On religion

[NotAllThere]

The book of Mark is generally considered to have been written around 70AD - 40 years or so after Jesus' death. The earliest references are in Pauls letters of 50AD - 20 years after Jesus' death. That means there were plenty of people about for whom the events would have been in living memory.

One point in favour of Jesus being a historical figures is that there are records of the enemies of Christianity in the first century questioning his status as a miracle worker, God, the Messiah, questioning his parenthood, but there are no records questioning his existence. If there had been any doubt of his historicity it would have been raised.

Of course there's no definitive proof; even with a time machine the video could be faked, but the weight of circumstantial evidence is such that no-one with sufficient qualifications in the area of first century archeology/history/sociology doubts that he existed. You are entirely free to come up with your own conspiracy theories and ignore current scholarly opinion, but the statement "there's no evidence that he existed" is manifestly false. There's plenty. Whether you accept it as evidence of his existence is entirely up to you.

[speling bee]

It does not mean he is not a historical figure, however, there is absolutely no evidence other than hearsay for his existence which is my point (which people jumped down my throat for making previously).

If you also do not believe that the Herod's massacre occured etc then we are pretty much on the same wave length. The bible has various statements in it which are historically inaccurate amongst other contradictions etc and therefore cannot be relied upon to be correct about anything (as we have no idea what is right and what is wrong).

There is no supporting evidence other than hearsay and a book which we have shown to contain various errors hence I see no reason to believe he existed or anything else that the bible says with supporting evidence.

I offer the same treatment to Allah, Ra, aliens, the tooth fairy etc.
This is without going into the various problems in having an all poweful God.

You are a bit confused I think. Your comparison with Allah, Ra, the tooth fairy is valid as a comparison with Jesus as God, but not Jesus as man.

We only (I think) have hearsay evidence for Boudicca, but we do not dismiss her.

So, we look at the evidence. We have number of documents (not the originals but that is always the way with ancient manuscripts) that we can date to perhaps 40 to 70 years after the supposed death of the man.

We have a movement, that has spread to Rome by 64 A.D., so that Nero blames them for the fire. 'Christus' and Christains are mentioned by Tacitus in the context of the A.D. 64 fire, and Tacitus is pretty gold standard as a source for 1st century Roman history.

So your (historical as opposed to faith) options are:

1. These references and this movement are based on a fictional character
2. These references and this movement are based on an embellishment of a historical character

Think through what kind of crazy conspiracy or mis-understanding or whatever would need to have occurred for 1 to be the truth - for within 30 years of the supposed death, a movement has grown up and spread to Rome enough to attract the attention of the authorities. 2 just appears much more likely and we accept the existence of other ancient historical characters on less. Don't worry about the early life of Jesus stories. Inventing ancestral and birth details was common enough if you wanted to 'big up' an emerging leader. Also, don't let your skepticism of the supernatural cloud your judgment on the historical. You might want to believe Jesus never existed, but an independently minded evaluation of the evidence suggests that on balance it is more likely that he did. You're falling into a faith trap if you believe what you would prefer to.

[MyUserName]

So your (historical as opposed to faith) options are:

1. These references and this movement are based on a fictional character
2. These references and this movement are based on an embellishment of a historical character

Hmmm ... ignoring the bible references as we have already debunked them the point you make above is good.

Nero did blame Christians for those fires, although this is before the gospels were written so they may have had different beliefs to what is presented in there.

However, there was at least a group which called themselves Christians so logically they were following a 'Christ' figure. It was decades after Jesus is said to have died so first hand knowledge of him would be uncommon at least (assuming they were following the same Christ figure that the gospels refer to) even if he were real.

Would it be more likely that they are following a collection of local stories unified into a fictional character (elements of Mithras, Baccus etc) or were these stories attributed to an actual man? Either way a legend could gain momentum just as easily, I guess.

However, there is also the possibility that these Christians whilst they were called that have nothing else in common with how Christianity was formalised in the gospels (e.g. these guys could have been waiting for the Christ etc and the later gospel writers modified things when they wrote them).

