Did Jesus exist? I don't care if he was the son of god...

Did Jesus exist? I don't care if he was the son of god, i just want to know if there is any historical evidence (besides the Bible) of his existance.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=84dwnPXD0LI
strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-the-evidence-for-jesus-part-1-of-2/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_Confucius_in_the_main_line_of_descent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Christ_myth_theory
youtube.com/watch?v=U9uEspZpYlo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele#.22House_of_David.22
youtube.com/watch?v=Qi29ezmfoX8
youtube.com/watch?v=aFeyOkdSLmE
youtube.com/watch?v=ZLCTzLzf6to
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>i just want to know if there is any historical evidence (besides the Bible) of his existance.
There isn't.

>the bible isn't historical evidence because thats inconvenient ;c
>i need historical evidence because i have stem autism ;c

Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.

I have no problem believing in him, this is just something that was brought up in a conversation yesterday.

The Torah is not Christian an predicts it all.

Reminder that the Bible is not one historical source, but many compiled at a later date by the institution of a religion that formed itself around those texts.

Claiming it is not a valid historical source is like saying a compiled history book of primary sources is not a valid historical source. Or that Aristotle's lectures are not a valid historical/philosophical source.

It's almost certain he existed. The only alternative is if he was just a metaphor made up by (historicall confirmed) people who said were his followers. Kind of like some people Socrates was made up by Plato.

Tacitus wasn't contemporary, and is in general considered as oddball.

The usual alternative I see seriously listed is that you had a number of apocalyptic preachers running around at the time, and a bunch of the stories associated with them got conglomerated into "Jesus". That makes him more like King Arthur than anything else.

Same with the OT
Incredibly rough timeline:
pre-Torah -> oral Torah -> written Torah -> compiled Torah - > timeskip -> Christ -> NT books -> Church -> translation of Torah and compilation of OT (Torah) and NT
Excluding changes any schisms caused of course
>it's an oddball because it's inconvenient ;c
Oral history gets written, older histories get compiled.
Tacitus was recording his research on the subject, you know like fucking modern historians do. He had access to historical sources that are gone now. If you're going to reject Tacitus, you must first reject history as a whole.

>I don't care if he was the son of god, i just want to know if there is any historical evidence (besides the Bible) of his existance.

What do you accept as "evidence of Jesus?"

The gospels make three major claims regarding God:

God is real.

God is living.

God is a spirit.

Once you have these, you can find your evidence for Jesus...

youtube.com/watch?v=84dwnPXD0LI

Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.[1][2]
Your bible, wiki.

don't think there's any real primary sources on him but Judea was a total clusterfuck of infighting and religious fervor at the time with cult leaders emerging left and right. Add to that that "Yeshua" was an incredibly common name and there's every sign that he could have existed

>His value as a historian is very controversial: Tacitus would not have been objective in what he wrote and we dispute the rigor of his information. He is considered too passionate.
>The accounts of the Roman historians after the reign of Nero, such as Tacitus, Dion Cassius, and Suetonius, raise a multitude of questions about the reliability of these "second hand" testimonies.
>Tacitus, when he wrote his works, combined several sources, interpreted them and rethought them in an original way. He built his historical reflection on his philosophical thought.
Your bible, wiki.

When I was a student Tacitus was a literary topic, not a historical one.

You can never ever tell for 100 procent certain. But considering the trail he has left behind, it is plausible that at least an influencial and inspiring person that enticed the masses or a group of them (12 apostels) existed around that time. Who they were exactly will as good as never be known and maybe isn't as relevant or interesting as the impact it had.

You do know that the bible isn't just one source right? The gospels are 4 (and more if you include the non-canonical ones) different books written by four completely different individuals writing about the same subject, some through their direct experiences and others through the tales others told them.
And besides Tacticus there's also the Roman historian Josephus who confirms Jesus' existance.

The position that no such individual existed as a historical figure is implausible, between Paul's non-pseudepigraphical letters, Tacitus' corroboration of the basic narrative of the movement starting in Judea and having their leader executed by Pilate, the pre-Eusebius interpolation account of Josephus attested to by Origen's "Against Celsus," the account of his brother James being executed by a later Roman administration, and so on. Plus, you'd have to go through some real logical contortions to come up with a plausible explanation for the existence of proto-Christians in Roman Palestine during the 30-50 CE.

