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Jesus: Truth Or Myth?

I really don't think it's worth going down the mythicist rabbit hole too far. If the claim is that Jesus is mythical because accounts of his life and nature are inconsistent and not contemporaneous, and some elements certainly would have been familiar from mythology to the graeco-roman world, it can be dismissed as a claim. The evidence doesn't show that, even if it suggests  some parts of the narrative are fictional.

If the claim is that there's not enough consistent contemporary evidence to say Jesus was a real person, that's fine, but not being able to say someone was real is not the same as being able to say he wasn't. There could be reasons why that evidence to lift Jesus to historical status isn't available to us. It just doesn't get us anywhere.

One thing I will say is that when I was growing up, it was often flippantly stated in articles that Jesus was historical, with essentially no qualification. And I accepted as much. I couldn't see why someone would lie about that. As an adult I've realised the historicity of Jesus is not something many people, even secular people, in our society can easily study dispassionately. I'm neither convinced, nor do I care, that there was a historical Jesus. But I'm convinced we currently lack the evidence that would be required of most figures for us to say he was a real person. And I don't think it matters either way. The religious have faith; by their own admission belief without evidence. And to the rest of us the evidence is currently lacking, but I don't know why we care. Do we care whether Heracles really lived? Do we ever expect to know?
 
PeteByrdie said:
As an adult I've realised the historicity of Jesus is not something many people, even secular people, in our society can easily study dispassionately.
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Yep, agreed. This is a very interesting thread, I've found, but I realise that I'm not objective about the subject (and so have resisted the temptation to post); and what use is that to anybody?
 
It's been a hard wrench for me to get away from my Baptist roots!
BUT something happened to me about 60 years ago:-
I was given two large, Victorian looking books by a neighbour who had sent her daughter to an R.C. Convent School -I don't even know how they managed to slip past my very non conformist mother! (The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ by J.James Tissot)

I think I was home from university ( I was still 17 when I went) and I decided to actually READ what I'd been given (Latin on one side, English on the other) .

I was so moved by the text -and the surprisingly erudite commentary -that I still, always read each daily portion from Psalm Sunday onwards.
The pain and humiliation Jesus must have suffered must have been horrific. It still gets to me.
And I reckon he knew what was coming. I can't believe it was all a myth.

I know I don't eat Hot Cross Buns until Easter day!
 
I have always been curious about Jesus “ missing time “ where from about age 12 to age 30 theories claimed he went to the far east.

The hamlet of Shingo, Japan has a monument to Jesus claiming Jesus lived there and had a family.
 
The Lord's Prayer doesn't "flow" as a prayer should.
You can imagine the elderly disciples trying to remember , many years later, what Jesus had said.
I think it reads like a an old fashioned telegram, with the disciples all chipping in with the different bits they remembered.
 
You see, the thing is that we have had more or less 1500 years of the mighty church editing the story as we go, excising what they didn't like and embellishing the bits they did.

Consequently, unless we find a contemporary source that is untouched, it is very hard to say with any certainty what is and isn't close to true.
 
charliebrown said:
I have read that it took about 50 years later that after Jesus’ death before anything was written about him.
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Scholarly consensus seems to place the earliest Pauline epistles around 50CE, and the Gospel of Mark, widely accepted the earliest gospel, around 70CE. The reasons for these dates are complicated, and from what I recall, I wouldn't consider them conclusive. However, for the most part, I think these dates are accepted by even Christian biblical scholars, as is the understanding (pretty incontrovertible) that the four gospels were not written by those whose names were assigned to them. I've heard fundamentalist apologists try to argue against these things (and if you learn how those names were assigned to the gospels, that's hilarious), but Christian and secular biblical scholarship seems mosty in agreement as far as I can recall.

So, you could say the first extant writing about Jesus was within a human lifetime of his crucifixion. Also, Paul was supposedly a similar age to Jesus, although there's no chance, or even claim, they met*. So I wouldn't read too much into how long after the crucifixion Jesus was first written about. And that's only extant writing.

However, I always felt strongly the letters of Paul read like someone making a concerted effort to effectively create a religion (albeit from existing traditions). That seems as transparent to me as Muhammed, Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard. I think there have always been folk willing to knowingly create a religion in a form that fits their own sensibilities, often through false claims of divine inspiration. Even Homer and Hesiod claimed inspiration from muses. Perhaps that's how all spiritual beliefs began, regardless of what mythologies spun off from them.

