Why is there no real proof of Jesus existing outside of biblical references?

reply to post by Dianec


I imagine that he was also only the kind of person who becomes a phenomenon after the fact.

We know about people like Picasso because they left their paintings, but during his life, no one much knew or cared about him because he was a poor, crazy man. Of course now, he's enormously important, but that doesn't change the fact that there aren't that many actual documents about the details of his life. Why? Because no one then knew.

Jesus is much the same. Now, he is a phenomena. Back then, he was a small, localized issue. As far as the Romans were concerned, he was at best a rabble-rousing religious cult leader, and they likely would have been content to let him alone and go his way, especially as he preached "render unto Caesar" but for their need to appease the Jews who were a much larger and more fractious group.

But all of this for them amounted to a blip in a regional report. Not big news, and if it's not big news to Romans, then it's not recorded.

And then you have the Jews who might also have recorded it. Why? He threatened their power structures and threatened to undermine them. Plus, there might have been some suspicion that if he was who he said he was, they were doing something very, very bad indeed. Is it any different than some suspect was done at the Nicean Council?

That leaves the Bible and other accounts that have been allowed to filter through. Not much because the major sources for recording information both would have suppressed or ignored him for various reasons.

So we have what we have today. Given the thousand years remove. It's pretty good.

reply to post by Dianec

What do people need? A snapshot and fingerprints? Of course Jesus was real.

Just the snapshot.... It would help immensely!

I understand the bible says he was real. I mean, he would have to be, the bible says he got himself crucified. So, he wasn't just some electrical, supernatural, entity. And ok, his deeds weren't documented till after the fact.... umm ok, more please, a statue? real bust sculpture, anything. Otherwise, it's IMO, just blind faith.

We demand the facts......

Chamberf=6

conspiracytheoristIAM
reply to post by Scope and a Beam

 

Last night we celebrated New Years eve and it's A.D. 2014. Just go to Wikipedia and look up A.D., B.C., C.E. and B.C.E.......all referring to the " the year of our lord "(Jesus ). I think that will convince you that Jesus is accepted and was written about in a historical sense.

Really?? It will?? The calendar we use today is only less than 500 years old.

The Gregorian calendar is today's internationally accepted civil calendar and is also known as the "Western calendar" or "Christian calendar". It was named after the man who first introduced it in February 1582: Pope Gregory XIII.

Calendar features
The calendar is strictly a solar calendar based on a 365-day common year divided into 12 months of irregular lengths. Each month consists of either 30 or 31 days with 1 month consisting of 28 days during the common year. A Leap Year usually occurs every 4 years which adds an extra day to make the second month of February 29 days long rather than 28 days.

Realigned with the equinox
The Gregorian calendar reformed the Julian calendar because the Julian calendar introduced an error of 1 day every 128 years. The introduction of the Gregorian calendar allowed for the realignment with the equinox, however a number of days had to be dropped when the change was made.

www.timeanddate.com...

edit on 1/1/2014 by Chamberf=6 because: (no reason given)

reply to post by Scope and a Beam


The association with labels can cause confusion this is why 1 more observes the said acts - behaviors - and ascension after the 40 days done by LORD JESUS CHRIST. It may be that yes there is another time label associated with hidden time keepers here on EA*RTH but as of now its 2014 AD in the collective of many here. Does the AD not count as some form of significance or proofs? Perhaps its based on the perspectives of the observing...

NAMASTE
LOVE LIGHT ETERNIA*******

The Ascension of Jesus (anglicized from the Vulgate Latin Acts 1:9-11 section title: Ascensio Iesu) is the Christian teaching found in the New Testament that the resurrected Jesus was taken up to Heaven in his resurrected body, in the presence of eleven of his apostles, occurring 40 days after the resurrection. In the biblical narrative, an angel tells the watching disciples that Jesus' second coming will take place in the same manner as his ascension.[1]

en.wikipedia.org...

