Reddit reviews Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
We found 51 Reddit comments about Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
HarperOne
It's funny that the number one reason given for why Jesus didn't really exist is just a quote from Bart Ehrman, who had to write a book about Jesus existing to try and put an end to this growing trend in pseudo-history that says he didn't.
In how many ways are you wrong?
You're in no position to call other people fools.
It's not Christians saying this.
It's historians, the qualified professionals in the area.
I'm not sure what you mean by historical science, but the claim the Jesus existed is supported by the vast majority of historians.
The evidence is complicated, so if you're interested in the subject, you will need to do some reading.
I recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
I suggest you read Bart Ehrman: Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. He an atheist and scholar who is upset that his fellow atheists can be so credulous as to believe Jesus never existed.
At least read the introduction with the "Look Inside!" feature.
An accessible work written about this subject is Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.
More about this subject can be found at the wiki/FAQ pages here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBibleScholars/wiki/faq
Specifically, numbers 12, 32, and 34.
Pet peeve. Citing a scholarly consensus is an argument from expert testimony, not from authority. The argument from authority is a poorly understood fallacy, and is asserted many times when it isn't applicable.
And yes, there's quite a bit of work into the field. I'd recommend Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist for an easy, good overview of the historical arguments (worth mentioning that Ehrman is an agnostic). This Wiki article isn't bad either.
I don't really see the point in going into this in great detail. It gets rehashed in /r/DebateReligion from time to time, and IMO the Sam Harris acolytes around here already have their mind made up.
It is hard to find work that can be considered completely non-biased. If it's written by a Christian it can always be considered biased one way, and if written by a non-Christian it can be considered biased the other way.
Bart Ehrman, an agnostic, has written a book on this subject and made audiotapes. He argues that Jesus did exist, although he did not closely resemble the Jesus described in the Gospels. They can be found in libraries.
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0062206443
http://www.amazon.com/The-Historical-Jesus-Bart-Ehrman/dp/1565853636
Richard Carrier is one of the major arguers for the case that Jesus never existed.
http://www.youtube.com/results?hl=en&gl=us&q=richard+carrier&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=n1
The myths that grew up about him are an amalgamation of previously existing myths. He, the human man, existed. This is the view of virtually all historians (e.g. scholars) who study this period.
Here is a popular work written by someone who is in no way sympathetic to Christianity: Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062206443/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Eml0Ab66Q58FZ
Well, historicity has always been the default assumption, so there are plenty of papers operating under that idea, but I think it would be accurate to say that there aren't any recent^1
peer-reviewed^2 works that really take on the modern scholarly^3 mythicist theory.
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^1 Carrier's recently published books are based on extensive research inspired largely by Earl Doherty's 2000 book: The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. Written by someone outside academia, this book didn't originally attract serious scholarly attention, so it is has only been the last couple of years that these ideas are being given serious consideration.
^2 Ehrman's book, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, regardless of whether you agree with its arguments, is written as an accessible overview, not an exhaustive scholarly response to Carrier. In fact, it was published before Carrier's main work on the subject, "On the Historicity of Jesus".
^3 There are plenty of bad mythicist theories that have been thoroughly debunked, like the Zeitgeist movie or Joseph Atwill's weird idea that the Romans conspired to invent Jesus. A big part of Carrier's frustration is getting people to even consider his serious work among all the crackpots.
You may be interested in Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, in which the author concludes that yeah, he probably existed. You may also be interested in this (still ongoing) series of blog posts reviewing the book, which does a nice job pulling out relevant quotes
If you were to claim that Saturn does not have rings, many astronomers would indeed inform you that all credible astronomers disagree with you. If you wanted a survey of how many astronomers believe Saturn has rings, and how many do not, it would be hard to get a solid figure -- not because the issue is controversial, but because astronomers don't usually bother to even say that they believe Saturn has rings. It's just that obvious to all credentialed astronomers. The analogy is pretty on point, I have to say.
You should know that Dr. Ehrman is a highly regarded Biblical scholar, and an atheist. Detailed answers to all your questions are in the book mentioned above. You say you don't have access to it, but it's only $10 on Amazon. If you can't afford that, or if getting the answers to your questions aren't worth $10 to you, you could always head over to your local library and check out a copy, as I did. It really isn't a long book. Or, if you're averse to reading a book, there's a very informative video debate online between Dr. Ehrman and a prominent mythicist here, in which he lays out abbreviated versions of the same information that can be found in the book.
In researching it, did you read the arguments of mainstream historians like Bart Ehrman and E. P. Sanders as well as mythicists like Carrier and Price, or the mythicists alone?
No tenured historian at any research university in the country doubts that Jesus of Nazareth existed.
I've not read it, but Bart Ehrman wrote a book titled Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Ehrman is a respected non-Christian scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity. The fact that conservative Christians dislike Ehrman so much (ample evidence for this on youtube, for instance) should indicate that he's not some religious dogmatist.
Here's a video in which Ehrman reads some of the book.
I found Richard Carrier's book to be much more credible than Ehrman's.
I was biased against Carrier, because I found him to be an annoying and repetitive writer. I liked Ehrman. He is a friendly writer, easy to follow, and hoped that I would get serious academic arguments against the "mythical jesus" view.
Despite my bias, Carrier beat Ehrman hands down. I was disappointed with Ehrman. I found that many of his arguments just made no sense. (I'm not a historian, but as an ex-programmer, I am well acquainted with basic logic.)
I do not consider it proven that Jesus was mythical. Not at all. But after Carrier, I also don't consider it proven that he did exist. All my adult life I took the exact same position as OP, that Jesus didn't perform any miracles, but I just assumed that he existed. Now I'm agnostic on Jesus. (But still atheistic on God. :-)
I would love to see a serious and scholarly attempt to refute Carrier.
