this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
112 points (93.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43397 readers
1112 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
By truth do you mean that Santa doesn't exist, that the whole Christmas celebration is an adaptation of Roman pagan traditions, or that Jesus never existed?
Jesus probably did exist, but he probably didn't commit miracles.
Exactly. Also, fun fact: If I recall correctly, there were a lot of religious preachers/prophets at the time. A good example is John the Baptist. Why do you think he baptised Jesus? So Jesus could now be a member of John's church/cult/club/group/whatever. My personal headcannon (i.e I don't have evidence to back it up but it just makes a lot of sense) is that Jesus learned how to lead a religion by example from John the Baptist and used that to grow his own religious group. And if it wasn't for the crucifixion, Jesus's religious group would have never grown to be so popular that it eventually spread throughout the Roman Empire. Now, I'm guessing the resurrection got added to the story either because Jesus was still alive when removed from the cross and then nursed back to health, or because someone saw him before the crucifixion and somehow got into his head that the time they saw Jesus was after the crucifixion and the story spread mouth to mouth, changing over time. Of course, as it turns out that was among main topics of discussion during the Council of Nicaea: should Jesus be perceived as human or as divine?
If you read the text carefully, no one saw him alive after the crucifiction. Just some lights and some stuff magically moved around when no one was looking. No reason for him to have survived, if his followers were fast and quiet etc.
But yeah, there are several possible "sons of god" at the time. Jesus is just a confabulation of them.
Well, idk about "sons of god" but there were certainly many many prophets at the time. Jesus wasn't anything special (if he was, in fact, real, and not just an amalgamation of multiple popular prophets at the time)
Source?
Exactly. There is about as much proof of Jesus of Nazareth existing as there is of King Arthur existing.
Saying βhe probably did existβ is like saying βmy dog probably speaks English to his fellow dogs.β It is meaningless without objective evidence.
People tend to say βhe probably did existβ simply to hedge their bet or to not go against the grain of the mainstream belief system. I, for one, have been provided no objective evidence (by claimants such as religionists) of the existence of such a person and therefore I have no reason to accept the mainstream belief of his existence.
Agreed. People don't take into account the fact that historians have existed for a long time and probably would have noticed a person as revolutionary as the one mentioned in the gospels - miracles or not. The Romans were excellent record keepers, and that is how we know for a fact - for example - that Herod's timeline does not jibe with the virgin birth myth, nor did the Roman survey methodology jibe with the Bethleham journey myth, to cite two examples among so many others
Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and attempts to deny his historicity have been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.
In a modern survey of Jesus is Definitely Real and Was The Son of God and Died and Rose Again for Our Sins scholars, they unanimously believe that Jesus was real.
Do not argue against it. It's on Wikipedia. Those are the guys who were cited, so he's real.
Silly me - wondering if there was a contemporary, unbiased historian who maybe could have heard of him
You stole the words right out of my mouth. Thanks for saving me the time to type that comment.
Santa doesn't exist? Why am I just now finding this out?