The historicity of Jesus

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name 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 Judæa, 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. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

- Tacitus, Roman Historian

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tacitus#Authenticity
Sorry bud

>rationalwiki

>Thallus
He never mentioned Jesus
>Josephus
It was forged later by Christians

Dying-and-Rising Gods prior to Jesus:
>Romulus
Roman state god, his death and resurrection celebrated in annual plays
>Osiris
Egyptian god, those baptized into his death and resurrection are saved in the afterlife
>Zalmoxis
Thracian god, his death and resurrection assures followers of eternal life

Jesus Christ = Julius Caesar

This is a source, but not a primary source.

True. It is a hostile source though.

That doesn't give it any more (or less) credibility tho

Meh. That's debatable.

reminder that r/atheism regulars like you don't understand the function of religion

How so?

Source 1
>that dumbs ass Hitler invaded Russia

Source 2
>our glorious Fuhrer invaded Russia

How would the hostility be of any value concerning the credibility?

Source 1: The Rape of Nanking happened.

Source 2: No it didn't.

Those are qually hostile.

>It was forged later by Christians
That's not universally accepted, even by scholars. In fact, it's incredibly contested.

Reminder that you're an autist

Considering he was born around 60 AD, he himself can't be sure Jesus existed.

Blasphemy, how dare you doubt the existence of our eternal Lord Zalmoxis

> Anything I don't like is fake!

If Christians faked Josephus' account, why aren't there more fakes in the historical record?

> "I'm going to fake historical records"
> "This will prove that my God really lived"
> fake source is critical of my beliefs
> only fake one document

This is what atheists actually believe.

How many times does this autistic asshole get to post this same fucking thread before he's banned?

He ALWAYS resorts to the fucking cop-out arguments that every single fucking primary source (the New Testament, Tacitus, Josephus, Mara bar Sarapion, Suetonius, the Talmud, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phlegon of Tralles, Celsus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lucian of Samosota, Emperor Trajan, Epictetus, Numineus of Apamea, Galen, etc.) were all "later Christian forgeries" WITHOUT A SINGLE FUCKING SHRED OF PROOF.

Nobody, and I mean LITERALLY FUCKING NOBODY who has actually studied the New Testament or the history of the Middle East denies the existence of a man named Jesus (Yeshoa) who started a religious movement.

Also, if there was no Jesus and no disciples, WHO THE FUCK WAS THE FIRST POPE?!?!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

"Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is more probable than not,[4][5][6][7][nb 1][nb 2][nb 3][nb 4] although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels.[nb 5][13][nb 6][15]:168–173 While scholars have criticized Jesus scholarship for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness,[nb 7] with very few exceptions such critics generally do support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed.[17][nb 8][19][20][21]"

Wut?

There are. A lot of the bits about Herod were rewritten to fit in to the New Testament view of him.

Yeah, problem is that 95% of the people here don't understand what the historical method is. I took some courses on the research of early Christendom. It's funny: Even the most hardcore atheist and borderline communist historians agree that someone names Jesus existed.

>the Talmud

How the fuck the Talmud a source? It was written in 500 AD and no one can actually agree if "Yeshu" is referring to Jesus because there are so many different Yeshus.

>fucking cop-out arguments
The cop out argument is listing your bullshit and claiming they are "primary sources." I mean the idea that any of those are actually primary sources shows you have no idea what a primary source is.
>the New Testament
None of the people who wrote it ever met the so-called "Jesus"
>Tacitus
Not a primary source, he learned from Pliny who met some of the early Christians, it is no way a reliable source
>Pliny the Younger
Most of the claims made by Tacitus about the fire in Rome are not corroborated by any evidecne
>Josephus
It's simply not a source. Josephus was a Jew, it makes no sense why he would give any cadence to Christian thought. A lot of Josephus' work, not even just Jesus was forged

It was embellished afterward, not forged.

No, it just shows that there were already people plenty convinced Jesus was real and the son of God rather than the whole thing being some elaborate 2nd century hoax.

There is more written evidence that Jesus existed than for Alexander the Great.

alexander the great is not believed to be the only God to purported to walk the face of the earth, no shit people should be writing about jesus.

I'm pointing out the retarded double-standard, especially since we're talking about Jesus existing as a man, period.

Nobody was arguing against that though, the other user was saying there aren't any primary sources

Quality > quantity

We have far more direct evidence of Alexander, it's why there wasn't a need to make up a bunch of bullshit stories to "prove" existence.

lol. Fucking Catholics, man...

>at least three of the gospels were written well within the lifetime of the apostles and are largely in agreement with each other despite separate authorships
>two of them possibly written/recounted by apostles themselves
>references to non-Jesus matters match non-biblical records and archelogical evidence of the time, in Luke especially
>no one in the early church (made up partly of people who would have seen Jesus while alive) seriously contested their validity
>"n-no they don't count because!"

