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Comment by RC_ITR | Hacker News Reader

The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic.

There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there).

However, unless you are a follower of his (or potentially some related religions), there are obviously mystical things associated with him that you likely do not believe to actually have happened. Even followers disagree about the veracity of certain stories.

So where does that leave us? There is undoubtedly a “real” Jesus, but was he anything like the person we think we know? 2000 years of being one of the most famous people ever is certain to leave a skewed perception of who you are. Hell, we don’t even know the true story of celebrities and religious figures today.

Unfortunately, much of the discourse about this seems to be heavily biased, cloistered (literally), or commercial (Nat Geo and History seem to butter their bread with this topic each spring).

And ultimately does it matter? How many of the attributes stories would need to be proven false to make Jesus seem “not real”?

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As a secular person I can understand Jesus as an important historical figure, but it seems to me his "historicity" is a pretty uninteresting question. I know this can be hard for a person who was raised in Christianity to understand, but from an outside perspective, the guy is pretty boring. His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier (and they were better explained an examined by them). From this perspective, its hard to care about detailed historical questions about the guy except purely as history, which is full of a lot of other arguably more interesting questions.

The more interesting way to approach I think is not so much through great man-style history like that about what he did or why, or even why him. But what was it about that time and place that produced so many of these movements, of which his was one (notably john the baptist who had a similar thing going first/with some overlap, and whose movement was almost certainly more popular than the jesus movement in their time)?

What made rome react to these movements the way they did, were they able to identify the real risk they posed (it did end up becoming a massive source of unrest and radicalism in the empire), did they understand the risks inherent in martyring apocalyptic religious leaders?

It's also a good entry point for understanding the process of history as a practice and discipline. For example we can be pretty sure jesus was from nazareth because it's mentioned in mark, the earliest gospel, and nazareth was a nothing place nowhere, there's no reason to fabricate an important figure being from there. Similarly his nativity story is probably a later attempt to link him to bethlehem, a city of deep significance to jews at the time. That's an interesting technique! There are lots of those, historians aren't just people who know facts about history, they are practitioners of this discipline.

It's one of the most researched, most discussed subjects in history and the movement that started there is one of the most impactful regardless of your personal relationship to it. So it's a good place to get an understanding of the concepts and techniques of history and historicity.

Although "show us some citations" is getting to be a pretty boring response, I would like to see some elaboration on "His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier."

I don't think so. The pagan "religions" were not very big on "everyone, even the poor, the sick, and the lame, is equal." Slavery was accepted almost everywhere. Women were very definitely second-class citizens. "Giving charity" was not a central concept in the Greek moral universe.

I mention the last one especially because in the pre-Constantine era, the notion that other Christians were your brothers and would take care of you was pretty powerful. That was not a common thing back then.

>Slavery was accepted almost everywhere.

Jesus wasn't anti-slavery, because he was a Jew and slavery is directly supported by Jewish law and scripture, sometimes with quotes from God himself. Jesus even commands slaves to obey their masters.

>Women were very definitely second-class citizens.

Read the Pauline epistles, particularly 1st Timothy. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet."

>Giving charity" was not a central concept in the Greek moral universe.

What linguistic root is the word "philanthropy" from? It isn't Hebrew[0].

[0]https://sofii.org/article/philanthropy-in-ancient-times-some...

So you haven't answered my question: what Greek philosopher said anything like what Jesus said (as you understand those sayings)?

Your other points are disingenuous at best. The eventual abolition of slavery in England was driven directly by Christian beliefs, however much they'd evolved in the ensuing time.

The bit about the Pauline epistles is also disingenuous. You picked one quote. Mary Magdalene was one of the disciples. Women were considered to be "in the image and likeness of God." They did not attend Mass in a separate section from the men (a separation which is still done at the Western Wall).

Lastly, who cares what the linguistic root was? And your link ignores one of the primary drivers of very early Christianity: the Romans didn't care how much you suffered. It was the Roman Empire where Christianity took off first.

"Philanthropy" seems to have been much like a lot of celebrities' "charitable foundations" nowadays: "Hey, everyone: Look at what a good person I am!"

> But the tendency for many donors to use such legal instruments for self-glorification, personally advantageous politicking, and the conservation of family wealth did little to help larger numbers of the destitute in growing Roman imperial cities.

> The eventual abolition of slavery in England was driven directly by Christian beliefs, however much they'd evolved in the ensuing time.

You do need to provide some evidence to support this claim. AFAIK slavery became unnecessary in the industrial era. So it morphed into Indentured servitude. Bible followers didn't hesitate from pillaging the world.

> Women were considered to be "in the image and likeness of God."