The theory about there being no direct historical figure behind Jesus is a pretty interesting one but is much more of a fringe idea in historical circles. If you're interested in reading up on it at all, here's a pretty good book on the subject
Christianity wasn't legalized until 313 C.E. and it didn't become the State Religion until 380 C.E. we can reasonably declare 380 C.E. as the beginning of the Catholic church. Before 313 Christians were persecuted throughout the empire. Also, did you even read the second link?
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>Preface
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>The Short answer is no: Tacitus is not the only or main reason why modern historians (whether Atheist, Agnostic, or Christian) believe the historical Jesus existed. I am going to copy and paste my answer from a previous post and also suggest that if you want in depth answers into what evidence we have for the Historical Jesus to read one of these two books:
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>Ehrman, Bart: Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
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>Crossan, John Dominic: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant Ehrman is a very vocal Agnostic (borderline Atheist) and Crossan is a Christian, just to give you both sides of the coin. I recommend Ehrman because he's one of the most engaging historians on this topic, period.
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>Why do historians overwhelmingly agree that Jesus was historically a real person?
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>First, we need to address one key issue that most people don't understand, so people on both sides of this argument like to take certain things out of context. It needs to be known that we have practically no primary sources for many secondary (non-monarchs or major political figures) characters in antiquity. This is what the historical Jesus was (a secondary character in his day). If we simply say "we have no archeological evidence, so he doesn't exist" then we need to say that Aristotle and Socrates did not exist because, like Jesus' story, we are left with written accounts that have been repeatedly copied through various generations.
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>Now when it comes to the historical Jesus (and what we know of him) well it's simple in a few ways. The first, is that although the gospels and other New Testament books were all written decades after Jesus died (however Paul started writing between 45-49 CE), they are independently attested. Yes, from a historical perspective (and personally for myself since I am agnostic) the miracles and resurrection are considered embellishments to help encourage early people convert to this new Jewish sect.
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>What does this mean
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>Now although much of this information cannot be relied upon for historical purposes, some of it can pass the test of historical plausibility. What do I mean by that? Well, every historian, when examining evidence, has a set of criteria they must use when comparing written accounts of any event. Part of doing this, is taking these four accounts, and cross examining with each other and seeing if any of the minor details (things that lack religious implications that would be less likely for people to make up) correspond to most or all of the documents. What you'll find is that many of these minor details correspond consistently in ways that you wouldn't expect-- this is something you almost never see with mythical figures.
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>You'll also see that the early Gospel writers likely had to create explanations for certain things about Jesus because his name was likely somewhat known around the time of his death. I'll give a brief example:
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>Two of the gospels deal with the birth of Jesus. Without going into too much detail, it's easy to make the argument that both Matthew and Luke did not get their information for this narrative from the same source. They are constantly at odds with each other over many specific areas of this story (example: in Matthew, Mary and Joseph already lived in bethlehem and then had to move to Egypt and then, years later, move to Nazareth. In Luke, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, traveled to Bethlehem for a theoretical tax registration, waited there for 32 days after Jesus was born, and then returned immediately to Nazareth).
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>Most historians believe it is likely that both of them made up nearly all (if not all) of the parts to their stories because they were trying to fulfill the prophecies from the Old Testament. See, in the book of Micah, it was predicted that a savior would be born in the city of David (Bethlehem), so these writers wanted to make sure that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy. But wait, they had a real issue to deal with. It was probably well-known that Jesus was from some small town called Nazareth, thus he didn't fulfill that part of the prophecy. So, to deal with this, early gospel writers created these narratives to explain how this person from Nazareth could have still been from the city of David.
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>If Jesus was a mythological figure that sprung up out of thin air, there would be no reason to say he was from Nazareth, they would have said he was from Bethlehem and just left it at that. This is what we typically see for made up figures. Keep in mind that this is one of dozens of examples where the writers did this to meet personal agendas of their time.
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>What historians also find is that it is nearly impossible for a sect or cult to immediately spring up without a founding figure. After Jesus' death, the remaining followers were probably a group of people of about 20-30 people, and it expanded rather quickly -- probably hitting the hundreds within the decade after his death and by 50 CE, they had spread throughout the Roman Empire. Most scholars believe that the book of Mark, written between 65-70 CE, was actually written in the city of Rome for a local church there. This type of growth and expansion is, by historical standards, incredibly fast. The rapid rate of growth suggests, for historians, that a real figure of Jesus existed, had a few followers who immediately disbanded after his death. Yet, for those whom remained, they started preaching about his life and resurrection, which was likely very enticing for their day.
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>I hope this gave you a glimpse into the answer for this. If you'd like more examples I can provide them.
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>Addendum I wanted to add one more thing that I forgot to mention in my original post, and it's something that I find to be extremely important but is often overlooked. Tacitus is often identified as the first Roman to discuss or mention the historical Jesus or his followers which is actually not correct. The first mention of Christians actually comes several years earlier, around the year 112 CE (although I've read one scholar claim it was maybe even during the decade before that) by a Roman governor. Here's an excerpt from another Ehrman book on the topic:
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>"The author, Pliny the Younger, was a governor of a Roman province. In a letter that he wrote to his emperor, Trajan, he indicates that there was a group of people called Christians who were meeting illegally; he wants to know how to handle the situation. These people, he tells the emperor, “worship Christ as a God.” That’s all he says about Jesus. It’s not much to go on if you want to know anything about the historical Jesus." -- Ehrman, Bart D Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) HarperCollins. (2009-02-20) pp. 149
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>As Ehrman points out, it's not much to go off of, but it is important that we have multiply attested sources talking about the rapidly growing Christian base at this time.
Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth gives a pretty good summary of why there is such a strong consensus that Jesus existed, among the historians who study that time.
They don't throw out the New Testament as evidence, just because it was written by Christians and has miracle accounts. Historians often make use of evidence that can't be taken literally.
There's also a lot to be said about the implausibilty of the claim that Jesus didn't exist - because in that case you have a theory that a Jesus myth was created without a basis in a historical Jesus, and historians can evaluate whether that theory works. Bart Ehrman goes over that, too.
You would probably enjoy Did Jesus Exist? by Bart D. Ehrman.
Ehrman is a well regarded main stream expert in academic Biblical studies. He writes well and alternates between publishing articles in academic journals and publishing popular books. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bart Ehrman had a Christian religious conversion experience while in high school. He attended a bible college after high school then went on to University to study Christianity academically. Along the way he lost his faith because he could not square the existence of a loving God with the existence of pain in the world. He describes himself as "an agnostic with strong leanings towards atheism" but most of his family, friends and colleagues are Christian.
Modern writing on this subject began with The Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweiker in 1906. Most books about the historical Jesus usually end up concluding that (surprise!) the historical Jesus matches each author's preconception of who Jesus was.
I'm an atheist. Jesus nonetheless probably existed, as is the historical consensus. In their field, it's analogous to denying climate change - you can do it, but everyone would be right to ignore you, and your conspiracy theories will always pale in comparison to the actual methodology of historians. If you sincerely want to learn more about how we know that Jesus likely existed, try Bart Ehrman's book: https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
Also Did Jesus Exist?
These are scholarly books, not emotional conjecture.
Read this book. It deals with this topic in detail and it's written by an agnostic.
The overarching thesis of the book is this: Paul actually met Jesus's brother James. James must surely have known whether or not Jesus existed!! James being Jesus' brother is attested to in multiple gospels which were written by independent people.
The idea of a suffering saviour seems natural to us now only because Christianity is ubiquitous today. Back then, it was nothing short of a heresy. It is not a "natural" myth that would have been expected in a Jewish community. The messiah was meant to restore Israel through battle.
That is the book in two paragraphs. The justification for these claims is quite complex and I won't make his argument for him here. Just read the book.
When you say "historicity," are you talking about whether or not Jesus existed or what the historical Jesus would have been like?
Bart Ehrman, an atheist, has a book on the former that pretty well represents the consensus of historians that Jesus did, in fact, exist.
I haven't read this, but this book looks like it might be a good intro to the historical Jesus. I don't know all of the scholars on this list, but the ones I do know are good, and it shows a spectrum.
The "Jesus" of Christianity is largely fabricated, I agree.
But, reading Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman convinced me that Jesus of Nazareth existed, taught stuff, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
I like what ex-Evangelical blogger Neil Carter says about the historicity of Jesus:
>When climate change deniers want to insist that our actions have no impact on global temperatures, they display a remarkable disdain for an entire discipline populated by credentialed professionals in that field who say otherwise. It doesn’t seem to bother the deniers that they themselves have no specialization in the academic field they disparage because in any field of study there will always be at least some small contingent who go against the consensus. The existence of those outliers is justification enough for the deniers to say, “This business is far from certain, you know. Just look at these four people who disagree!”
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>That’s how I feel when people in the skeptic community argue that Jesus never existed. They are dismissing a large body of work for which they have insufficient appreciation, most often due to the fact that they themselves have never formally studied the subject.
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Honestly, I don't remember the evidence that Bart Ehrman brought up to prove that Jesus was real. But Ehrman is an agnostic NT scholar who vociferously opposes those who deny the existence of Jesus. Most scholars agree that Jesus at least existed, and Ehrman explains why.
>Actually, there still is no consensus in archeology if he actually existed.
That's not true. The vast majority of serious historians of ancient history agree he existed. That doesn't mean they all agree with Christian faith claims about him – there are plenty of Jewish, atheist, agnostic, etc., historians who reject Christian claims that Jesus is divine or rose from the dead, but still agree that he was a real historical person, a 1st century Jewish religious teacher who was crucified by the Romans, and the religious movement he founded evolved into historical Christianity. See, for example, Bart D. Ehrman's book "Did Jesus Exist?". (It is worth noting that Ehrman is an ex-Christian and an agnostic, but he still maintains the scholarly consensus supports Jesus' existence.)
Christ myth theory is almost entirely amateurs (or people who are experts at fields other than ancient history dabbling outside their sphere of professional competence). There are close to zero serious academic historians who support it.
>That said, the set of evidence that does most align with him probably existing has him being High Priest Yeshua of the Essenes
That's a speculative fringe theory, it isn't mainstream scholarship.
As a heads up, historical Jesus is a FAQ on the /r/AskHistorians wiki.
I don't have much to add, so I'm not sure if this will qualify as a top-level comment, but I hope this answers your question, as these answers are all well-written and sourced. Additionally, a book that is often recommended on this topic is Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman.
Ha, thanks!
I'm familiar with the debate you speak of -- but this is a different, very real, very stupid debate from people who believe Jesus didn't exist. Like I said, they're pretty much antivaxxers: they latch on to bits of misinformation which they use to argue a fringe position, and wage war on anyone who dares disagree. They've also taken over a lot of the atheist community. Here's a debate where Bart Ehrman (a Bible scholar I really like) debates mythicist Robert Price. Ehrman also wrote a whole book refuting the hypothesis. Here's another massive resource refuting mythicism from redditor and historian u/timoneill.
>Es ist nicht historisch gesichert, dass es diesen Jesus überhaupt gegeben hat.
