Is there evidence that Jesus Christ existed? Yes, there is.

a reply to: Entreri06

You're preaching at me

You know, when it comes to the existence of Jesus Christ, you have to figure there's a good chance that he existed. It's basically the most well known figure in all of the world still to this day. I can't see someone lasting through history as he has if he were a fictional person. Somewhere down the line, it would've became common knowledge that he was actually a figment of someone's imagination or the fictional workings of a group of people. Is it still fair to debate? Absolutely. To be fair, not ruling out the possibility that Jesus never existed. But I believe that there is a better chance that there was a man named Jesus Christ who lived on this Earth 2,000 years ago than not. I consider myself spiritual agnostic. My whole life I have been searching for answers to all the big questions that most of us ask. Through this process I have always maintained an open mind. I am very familiar with the practices of the Catholic Church, being that I was raised in that environment. We attended church on most Sundays for a good period of time, but it was more of a casual sort of worship. I wasn't the kind of kid that would get locked in his room for saying Jesus Christ's name in vain.
Do I believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God as he said he was? Do I believe that he was God in the flesh? That's a tossup for me. I wasn't alive in those days. In the book of Revelation, it is stated that faith in Christ would begin to diminish in the end times. So the realm of possibility exists that the reason more people are becoming atheist, and more people are questioning the validity of Christ being who he said he was, is a direct result of what the Bible claimed would basically occur. A fulfillment of said prophecy. Or it could just be the natural progression of things. Science has obviously answered a lot more questions than the ancient texts have. So, when anyone asks this kind of question, naturally someone like myself would have to answer I don't know for sure. This is where one's faith comes into play. But I can't say for sure, though, is that I will try to live my life to the fullest, and treat others as I would like to be treated. Through death, the questions that we ask could be answered, or reality could just go blank, and that could be it. I feel as though that isn't what will occur when we pass. That's my face. The faith that when I die, there will be more to my existence. One thing is for sure. In a sense, no one gets out of this life alive. We should all just try to make a better effort cleaning up this planet, living life to the fullest, and treating everyone around us with respect and dignity.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Once again you are making false claims. You have been claiming that Jesus did not exist. In fact, you, and one other member in another thread claimed there was no evidence whatsoever outside of the Christian bible that talked about Jesus. It is the reason why I posted this thread. Now, you are changing goal posts, posting from websites of a few people who "BELIEVE" the stories were fabricated and all these people have as evidence is "their own beliefs"?

In case you didn't know for a long time scholars thought that Pontius Pilate was a myth until the Pilate Stone was discovered in 1961 at the Roman theatre at Caesarea Maritima. Other than that, and other than biblical accounts, some of the Roman authors who wrote about him included Tacitus, and Josephus. Some other authors made mention of him from earlier accounts like Eusebius, and Agapius of Hierapolis. But these accounts were seen as "myths" until the "Pilate Stone" was found.

What this thread proves, is that despite some people claiming "there is no evidence for Jesus Christ existence, in fact there is evidence.

None of the other "Jesus" did what Tacitus mentions Jesus Christ did. Other Roman non-christian authors called him the Christ, or Christus because that's what the people called him.

Your claim that Christianity "damages children" is in fact a childish thing to say. Most Christians are good people, and as I have already mentioned there have been quite a few "atheists" who have caused suffering and death just in the 20th century.

Just being "an atheist" is not going to make you, or children better people. I am not saying atheists are bad people, but simply being an atheist doesn't make your "belief" the right one, and it certainly doesn't make you a better person.

But i digress, because as we can see you have changed yet again the goal posts... From first claiming "there is no evidence outside of the bible for Jesus Christ existence", to then claiming" that proof from non-Christian Romans and others are hoaxes", and now your argument is that "Christianity damages the children"...

Wow where to start...