Could you quote something from Bible on this topic.

> the Romans didn't care how much you suffered. It was the Roman Empire where Christianity took off first.

Christianity tool off when Roman king understood it's political power and decided to use it. He then forced it down the throats of unorganised pagans who got eliminated brutally.

If that is the case then why GDP of Europe was declining?

You don't like Christianity. That's nice. You must have me mistaken for a Christian.

Instead of proselyzing you should present some references. Start with justification of a millennia dark age in Europe.

we are done here. I'm not responding to you anymore.

Apollonius of Tyana?

What linguistic root is the word "philanthropy" from? It isn't Hebrew[0].

Likewise, what linguistic root is the word "television" from? it's not American or British. *

---------------------------

* the main claimants as inventors of television are British and US.

> "His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier.

Read any Hindu upnishads especially Bhagwad Gita[0]. Chapter 16 especially defines the code of conduct for good peoples. Here is the opening statement.

श्रीभगवानुवाच |

अभयं सत्त्वसंशुद्धिर्ज्ञानयोगव्यवस्थिति: |

दानं दमश्च यज्ञश्च स्वाध्यायस्तप आर्जवम् || 1||

अहिंसा सत्यमक्रोधस्त्याग: शान्तिरपैशुनम् |

दया भूतेष्वलोलुप्त्वं मार्दवं ह्रीरचापलम् || 2||

तेज: क्षमा धृति: शौचमद्रोहोनातिमानिता |

भवन्ति सम्पदं दैवीमभिजातस्य भारत || 3||

renunciation, peacefulness, restraint from fault-finding, compassion toward all living beings, absence of covetousness, gentleness, modesty, and lack of fickleness; vigor, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, bearing enmity toward none, and absence of vanity.

Bible on the other hand is directed responsibility for the dark ages in which people were tortured for having different beliefs, women were burned for witch craft, believers in other gods were eliminated brutally. Scientists were killed for stating their theories. Remember Bruno was burned on stake for merely saying earth revolves around the sun. World history is filled with divine crimes sanctioned by Bible. There are hundreds of examples to read from history. For example Goa inquisition in which is Indians were tortured to death not because they didn't believe in Jesus. But because they also continued to believe in the gods they used to worship[1].

There are enough references in the Bible. One only needs to read it critically.

[0] https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/16/verse/1-3

[1] https://archive.org/details/FrancisXavierSJTheManAndHisMissi...

you seem to be on a different topic. Maybe start your own thread?

I am simply responding to your assertion that world before Christianity was a dog eat dog uncivilized wasteland and Jesus taught it morally.

On the contrary, before the advent of Christianity Greek and Romans had dialogs on various topics. IFAIK Science and Philosophy came to a stand still for a thousand years till renaissance happened. If you evidence to the contrary, please do share some references.

Bible divided the world in believers and heathen so claiming it promoted universal brotherhood is laughable. World was never a perfect place, Christianity made it worse.

> your assertion that world before Christianity was a dog eat dog uncivilized wasteland and Jesus taught it morally

this was a dialog about whether Greek philosophers said the same things, but better. The rest is your own invention.

I mean not to be all like “read Plato’s republic, literally the most famous Greek philosophy” but…

* Polemarchus claims that justice is helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies and that this is what one owes people (332c). Socrates’ objections to Polemarchus’ definition are as follows: (i) Is this appropriate in medicine or cooking? So in what context is this the case? (332d)? (ii) The just person will also be good at useless things and at being unjust (333e). (iii) We often do not know who our friends and enemies are. Thus, we may treat those whom we only think are our friends or enemies well or badly. Would this be justice? (334c). (iv) It does not seem to be just to treat anyone badly, not even an enemy (335b). Discussion between Socrates and Thrasymachus follows (336b-354c).*

* Adeimantus complains that the guardians in the just city will not be very happy (419a). Socrates points out that the aim is to make the whole city, and not any particular class, as happy as possible (420b). Socrates discusses several other measures for the city as a whole in order to accomplish this. There should be neither too much wealth nor too much poverty in the city since these cause social strife (421d-422a).*

Already read it, thanks.

Somehow, I don't see this drawing throngs of Hebrew peasants. Just doesn't have that common touch, or something.

I often say Jesus is Socrates for idiots, so you're kind of right.

Uhm, if you are interested so, you should realize it is these false narratives that are used most convincingly in support of Jesus historicity.

Consider that passage from Flavius referencing Jesus. It is somewhat different in the Arabic translation version. Some people goes as far as to doubt if this passage is altogether an insertion of later christian scribes.