In anti-Christian polemical texts written by Roman pagans, Jews, and others argue that Jesus of Nazareth wasn't the messiah, that he was a black magic practitioner who tricked gullible people into following him, a scam artist, delusional, etc. They do not argue that he was a total fabrication. Think about it: if you hated Christianity's guts and wanted to utterly discredit them, the easiest way to do it would've been demonstrating that nobody in his alleged neck of the woods or the local Roman administration had ever heard of Jesus.

Though there is no proof of his divinity, it is almost universally accepted by scholars of antiquity that Jesus of Nazareth existed.

>it is almost universally accepted by scholars of antiquity that Jesus of Nazareth existed
Quite the contrary.

Yes, there is plenty of evidence.
Hell, Polycarp was the apprentice to John the Apostle and that dude confirmed John continued talking about Jesus up until his death.
There are pagan Roman accounts of Peter.
The list goes on, just search around.

>Yes, there is plenty of evidence.
None. Or else post them, for the lulz.

Read

>provides no evidence
>"the only alternative..."

No OP, there is no proof. There are however a ridculous amount of similarities between Jesus and previous figures from history that the writers of the new testament would have been well versed on.

>The Gospels and Paul's letters don't count!
>Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum also doesn't count!
>Tacitus doesn't count either!

Read

There are no texts that I could find mentioning Jesus prior to 60 AD.

Post your sources.

>be man in 21st century
>start cult
>considered a weirdo

>be man from two millennium ago
>start cult
>considered holy

Yes he existed Pilate ordered his execution

The first letter to the Thessalonians was written in 52 AD and it mentions Jesus.

>THAT DOESN'T COUNT REEEEE

Predicting something is not proof that something happened

Veeky Forums is contrarian and there's no winning with people who aren't open to changing their view to begin with.

We have less historical evidence for plenty of other figures throughout history but assert their existence with even less.

Tacitus
Josephus
The Talmud

>We have less historical evidence for plenty of other figures throughout history but assert their existence with even less.
Name them pls.

Deepthroat

Siddartha and Confucius both come to mind.

>first major biography of Alexander the Great written 500 years after his death
>this is fine
>first major biography of Jesus written 40 years after his death
>this is unacceptable and proves he didn't exist

???

Predicting something with such accuracy gives huge credence to its actuality as something divine though.
Not only that, but the NT also predicts so much that affects us now. Things that would have been inconceivable at the time.
Face it, now is the Kali Yuga -- the Era of Sin. the next 'progression' towards communism will cause the Second Coming. Christ will come to reunite us with Him.

strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-the-evidence-for-jesus-part-1-of-2/
This was a good article on the subject.

lol

They're both legendary figures, I don't think anyone takes their existence for granted.

pic related

No it doesn't.

>Siddharta and Confucius
>Legendary figures
>Less historical evidence than Jesus
One was a prince of an Indian Kingdom the other is a noted official of a Pre-Imperial Chinese state.

The only thing off of the two is the fact that Confucius didn't write anything resembling scripture down. Others did. The Analects was basically writing by his students and so jury is out there if these were truly his teachings or not.

Neither Siddartha nor Confucius have contemporary historical evidence corroborating their existence, like Jesus everything we know about them comes from people who wrote it down years after their deaths.

Can't say about Siddharta, but Confucius shows up in the histories of the State of Lu, his home country.

In addition, tracing Confucius' family is the most autistic thing the Chinese have ever done. It was started by his disciples, and carried on by the Imperial Dynasties (save of course the legalist Qin), and now is handled by the ROC
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_Confucius_in_the_main_line_of_descent

I don't think those histories and genealogies were composed during his lifetime.

The "Jesus myth" theory has been largely abandoned.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Christ_myth_theory

Considering Siddhartha came from much more affluent roots than Jesus, lived much longer, and was much more successful, it is absolutely absurd to claim that Siddhartha existed but Jesus did not.

The Bible is a historical source. We can literally trace its writing to within 100 years of Jesus' claimed time of life. There's no basis to believe he did not exist, and no credible historian can discount it as a legitimate source.

>subject, some through their direct experiences

The authors of the gospels are unknown and have been written 250years after "jesus" death.

Not a single author of the bible has seen jesus or met someone that has.

The problem with the bible is that it's an inherent biased sources as it is a collection of religious texts. As such you can't really expect people to take it into consideration when you're discussing the historicity of Jesus. If Jesus didn't walk the earth then the bible would be incorrect. The only thing that the bible proves is that people believed in Jesus which is irrelevant to the discussion as we don't know the authors of the gospels and Paulus IIRC never met the pre-ressurection Jesus.