Das ist eine typische völlig sinnlose Herangehensweise die auch nur für Leute die verliebt in Gedankenexperimente sind interessant ist. Bart Ehrmann (der übrigens eher aus der Skeptikerposition argumentiert) nimmt das in seinem Buch ziemlich gut auseinander. Occams Razor sagt es hat einen Jesus gegeben weil er Spuren in der Geschichte hinterlassen hat. Nur weil wir wenig sicher über sein Leben sagen können bedeutet nicht dass wir nicht ziemlich sagen können dass etwas JesusVonNazarethförmiges in dieser Zeit existiert und eine größere Menge an Menschen schwer beeindruckt hat, weswegen sie angefangen haben über ihn Bücher zu schreiben. Wir wissen über die überwältigende Mehrheit der Menschen die zu dieser Zeit gelebt haben wenig (ie jeder der nicht wichtig genug war um eine Statue von sich zu bauen oder eine Münze über sich zu drucken), das heißt nicht dass sie nicht existiert haben.
Das neue Testament ist ein historisches Dokument ihrer Zeit (= die Zeit ein wenig nach JesusVonNazareth). Nur weil sie in vielen Details unzuverlässlich ist (was übrigens Ehrmanns Lieblingsthema ist: dass die Bibel unzuverlässig ist, aber in vielen Fällen auf sehr vorhersehbare Art und Weise) ändert das nicht dass sie ein Dokument ihrer Zeit ist (er geht auch lang und breit darauf ein warum wir über viele andere Figuren die wir als historisch betrachten oft nur eine Quelle haben oder nur stark unzuverlässige Quellen, zb weil die nur von Feinden geschrieben worden sind, weil die Gruppe der die Person angehörte selbst noch keine Schrift hatte). Und dass Leute nicht ohne Grund anfangen Bücher zu schreiben und communities zu gründen => Und dass keine der Alternativthesen eine glaubwürdigere, fundiertere Erklärung liefert warum da plötzlich um diese Zeit herum Leute angefangen haben sich seltsam zu benehmen.
> Ich hab halt den Eindruck, solche Nachrichten zielen darauf ab, Gläubige Menschen zu bashen, oder harmloser ausgedrückt, sie in ihrem Glauben herauszufordern.
Hast du den Artikel überhaupt gelesen? Der tut doch eher das Gegenteil, er nimmt sich dem gängigen Vorwurf "Momo = pedo" an und erklärt basierend auf Quellen was der Kontext war und was noch in Momos Leben abging. Das meine ich mit dass es hier zwei Gruppen mit unterschiedlichen Motivationen gibt. Ich glaube nicht dass es der Sinn des verlinkten Artikels ist dass er gläubige Menschen bashen will, er wendet sich eher an/gegen Leute die das so machen indem er aufzeigt was seiner Meinung nach Fehler in deren Argumentation sind.
>Religion ist sowas widerspeuchsvolles und kompliziertes, da hilft es nicht auf Widersprüche hinzuweisen, die sind längst rationalisiert oder überhaupt nicht relevant.
Das mag so sein aber ich würde behaupten dass es erstens sehr wohl zweifelnde Menschen gibt und die wenigstens Menschen so sind dass sie nur rational oder nur emotional sind. In den meisten Menschen existiert beides und zweitens dass es in der Regel die Religionen SELBER sind die versuchen ihre eigene innere Ableitungslogik zu geben. Darum gibts ja überhaupt christliche und islamische Theologie. Was tut die denn anderes als schon seit Jahrhunderten an verschiedenen Zitaten rumzuwichsen?
Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
I had this argument 1 million times now, but here we go again:
I'm an atheist and I despise Christianity probably as much as you. That being said, I don't let my ideology blur my quest of the historical truth.
While I agree that the evidences for an historical Jesus are weak, I've never encountered a decent mythicist hypothesis explaining what we know about the creation and spread of the early church. Some of these points are:
> a book that's been translated and rewritten several times.
The NT is not one book but a collection of books, some of them interrelated, but the historicity of Jesus is attested by several independent sources:
There is no evidence that any of these books were translated: they were all written in Greek. Some of them probably used Aramaic sources, but none of these original sources survived. Yes, most of them experienced several stages of writing.
For a serious take on what secular historians think about this issue : http://www.amazon.fr/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
ninja edit: as a conclusion, I respect "weak mythicists" who are just saying that we can't extract biographical information about Jesus from the NT, even if I disagree with them, but hardcore mythicists are just irrational, driven by their ideology.
Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman is a good overview of the evidence.
That's not a position I have made and one of which I don't care to defend. If you are curious though, Bart Ehrman does have a book out called Did Jesus Exist?
There's also some scholarly subreddits that you can find that have discussed the topic as well.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062206443/ref=redir_mdp_mobile
You know how you've heard some people say, "it was like a movie" when talking about real events? Does that mean the event isn't real?
Similarly, just because there are some (way over-exaggerated) similarities between some myths and Jesus' life dies not mean he didn't exist. Wipe away the supernatural stuff and a real person was there.
Look at it this way. Pretend the nuclear holocaust just happened. 99.9999999% of the books, computer hard drives, magazines, billboards, etc are gone. Alien historians come and discover our civilization. Put yourself in their shoes. That's the position today's classicists are in.
These aliens discover that there was a religion called Scientology. They don't have any of the early writings. All they have are one Church pamphlet talking about L. Ron Hubbard's life, a neutral scholarly work about the early Church of Scientology, and an angry blog post by an atheist member of Anonymous.
Now, the second and third source don't have a lot of flattering things to say about the guy, but, the aliens notice, they all talk about him like his existence isn't even in question. It's just understood. The third source especially has no love lost for the religion, so if Hubbard didn't exist surely he'd be the first to say so.