Unless there are some details about their beliefs hanging around with which I am unfamiliar?

[speling bee]

Hmmm ... ignoring the bible references as we have already debunked them the point you make above is good.

Nero did blame Christians for those fires, although this is before the gospels were written so they may have had different beliefs to what is presented in there.

However, there was at least a group which called themselves Christians so logically they were following a 'Christ' figure. It was decades after Jesus is said to have died so first hand knowledge of him would be uncommon at least (assuming they were following the same Christ figure that the gospels refer to) even if he were real.

Would it be more likely that they are following a collection of local stories unified into a fictional character (elements of Mithras, Baccus etc) or were these stories attributed to an actual man? Either way a legend could gain momentum just as easily, I guess.

However, there is also the possibility that these Christians whilst they were called that have nothing else in common with how Christianity was formalised in the gospels (e.g. these guys could have been waiting for the Christ etc and the later gospel writers modified things when they wrote them).

Unless there are some details about their beliefs hanging around with which I am unfamiliar?

Stories - and particuarly prophecies - absolutely are unified around a figure - but I suggest a historical figure.

There is a narrative:

There is a religious and / or political lead called Jesus
He is executed
His followers morph into a sect
The sect develops into a religion
The religion spreads as far as Rome by c. AD 60

All the sources fit this narrative neatly, including importantly, the most important 1st century Roman history, which states that they were following a man who was executed under Tiberius (although it is possible Tacitus fitted this in from his later knowledge of Christians). You have to really bend things to try to get it to fit another narrative, and when faced with a simple narrative that fits the sources, some of which are not great, and another narrative, which is contrived, it seems reasonable to say that on the balance of probabilities, Jesus probably existed, but we can't prove this and we don't know a great deal about him.

[NotAllThere]

Christ means "anointed one". In Hebrew it's the word we translate as "Messiah". It wasn't Jesus's surname. Just to be clear. For many years the followers of Jesus were known as Nazarenes, rather than Christians, which was a pejorative term.

Historians are not quick to reject the gospels and Paul's letters (some of which were written by him, others perhaps by his students, such as Timothy) as unhistorical - nowhere near as quick as liberal theologians have been. There's a huge amount of effort and research that's gone into mining history from these documents, taking into account the purposes of the authors and their natural biases.

Looked at objectively, the manuscripts that make up the New Testament are a major resource for anyone wishing to study the sociology and religious and political landscape of the first century.

[MyUserName]

The book of Mark is generally considered to have been written around 70AD - 40 years or so after Jesus' death. The earliest references are in Pauls letters of 50AD - 20 years after Jesus' death. That means there were plenty of people about for whom the events would have been in living memory..

And they are in the bible ... which makes them highly suspect. There is not a single non Christian source which mentions Jesus - not one.

One point in favour of Jesus being a historical figures is that there are records of the enemies of Christianity in the first century questioning his status as a miracle worker, God, the Messiah, questioning his parenthood, but there are no records questioning his existence. If there had been any doubt of his historicity it would have been raised.

And these records are where?

Of course there's no definitive proof; even with a time machine the video could be faked, but the weight of circumstantial evidence is such that no-one with sufficient qualifications in the area of first century archeology/history/sociology doubts that he existed. You are entirely free to come up with your own conspiracy theories and ignore current scholarly opinion, but the statement "there's no evidence that he existed" is manifestly false. There's plenty. Whether you accept it as evidence of his existence is entirely up to you.

Of course we do not know for sure but various things in the bible are wrong, or only appear in the bible and not in other sources where we would excpect them. I will let Bart D. Ehrman, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provide my closing statement

This is from Lecture Three of “From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity”

Ehrman: If we look at the sources on Jesus written by Romans – non-Christian Romans who were neither Jewish nor Christian – if we look at the sources written in the first century, we have hundreds of sources. We have writings of poets, philosophers, religion scholars, natural scientists, personal letters that people sent through the ancient equivalent of the mail system, inscriptions that were put up on buildings. If we examine all of these pieces of literature from the ancient world, from the first century, from the time Jesus died in the year 30 until the year 100 – if we examine all of this record from the Roman Empire, we will find that Jesus is never, ever mentioned at all. His name never occurs in any Roman source that’s neither Jewish nor Christian, from the first century of the common era. What were his enemies saying about him? We have no idea, because they left us no writings.