On the other hand, they usually argue that Jesus being born in Bethlehem is made up to match some old prophets, and then they accept that if Jesus was completely made up he would not be from Nazareth. (*)

There are more analyses like that in "Gospel of Afranius" by Kirill Eskov (who is known for "The Last Ringbearer"), and I found out only today that it was translated to English recently, wikipedia says Dec 2022. Enjoy!

(*) it is relatively rare that someone will observe that there could have been another settlement called Bethlehem just closer to Nazareth.

Look at this from the perspective of a believer: historians agree Jesus existed, and was a prophet type figure who was executed.

But they don’t know much more. They’re constantly trying add to that bare outline, but the additions are no more than speculation.

This speculation changes frequently. The changes are based in trends in historical methodology unrelated to the Christian faith.

Was Jesus a Buddhist? Did he travel to India? In the 1960s he did.

Are these historians actually adding anything? It doesn’t seem they are.

Historians can provide missing context. For example, when the demon says “I am legion”, it was probably not a reference to Roman legions.

But there really isn’t a historical Jesus.

Notovitch and Kersten have nothing to do with 1960s.

The important thing it seems is that his myth a part of our stories, and who we are, throughout a large part of the world.

Myths tell us about ourselves. The sad thing is when people distort or weaponize myth to control others for personal egocentric agendas.

Ultimately many of his apparent teachings seem to be timeless: finding joy in living simply; understanding that heaven is within; etc. Lots of overlap with Buddhist teachings on cessation of suffering. I'm not religious and still try to incorporate the beauty of these ideals!

If you think Jesus being a 'good guy' is the most important part of Jesus, that's absolutely missing the point of Christianity.

Jesus being a "good guy" is fundamental to the role he plays in Christianity. How could you see it any other way?

From some Christians' points of view the important part of the Jesus story is that he is sacrificed by God as a way of dealing with a fundamental break between humanity and God having to do with the Jewish priesthood.

That is the other important aspect of the Jesus story. He was the son of God in human flesh, exemplified by the manner in which he lived ("good guy") and by his teachings.

Yet he was betrayed by one of his disciples, and died a distinctly "low death". I think it's more correct to say that God sent Jesus down to Earth and Jesus sacrificed himself / God forsake him, than "he is sacrificed by God". This is probably a bit nitpicky from your perspective.

My main point is that there is no Christians that do not hold the following two aspects of Jesus as extremely important:

(1) The life of Jesus: how he lived and what he taught

(2) Jesus sacrificed on the cross

Frankly, I think you're not familiar with Christian teachings if you claim otherwise, i.e. by disagreeing with a person who says that Jesus being a "good guy" is an important aspect of the Christian faith. It is important, unequivocally.

> i.e. by disagreeing with a person who says that Jesus being a "good guy" is an important aspect of the Christian faith

To be fair - and without offering an opinion either way on the thread itself - they never disagreed it was important.

What they said was "If you think Jesus being a 'good guy' is the most important part of Jesus, that's absolutely missing the point of Christianity".

God does miracles, whoop-de-doo. God avoids temptation, whatevs.

God suffers as the sacrificial goat to expiate our sins? Yeah, right .

A good guy doing those? That is the essential point of Christianity, that God became man in order to walk in our shoes but still show us how to walk better.

I assume you're replying to me in error as my post says nothing about any of your points. In fact 50% of my entire comment was specifically saying I had no opinion either way.

Not disagreeing with you, but from my reading of early Christian history, there's a third fundamental belief:

(3) He rose physically from the dead. That's why Easter is the most important Christian holiday.

Thanks for writing this. I think you put it more accurately than I could have - I was just trying to head of the endless other religions, athiests, and non christians saying "Yeah jesus was a great guy! super nice!" and missing the point that, just being a good teacher or a kind person, or even a perfect person makes a new religion called Christianity.

Without the divine nature of Christ, he would have been more of a Jewish reformer against the Pharisees. Sure there's the law, and I'm here to talk about it and to spread my thoughts and feelings on it and how we should interpret and use it. But that's not even the half of it.

Yeah, but like there have been and will continue to be plenty of good dudes. From a Christian point of view Christ's goodness is necessary, but not sufficient, to make him an important figure.

>> having to do with the Jewish priesthood

I do not remember this part of old testament. Care to elaborate?

>> fundamental break between humanity and God

This is not the first time when I heard this put this way but it is first time when it dawned on me how in this biblical context humanity is restricted to small parts of middle east - so I guess sorry Chinese, American & Australian natives from that time ?

This obviously is very important.

However, the more important aspect of Jesus’ teachings was to steer believers away from the Old Testament and Jewish faith, and into something new.

