this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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I always had this pet theory that Jesus was more like a group of dudes who had a similar message and that the guy existed and was executed by romans (thats as far as we got from roman records iirc is a guy who fit the bill existed and was executed) but that the jesus stories from the new testament were an amalgamation of different street preachers or philosophers and were incorporated into religion
But my heart also wants to believe he was a dude who was really fuckin good at pulling coins from behind someones ear
The clouding of historical vs mythological is interesting. I wonder if theres a bio of Jesus purely based off actual evidence and records that can be substantiated.
Substantiation is difficult because we're talking about a late Judaean prophet, but https://historyforatheists.com/2018/12/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet/ piece explores Jesus in the context of Roman-occupied Judah, when there were many preachers predicting the end of the world and the salvation of the Jews; Jesus' movement outlasted his death.
Esoterica has an hour-long video on the historical Jesus, built on primary sources: link
I actually stupidly chose Jesus as a historical figure to write a proper primary sources only paper thinking there would be a breadth of info on the guy... and found out the hard way that from a historically factual standpoint all we've got is he probably existed, was baptized, and was executed. Straight up all weve got is what roman records gave us and ~~one painting~~ that might not even be right I think it was like a few depictions and some stories that corroborated
Painting?
I might have fucked that one up, all I can remember with certainty was there were enough sources that could be cross referenced to include the baptism of a man named jesus by john the baptist and there being mention of like a visual depiction that could be taken as a reliable second source but this was a first year history of religion paper I struggled a lot with so Id take it all with a big grain of salt
All I really remember for sure was historians can (sorta) agree he was baptised by probably john the baptist