Is there any historic proof that Jesus existed?

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there are oodles of jesus's everywhere. i never was told his surname.

they said that a person named jesus died on a cross and when he was taken down to be buried, he came alive again.

that was the easter sunday thing about his resurrection.

but after he was resurrected, where did he go, and what life did he lead ? why would he be anonymous from the point where he was "resurrected"

i never heard any story of how his life unfolded after that easter sunday resurrection thing.

Wasn't He beamed up?

Actually, there is proof that an Egyptian named Moses existed, and that he did lead a rebellion of the Israelites. Sorry, I can't remember where I saw it, but I there is evidence in some Egyptian tomb about it. (Remember, Moses was 'adopted' by Egyptians early in his life, so he was considered to be Egyptian.)

goat

P.S. ALOT of people were crucified by the Romans - it would be very unusual indeed if the Romans themselves kept written records of every rebellious leader they executed - that is, kept PERMANENT records. I'm sure what was sent back to Rome was "This month 7 Jews were executed for various crimes..." or something of that nature.

"Mose(s)" was not a name, but part of almost every Egyptian name. It means: "son of ...". Otherwise there no shred of evidence of a Jewish rebellion or exodus from Egypt.



Even not: We have the correspondence of Plinus the Younger with Emperor Trajan. Plinus only write issues to Rome regarding questions on which he thought that he would need imperial backing for his decisions. The execution of a potential rebel without any connections to Rome or other important people was hardly in this category. The administration during the reign of first Caesars was organized in a way that only important issues had to be reported to Rome.

Also: What is a "permanent" written record? We have very few actual texts of Roman writings except inscription on buildings and monuments. The very most antique texts are copies of later time. The records of the Imperial Chancellery are lost.

Last edited by Dussel on 07 Mar 2009, 12:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Shouldn't that be Galilee?

Interesting book here

http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/rea ... ns-version

and article here

http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/ ... ation.html

It does look as if the Jesus described in the New Testament probably never existed.

Jesus and his 12 male companions traveled around quite a bit.

ruveyn

... This thread is from 2009.

Also, there is historic proof that Jesus existed. It is called the Gospels.

The gospels don't really count since they were written way later than Jesus supposedly existed, by people who probably only heard about him. The authors could have made up the whole story of Jesus Christ, naming their mythical figure by a name that was common when he was supposed to exist, maybe copying information from the older gospel and adding extra details.

Why would the fact that what they described was reconstructed or made better do anything about the existence of Jesus? The Gospels are an unreliable source because of their late redaction date and the frequent miracles, but they are a source nonetheless.

The first thing is that there is absolutely no reason to "invent" Jesus. Why would anyone claim not to be the prophet? I know that if I were to propagate a new faith, I would certainly not say that I took it from someone else.

Abraham is a myth. Moses is a myth. Herakles is a myth. Odysseus is a myth. Aeneas is a myth. Romulus is a myth. They are all far away in time, "lived" several centuries before they were reported, and were completely inaccessible to memory. Jesus? Yes, the Gospels were written much after his death, maybe even beyond living memory, but still comfortably within the possibility of second-hand knowledge. That is not perfect, especially within all the mystical modifications, but it is still enough to go on with. Also, you will notice that, if the sources we have were copied from earlier extinct documents, that increases their accuracy.

Many things about him are myths or inventions, such as the miracles, resurrection, etc. One would observe similar things in hagiography, i.e. the biography of saints, to whom miracles and various unlikely/impossible anecdotes are always attributed -- yet that does not mean that the saints did not exist.

Certainly all that Jesus supposedly did is not historical. Maybe some events which are attributed to Jesus were done by someone else, making Jesus a sort of composite character. I have no idea, and since we lack documents, I doubt I ever shall. But appart from a systematic bias against the Bible as a source, I don't see why he would not have existed. When something is said in a document, one should not dismiss it automatically just because it isn't corroborated by other sources, but try to understand why it was written, and conclude thence. That is called critical reading.

