehrman I saw him on >the Daily Show on Youtube. I read his book, now >I'm an expert Jesus historian.

Even Ehrman, no friend of Christian apologists admits the guy lived.

He lived user, whether or not he is your Messiah is a matter of religion.

As a matter of history, he existed, by all standards applied to any other historical figure of the time.

strangenotions.com/skeptic-bart-ehrman-on-whether-jesus-really-existed/

>Siddhartha and Confucius are both highly debated

Lol yeah I must've missed all those documentaries like "the Buddha who wasn't there" or the "sage myth" movement in academia.

Let's not make absolute statements.
He admits that the preponderance of evidence suggests that Yeshua ben Yusef was a real person.

>but some of the account was obviously doctored by early Christians.

Right, because the earliest Christians, who would have been the most devout, completely forged a secular affirmation of their messiah. Dan Brown get out.

That's because you've never bothered to actually go looking.

Another example would be Homer and his epics, where there was constant debate over their nature and authorship, and the nature of Homer himself.

Chuang Tzu springs to mind. Being one of the few ancient Chinese philosophers whose existence can be somewhat verified; the actual authorship of the philosophical texts attributed to him goes under considerable scrutiny (as in which ones were actually him, and which ones were other authors attributing their own works to him).

As I said, Jesus gets more attention because there's a lot of people who refuse to shut the fuck up about the guy and because his existence, and the authorship of the texts associated with him has actual ramifications to their validity.

Confucius is not one of the philosophers "without hard details" by any stretch of the imagination. They even identified the DNA shared by his descendants.

It's pretty much standard consensus in academia that some of the account of Josephus is a later interpolation. People don't stop being people just because they're religious.

>Even Ehrman
So what? There are plenty of historians who would agree with him, plenty who would disagree with him, and even more than the two groups combined who say its not proven one way or the other.

>whether or not he is your Messiah is a matter of religion.
My religious beliefs never once mattered in how I view this.
I have no incentive to make you doubt Christ, or affirm your belief in him.

My mistake. Regardless you do see this kind of debate with most historical figures.

Would you please link me 1 (one) academic paper denying Confucius' existence?

Nah, I'm gonna have to admit my mistake here. I actually don't know much about Confucius, he's relatively well documented apparently. I was just assuming his existence was debated because most philosophers that I've encountered of the era are subject to such scrutiny.

Regardless my point is simply that this kind of scrutiny is not exclusive to Jesus and the apostles.

Why did docetism arise in Ignatius' time?

Wouldn't Jesus' historical foorptint be a bit more pronounced in c. 35 – c. 108?

The language of the interpolated Testimonium Flavianum does not sound like Josephus at all and the odd bits of flattery for an illiterate street preacher just don't sit right with most people familiar with his work. Never mind it is bears striking similarities to Luke.

How come no one has mentioned the possibility that more historical accounts of Jesus did exist but were expunged from history by some political authority whose interests contradicted those espoused by Christianity?

Actually you've just proven that this level of scrutiny is indeed unique to Jesus.

>no contemporary sources for Confucius
>eh it's fine he's pretty well attributed after the fact so he existed

>no contemporary sources for Jesus
>we need to be responsible objective historians and remain skeptical about whether this "Jesus" character ever existed and we need to be very suspicious about those sources after the fact because they may have been tampered with or the authors are unreliable or they could be forgeries or they might be talking about several different people who later became known as a singular "Jesus" or they might be talking about a ghost who only looked like a man... et cetera et cetera.

>Actually you've just proven that this level of scrutiny is indeed unique to Jesus.

Not really. See and other previous posts, which brought up examples such as Lao Tzu and Lieh Tzu.

Seriously, end the victim complex.

In the case of Confucius, we have his remains and his descendants.

Because that's pure speculation.

The documents, if they existed, from the time of the seventy apostles could have been destroyed as heresy, or by persecutors, or not kept because the Gospels were deemed sufficient.

It could have been anything; there's little use speculating on theories why documents are missing.

Because Jesus was actually that unimportant to the literati. Does the New York Times write articles about that bum on Canal Street?

I'd actually say Confucius is a unique case. The Kong family has maintained extensive family records and they've been famous since OG Kong. They have a documented lineage with proof from dozens of Emperors over thousands of years granting them special privileges and letters of patent.

>How come no one has mentioned the possibility that more historical accounts of Jesus did exist but were expunged from history by some political authority whose interests contradicted those espoused by Christianity?

Because aside from the sporadic, patchy and minor persecutions (which early Christian authors like to present as a systematic and targeted shoah) prior to Constantine in the 4th century, Christianity has always been dominant in the Mediterranean world.

Maybe because the Gospels aren't about them? They are extremely humble, regardless.

A better example would be Socrates or Diogenes.

China has always been good at keeping old shit