Jesus is the catalyst for change from one religion to a new one based on the old. Indeed, one of the many contradictions of Christianity is having the New Testament contradict the Old Testament in so many ways.

Isn't it so that the "point of Christianity" depends entirely on historical context and who you're speaking to, which has continuously changed over thousands of years?

It seems like it isn't an objective science as you're implying; how does one measure such a thing? There are so many garden paths that lead to horrible rigid dogmatism, which we know to be the case when reflecting on history.

What works for me is just incorporating the helpful parts that help me live a more harmonious life, while respecting philosophies of others and trying to do no harm. Perhaps not to you, but that is the point of Christianity to me.

So what is that point?

(atheist)

He is just incorporating the most practical and useful aspects of Jesus teachings - the other aspects are too meaningless in context of day to day life to be useful to a nontheist.

Assuming you believe in an immortal soul, what else would you call someone who is trying to get you to save your immortal soul?

The scholarly consensus is that there was a historical Jesus but what bothers me is that the same unbiased scholars reject just about every event of the New Testament as being improbable (eg the Jesus Seminar). This leaves me with a real hunger for what his story was really like. Just knowing that a preacher man named Yeshua lived in the ancient Judea 2000 years ago is really unsatisfying.

Well according to our understanding, on stories like these they usually embelish on the 'origin' part. In the case of the bible, the story of the archangel gabriel visiting Mary is number one on the suspect of being an embelishment.

And speaking of being 'historical', as in written down by a witness, there are things in the bible that strikes me as 'filled in'. I only go to church during easter, so it I had it read to me very recently.

Like the story of Jesus praying in Getshemane, it was supposed to be jesus' personal prayer, who witnessed that?

Or Jesus personal discussion with pontius pilate, again, who wrote that down? Maybe someone interviewed pilate again later, I don't know, that doesn't seem too plausible, as I never heard the name pilate written down again as one of the accounts.

Or when Jesus got tempted by the devil, again he was supposed to be alone. Did he tell his disciples afterwards, or is this completely creative writing (or oral as the first christians did it)?

These are just some of the thoughts I had while listening to the sermon. My point is I think that there was some artistic license in the whole mythology of Jesus. Maybe 'to make it flow better' or something like that.

None of the gospels (out of the hundreds that existed before canon was decided on) were written by actual eyewitnesses, much less by the apostles. All of them are embellishments written years or decades after the fact.

The Religion for Breakfast has some interesting videos on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyI1XOselI - Introduction to Biblical Archaeology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc - How Did the New Testament Form?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV9VPM7lIoQ - Did the Gospels copy each other?

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PrrnhAKFQ - Who Wrote the Bible (Useful Charts)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKp4yWGTfXo - 10 Changes Made to the Bible (part 1, Trey the Explainer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX62bRIG-OI - 10 Changes Made to the Bible (part 2, Trey the Explainer)

I know, but I shouldn't have said 'written'. The early christians mostly use mouth-to-mouth to transmit the gospels. I agree that most of it are sus, but there are some couple elements that remains consistent, like the last supper, or the baptism of jesus, or his death and rise.

At least those elements of the lore, I believe are constant from the very first followers. A story must have a connecting thread, even though it may have many modifications.

I'm just saying this from a storytelling perspective of the early christians, not that I believe it really. I shouldn't even probably attend mass at this point.

I think it's helpful, when considering historicity as it relates to the stories in the Gospels, to think about what a believer or outsider view of, say, Mormonism might be if our only sources were written 2nd or 3rd hand, mostly by a very small number of believers, years to decades after the actual events.

In the case of Mormonism, we have tons of other sources from outside the faith, and the claims made by the faithful were largely recorded more-or-less as the supposed events were happening. Our view, and the religion itself, would likely be a ton different if our sources for all that were more like what we have for Jesus and the events of the Gospels. Plausibly, what survived might hardly have any basis in reality whatsoever.

That's a great point about what bible or rather any holy book actually is - just a collection of stories that were passed from person to person (and we all know that we always tell the stories the same way, without mistake here and there, right?) and then written down at some point in time and curated, filtred and rounded up by clergy (which did not have any interests in the shape ot the stories, only truth, right?).

Besides the bible what other source is there?

Maybe Josephus? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

I'm not a historian but it says most accept the authenticity of the name mentioned and being persecuted but that it's been manipulated over time.

At best you can argue Jesus existed. So what? At the time there were a number of apocalyptic preachers, hence the format of the book of Revelation.

I'm shocked that a religion didn't form around this guy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_bar_Kokhb

Who actually formed a sorta Jewish state for three years after beating the romans.