Well you have to think of Tacitus as ... lets say Ridley Scott. He did factual and fiction like Scott. And about that "jesus" reference you have to look at it as you see the Gladiator - The places are real, the names are real, everything is factual besides the actual "gladiator"... and when it comes to jesus its pretty much the same thing so you cant rely on context to prove someone's existence as "fact"

So the fact that tacitus mentions him... doesnt prove that jesus in fact existed. As for trying to prove his existence using context like places and known and factual persons like pontius pilate also fails to do so because well... all you have is that stone and that stone only says "there was a man named pontius pilate who was a prefect of judea" ok... (btw in the stone as you can see by your awesome read from wikipedia only shows TIUS... so if you want me to get technical about it maybe he was antistius or pisentius or horatius or maybe quinctius hm? what do you think) but ok, lets believe for a second that is the proof for pontius pilate... well you dont actually know anything else. So the best you could come up with is to try to find a guy that existed that was pretty much the only man that could be responsible for that particular situation like its described in the bible because if he was the prefect of judea, be it jesus or anyone else, man he had to take part in trials involving death penalties, civil disorder, etc and the questioning of roman authority.

Oh and he had to take the roman side... and no roman, especially not a politian, would question the decision like pilate did like stated in the bible - thats crap and romanticizing it... a roman would get there and say "hm hm hm... kill him I dont care when where or how I just want this dealt with and I want to be home by lunch time"

This "pontius pilate" from the bible is nothing more than a "moral relief"... basically hes there to show people to be fair, to be just, to heed advice, to ignore the voice of the mob and do whats right, etc etc... its a story... like... walking on water and getting the blind to see and healing the lepers etc.

Now I wont mention turning water into wine because nature does that by itself... and I wont mention being born from a virgin because well, we can do that now.

but tell me... ever wondered why new religions always sound so fake?

Boy arent you glad your religion was created 2000 years ago... lol.

a reply to: s1ngular1ty

But I believe that there is a better chance that there was a man named Jesus Christ who lived on this Earth 2,000 years ago than not.

And, herein lies a big problem. A man named Jesus "Christ" never existed, because, the biblical character whose historicity we're looking for, was named Jesus of Nazareth. The title Christ was not bestowed the the person, if he existed, until it was said the he rose from the dead.

Jesus came to be called "Jesus Christ", meaning "Jesus the Christós" (i.e. Jesus, the anointed; or "Jesus, the Messiah" by his followers) after his death and believed resurrection. Before, Jesus was usually referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus son of Joseph".
en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: s1ngular1ty
You know, when it comes to the existence of Jesus Christ, you have to figure there's a good chance that he existed. It's basically the most well known figure in all of the world still to this day. I can't see someone lasting through history as he has if he were a fictional person. Somewhere down the line, it would've became common knowledge that he was actually a figment of someone's imagination or the fictional workings of a group of people.

The historicity of Robin Hood has been debated for centuries. Modern academic opinion maintains that the legend is based in part on a historical person, although there is considerable scholarly debate as to his actual identity. A difficulty with any such historical research is that "Robert" was in medieval England a very common given name, and "Robin" (or Robyn), was its very common diminutive, especially in the 13th century. The surname "Hood" (or Hude or Hode etc.) was also fairly common because it referred either to a Hooder, who was a maker of hoods; or alternatively to somebody who wore a hood as a head-covering. Unsurprisingly, therefore, reference is made to a number of people called "Robert Hood" or "Robin Hood" in medieval records.

Hmmm... also:

The historical basis for the King Arthur legend has long been debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), sees Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons sometime in the late 5th to early 6th century. The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Mons Badonicus, or Mount Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.

The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Mount Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Mount Badon. Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonum's account. The latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the complex textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at some point in the 10th century and may never have existed in any earlier set of annals. The Mount Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum.

This lack of convincing early evidence is the reason many recent historians exclude Arthur from their accounts of sub-Roman Britain. In the view of historian Thomas Charles-Edwards, "at this stage of the inquiry, one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur [but ...] the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him". These modern admissions of ignorance are a relatively recent trend; earlier generations of historians were less skeptical. The historian John Morris made the putative reign of Arthur the organizing principle of his history of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland, The Age of Arthur (1973). Even so, he found little to say about a historical Arthur.


The 10th-century Annales Cambriae (from a copy c. 1100)
Partly in reaction to such theories, another school of thought emerged which argued that Arthur had no historical existence at all. Morris's Age of Arthur prompted the archaeologist Nowell Myres to observe that "no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time". Gildas' 6th-century polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), written within living memory of Mount Badon, mentions the battle but does not mention Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. He is absent from Bede's early-8th-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, another major early source for post-Roman history that mentions Mount Badon. The historian David Dumville has written: "I think we can dispose of him [Arthur] quite briefly. He owes his place in our history books to a 'no smoke without fire' school of thought ... The fact of the matter is that there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books."