Please. We don't discount the idea Socrates existed and our only evidence of him is from his pupil Plato.

>We don't discount the idea Socrates existed
Um...what? Yes we do. Plato wrote fiction to make his points and spread his ideas all the time.

And now you know the type of person who will be in hellfire forever. Try to pity him if you can.

Prove your absurd statement.

Talmud was begun in Babylon in the 6th century BC.

BC.

And we have, what, 7 manuscripts about Plato?

and 26,000 about Jesus?

we know the sources about him weren't forged because a shit ton of them are talking slack about jesus

>26,000 about Jesus
And not one of those is a primary source

>talking slack
How does that prove authenticity?

>>at least three of the gospels were written well within the lifetime of the apostles and are largely in agreement with each other despite separate authorships

The earliest gospel we have is somewhere between 125-250 AD. It's still heavily contested whether they were written by the apostles. There are many non-trivial inconsistencies within these texts. Even his birth story is obviously fabricated to match prophecies.

>>two of them possibly written/recounted by apostles themselves

See above.

>>references to non-Jesus matters match non-biblical records and archelogical evidence of the time, in Luke especially

Luke couldn't even get the correct governor of Syria during the census right. Trusting the Bible for historical matters is like trusting ancient Egyptian texts. Heavily affected by propaganda, such as claimed a pharaoh conviniently conquering territory just larger than Darius

>>no one in the early church (made up partly of people who would have seen Jesus while alive) seriously contested their validity

Obviously not, they were Christians. Do you think Muslims would doubt the validity of the Koran? But let's not mention Christians had a council in the 3rd century to cherry pick what to include in the New Testament

>Please. We don't discount the idea Socrates existed and our only evidence of him is from his pupil Plato.

Yes, because it's more reasonable to assume Plato existed than something heavily tainted by religious fanaticism, propaganda, and politics.

Not the one that mentions Yeshu

Pagan and Jews hated Jesus.
Imagine my shock

>we know the sources about him weren't forged

Uh...

Portions of the Talmud were written in the 1st century AD.

reformjudaism.org/talmud

"The Talmud (Hebrew for “study”) is one of the central works of the Jewish people. It is the record of rabbinic teachings that spans a period of about six hundred years, beginning in the first century C.E. and continuing through the sixth and seventh centuries C.E."

>ignoring half of his arguments
>making up bullshit arguments like "Josephus was a Jew, ergo he'd never write about Christ"

Whom do you consider the first historical pope?

None of you faggots can name a single Near East Historian who buys the "Christ Myth Theory", I guarantee it.

>The earliest gospel we have is somewhere between 125-250 AD
That's John and at 128 AD it's the latest.

>Luke
The governor thing has been debunked for decades, update your archeological info.

>But let's not mention Christians had a council in the 3rd century to cherry pick what to include in the New Testament
To affirm what books were already widely taken as canon, actually, and the gospels were never challenged. It was all letters and shit.

Please stop using stale memes as arguments.

>making up bullshit arguments

It's not a bullshit argument, it's clear you didn't understand the message. It wasn't that he wouldn't speak about Christ, it's how he did.

No way John was 160 years old. John finished writing @ 95 AD.

The gospels were likely written in the 30's and 40's, and Paul was writing in the 40's and 50's. Luke was literally documenting the first martyr and the earliest church members possible.

the people who late date everything in the New Testament do it to discredit the New Testament, and for no other reason. They tried to back the gospels up to 70 AD reasoning that since nobody wrote of the destruction of the temple, they must have written in the late 60's.

It's bogus reasoning. There's no reason not to believe the apostles immediately started writing.

For dates on the gospels I'm going by the oldest documents we know of
Matthew: 150-250 AD
Mark: 250 AD
Luke: 175-250 AD
John: 125-250 AD

>Has been debunked
No it hasn't, Luke's claim is still false. If you want to show me the consensus that disproves this, go ahead I couldn't find it. The new testament is a joke as a historical document.

>Nicene council
They voted on what documents they believed were divinely inspired. That doesn't mean the gospels are any more valid. There were a plethora of gospels written.

You need to proffer they immediately began writing, and there have been no documents found to prove this. The earliest found gospels are dated between 125-250 AD

Complete and utter bullshit.

Matthew, John, Peter - all apostles of Jesus, all full grown men in 32 AD.

Luke and Paul were contemporaries; Paul was a full grown man when Stephen was martyred. He died in the 60s.

You're so full of shit you could be a septic tank.

the joke is you judging the bible, that's the joke.

And finally, to end your reign of bullshit, the Nicene council had absolutely nothing to do with making canon out of the books of the bible that had all been written prior to 95 AD.

We don't have the autographs. The autographs are what they immediately began writing. In their lifetime. When they were already full grown men in 32 AD.

>Believing Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the gospels we know although there is no proof of this
O Lordy

>The earliest found gospels are dated between 125-250 AD
No, that's the earliest dated manuscript copies of the autographs, having absolutely nothing to do with when the autographs were written.