If you were the alien scholar, wouldn't you assume L. Ron Hubbard was real?
Add this to your reading list.
My assertion that Carrier knows what peer review actually is stands. He's described the process in writing before. What he submitted his book to is not peer review by his own definition. If you have an explanation for that other than dishonesty, I'd be interested to hear it.
As for your request, and apropos of the interview this thread is about, I would recommend Erhman's book-length treatment. If you don't have time for a book, this (peer reviewed) article will do just fine.
Also, I'm not sure you intended it, but I laughed out loud at the implication that I'm a Christian. Just for the record, it is possible to be an atheist even after admitting the fact that Jesus was a real person.
CNN is not a source for textual reliability. Prof. Casey is a non-believer, but that doesn't fit your narrative.
For the record, Bart Ehrman does not disagree with me. He wrote a book defending the proposition of the historical Jesus in 2012, linked here and here is a video of him saying as much. For someone who is awfully critical of sources without reading them you do very little analysis of your own.
Yes I am aware of Richard Carrier and Bob Price. Ask yourself why he - not originally a new testament historian - has not written a peer reviewed paper on this rather novel and contrarian view and has instead decided to publish popular books targeting an atheist/agnostic audience eager to accept this message.
As a counter can I recommend Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?, also a short video
Yeah, I get that.
But the issue is, if you want serious scholarly information on this subject you're not going to get it by reading some links or listening to some asshat on the internet like myself. You're going to have to pick up a book. Possibly two.
Further, if you're goal is to challenge consensus in a credible manner then you're looking at years of intense study and probably a doctorate. This isn't specific to history, it applies to virtually all fields these days.
But if you're interested, here are some very readable books on the historical Jesus. Here's a good one that addresses this topic directly:
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0062206443
If that's to scholarly this one is a decent introduction:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061434345
If you can get through one or both of those books then you'll know enough to know what to read next.
It doesn't contradict:
>1. An angel rolls away the stone from the tomb before sunrise (Matthew 28:2-4). The guards are seized with fear and eventually flee.
2. Women disciples visit the tomb and discover Christ missing (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1-4; Luke 24:1-3; John 20:1).
3. Mary Magdalene leaves to tell Peter and John (John 20:1-2).
4. Other women remain at the tomb; they see two angels who tell them of Christ's resurrection (Matthew 28:5-7; Mark 16:5-7; Luke 24:4-8).
5. Peter and John run to the tomb and then leave (Luke 24:12; John 20:3-10).
6. Christ's First Appearance: Mary Magdalene returns to the tomb; Christ appears to her (Mark 16:9-11; John 20:11-18).
7. Christ's Second Appearance: Jesus appears to the other women (Mary, mother of James, Salome, and Joanna) (Matthew 28:8-10).
8. At this time, the guards report the events to the religious leaders and are bribed to lie (Matthew 28:11-15).
Moving on...
>I'm sure you've heard of the Odyssey.
The Odyssey does not include little irrelevant details like the one I have pointed out.
>Here's a fun link.
Oh, we're allowing links now?
Here's a fun one from an atheist PhD historian: https://historyforatheists.com/2017/05/did-jesus-exist-the-jesus-myth-theory-again/
Your article excludes crucial details, for example (this is just pulling out one, there are many more errors I could if I wanted to devote the time) we know that the second reference in Josephus could not have been interpolated for the following reason:
>Since it is wholly unlikely that a Christian interpolator invented the whole story of the deposition of the High Priest just to slip in this passing reference to Jesus, Mythicists try to argue that the key words which identify which Jesus is being spoken of are interpolated. Unfortunately this argument does not work. This is because the passage is discussed no less than three times in mid-Third Century works by the Christian apologist Origen and he directly quotes the relevant section with the words “Jesus who was called the Messiah” all three times: in Contra Celsum I.4, in Contra Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17. Each time he uses precisely the phrase we find in Josephus: αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου (“the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah”). This is significant because Origen was writing a whole generation before Christianity was in any kind of position to be tampering with texts of Josephus. If this phrase was in the passage in Origen’s time, then it was clearly original to Josephus.
If you have the time I would recommend the following book actually, it's quite good: https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
Ehrman is an atheist scholar.
>I can see you are prone to ad hominem attacks.
No, I'm simply pointing out that your argument is incorrect because you don't even know what Aquinas is saying. If you don't know what his argument is, then how could you know that it has been "refuted"?
I would recommend the following book which provided me the impetus to convert from atheism to Christianity, it goes over that argument specifically: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1587314525
Se é pra apelar pra vídeos aleatórios no youtube, aqui está um que diz que a Terra é plana. Tá no youtube, então claramente é verdade.
Eu teria vergonha de linkar um vídeo desses. Obviamente não vi o vídeo inteiro(pode falar o que quiser, não vou perder quase 40min vendo um vídeo que em poucos minutos percebi não ser de muita confiança), mas se quiser algo melhor que essas "apostilas" feitas pra arrancar dinheiro de ateus rebeldes que usam fedoras, aqui está um ótimo livro sobre o assunto
Não é questão de ser religioso ou não - eu nem cristão sou -, isso é história.
>you imbecile
I can already tell this is going to be fun.
>Jesus has literally ZERO contemporary historical data.
That's not what you asked for. You asked for peer-reviewed arguments for the historical existence of Jesus, of which I said there are thousands, and to which I said you'd have a much more difficult time finding the opposite--- peer reviewed articles and books arguing that Jesus was entirely a myth.
>I’ll wait for those libraries of sources you have.
Where do you want to start?