*EDIT Apart, of course, from that little incident on the road to Damascus.
 
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And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John14:13)

And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23-24)

Min Bannister said:
Yes, people get God confused with the Fairy Godmother all the time. :)
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I know. It's just weird, right?
 
Recycled1 said:
Perhaps Jesus meant us to ask for a better temper, patience, a forgiving nature - not a new house / wealth/ a better job. :)
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Then he should have said so - and there's plenty of that kind of thing in the Bible, too - but he also says explicitly the faithful who ask for anything in his name will get it. And my quotes were only from John. He says the same in the other gospels, but I'm not digging them out.

I'm not sure this gets us any nearer your reference to free will, though. You're right in a way...
Recycled1 said:
I've given it a lot of thought.
If humans were given (or have developed) Free Will -i.e. the ability to make their own decisions, we can't expect "God" to be a magician who makes everything come right. We either have control, or we don't.
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... either we have control or we don't. Free will is always a thorny topic. It is for science; biology and physics are struggling with it, although they seem to have fallen on the side that it's an illusion.

I feel pretty much that if there's a God who's all-knowing and all-powerful, we don't have free will. Anything God did He did knowing the consequences, including how we'd act, because He's omniscient, and He could have done anything He wanted, because He's omnipotent. We are therefore acting as He knew we would in response to the world as He's set it up, which He could have set up in any way.

From scripture, I don't have an issue with this, simply because scripture doesn't describe a god of infinite power and knowledge. He's sometimes given those qualities almost epithetically, but the Bible describes many situations in which God clearly doesn't know things he should, and His power is shown having limits. So, perhaps we do have free will.

My theory, without knowing what actual scholars think on this subject, is that our imaginations over time have added understanding to what 'all-powerful' and 'all-knowing' can mean, and because God's God, if we can imagine it, He must possess it. My intuition (and intuition is the enemy of reason) is that it began more along the lines that an ancient king might be described as all-powerful, in other words, having the maximum amount of power a being of his nature could have (as a human being with the ability to command others). And perhaps a wise man could be described as being all-knowing, having the maximum amount of knowledge a human might be expected to have. God is obviously above that level of knowledge and power, but can still be expected to have certain limits. So, anyway, I don't have a problem with us having free will (apart from that bit in Romans where God can harden anyone's heart to not accept Him, thus condemning them just to show off his power), because scripture describes a limited and fallible God.

The biblical-literalist Christian apologists, though! These are people who claim to believe in the absolute literal truth of the Bible, where God is clearly described as limited, yet they're totally, unshakeably married to a tri-omni God. An omniscient God who Adam and Eve hid from, and an omnipotent God who has to cheat to win a wrestling match. (Not to mention an omnibenevolent God who is frequently utterly genocidal and hateful. That anyone can believe in the Bible's literal truth and consider the God therein described as having infinite love shows how delusional people can be.)

So these biblical-literalists not only convince themselves God is different than the Bible describes, they also believe He's omnipotent and omniscient yet that we still have free will. I don't buy that possibility. A limited God and we have free will, or a tri-omni God and we don't in any real sense.

My thumb aches from tapping my phone.
 
In the Bible Belt of the U.S. southern states in the African American churches Jesus is represented by a African man.

This causes friction with white churches where Jesus is represented as a handsome blue eyed, blonde flowing hair white man.

I am not knowledgeable, but I don’t think the Bible ever describes what Jesus looks like.
 
charliebrown said:
In the Bible Belt of the U.S. southern states in the African American churches Jesus is represented by a African man.

This causes friction with white churches where Jesus is represented as a handsome blue eyed, blonde flowing hair white man.

I am not knowledgeable, but I don’t think the Bible ever describes what Jesus looks like.
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Ha ha! I didn't know this. The Bible doesn't tell us much except that someone with Jesus's heritage and place of birth is unlikely to have been pale, blue-eyed and blond. Unfortunately people not only create their gods in their own image, they do so in such obviously incorrect ways and then defend that image as though it's remotely justifiable.
 
I have had people tell that it was impossible for Jesus to be anything but a beautiful, white man.

I disagree because like you said living in the Middle East I don’t think Jesus was “ sparkling “ white.

I never answer people but I just stick to myself and go on.
 
charliebrown said:
In the Bible Belt of the U.S. southern states in the African American churches Jesus is represented by a African man.

This causes friction with white churches where Jesus is represented as a handsome blue eyed, blonde flowing hair white man.