@an angel tells the watching disciples that Jesus' second coming will take place in the same manner as his ascension.

reply to post by retsdeeps1

Too little focus is given to the new facts we now know about the Essenes who lived at Quoram , a monastery 12 miles outside of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth is likely to have been part of that group up to his outreach ministry at age 33. The Essenes studied other religions, where focused on the afterlife and charity and on a life of piety and service. Their writings are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947.

Certainly, Jesus Christ never existed. Perhaps, however, there was a real person called Jesus the Nazarene. The first century followers of Jesus the Nazarene weren't even called Christians, as that title was being used by age old pagan cults already. They were called Nazarenes, even up until the 4th century.

Nazareth laid at the foot of Mount Carmel, the home of the Essenes sect of the Nazoreans, that were a related branch to the Pythagoreans and claimed to have been an order, created by Enoch and reinforced by Moses. Mount Carmel is where Elijah's Cave is said to be located, which is an interesting link in the Jesus mythology.

In the 4th century, the Nazarenes were finally declared heretics by the Roman Catholic Church, because of their adherence to Old Testament law, such as observing the Sabbath, circumcision and holy feasts.

I believe that there is a conspiracy within the history of the Roman Catholic Church to hide the fact that Jesus Christ never existed, but Jesus the Essene Nazarene did. He wasn't the Herculean Hero that Jesus Christ was made out to be. He was just a man, and a "Good Teacher".

reply to post by Seede


Sounds interesting. Do you have any decent sources for this stuff? Would like to read up more.

conspiracytheoristIAM
reply to post by Scope and a Beam

 

Last night we celebrated New Years eve and it's A.D. 2014. Just go to Wikipedia and look up A.D., B.C., C.E. and B.C.E.......all referring to the " the year of our lord "(Jesus ). I think that will convince you that Jesus is accepted and was written about in a historical sense.

Thank you for that simple, yet very plausible explanation. Derp, 2014 A.D. After Death. There are records that go back 1000's of years B.C. Before Christ. People seem to forget some of the simplest things.

reply to post by Scope and a Beam


There's absolutely no way to know either way.

Logarock
reply to post by Scope and a Beam

 

Its just as well that there isn't any or very, very little outside proof that Jesus ever existed. The proof, to folks that can see, is in what was written about Him.

I don't buy this kind of logic. It feels like a cop out. In a million years if all our data got wiped out save just a few books--The Hobbit perhaps--it still wouldn't make it real, although people may take it for fact and just say "well it's written here so it must've happened", that's fine, but for me I just wanted to look a little further into it to see about evidence that he existed. I believe he did, as I said in the original post, just not in the capacity the Bible says.

Jesus of Nazareth' supposedly lived in what is the most well-documented period of antiquity the first century of the Christian era yet not a single non-Christian source mentions the miracle worker from the sky. All references including the notorious insertions in Josephus, stem from partisan Christian sources (and Josephus himself, much argued over, was not even born until after the supposed crucifixion). The horrendous truth is that the Christian Jesus was manufactured from plundered sources, re-purposed for the needs of the early Church.

It is not with a human being that the Jesus myth begins. Christ is not a deified man but a humanised god who happened to be given the name Yeshu. Those real Jesuses, those that lived and died within normal human parameters, may have left stories and legends behind, later cannibalised by Christian scribes as source material for their own hero, but it is not with any flesh and blood rebel/rabbi/wonder-worker that the story begins. Rather, its genesis is in theology itself.

The name Jesus is actually a 16th century creation.

"Jesus" has its origins in יהושוע (Yehoshua or Joshua) in which the first part "yeho" refers to God. The name means "YHWH helps". But it was a name to be used with care and to prevent accidental voicing of the name of God, Yehoshua got truncated to ישוע (Y'shua), or, in the Galilee, to Yeshu.

Transliterated into Greek, Yeshu became Ἰησοῦς (Iesous), and from that, the Latin Iesus. A late development was the letter J which was then substituted for the initial capital I rendering Iesus into Jesus.

The Jesus of the Gospels is an artificial creation, a collective work of art who evolved through the combined consciousness of two generations of Christian worship.