Probably the best place for you to start is with Bart Ehrman, a leading scholar of on the development of Christianity, and he's also a popular skeptic speaker and writer. In addition to publishing he's written popular books about how many of the books of the Bible were forgeries, and how the belief that Jesus was divine developed in early Christianity, he also wrote an entire book laying out the widely accepted case that Jesus was likely a real historical person, written directly to skeptical lay people like yourself.
If you want a great introduction to the scholarly debate about the historical Jesus, you could start here or here. I also think Dale Allison's work is great critical look at some of the issues at work in the debate. There are lots of historical reconstructions of Jesus' life. Some of the more popular ones like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan tend to sell books to liberal Christian audiences, so I've always thought E.P. Sanders treatment was perferable. I'll spare you the links to scholars who identify as orthodox Christians, like Luke Timothy Johnson or N.T. Wright. It sounded like you specifically wanted more scholarly sources and not popular books, so you could just look at the scholarly journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. Or the Jesus Seminar. Or either of the following Introductions to the New Testament textbooks which are used in secular universities throughout the english speaking world:
Introduction to the New Testament by Mark Allen Powell
Introduction to the New Testament by Bart Ehrman
These are the ones I'm personally most familiar with. There are tons more like Geza Vermes and Amy Jill Levine I haven't read and I'm not as familiar with.
But I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't learn in any basic 101 intro to New Testament Class. The academic consensus is that regardless of what you think about him as a religious figure, it is extremely likely that there was a first century Jew named Jesus who started a faith movement that led to him being crucified. Why do scholars think this? Because by the time Paul started writing his letters 20 years later there was a growing, spreading religious movement that worship a crucified Jew named Jesus as their messiah, and given critical analysis of the texts produced by this movement, some of which are now in the New Testament, there really doesn't exist a coherent argument for the development of this movement that doesn't include the existence of a first century Jew named Jesus who was crucified.
>and it's definitely not special pleading to say they contain innacruate information, especially when I just showed you all the data that say you are wrong.
Sorry, but the Talk Origin page is wrong.
Consider the molecular data.
If lobopods are closely related to annelid worms and arthropods, then we'd expect annelid worms, arthropods and onychophorans to nest closely in molecular trees. But that isn't what we find. In fact, the molecular data is a mess and often conflicts with the morphological data when you try to construct phylogenetic trees for the major animal phyla.
One paper states: "Prior to 1997, the prevalent view of arthropod relationships linked them, via the onychophorans, to the annelid worms." Maximilian J. Telford, Sarah J. Bourlat, Andrew Economou, Daniel Papillon and Omar Rota-Stabelli, "The evolution of the Ecdysozoa," Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363 (2008): 1529-1537.
So what happened in 1997? Well, that was when scientists started sequencing the DNA of these phyla and found that annelid worms are NOT molecularly close to arthropods. Today, the idea that lobopods should serve as a "intermediate" between arthropods and annelid worms no longer make sense, because the molecular data suggests they aren't closely related.
This is another good example where the molecular data conflicts with morphological data. As Graham Budd explains, if arthropods are distantly related to annelids, "then the striking resemblance of such arthropod systems to (for example) those of annelids would be a convergence, which may be considered by some to be unlikely." See Graham E. Budd, "Tardigrades as 'Stem-Group Arthropods': The Evidence from the Cambrian Fauna," Zoologischer Anzeiger: A Journal of Comparative Zoology, 240 (2001): 265-279 (internal citations omitted). Or as another paper put it, the molecular data imply "the closest relatives of panarthropods are not segmented, coelomate animals like annelids, but rather are nonsegmented, mostly acoelomateworms with terminal mouth." Gregory D. Edgecombe, "Palaeontological and Molecular Evidence Linking Arthropods, Onychophorans, and other Ecdysozoa," Evo Edu Outreach (2009) 2:178-190. Since arthropods are segmented and coelomate animals, this finding is most surprising.
The TalkOrigins page is outdated because modern molecular systematics would not view lobopods as linking arthropods and segmented worms. In light of the molecular data, that argument no longer seems credible.
In fact, the molecular data put nematode worms closer to arthropods -- but no one would have expected this on the basis of morphology because nematodes aren't segmented. Thus the molecular data implies segmentation is distributed in a paraphyletic fashion (i.e. a manner that doesn't fit with the nested hierarchy predicted by common ancestry) and lobopods aren't a good link between segmented worms and arthropods. Some lobopods do bear a certain resemblance to arthropods, but as one paper admits, "the origin of lobopods is still obscure." Jianni Liu, Degan Shu, Jian Han, Zhifei Zhang, Xingliang Zhang, "Origin, diversification, and relationships of Cambrian lobopods," Gondwana Research, 14 (2008): 277-283.
Another article states, "Lobopods in the Cambrian appear to be diverse and not particularly closely related to one another, and certainly cannot be combined in a monophyletic clade." Graham E. Budd, "Tardigrades as 'Stem-Group Arthropods': The Evidence from the Cambrian Fauna," Zoologischer Anzeiger: A Journal of Comparative Zoology, 240 (2001): 265-279
Science has moved on while those Talk Origin pages are stuck in the past, it is constantly churning up more data . The TO website was last updated in October 9, 2006. Click on a lot of its links get you the dreaded 404 or Not Found error message.
You may want to start reading more current scientific research journals and articles.
>Which is the same thing as saying it. Most atheists are not naturalists.
So most atheists believe that there are things that exists outside of the natural world, i.e. that non-natural, non-physical, super-natural things exist?
>Most atheists are skeptics.
Most atheists are skeptics of everything except atheism.
>Skepticism is applying critical analysis to claims before just blindly accepting them to be true.
If atheists applied the same amount of critical analysis to atheism as they do everything else they wouldn’t be atheists for long.
>Well, by your definition sure. But we have already established that your definition of naturalism is incorrect.
No, you just asserted that.