I am not knowledgeable, but I don’t think the Bible ever describes what Jesus looks like.
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I remember being a kid at Sunday School and looking up at the picture of Jesus they had on the wall. Pretty much a bleach-blond surfer dude.
I also remember at the time having serious doubts that Jesus would have looked like that.
It was about that time me and religion parted ways.
 
charliebrown said:
In the Bible Belt of the U.S. southern states in the African American churches Jesus is represented by a African man.

This causes friction with white churches where Jesus is represented as a handsome blue eyed, blonde flowing hair white man.

I am not knowledgeable, but I don’t think the Bible ever describes what Jesus looks like.
Click to expand...

PeteByrdie said:
Ha ha! I didn't know this. The Bible doesn't tell us much except that someone with Jesus's heritage and place of birth is unlikely to have been pale, blue-eyed and blond. Unfortunately people not only create their gods in their own image, they do so in such obviously incorrect ways and then defend that image as though it's remotely justifiable.
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charliebrown said:
I have had people tell that it was impossible for Jesus to be anything but a beautiful, white man.

I disagree because like you said living in the Middle East I don’t think Jesus was “ sparkling “ white.

I never answer people but I just stick to myself and go on.
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Mythopoeika said:
I remember being a kid at Sunday School and looking up at the picture of Jesus they had on the wall. Pretty much a bleach-blond surfer dude.
I also remember at the time having serious doubts that Jesus would have looked like that.
It was about that time me and religion parted ways.
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This is my email Christmas card image I compiled and collaged - the Nativity from around the world - and the various portrayals of Jesus's parents/family/friends are very enlightening to compare.

I'm a follower of Jesus and his ways but I don't do much 'Churchianity' - although I am a member of a local church and help out in some services. I am known as the slightly odd non-conformist and that's fine with me :)

What the people arguing about the appearance of Yeshua/Jesus/Joshua/Isa of Nazareth are missing - it doesn't matter and never will!

He probably had olive/light brown skin with darker hair as he was from Judea but it's really not important at all. The Pre-Raphaelites often painted him as a ginger!

nativity.jpg
 
AnonyJ said:
This is my email Christmas card image I compiled and collaged - the Nativity from around the world - and the various portrayals of Jesus's parents/family/friends are very enlightening to compare.

I'm a follower of Jesus and his ways but I don't do much 'Churchianity' - although I am a member of a local church and help out in some services. I am known as the slightly odd non-conformist and that's fine with me :)

What the people arguing about the appearance of Yeshua/Jesus/Joshua/Isa of Nazareth are missing - it doesn't matter and never will!

He probably had olive/light brown skin with darker hair as he was from Judea but it's really not important at all. The Pre-Raphaelites often painted him as a ginger!

View attachment 75210
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That's certainly true. If someone is arguing about the colour of the messiah's skin, they're certainly not likely very focused on his message.

I might steal your e-card.
 
I was led to believe that God gave us choice - and with every choosing, there are consequences.

I dunno if free will is the same as choice...I'm sure there are people arguing over this - to me, in the grand scheme of things, choice and consequence is the natural order of things.

YMMV.
 
Mungoman said:
I was led to believe that God gave us choice - and with every choosing, there are consequences.

I dunno if free will is the same as choice...I'm sure there are people arguing over this - to me, in the grand scheme of things, choice and consequence is the natural order of things.

YMMV.
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I think if you don't want to delve into the philosophy, physics, biology or theology of what free will is, and you just want to live your life as you feel is going to produce the results you want, you don't need to look beyond that.

And if the results you want are to maximise the happiness and welfare of the people around you, you're already doing better than most interpretations of religious texts.
 
What on earth does it matter what Jesus looked like? If you were/ are blind, it wouldn't matter anyway!
I've always assumed he looked like a typical Israeli i.e. Jewish! (Browner skin than me, dark hair and eyes, somewhat -ahem! -big nose.)
p.s. Possibly quite fanciable -he was only in his 30's when he died.
 
Ascalon said:
Wasn't the man himself supposed to be too?
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First century historian Josephus recorded Jesus’s description in a work called “Capture of Jerusalem.” Josephus’s description of Jesus is: “a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small in stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked, with a long face, long nose, meeting eyebrows, and with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard.”

There is no hard evidence to prove this is Jesus’s description or, if it is, that it’s accurate, but many scholars believe it is authentic.

https://www.express.co.uk/comment/e...tion-Easter-is-turin-shroud-real-Christianity
 
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