A. N. Wilson (Paul, p144)

'Whether Jesus ever actually existed has long been debated. The argument (very well documented) is that there is absolutely no corroborating evidence of his existence in documents other than highly suspect Christian sources.'

– Riane Eisler (The Chalice & the Blade, p122)

Many elements of the 'Passion' make no sense historically.

A trial for Jesus, when suspected rebels were habitually arrested and executed by the Romans without trial? Philo of Alexandria (On the embassy to Gaius, XXXVIII) speaks of Pilate's 'continual murders of people untried and uncondemned.'

And why would the Romans have allowed a convicted felon to be almost immediately removed from his cross and put in a tomb? Crucifixion was chosen precisely to make a public point that the most cruel and humiliating form of punishment awaits those who oppose Rome's will. Roman disposition on this point was perhaps best summed up by Quintilian (AD 35-95, Decl. 274) when he wrote that:

"Whenever we crucify the guilty, the most crowded roads are chosen, where most people can see and be moved by this fear. For penalties relate not so much to retribution as to their exemplary effect."


A century earlier, after the 'slave revolt' led by Spartacus, 6,000 prisoners were thus crucified along the Via Appia between the cities of Rome and Cappua, as a gruesome deterrent to further rebellion. Doubtless the corpses were left on their crosses to rot or to provide food for wild beasts and birds of prey.

But of course if the 'Passion' were really a pageant of a re-born sun-god it makes perfect sense that the 'sacrificed' actor be taken off-stage, subsequently reappearing in a later act, 'reborn'…

Sources:
Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (Phoenix Grant, 1987)
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Doubleday, 1991)
Josephus, The Jewish War (Penguin, 1959)
Leslie Houlden (Ed.), Judaism & Christianity (Routledge, 1988)
Riane Eisler, The Chalice & the Blade (Harper Collins, 1987)
Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (Allen Lane, 2000)
A. N. Wilson, Jesus (Harper Collins, 1993)
Ian Wilson, Jesus: the Evidence (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984)
Alvar Ellegard, Jesus One Hundred Years Before Christ (Century, 1999)
Johannes Lehmann, The Jesus Report (Souvenir Press, 1972)

reply to post by C21H30O2I


Or maybe Matthew and Luke were writing to different audiences. For instance, is Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience, he would want to emphasize the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. On the other hand, if Luke was writing to the Romans, he'd reference facts and situations they were aware of, but not Jewish prophecies they didn't really care about. To use another example, suppose a military historian, a political historian, and a daughter all write biographies of an individual. The military historian doesn't care so much about the politics or personal life, but he will discuss in detail the tactics and strategy of the person's wartime years. The political historian will look at the political triumphs and contexts, while the daughter might not care about either of those things and might barely touch on them, focusing instead on her familial relationships. Which one of these stories is telling the truth?

All of the gospels have a slightly different "tweak," a different and complimentary perspective. For instance: did you know the Gospel of John has a genealogy?

Immaculate contraception Is the massive beating, opiate. Apocalyptic conception, Planted, its seething reprobates. Unremitting desolation, There's no reprieve. The fallen host endures mortality. Venomous concepts, Catalyst of damnation. The Christian is the Sole purveyor of their own unrest.

WoW that was post, Six hundred and Sixty Six

Ophiuchus 13
reply to post by Scope and a Beam

 

The association with labels can cause confusion this is why 1 more observes the said acts - behaviors - and ascension after the 40 days done by LORD JESUS CHRIST. It may be that yes there is another time label associated with hidden time keepers here on EA*RTH but as of now its 2014 AD in the collective of many here. Does the AD not count as some form of significance or proofs? Perhaps its based on the perspectives of the observing...

NAMASTE
LOVE LIGHT ETERNIA*******

How is AD proof of anything? It is only a lable from long ago. As is Thursday not a proof that there is a god of thunder (Jupiter or Thor) even if the weekdays are much older than the counting of year.

reply to post by StalkerSolent


Interesting. Or maybe they swiped most of their material from pagans?

Yes, I am aware of the genealogy..