Some scholars argue that Arthur was originally a fictional hero of folklore—or even a half-forgotten Celtic deity—who became credited with real deeds in the distant past. They cite parallels with figures such as the Kentish totemic horse-gods Hengest and Horsa, who later became historicised. Bede ascribed to these legendary figures a historical role in the 5th-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain. It is not even certain that Arthur was considered a king in the early texts. Neither the Historia nor the Annales calls him "rex": the former calls him instead "dux bellorum" (leader of battles) and "miles" (soldier).

Historical documents for the post-Roman period are scarce, so a definitive answer to the question of Arthur's historical existence is unlikely. Sites and places have been identified as "Arthurian" since the 12th century, but archaeology can confidently reveal names only through inscriptions found in secure contexts. The so-called "Arthur stone", discovered in 1998 among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall in securely dated 6th-century contexts, created a brief stir but proved irrelevant. Other inscriptional evidence for Arthur, including the Glastonbury cross, is tainted with the suggestion of forgery. Although several historical figures have been proposed as the basis for Arthur, no convincing evidence for these identifications has emerged.

Just saying...

The similarities are striking. Famous person, written about throughout history, credited with incredible feats, some evidence suggests it was a real person, most likely a result of legend and folklore combined with one real person or a combination of people to result in a partially-accurate myth.

The difference is, there is no "First Church of Robin Hood" telling everyone that they have to accept the story and put money into a plate to get into the invisible Sherwood Forest where they'll be safe from the eternal torture of the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
a reply to: Prezbo369

In this thread I posted some of the evidence from non-Christian sources outside the bible that describe Jesus has having existed. If Jesus had not existed Roman historians in the 1st century would have used that as evidence against Christianity. But not even then did they, or anyone else denied his existence and that he was crucified under the orders of Pontius Pilate.

That right there is a perfect example of the ridiculously poor standards of evidence employed by by theists for the most incredible of their claims.

If Christians had based their entire religion of a wandering, preaching Jew, with no super powers or anything like that, then sure not many people would disagree with the claims for his existence. But as they didn't do that, and instead based it off an apparent son of god, master of the universe with unlimited powers,etc etc, well then yeah you have no evidence whatsoever.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you have zero, zip, zilch, nada...

originally posted by: Prezbo369

If Christians had based their entire religion of a wandering, preaching Jew, with no super powers or anything like that, then sure not many people would disagree with the claims for his existence. But as they didn't do that, and instead based it off an apparent son of god, master of the universe with unlimited powers,etc etc, well then yeah you have no evidence whatsoever.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you have zero, zip, zilch, nada...

I said repeatedly earlier in the discussion, that given Tacitus and Josephus and the presence of Christians, evidence for "a" Jesus/Yeshua is not evidence for "the" Jesus Christ, Son of God, Redeemer of Humantity, and Wine-Maker Extraordinaire.

That seems so simple and straight-forward and clear to me ... I really don't understand what the hubbub is.

Believing in Jesus is a matter of ... imagination or faith ... anyway. What difference does factual evidence make to a religious belief?

I never get an answer to that.

a reply to: Answer

No "First Church of William Wallace (Braveheart)" either. Nine feet tall, and shoots fire out of his eyes, isn't that right?
Hmmmm.

a reply to: Grimpachi

I concur with your argument. There are many more historical references to Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Ra, etc. than to Jesus. Look at the Iliad– so many gods that you could not swing a cat without hitting one. But no one takes the old gods seriously because they are...silly. No one thinks that all the stuff written about gods coming to earth really happened any longer.

Edward Gibbon in the The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire makes a good (and humorous) argument questioning where all of the old gods have gone? Did they die? Did they ever exist? He points out that no one can be found among the living who has seen, talked to, or witnessed a miracle (other than parlor tricks and lunaticks).