I wonder if his story isn't as good because he created the promise land but failed to maintain it. Almost like it's better to be vague like Jesus and avoid doing anything that you could end up losing. Though they could have just said it was on purpose, like Jesus.

People talk about the actions of Jesus and quotes as if it's historical certainty because of how long and how many people believe

Did you actually read the article? Or any of the other historical scholarship?

I did read the article, and it seems to be entirely things like "there's no evidence Jesus was there, but historians say he could have been" or "according to the Gospels". Neither of those rise remotely to the level of what I'd call "evidence". The former establishes that the historical Jesus is plausible, but that could just as easily mean that the authors who invented Jesus were aware of the real-world setting their character occupied.

The whole article reads much more like a believer going on a quest to develop a more personal connection to events which they have faith occured. That's fine, and I'm sure is interesting to believers, but it did nothing to convince me of the historical Jesus.

No, it isn't.

The historical Jesus did exist, and as they say, no scholar believes otherwise.

Bethlehem, miracles, etc. do indeed have no proof. Why he was crucified: no proof there either.

I'm not sure which of the many things I said your "No, it isn't" is in response to.

I care less about what the scholars believe, than I do about wanting to hear some scrap of evidence for it. There's a ton of evidence that the stories in the bible could have happened (churches existed at the right places and right times, it references real-world people and places), I just haven't seen any evidence that they did.

> I'm not sure which of the many things I said your "No, it isn't" is in response to.

It was the very top: "it seems to be entirely things like ..."

"a scrap of evidence" -- you mean like video or something? What do you expect?

No one can provide a link that'll convince you. For something this ancient, scholars spend their lives weighing all the evidence and determining what's most probable. So if you think that just dismissing all that as "no evidence" is reasonable, then there's nothing to debate here.

The apocryphal Jesus traveled a fair bit, led a religious sect, was a somewhat known public figure, and was publicly executed with some amount of fanfare. Basically anything contemporaneous would be a good start. Given that multiple of the supposed references to him refer to multiple people by the name, it seems far more likely that a variety of Jewish men named Yehoshua were after the fact agglomerated into one historical invention.

At this point, someone needs to do a whole lot of research. I think that "someone" is you. I'm not going to do it for you.

From what I've gathered, scholars compare the various pieces of evidence for consistency with what else is known. That's why they know that the canonical Gospels weren't written until the latter part of the first century, for instance, and there is one lost text that three of them derived from.

"it seems far more likely that a variety of Jewish men named Yehoshua" -- ok, to you. I don't care to argue that because I'm not a scholar of that period. I suspect you're not, either.

I see you got in a debate below, but Jesus is mentioned in Tacitus's Annals, and if you don't believe those, then you don't believe a lot of what we accept for fact about Rome in the First Century.

> Besides the bible what other source is there?

What’s strange to me in this whole debate is that there are folks that will take a single mentioned name on a incomplete stone tablet as absolute evidence of a person to exist thousands of years ago, but demand many contemporary non-biblical references for the existence of a man named Jesus from Nazareth. It seems strange that such effort is made to deny his existence, almost as if he existed then his divinity did too? It’s not an all or nothing equation.

Question the claim of his divinity…of course that requires extraordinary proof (or perhaps simply faith), but is it really that difficult to believe that the man existed?

It's also possible that the stories were an amalgamation of several itinerant preachers. It might explain some of the conflicts between different gospels. But that there were real people at the basis of these stories is a pretty mundane claim, and so the mundane parts of the story i'm willing accept without much evidence. That a preacher had followers, gave sermons, pissed off the wrong people and got crucified is pretty mundane for the time, i'm willing to accept that those things are likely true.

> There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there).

Josephus is the only one I've heard put forth (and I am aware that many believe the one mention of Jesus by Josephus was a more recent edit).

It wasn't clear to me that it was an open and shut case that there was a man from Nazareth named Jesus.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus)

Tacitus talks abut Jesus in The Annals, and if we don't take that collection at face value, a lot of our understanding of Rome becomes shaky.

I had not heard of that one.

Personally, while atheist, I believe there likely was a Jesus of Nazareth. I just reason that if they were going to invent someone out of whole cloth they would have made up someone more interesting than a carpenter from Nazareth. It's kind of the coolest part of Jesus to me, how ordinary and humble his beginnings are.

> And ultimately does it matter? How many of the attributes stories would need to be proven false to make Jesus seem “not real”?

Like you said, he clearly was a real person even if all the controversial stuff is proven false.

> The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

It can probably also teach us a lot about how to start successful movements today.

Though the part where you get your ideology integrated into the ligitimacy of large countries is maybe hard to achieve.

Perhaps Marx and socialism is the closest analog.

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