Scope and a Beam
Hi,

I don't mean to enrage anyone here, but there seems to me that there's no solid proof that Jesus actually existed. Of course the bible says he did, but I don't trust the bible as it is not a first-hand account and has been, in my opinion, warped over the years by the Church to fit its own personal agenda, and not that of the people following it.

So I've been looking online for interesting nuggets of proof, or at least evidence, that Jesus existed. I am not an atheist and I am not trying to rattle religious cages, but I just don't see any hard proof really. It seems weird too that there were supposedly well respected historians who lived in the same time and same area as Jesus, yet they never recorded his supposedly mind blowing acts of miracle.

I know about Flavius Josephus, but he didn't see Jesus first hand either so I'm a bit skeptical of that.

Personally I believe Jesus probably existed, and was effectively a freedom fighter. He was a revolutionary who did great things, like feed poor people when it seemed there was no way to help them. But I don't believe the stories of miracle are literal interpretations. I think they're metaphors. This makes sense to me especially when looking at the Middle East--the culture lends to myths being created and extraordinary stories being passed on as a way to explain something big.

But still, I thought I'd just post to ask what people's opinions were on this? Do you feel all the records were destroyed? Was Jesus made up? Is it just a mix up of us calling him Jesus, when in fact we should be looking for Yeshua? I'm very happy to be proved wrong here and am interested in anyone's theories, so please don't think I'm trying to flame anyone's beliefs.

edit on 1-1-2014 by Scope and a Beam because: (no reason given)

Thus it IS for these reason or reasons that the Bible exist - it was written and was faithfully preserved for posterity so that people can see and read for themselves that the person we now know as Jesus Christ did indeed exist!

In fact, his very existence was never doubted even by his enemies - throughout the centuries. It's only in modern times that his existence was questioned.

But the fact that his beautiful teachings and simple way of life and simple way of looking at things had great impact on mankind past, present and future testify to his very existence.

Even now he continues to exert power on the lives of many.

In any case to quote:

H. G. Wells, British writer, 1866-1946

When asked which person left the most permanent impression on history, he replied that judging a person’s greatness by historical standards:

“By this test, Jesus stands first.”

“I am a historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”

“Christ is the most unique person of history. No man can write a history of the human race without giving first and foremost place to the penniless teacher of Nazareth.”

www.why-jesus.com...

reply to post by Scope and a Beam


That's pretty easy, but people get upset when I tell them.

It's because Jesus, probably didn't exist outside of religious doctrine.

If he did, his imagine, likeness and history were entirely fabricated to fit a particular political movement that was becoming popular in Rome at the time, that needed to bring together all the various religious groups under the banner of obedience and fear.

At the very least his origins were completely fabricated and nobody can argue this. Just look at the 12 or more identical stories regarding 'gods and saviors' that come much better the time of Jesus.

Oh and the fact that almost every important Christian Holiday is based on Pagan rituals.

~Tenth

reply to post by Scope and a Beam


Don't believe if you need proof, decide as we all have. You may need a NDE, good luck.

If you are desperate as it seems you are, play with the ouija board and ask for Satan.

Nothing will happen right, if it does, call for Jesus.

reply to post by edmc^2


What enemies did not doubt him for centuries?

MacroHawk
reply to post by Scope and a Beam

 

There's absolutely no way to know either way.

We have been purposely blinded and lied to; led astray (and did this start with the confounding of the languages) NO, that was just a result of the separation of different 'inserts' Mayas here, Hindus there; cultures 'peoples' in areas they would not compete within (kill each other too soon) OR a perfectly viable lab test (a sea barracade here, Himalaya Mts there; desert inbetween; potential longterm human petri dish labrat maze experiment fails. There have never been long term civilizations that are ancient. Only the Roman modern documented AS THE VERY FIRST that lasted 700 years. The others, the Egyptions, the Ancient Maya were inserts that in ONE day they manifested at 200 BC (a fully functioning civilization), at AD 0 gone Poof (leaving everything behind) to their ancestry--that being the genetic lines they bred within (local indigenous tribes that carried on the genetic lines that were mated to and exist to this day).