I dunno about them being written 250 years after the death of Jesus but one you neglected to mention was that the evangeliums are likely based on each other.

No. He only said that the Jews rebelled, motivated by some "Chrestos".

There were plenty of biographies written about Alexander the Great during his life time and soon after, however none of then are extant.
We do however have other contemporary sources for Alexander the Great which means that we can reliably claim that he did actually exist.
With that being said there probably was a historical Jesus even though we don't have any first hand sources.

All sources are fucking inherently biased you stupid modernist. Holy shit are you delusional.
A compiled primary-source history book is compiled by somebody with a bias to the contained primary sources. The lectures of Aristotle are biased because they were recorded and compiled by his students.

How dense are you?

There's a difference between innate, biases that the person is unaware of and blatant side-picking/propaganda. If I wanted to research whether or not Chuck Norris is a real person or just a meme I'd look at his birth record and similar documents. What I wouldn't do is read the bizzare stories he's now famous for and hold them up as a verification of his historicity.

>the bible is a historical source
When did this meme start? Have we ever substantiated any historical claim from the bible?

why do you post like this

Josephus

>pre-Torah -> oral Torah -> written Torah -> compiled Torah - > timeskip -> Christ -> NT books -> Church -> translation of Torah and compilation of OT (Torah) and NT
>Excluding changes any schisms caused of course
DUDE ULTIMATE TRUE WORD OF GOD LMAO

DUDE YOU'LL GO TO HELL IF YOU DON'T ACCEPT IT LMAO

>Have we ever substantiated any historical claim from the bible?
I might be mistaken but I believe they found the ruins of a city which was mentioned in the bible. However the same can be said about the Illiad.

Isn't the part about Jesus in Josephus confirmed as a later fraud?

>Have we ever substantiated any historical claim from the bible?
What about the existence of the Hittites, Tyre, House of David, Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer, Sargon, Dead Sea Scrolls, Pilate, correct association of pagan deities with the right peoples (Baal, Asherah, and Dagan), ancient city walls around of the City of David, and Nebuchadnezzar's conquer and destruction of Judah/Jerusalem. Say what you will about the miracles, though there is a signiciant amount of legitimate history contained with the pages of the Bible.

>THE BIBLE IS JUST FUCKING PROPAGANDA MAAAAAAN

I'm not protestant you fucking redditard

>why do you post like this

"God" is a given for most humans for most of human history - it's only when humans started expecting pillars of fire, voices from heaven, raising from the dead, 6 day creations, and worldwide floods that you stopped believing in God.

Here is some empirical evidence supporting the notion that "his blood on us and our children" is a real curse - which would imply Jesus was probably real:

youtube.com/watch?v=U9uEspZpYlo

Empirical evidence doesn't exist. Stop baiting, redditor.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele#.22House_of_David.22

>Isn't the part about Jesus in Josephus confirmed as a later fraud?
No, there's contention over whether parts of it have been altered later by Christian scribes (adding in references about Jesus being the Messiah, for example), but the reference itself is considered genuine.

I think that was Suetonius

Ah yes those pesky Chrestos worshiping Chrestians who are in no way related to the Christos worshiping Christians! They were totally different!

>Empirical evidence doesn't exist. Stop baiting, redditor.

Then you aren't paying attention - cause it certainly does.

youtube.com/watch?v=Qi29ezmfoX8

...

Yes, you can find a lot of the evidence for God and Jesus on my subreddit - but also my youtube...

You see, the thing with Jesus is you're talking about a prophet of God - therefore God should be able to testify to Jesus.

youtube.com/watch?v=aFeyOkdSLmE

We always considered him a historical source in my program, we just considered him for what he was: a bias guy with an axe to grind with the Julio-Claudians.

...

The bible is for the most part, the evidence, that and the proven existence of the Christian movement and a few extra canonical works and some graffiti

Before you dismiss that, you have to understand during his lifetime, Jesus was relatively unimportant. One of many radical preachers in an remote corner of the roman empire. He only became important after his cult started to spread outside Palestine, and its only then we start getting mentions of him and his backstory.

Most modern historians have concluded the idea that A guy named Jesus did not exist, and is simply a literary invention of Paul is simply not a viable explanation of the spread of Christianity

>One of many radical preachers in an remote corner of the roman empire.

Doesn't sound like a radical preacher to me according to these documents...

youtube.com/watch?v=ZLCTzLzf6to