Why didn’t they talk about Jesus? Well, that’s an interesting question. I would assume that they didn’t talk about Jesus because he didn’t make as big of an impact on his world as he has made on ours.

The first time Jesus is ever mentioned by any pagan source is not until the year 112 of the common Era. The source is a letter written by a Roman Governor whose name was Pliny.

If you want to believe in this stuff when it is provably wrong on various points and has no evidence to support it's position outside of it's own writings on others then you are welcome to.
I am sure you can understand my desire to investigate, fact check and come to my own conclusion.

However, this is a rabbit hole we have fallen down. I raised several issues with the Christian God (which can be applied to most other Gods tbh) - this was merely an off hand comment which you have seized upon.

[NotAllThere]

...The bible has various statements in it which are historically inaccurate amongst other contradictions etc and therefore cannot be relied upon to be correct about anything...

This is not how historical material is evaluated. It's not "oh, this history book contains errors / contradictions, therefore we must reject the whole thing". Historians look at the components of the material and weigh the evidence, deciding on what can be pretty sure, and what is pretty flaky. Some criteria, among others, are:

1. Embarrassment - statements likely to be problematic to the people who propagate the document, or for whom the document as authoritative.
2. Multiple attestations - the same statements appearing in different places

Even where a document is clearly unhistorical, if it can still give valuable information about the attitudes of the author or the environment in which he lived.

[MyUserName]

Christ means "anointed one". In Hebrew it's the word we translate as "Messiah". It wasn't Jesus's surname. Just to be clear. For many years the followers of Jesus were known as Nazarenes, rather than Christians, which was a pejorative term..

How many years - presumably less than 30 for Nero to have called them Christians. Do we have evidence that they are one and the same or just people from the same area at the same time that the bible has rhetro fitted?

Historians are not quick to reject the gospels and Paul's letters (some of which were written by him, others perhaps by his students, such as Timothy) as unhistorical - nowhere near as quick as liberal theologians have been. There's a huge amount of effort and research that's gone into mining history from these documents, taking into account the purposes of the authors and their natural biases.

Looked at objectively, the manuscripts that make up the New Testament are a major resource for anyone wishing to study the sociology and religious and political landscape of the first century.

Indeed they do but Moby Dick also tells us about whaling and American culture but that does not mean everything in it is true. You will note that various places and probably people are historically correct.

[MyUserName]

This is not how historical material is evaluated. It's not "oh, this history book contains errors / contradictions, therefore we must reject the whole thing". Historians look at the components of the material and weigh the evidence, deciding on what can be pretty sure, and what is pretty flaky.

But if the bible has errors then it cannot be God's holy book as his message is wrong/corrupted and he claims to never sow confusion. This is not a normal history book and it not evaluated the same way.

If we agree that the book is not divinely inspired and the product of people then we have nothing to argue about.

Even where a document is clearly unhistorical, if it can still give valuable information about the attitudes of the author or the environment in which he lived.

It certainly can, I have never said otherwise.

[MyUserName]

Stories - and particuarly prophecies - absolutely are unified around a figure - but I suggest a historical figure.

There is a narrative:

There is a religious and / or political lead called Jesus
He is executed
His followers morph into a sect
The sect develops into a religion
The religion spreads as far as Rome by c. AD 60
.

Assuming that what we call Christians now is the same as what they called them then then as Jesus himself was not mentioned until 112 AD by Pliny.

However, it is perfectly plausible that these early Christians had started before the alledged birth year of Jesus, they could have been around for decades before hand. I have not seen any evidence to state that these Chritians were worshipping Jesus or, if they were, that they had the same timeline which was later put in place for him.

Do you have any?