He already knows.

The idea is that a source is less likely to have made up something disfavorable.
I mean it's obvious right, if the romans knew there was no jesus guy they would have certainly mentioned it, while a christian would assume jesus existed regardless.

It's possible there were no such thing as official records and he's taking the christian's words are true however, since it's not too unbelievable that a crazy hobo claiming to be god was executed in judea.

You're right, I'll just follow it's writings without question

It was precisely a function of the Nicene Council. Do you think the New testament just formed in unison amongst everybody?

We don't have evidence of these even existing. So until then, we can only go by what we have.

>Matthew, John, Peter - all apostles of Jesus, all full grown men in 32 AD.
None of them met Jesus. They had visions from a celestial being named Jesus and early Nazarenes changed it to make it more appealing

>The idea is that a source is less likely to have made up something disfavorable
That is a very flawed idea. There are plenty of reasons that motivate people to write disfavorable about something/someone. It does NOT in ANY way add or substract credibility to that writing.

Jesus appears and is mentioned in the Old Testament on many occasions. Goes by the name The Angel of the Lord and other such names.

>lalalalalala I can't hear you.
Oh nice. Great discussion. Well... thread's over I guess.

Well if you read Josephus the whole Jesus thing looks suspiciously out of place and artificially inserted.
>''And so Aristobulus murdered his ehh btw there was this Jesus guy, and now let me get back to the actual story, so than Herod told his wife...''

Revisionist bullshit trying to undermine the perceived credibility of Christianity as a faith. Once certain agenda-driven scholars saw that making Jesus into a "mere" historical figure failed to drive people away from the church, the next logical step was to make Jesus a purely fictional figure.

Literally fanfiction-tier historiography.

>sourcing richard carrier

>The Quran is the spoken teachings of Gabriel
No you dunce it is supposed to be the direct words of God.
How can you fuck up a basic tenant of the religion this badly.

Not a very good source there my man

haha nice reductionistic argument dude, christcucks btfo

?

There's a book called the Case for Christ and a movie about it as well. I've read part of it but not all of it. We can't use any prophetic or religious sources if we want to justify him because objectivity. There is my Josephus and calling him a fabrication is like saying The Prince was created as a manual to throw the monarchy (actual theory). Do you really think people let themselves die over someone who was a fabrication in their lifetime?

The most famous historian of Rome wrote of Jesus and his followers.

>not good enough

*tips fedora*

If you could follow the bible, you'd be much better off than you are now, yes. Infinitely so.

The Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament canon (nor did Constantine). Nicea was concerned with how Christians should articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Jesus. Thus it was the birthplace of the Nicean creed.

We have copies of the autographs, and writings of the early christians sufficient to reconstruct the autographs.

What you have is willful ignorance.

They all met Jesus, lived with Jesus for years, and were witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. And they are all currently seated with Jesus in heaven.

Hostile witnesses tend to be like that, yes.

Even Judas?

It was satan in the cave with Mohammad. Mohammad knew it, and almost killed himself over it.

Judas met Jesus, worked with Jesus for years, betrayed Jesus, and killed himself.

"Have I not selected you all, and one of you is a devil?"

--Jesus of Nazareth

>If you could follow the bible, you'd be much better off than you are now, yes. Infinitely so.

At this point I'm assuming you're a troll so whatever. I'm good without relying on a the belief of some Canaanite god being the only god and the whole Jesus bullshit. He didn't even fulfill the Messianic prophecies.

>The Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament canon (nor did Constantine). Nicea was concerned with how Christians should articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Jesus. Thus it was the birthplace of the Nicean creed.

Ok, where was the New testament put together then?

>We have copies of the autographs, and writings of the early christians sufficient to reconstruct the autographs.

Once the again, the only documents we have are from the dates I gave. Ergo, that's the best we know. If we find any earlier copies, great. That hasn't happened yet. Saying there were earlier copies without proof is useless.

>What you have is willful ignorance.

K.

It's a statistic tendency that verifies itself in reality.
Nothing flawed about that, as long as we know it's no guarantee.

suck my dick

>I heard Jesus existed
Ya none of those sources suffice.

Gabriel is speaking for Allah though

>Do you really think people let themselves die over someone who was a fabrication in their lifetime

Yes. They didn't believe it was a fabrication. They thought it was real. In the cargo cults their religious experiences started as them getting visions and hearing words from antennas and then 30 years later they believed there was a real man named John Frum who taught them everything they know and would soon drop them Cargo. There is precedent for it. You had people saying they knew John Frum personally even though he didn't exist. This was less than 100 years ago so to say it's unlikely back then seems odd.

>It's a statistic tendency that verifies itself in reality.
Nice conjecture m8.

>Tacitus
>Josephus
>Pliny the Younger
>THE FUCKING TALMUD

>The Talmud

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA