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[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[13] Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church's imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus's non-existence "a thoroughly dead thesis".[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, "there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy."[19]

[-] bufalo1973@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Maybe he existed... but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Oooohhhh

I mean, yes, obviously. It all of a sudden makes the other commenter's steadfast insistence against me make sense, if they thought that I meant this person actually existed who could do real life magic tricks and came back from the dead and he still watches to see if you're masturbating.

Yes, I was talking about the historical figure, not the superhero. I thought that went without saying but maybe not.

(Edit: What the heck, their original argument is clearly saying that they think there's no evidence that the historical figure existed. But whatever, we got there in the end, I guess.)

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

(Edit: Also I think it is dishonest of them to edit their comment...

Dude, I did nothing of the kind.

Wow, it's almost like you managed to copy-paste the known fact that the body of Christian scholars agrees that someone existed, later known as "Jesus," and then seemingly couldn't deal with a rebuttal upon your notion of 'that clearing up everything.'

So now you're getting weird about the fact that I had to re-do my comment, simply because I responded to the wrong commenter at the time? So, did not see my rebuttal at all? Did you not see my attempt to explain that?

Go ahead, tho-- consider this your opportunity to fairly reply to what I said above. Sound good?

EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.

While "Jesus" likely had something to do with an actual person who once lived, nailing down the details of his life and history seems highly problematic from a scholarly & historical POV, and as for embellishment, amalgamation and distortion... all such things are highly possible, and even highly likely, AFAIK.

[-] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

But then you're making up new standards of evidence for historical characters, and only applying them to Jesus.

All evidence points to a jew who, under roman occupation, organized a political and religious movement around his person with a message so powerful that it immediately started replicating. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden outflow of missionaries from Galilee ? Whose message were they spreading, which travelled as far as Asia and Ethiopia with relative unity and consistence ? What reason do we have to doubt that a revolutionary mystical prophet such as Jesus existed (they were legion at the time in that region), and why should we subscribe to some more exotic, laborious explaination ?

The question is not whether Jesus' story was embellished and distorted, because it was, with 100% certainty. But then that's true of everything we know from that time period. We have 0 archeological evidence of most historical characters existence, only hearsay and unreliable testimony. But we don't doubt their existence because the alternative would have to be far fetched and contrived to fit the evidence.

[-] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 0 points 2 weeks ago
[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.

What? Of course it does. A near-unanimous consensus by experts in the field is worth more than whatever you are bringing up in your Lemmy comment.

I mean, it would be possible to lay out logic so compelling that even if experts in the field felt one particular way about it you could make a case otherwise, but weird strawmen like wanting archaeological evidence of Jesus's specific skeleton or something is not that.

this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
22 points (95.8% liked)

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