So, I'm wondering for those who are atheist or part of another belief structure or religion outside Christianity, do you believe in Jesus Christ as a historical figure, or do you believe he never existed at all? Not being confrontational, just genuinely curious what y'all think.

But all the evidence is to the contrary. The testimonium flavinium has been proven to be fake. The earliest new testament manuscript P52 dates to AD125.

There are no first-hand accounts of any Jesus of Nazareth. The second-hand and third-hand accounts are not contemporary.

There is no roman record of the crucifixion of a jesus of nazareth.

There is as much evidence of a historical jesus as there is for horses in pre-columbian america. They'll find good evidence for a historical jesus when they find lamanite DNA.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2011 07:42PM by Susan I/S.

If it weren't for him appearing in the flesh to the boy Joseph in 1820 we wouldn't have any solid historical proof at all.

What a blessing.

That made me laugh out loud. Nicely done...

You!

stop it!

Arrrrgh!

Leave Bona Dea Alone.

Historical Jesus!

Okay where are these manuscripts you speak of?

I want to see!

P52 - St. John's Fragment

There's pictures here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52

There are things in the bible that suggest that the gospel writers tried to fit a real person (rather clumsily) into old testament "prophecies". For example it's obvious that Jesus was born in galilee, and if he wasn't real then Joseph and Mary could much more easily have been placed as original citizens of betlehem instead of the ridiculous story to get them there that we now find in Luke. Likewise there's the troubling fact that Jesus got baptized into a jewish sect which he later seemed to have rejected while starting a new sect of his own, again the bible writers tries to explain it away, making it fit with "prophecy", instead of denying it outright which would be the proper way to deal with a fictional character.

Ofcourse this isn't conclusive evidence. Just as likely is the conclusion that these "facts" about Jesus had for some other reason been so popular amongst early christians that when the gospel writers came upon the stage they simply had to include them. Not that I care much either way. But I see nothing improbable with a real man behind the myth. Jewish history has been filled with self-proclaimed messiah's.

Email me, yeah?

Shhh. Don't tell the mormons but even if he was a real person that lived in the middle-east, there is no way the guy ever came to America.

If there was, there were a crap load of other poor bastards that got crucified much like he did. No wonder there are no Roman records of such, there were too many, and they didn't care that much.

I don't have any references, just what I've heard and seen, just my humble opinion.

We're okay. But thanks for checking. :-)

One thing for certain, the Christ as described in the bible NEVER existed, thus, as far as I am conceder, the Christian Christ never existed.

...had an assortment of pagan myths piled on him after he died. I go with the theory that Paul is mostly responsible for that. What he wasn't was a deity incarnate.

There was a book out there I saw once and started reading before I got bored of it, it was called "Jesus, a very Jewish Myth" it basically theorized many of the things we already knew, pagan gods of Virgin birth stories reached Jerusalem through their pagan overlords (the Romans), and a marriage of the two occurred, the fact that many people alive at the time believed that their son could be the chosen as was the prophecy in the old testament, etc., etc. Otherwise, no prof of Jesus exists, first writing appear in what is now known as 70 AD. Try to get someone to write about you 70 years after your death...

Truthbeknown.com has done a lot of work on this, Acharya S was consulted for Zeitgeist movie part one, which is free to watch on Youtube and covers the Solar deity angle very well.

=D

Phone wouldn't let me type Deity, corrected it to"dirty" piece of shut!

Ohhhh I have been spotted and apparently I am a catch :D

Why is he magical?

At some point in time we will have to decide why most folks past present all tell stories of a superior being.

I've never asserted a belief in any kind of singularity, nor do I pretend to know what may have triggered the big bang, if that's what really happened.

This however, is a logical fallacy as you very well know. It's not as if one has to choose between believing in a flying jewish zombie or the bing bang. There are an infinite number of possible explanations that we don't know about yet that might better explain what's really going on.

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed...
Religion denies observation so that belief can be preserved...

No you didn't.

MJ did. For some reason I feel like you are one and the same.

Nope you tell me how it came to be.

Just randomly?

I mean you tell me since you reject my position so tell me.

Oh, and how God could exist without a universe to exist in. After all, if God created the universe, God would have to be able to exist without a universe to exist in.