There is enough documentation to say there was a "Jesus" around this time but in all likelihood real historical Jesus was so different than biblical Jesus, that we can just say they are not the same person.Yeah, I lean toward the "not a real person" theory myself. At best, an amalgamation of several real figures. But I don't have a dog in that fight, so... whatev.
None of them were written contemporaneously. Flavius wasn't even born until AD 37 and wrote about legends he'd heard 70 or more years after the crucifixion.
I think it's very likely there was some dude with a name like "Jesus" but we of course can't prove anything else that would actually make this interesting or extraordinary.... I'm certain there is no evidence of any miracles or anything that is truly important.
That is all history is, a bunch of legends people take as fact. Most of today's histories are written by people who weren't alive at the time of those histories. Today it's based on things written by people who lived in the past but not necessarily at the time the events took place, so we don't really know if it's accurate or not.None of them were written contemporaneously. Flavius wasn't even born until AD 37 and wrote about legends he'd heard 70 or more years after the crucifixion.
The problem with proving a historical Jesus is the very nature of the subject matter. Any relics we might expect to find were made of wood, ceramics or bronze. Wood, if not preserved, deteriorates completely over time. Where are the ceramic and bronze artifacts? The ossuaries with "Joshua" on them are sketchy proof since it was a very common name during that period - much like "John" is today in western countries. Coulda been THE Jesus, but probably not.
"There's no evidence" isn't the same as "you can't prove it". It's more like Sagan said: ""extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and looking at a very distant time in history after so much has been lost or destroyed, it's something we can probably never actually prove.
I'm merely demonstrating that none of the evidence believers point to is actually incontrovertible. He didn't leave a written record himself - he relied on his disciples to write many years later. Had he been a famous author on the NYT best seller list (in his day), this would be a different discussion. But he wasn't and here we are.
I disagree. I was trained to evaluate historical accounts as apocryphal unless we possessed real, physical evidence. We can recognize many of the tales from antiquity, like Gilgamesh or Achilles as "tales" or legends told by our ancestors and exaggerated to portray someone more favorably without producing physical evidence in support.
What about: "2000 years after his death (give or take a few years) he is still very relevant for 2.1 billion people on earth."?
I'm not saying you are wrong, that we don't have ways to determine accuracy. I'm saying, from my own experience, that I question those methods just as much, if not more so, as I do what is written in the Bible. The one thing that is not in question, for me, is whether or not a man who may or may not have been named Yeshua and went around creating havoc in the 1st century existed. Someone [or several someones] existed that the "character" was based on. I seriously doubt someone just dreamed him up out of thin air and then decided to make him a god, although that has occurred many, many times throughout human history. So, what made this person Christ was based on so special?
The first Christians addressed that when they decide he had to be divine. The tales of water-to-wine, resurrection from death and other stories are a good example of what I meant about exaggerating a hero's feats to make them more appealing. It's pretty telling that we can't find anyone else since then who actually, provably arose from the dead.Someone [or several someones] existed that the "character" was based on. I seriously doubt someone just dreamed him up out of thin air and then decided to make him a god, although that has occurred many, many times throughout human history. So, what made this person Christ was based on so special?
Lots more police brutality tho.
That's not what I meant but this is getting too far off the topic of crisis.
It would have been difficult for the Vatican to amass the obscene wealth that it has without guilting the people of many nations into compulsory generosity.
Don't you fart rainbows?
Wouldn't the methane need to "crystalize" first so that there is some "water" vapor for the light to refract?