I rather like the argument that everyone is an atheist, except for one last god. Yeah, all the folks who believe in Jesus are atheist, because they deny (or are without) other gods. Have fun discussing, but this is a really pointless debate.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Just being "an atheist" is not going to make you, or children better people. I am not saying atheists are bad people, but simply being an atheist doesn't make your "belief" the right one, and it certainly doesn't make you a better person.

By the way, I'm not an atheist.
I'm an agnostic. And that does, in fact, make me a better person than if I were preaching fantasies (lies) to other people and calling it "truth" and telling them they will burn in hell for not believing what you believe.

As for my claim being "childish".....lol!! What is childish is believing myths are true, when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I guess this thread is a wrap, then....right?
Who won?

lol!!

Some sort of painting of Isa/Yeshua/Jesus done by an artist that wasn't painted at least 1000 years after his death may get my attention. LOL Maybe Jesus didn't exist back then because he wasn't Jesus back then. Why don't people call him by his real name ? Even worse they use a wrong pronunciation of (HAY ' SOOS) and pronounce it (JEEZUS), people sound like they jumped on a bandwagon of hicks.

originally posted by: Foderalover
Some sort of painting of Isa/Yeshua/Jesus done by an artist that wasn't painted at least 1000 years after his death may get my attention. LOL Maybe Jesus didn't exist back then because he wasn't Jesus back then. Why don't people call him by his real name ? Even worse they use a wrong pronunciation of (HAY ' SOOS) and pronounce it (JEEZUS), people sound like they jumped on a bandwagon of hicks.

I like pronouncing them by their real names...but keep in kind that every single biblical character's name is different by that line of reasoning, not just Jesus'.

originally posted by: Blue_Jay33
a reply to: BuzzyWigs


If you only knew the true power of the dark side, and it's ability to influence people with ideologies that is leading people away from truths...

Ah, Darth Vader is here, excellent!

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

So, you have dellusions of grandour that your beliefs are better than any Christian belief, or anyone else who believes in any religion... Got you...

No wonder you claim Christianity and religions in general are "a danger for children"... Because it is "your belief"... Kind of ironic of you to claim other people's beliefs are a "danger for children" but you think your own "belief' is right and it's what should be taught to children... in other words, you want to force your "belief" on children... Even when you are not their parent...

originally posted by: Gryphon66

I said repeatedly earlier in the discussion, that given Tacitus and Josephus and the presence of Christians, evidence for "a" Jesus/Yeshua is not evidence for "the" Jesus Christ, Son of God, Redeemer of Humantity, and Wine-Maker Extraordinaire.
...

But Tacitus among other non-christian Roman historians do mention Jesus as the Christ, that the Christians were named after him, and that he was crucified under order of Pontius Pilate...

In his Annals, Tacitus tells of a fire that swept through Rome in the 60s, for which some were blaming Nero himself...

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 Judaea, 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.
...

www.mesacc.edu...

So now you have changed goal post again to claim now that what Tacitus among others say, it's not what they are saying...

Wow, this has been a fascinating thread to read over the past couple of days, largely on my phone.
Everyone has, for the most part, been really civil, and reading the exchanges between DeadSeraph and Gryphon66 led me off on Google and Wikipedia entries on people I'd barely (or never) heard of. So, well done on that front.

I think that one problem with this thread is that the question asked in the title is ambiguous; is the question, "Is there evidence for a historical figure named Jesus of Nazareth whose biography at least loosely fits the person depicted in the Bible?", or is the question, "Is there evidence for a historical Jesus Christ (a messiah who could perform miracles, etc) as depicted in the Bible"? The first question seems worthy of a discussion or debate, the latter is pretty obviously "no", unless you decide you want to start taking the Bible as evidence of its own claims.

And even the question, "Is there evidence for a historical Jesus of Nazareth" seems to dodge the core issue, which is, "Is there *conclusive* or *definitive* evidence for a historical Jesus of Nazareth"? Because not all evidence is equal (hearsay for instance is a form of evidence, but its usually not accepted in U.S. courts of law, and circumstantial evidence is considered weaker than "hard" evidence). And of course, there is evidence of historical occurrences that never happened. There is evidence that aliens crashed a spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, in the form of a statement released by the military claiming that it was, in fact, a crashed "UFO", and assorted eye-witness reports. But that initial statement by the military turns out to be a cover for the new American program of using balloons to spy on the USSR, and the eye-witnesses turn out to be unreliable (as any police detective will tell you, eye-witnesses are often unreliable). So there's evidence for the UFO hypothesis, but it's not *good* evidence, and if you're one of the people that believes little aliens did crash there, well, you're gullible.

