A man ahead of his time. source
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
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It's a fictional character, he can be as old as you want
AfaIk, it's undisputed that he was a real person.
It is not undisputed. We have no contemporary evidence of his existence, but scholars agree on a consensus that he most likely existed, based on a range of secondary conjectural evidence.
It cannot be undisputed though, since we have no certainty, and the scholars involved in the consensus are freely admitting to that.
As dispute is a, if not the, core concept of science I should have used another adjective in that context.
It is extremely disputed that he was a real person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
Look at the sources, they have dissent amongst themselves...
"Robert M. Price, an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars."
A fun excerpt...
Christians are the majority religion, so I would say "of course the majority agree". It's the very easiest position to take in the Bible scholar field, regardless of their personal beliefs.
your exceptional claim lacks exceptional evidence to support it.
think about all the records in the region, and wonder: if someone was miracling around, wouldn't the romans have noted it?
I don't remember having said anything about "miracles" or sky-daddy stuff.
it's kinda central to the whole jesus thing.
No, that's religion, but not history.
lol. your belief is literal dogma, and you're mistaking it for actual history.
show me the evidence for miracle man "oh uh that's religion, I'm talking history"
what a waste of time
What is the "exceptional claim" in this context?
someone was miracling around the middle east and no one recorded any of it.
until a couple hundred years later.
Again, I didn't find anyone in this discussion ever ~~did~~ made such claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
...By imbeciles inconsistent in their own veneration of "le based peer reviewed research." He is one of the best documented historical figures ever, so by denying his existence as a person you create a mountainous list of other historical figures who are "obviously not real because i wasn't there at the time."
If Jesus wasn't real, it wouldn't just be a question of Christians lying, but of the roman empire making up a character so that they could persecute this new sect of Judaism, and of the wider Jewish faith likewise making up a character for the same propaganda purposes.
It's just bad religious critique.
The consensus is that he probably existed, but he's far from one of "the best documented historical figures ever", there's like 2 or 3 mentions of him in sources outside of the early proto-Christian movement from the first century CE. That's better documented than most, which is why he probably was a real guy, but we can't really say more than that with any level of confidence. Calling him one of the best documented historical figures ever is genuinely unhinged imo.
If that were true then this thread would be full of people providing citations to that excellent documentation, but you will notice a complete absence of that here.
The closest we’ve come in this thread is the Wikipedia page with citations to several historians saying “yeah we mostly think he was probably real based on it would be weird if he wasn’t”
That is a waaaay lower level of certainty than you’re presenting here.
Lemmy is notoriously atheist, even anti religion, lol. People don't feel a need to come out and advocate for things they don't support, and they probably know that you can just google it and check out the Wikipedia page (or other sources...)
If you discount Christians showing you something on account of the fact they're Christian, then obviously you're not going to get anywhere, and you have really bad scholastic practice. Nothing else to say to that.
Sure, there were lots of guys named Jesus. It was a very common name at the time.
Like trying to prove that all of the "Mike" stories in the 80s refer to the one true Michael (Mike Tyson, of course).
Were there? How many? I mean i thought that name only took off after Christianity did, because one hears that "Jesus" is spelled and pronounced differently in the contemporary aramaic/hebrew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Historicity
Jesus - as in the guy executed, not just for being called "jesus" but for being INRI (Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudeum = Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews) - is recorded by contemporary historians like Josephus (a Jew).
How many? I don't know, ask the historians who say it was a common name at the time, with dozens of graves of dead guys named Jesus at the time of Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
But if you read about the historicity of jesus' crucifixion it's obvious that it isn't a question of "Oh he swapped out with another guy who had the same first name." If he did, that wouldn't prove he didn't exist - so what's the problem?
There probably was a carpenter in Bethlehem with a name like Jeshua or a variant around that time.
The rest is embellishments.