First, in academic circles, this question is considered to have been settled about 50 years ago. The consensus is that there was a historical Jesus.

Second, "historical proof" is a misnomer. We historians use evidence, but history is not a science. The reverse of this mistake would be saying something like "Unless you show me historical writings proving that there was gravity in 7000 B.C., I won't believe it."

Saying you won't accept "the Bible" is also problematic, because there is no such thing. The Bible is a collection of books, letters, and poems written over thousands of years, not a single book. Aside from the Gospels, it does contain letters about Jesus.

There is more evidence pointing to the existence of Jesus than other ancient figures, such as Socrates. Extra-biblical evidence includes the Gnostic Gospels, the Roman historian Josephus, some versions of the Talmud (who called him a sorcerer, but did not doubt his existence,) the migration pattern of early Christians, and so on.

I have heard that the census requiring Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem never happened. There was never a census that required people to move to their hometown to be counted.

This, or some other ancient WP thread prompted me to google the subject of "extra bibilical references to Jesus", and look at the text that went along with one of the "great courses"tapes in the public library.

From what I gather -there are none-no contemporary extra biblical documents refering jesus in his own time.

Two come kinda close in time- and kinda close in subject matter -or not.

One is letter written by a second centurey roman living on the Island of Rhodes to a friend in rome.

He muses about the fact that "every nation kills its wisest men. For example the Athenian greeks put Socrates in the slammer and forced him to drink poison. And then the Jews in Judea had that wise king. You know..whatshisname... the one who enacted more just laws. And they rose up and had him executed..no good deed goes unpunished".

Modern historians are driven nuts because the writer didnt mention this "wise king" by name.

To me this mystery jewish king has one problem: though he was refered to by both his friends -mocked by his enemies as "the king of the Jews"- the Jesus of the Bible was never litereally a "King", and could not have enacted actual temporal laws. But if this guy wasnt jesus then who was he? Its a conundrum.

Then there is a story in the Babylonian Talmud, which goes back as far as around 200 AD, about a trouble maker in Judea named "Joshua", or 'Yeshua" who was put to death.

He roamed the countryside preaching. He had nine disciple. And the talmud even lists each by their names.

The Jewish authorities charged him with "practicing sorcery", and with "preaching heresy". And he was hung from a tree.

This Joshua however had the wrong number of disciples, and none of disciples had names even resmbling those in the Bible. And Jesus was matryed Roman style on a cross, and was not given the noose.

So Jesus is still hidden from view in history.

My guess is that the Biblical Jesus is actually a conflation of several real intinerate preachers and rabble rousers in the humiliated of Judea of Hellenistic and Roman times in the decades leading up to the Common Era. Maybe most were commoners, but maybe there was an actual petty king in the mix as well. Some ran afoul of local Jewish authorities and ended up swinging from trees, and others may have gotten the attention of the Roman occupiers and ended up matyred roman style on the cross. More than one of them may have been named "Yeshua".

I think that's the Vatican's position on it. Conservative Protestants would just say that other sources are not extant, probably. Either way, I think the Gospel of Luke is the only mention of it.

Appart from systematically rejecting all that is said in the Bible, why is this more plausible than there being only one Jesus who started what would become Christianity?

Also, wrong numbers of disciples, cause of death, and inaccurate legal knowledge are very acceptable differences. I didn't know about those, mostly because I don't care very much, and it just strikes me as different things which were transmitted wrongly to different people who had no interest in facts-checking. Numbers do get wrong, deaths get confused, and the Sermon on the Mount, for example, could have been understood as enacting laws after several inaccurate transmissions. It doesn't go against the existence of Jesus at all.

Because there is no extrabiblical evidence of this "one founder".

The paltry evidence that does exist points to either NO jesus at all, or to a composite jesus.

So Im being generous and going with the latter.