You offered the definition of: “naturalism is "the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted."
What is the difference between “the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.” and ”nothing exists except for atoms and physical laws”?
Maybe you are saying that the non-physical exists [or might exist] but it is not needed [or shouldn’t be used] to explain the world.
But I one thinks the non-physical does exist then it should be incorporated into one’s worldview since it’s part of their reality.
And if one is unsure of the existence of the non-physical then they shouldn’t object to a non-physical explanation of the world a priori.
>Let me ask you something. Do you know for a fact that a god created this universe,
As I wrote before the KCA is a deductive logical argument that takes into account what is currently known of the world. That a MNB [aka God] created the world is much more plausible than any other explanation.
>that he has a son named Jesus, and that he died for our sins.
If one treats the Bible like any other historical document then one can be sure his life, death and resurrection are as historically valid as anything else. Even Bart Ehrman wrote a book stating the Jesus was a historical person
>It's that neither of us know and you are claiming that you do know.
You may not know. But I do know. Science, logic, philosophy, history all point to the God of the Bible.
>It's not an explanation, it's being intellectually honest.
I agree. Saying we haven't-figured-it-out-yet is NOT an explanation. It is a concession that the naturalistic or atheistic world view cannot explain the world as we know it.
>In order for your statement to be valid, you would have to know for a fact, that there is no possible way for the universe to have ever arisen from a natural cause. You do not know this. You are claiming knoweldge that is impossible to have.
Nope, it just has to shown that it is more plausibly true than it negation.
>Then you don't understand science.
Then you don’t understand deductive reasoning or critical thought.
>I agree with that, however the problem you have failed to address is that the majority of educated adults are atheist or agnostic. Theist scientists are the exception not the norm. There was a point in time where all scientists were theists because the world was much more superstitious, however the more we learn about the universe the more and more scientists (and people in general) reject theism.
Truth and reason is not an opinion poll. Those that reject theism do so in spite of the evidence, in defiance of reason and critical thought.
>The part you leave out is that all these people believed in different gods. Some of them believe in a monotheistic god, some believe in a polytheistic religion, some believe in a deistic god (which is not the christian god).
Irrelevant. They thought god, whichever one they believed in, had ordered the world in some way, just like naturalists believe the world is ordered by physical laws. One does not have to assume naturalism or atheism to do science.
>Actually it can be. If just one fossil was found out of place where it shouldn't be the entirety of evolution would be false. There are multiple methods of falsifying evolution. Yet no one has ever disproved it.
See the quotes above, which are leading some to call for a revised evolutionary theory and others to another theory altogether.
>I'm not saying that my beliefs can't be disproved. I'm saying we cannot know the origin of the universe. We do not actually know this.
Well a much more plausible answer for the origin of life has been proposed: a MNB. And it rests on solid philosophical, logical ground.
>Like I said in order to demonstrate that your position was valid you would have to have absolute knowledge that all other claims were impossible. Which you do not have.
False. One does not need to have absolute knowledge that all other claims were impossible. More plausibly true than negation.
>And at some point you have to acknowledge that you misrepresenting my worldview therefore making your criticisms of it invalid.
Then explain your WV.
>The intenionally misleading term "historical Jesus" is meant to confuse who we really have evidence for. We have everyone for the person(s) Jesus is based on (whose key properties are entirely natural), but no evidence for Jesus (whose key properties are entirely supernatural).
Since you repeatedly show that you have never even bothered to so much as Google the scholarship on this issue I'm just going to give it to you.
The wikipedia page on the subject with hosts of links and quotes from historians, and textual critics:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
Bart Ehrman Answering a question about this at talk:
https://youtu.be/43mDuIN5-ww
His book on the subject:
Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062206443/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Hrf6CbNSB68PT
Albert Schweitzer's book on the subject:
The Quest of the Historical Jesus https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486440273/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_gtf6CbY07Q6Y0
It's also one of r/Askhistorians most frequently asked questions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a2z3a7/i_always_hear_people_say_we_know_for_sure_that/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/259vcd/how_much_evidence_is_there_for_a_historical_jesus/chf3t4j/?context=3
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8mm717/what_is_the_historical_jesus/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tjeq1/from_a_historical_perspective_what_is_the_actual/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sxsko/evidence_for_jesus/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rubhc/so_what_do_we_actually_know_about_the_life/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3uubcm/how_certain_are_historians_the_jesus_christ_was_a/
Bart Ehrman has a book on the subject that looks at all the evidence for Jesus existence.
​
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539691375&sr=8-1&keywords=did+jesus+exist
Josephus is who is most often quoted. It was one line among many others. One of a number of others who were executed. It's not like there was one source that said a man named jesus was crucified. From all I've read it's a long document dealing executions and a bunch of other stuff and one tiny line references a jesus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
The link above is what people reference when they claim that there was AT THE VERY LEAST someone named jesus who was crucified.
John Shelby Spong talks alot about the stories in the gospels and how they correspond to the judaic liturgical calendar. So he explains why those stories may have been crafted to serve as allegories not as history.
Liberating the Gospels; reading the bible with jewish eyes-John Shelby Spong
IF you are only going to read one book about this subject this one below is the one that most directly answers this question. He's one of the most salient voices in new testament scholarship and he's atheist(since some people think that should be a qualifier here)
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1416704663&sr=8-4&keywords=bart+ehrman
EDIT: I had to submit my reply in two parts. The second is a reply to this post.
Ok, I’ve been gone since last week and got back the other day. You’re certainly getting desperate, aren’t you? Pretty much unloaded with both barrels. Well, I’m not going to address every single thing in here so please excuse that. If you want to really argue about evolution, take it up with a biologist because I’m not an SME in that area. I’ll stick with the overwhelming consensus that we evolved. If you want to argue design, no problem. I notice you’ve not addressed practically any points I’ve brought up on that subject. Like the probability of a leaf hitting me in the face decades from now or my critique of the issue’s surrounding the human body being designed. All well…let’s dive in.