So from reading this entire thread, and doing some research, it seems there is some small amount of (patchy) evidence for the existence of a historical person whose name has been transliterated and mis-translated into "Jesus of Nazareth", but that evidence is a mix of circumstantial and hearsay. It's hearsay because the single strongest piece - the mention of Pilate having had "Chrestos" executed - was something that Tacitus didn't watch himself (he wasn't even born), and so he was repeating information he got from another, unknown, source. Was *that* source reliable? Could Tacitus have made an error? We don't know - which is one reason that hearsay makes for weak evidence. Plus, since Tacitus doesn't explicitly write that it was Jesus of Nazareth who was executed, historians are left to make the (small, perhaps) leap that the Chrestos who was executed was the same person as the Jesus referred to in the Bible.

There seem to be a couple other references to either a Chrestos, but the most commonly mentioned one (the more credible one by Josephus) suffers from similar issues. Neither account is a first-person account. Some other people have brought up other possibly-historical figures - King Arthur, and Robin Hood - for whom there is also controversy, and for them too, if there was a single historical figure that inspired the legends, the original person's story has been embellished greatly.

So to the question, "Is there evidence for a Jesus of Nazareth", it seems (to me) that the answer is, "Yes, there is some".
To the question, "Is there conclusive, definitive evidence for a Jesus of Nazareth", I think the answer is "No, there isn't". Note that I'm not claiming that there was no historical person named Jesus (or Yishua, or whatever) from Nazareth who had followers, etc, I'm just claiming that the evidence we have for such a person isn't conclusive. Maybe he did exist (it seems plausible to me), but I haven't seen any way to completely rule out the possibility that the references in the Bible and by Tacitus and Josephus are a mixture of references to different people or simple errors.

And finally, the truth is that history is indeed written by the victors, and the Catholic church was a monumental victor, and so much of what we have of the historical record comes to us via the centuries of Christian dominance of human power structures. It's very hard to rule out intentional changes to the historical record (except in cases where we find manuscripts or evidence from pre-Christian times) that attempt to reinforce the Christian narrative. That has very obviously happened, and the Bible itself is rife with edits and misappropriated material sourced from Buddhism, the old testament, and from whole cloth.

At the end of the day, the issue of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth seems like it would only matter to either Christians, or to anti-theists. Contrary to what some on this thread have said, atheists don't claim that there can be no god, and are not "anti-religious". The word atheism comes from the Greek, "a-" [without] + "-theos" [ (belief in) God ]. Atheists lack belief, while anti-theists are opposed to god(s) or religion or both.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

BTW, i would call a fantasy the belief that only the material exists... You are denying quantum mechanics, other dimensions and energies that cannot be seen... That's what i call a fantasy, and it's a "danger for all children" btw... Trying to teach children such nonsense...

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

BTW, i would call a fantasy the belief that only the material exists... You are denying quantum mechanics, other dimensions and energies that cannot be seen... That's what i call a fantasy, and it's a "danger for all children" btw... Trying to teach children such nonsense...

WUT?!!

No, actually I am fascinated by Quantum Physics, believe in it and other dimensions and energies.......
I think those ideas SHOULD and MUST be taught to children and youths.

A couple of years ago I gifted my daughter a copy of The Physics of Consciousness
which I had read during/after my father's death.

I think the more humans delve into science like quantum theory and consciousness, the more we will understand about it.

And NONE of it depends on "Jesus" or "God."
It just is what it is.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Then you are not an agnostic...

ag·nos·tic
aɡˈnästik/
noun
noun: agnostic; plural noun: agnostics

1.
a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

Perhaps you should try to find what an agnostic is, because if you are fascinated and believe in quantum mechanics, and in other dimensions then you are not agnostic...

Agnostic means "not known", as in the nature of things beyond the material cannot be known.