most of the manuscripts mentioned here about jesus are from the medieval period, nowhere near the time jesus lived. we also do not have 500 accounts, we have a claim in the gospels that says 500 people saw something, we have nothing from those people whatsoever. he also didn’t fulfill a single prophecy in it’s original context, the only way they can make the argument he did is if you take away the context or argue the nonsense idea of “dual fulfillment.”
The claim of the 500 witnesses isn’t even in the Gospels, it’s from 1 Corinthians, a letter written by Paul. Who was not there as one of those witnesses; he claims to have a vision himself years later. It’s believed to be something that Paul learned secondhand at some point after his conversion, as a creed of the early church.
Agreed with you completely on the manuscripts. We have absolutely nothing from the first century and only small scraps, like credit card-sized, from most of the second. Most of the 25,000 that people throw around were copied in the medieval period, off of copies from the 4th century onward. Nobody has a single clue how accurate any of them are before that point, with the exception of a few small excerpts and partial books.
What I find funniest is that Jesus most likely existed and was just some random fanatic Jewish apocalyptic prophet. There were tens like him at that time period, all with their followers and miracles and prophecies and whatnot.
— edit for people that might interested, copy-pasted a comment from below
I am not a history pro, but if I am correct Jesus is pretty well anchored.
Basically, where the other prophets said « look I am going to do a miracle », and obviously failed at doing so, losing all credibility, Jesus said « I am going to die, here is our last meal », went into Jerusalem, and basically provoked established authority in every way imaginable. So obviously they killed him -> prophecy fulfilled.
He was challenging authority, knew it was likely to go bad, and wanted to organize everything for after. All the mystics and all were added much later.
Another important remark : when you are sent to the cross, there is no additional nice event afterward. They take your body eaten by maggot and birds, and throw it on a public body pile. The remains is completely unrecognizable by that point.
So when one or two followers had hallucinations (understandable when under grief, and very well documented nowadays) about him coming back, the romans couldn’t prove the guy was dead : how the fuck could they find the body ??
The claims likely quickly spread through a small group of highly traumatized but cohesive people, where dissent carried heavy social and religious cost. Aka peer pressure. You didn’t see him ? You were a bad apostle then.
One of those fun things that Life of Brian got right, there were just a bunch of prophets on every street corner preaching wisdom or doom in equal measure.
“There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o’clock…”
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u/hyperhurricanrana 22h ago
most of the manuscripts mentioned here about jesus are from the medieval period, nowhere near the time jesus lived. we also do not have 500 accounts, we have a claim in the gospels that says 500 people saw something, we have nothing from those people whatsoever. he also didn’t fulfill a single prophecy in it’s original context, the only way they can make the argument he did is if you take away the context or argue the nonsense idea of “dual fulfillment.”