> The burden of proof is actually not on me or any theist.
Nope. Not how it works. You’re the one trying to claim that a god, any god, actually exists. It’s up to you to prove it. I’m not claiming that a god doesn’t exist, only that I do not buy your claim and evidence that one does. If your spouse says that you’re cheating on them, would you not ask them what the basis of their claims were? You certainly wouldn’t buy into the notion that you have to prove that you’re NOT cheating, correct?
> There are just too many moving parts, too much complexity for there to be no designer.
This is known as the Argument from Complexity and it’s a fallacy. Again, I’m a licensed engineer and have already pointed out to you many things that do not make sense from a designing POV. Are you a design engineer?
> If you are quoting ehrman and krauss then you have not heard how unpopular they are among actual academics.
OK. Despite that I’ve not read a single story disputing them from reputable sites and the fact that they appear in numerous documentaries supporting their viewpoints; provide me evidence that they are “unpopular they are among actual academics.” Are you a professor? The only real dispute, aside from his debates with theists, that I’ve ever seen him involved in was with Richard Carrier over whether or not Jesus actually existed with Ehrman arguing that Jesus did in fact exist! Even wrote a book on the subject I’ve listened to both of them and while I’m not a mythicist, I think Ehrman’s argument is slightly stronger. That aside, the majority of biblical scholars think Jesus existed so until that changes, I’ll stick with it.
> Hilarious that you ignored what I said about Isaac, Einstien, and Galileo,
What do you mean “ignored”? I didn’t ignore it at all but pointed out the flaw in your argument. Which is BTW known as the Argument from Authority. What you’re hoping is that just because these guys are were smart, that will serve as evidence for your point. It CAN … IF they are the proper types of authority. Like say you keep coming back to design. Well, as I have pointed out, I’m a licensed engineer so I would be a good “authority” to discuss that with. However, I’m NOT a good one to reference in say opinions on cancer research. So just because these guys believed in a god, which as I pointed out in Einstien’s case is not necessarily the god you’re implying, doesn’t make your argument any stronger. Steven Hawkings DOESN’T believe in a god but I don’t reference him to make my point because what he believes about the existence of a deity is irrelevant because he’s not an expert in that area.
>I'm not wrong
Sure you are. 1) You think Bart Ehrman is a Jesus mythicist apparently ignorant about the fact that he wrote an entire book against the position. In what world is that not wrong? 2) The academic consensus amongst those who are actually experts on this is that Jesus of Nazareth existed. This is the academic position among scholars regardless of their particular religious position. This is the position represented at every major research university. If I'm wrong here, it's easy to prove it. Just name a single scholar of ancient history/early Christianity who teaches at a reputable university and holds to Jesus mythicism. Simple.
yep, this book Did Jesus Exist is pretty convincing in terms of other historical documents that Jesus was a historical human being. Not all the stories about him are true, notably the Nicodemus "you must be born again" story -- the confusion about being born through your mother again is only true in Greek and Jesus would have spoken Aramaic so that story most certainly did not happen.
This case is built on Erhman's previous book:
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
Yeah, I would just tell people that say "Jesus did not exist!" that there are no credible scholars that hold that position. You can direct them to Bart Ehrman who isn't a Christian or theist but thoroughly refutes arguments that Jesus didn't exist. Here's his book on the subject - https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
So you believe evidence that characters of Biblical actually existed gives credibility to the Bible and Christianity? Cool. I'd agree.
Bart Ehrman is one of the most respected New Testament and formative Christianity scholars in the world, and he's also an atheist/humanist.
He wrote an entire book countering Jesus Mythicism.
>To the objection that there are no contemporary Roman records of Jesus' existence, Ehrman points out that such records exist for almost no one and there are mentions of Christ in several Roman works of history from only decades after the death of Jesus. The author states that the authentic letters of the apostle Paul in the New Testament were likely written within a few years of Jesus' death and that Paul likely personally knew James, the brother of Jesus. Although the gospel accounts of Jesus' life may be biased and unreliable in many respects, Ehrman writes, they and the sources behind them which scholars have discerned still contain some accurate historical information. So many independent attestations of Jesus' existence, Ehrman says, are actually "astounding for an ancient figure of any kind". Ehrman dismisses the idea that the story of Jesus is an invention based on pagan myths of dying-and-rising gods, maintaining that the early Christians were primarily influenced by Jewish ideas, not Greek or Roman ones, and repeatedly insisting that the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus is not seriously considered by historians or experts in the field at all.
>Many specific points by Ehrman concentrate on what may be regarded as the 'embarrassments' and 'failures' of the various depictions of Jesus Christ found in the gospels and the works of Paul point to an account based on a real person that got embellished rather than a completely made up figure. He notes that Jews in the first century AD expected their Messiah to come from Bethlehem while Jesus is described as growing up in Nazareth, a dilemma that is simply not addressed in the Gospel of Mark (which has no nativity account) even though it is regarded as the earliest gospel. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas is another example, as critics of early Christianity found it strange that the Messiah would display the lack of personal awareness and foresight to even keep his close followers in line. Ehrman states that such things would make sense for a historical Jesus to which multiple people believed grew up, lived, and died in a certain time and place versus a purely mythological figure with malleable personal details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_Jesus_Exist%3F_(Ehrman)
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443
Dr. Bart Ehrman, a former Christian, now agnostic, and a huge scholar in New Testamant studies recently wrote a book on this matter: https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443 .