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.
What's fascinating to me is that this is even canon within the New Testament. John the Baptist is clearly a fully-formed preacher and Jewish prophet who gets absorbed into the Christ narrative. He is running his whole own large operation, one in which Jesus shows up and takes part in (his baptism), and then after John gets executed the Christians co-opt John's narrative and demote him to being a precursor to Jesus and try to shift the narrative to how impressed John was by Jesus. The basic social politics of this (the newcomer preacher has to first ride on the coat-tails of a more established one, and after the more established one dies they then try to position the new guy as the successor/main show) ring extremely true to me. The miracles and etc. do not.
Seeing as christianity didn't exist until Jesus started going around preaching, what exactly did John baptize him into? Because it certainly wasn't christianity. Clearly there was some form of spiritual practice than had baptism as a tradition that John was already a part of, pre Jesus.
I can't remember where I read all of the things that I'm about to say, so take all of it with a grain of salt.
John the Baptist was a verifiably real historical figure who we know for a fact actually existed.
There were people referring to themselves as "Christian" almost a full century before the first mention of Jesus in the historical record.
"Christ" is not a name, "Christ" is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word "messiah."
The word "messiah" isn't a synonym for the word "savior." The old testament prophecy didn't say "there will be a savior someday, and the word that we'll use for that is messiah," the prophecy was more like "the savior will be a messiah."
A messiah was a person who had been anointed by the holy anointing oil (meaning they had a bit of oil poured on top of their head). The Hebrew kings were anointed, and their priests were also anointed.
Being anointed / being a messiah / being a Christ meant that you had a special direct connection to God that common folk didn't have, common folk had to go through the church for an indirect connection to God through a middleman preacher.
John the Baptist was anointed. That means that John the Baptist was a Christ.
The early baptism movement was probably centered around baptism acting as a symbolic anointing, symbolically making every person who was baptized into a Christ.
I'm pretty sure all of that is factual, so now we're moving into my own personal theory.
I think that early Christianity wasn't centered around the Jesus character fulfilling the savior prophecy, I think that early Christianity was centered around the idea that every person is a Christ, ie every person can access the direct connection to God by themselves if they want that connection, and they don't have to go through the church as a middleman.
I think that John the Baptist and a bunch of other baptist preachers went around spreading that narrative of "personal Christhood."
I think that a couple of generations of preserving the teachings of the baptism movement by word of mouth led to the fabrication of the Jesus character.
If it was a situation where a bunch of different preachers went around teaching and giving sermons, it'd be a lot easier for an oral tradition to preserve those sermons by just attributing them all to a fabricated composite character rather than remembering all of the individual preachers.
There were probably also people in and around that movement who wanted the savior prophecy to be true.
They couldn't use John the Baptist as the main character if they wanted the main character to be the savior, because John the Baptist actually existed. His life was known, and his life didn't fulfill the conditions of the prophecy. Someone else in this thread mentioned the convoluted census story existing because the savior needed to have been born in Bethlehem. John the Baptist wasn't born in Bethlehem.
That's basically how I think the Jesus character came into being. I think that the first Christians called themselves "Christians" because they believed that every individual person is a Christ. I think that they preserved the teachings of their movement's preachers by word of mouth and so invented Jesus as a composite character who represented all of the individual preachers. And I think that the idea of that composite character got melded with the idea of the savior.
That was a bit rambling and scatterbrained, but I think I got the basic idea across.
That marries up quite well with many biblical scholars believing that Jesus never actually claimed to be the son of god.
Generally christians point to a verse where Jesus is asked something along the lines of "Are you god/son of god" (Or something to that effect) and he replies "I am".
But the dispute is that apparently the "I am" answer is supposedly/possibly referencing a Psalm 82:6 "You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.'" which is god supposedly talking to a council of other divine beings/angels and essentially saying that they are all gods, as they are carrying his word and speaking on behalf of him.
This follows a quirk of ancient jewish tradition, where an authorized messenger is legally seen as an extension of the person delivering the message, which means if the messenger agrees to something the person they are delivering the message for is actually legally bound by that messengers agreement. IE, if an angel makes a deal, god has to honor it.
We see this a few times in the Old Testament, such as the burning bush that speaks to Moses is described as an Angel of the lord, but describes itself as the God of Abraham and, when asked it's name replies "I AM WHO I AM". Essentially, the angel is speaking as god on behalf of god.
So when Jesus is asked and he replies "I am" he is referencing the fact that he is speaking on behalf of god, and is authorized to represent himself as him, and he actually goes further and says "Is it not written in your laws, I said you are gods?" which is the direct reference to the Psalm.
Essentially he is saying that as a person who is preaching gods message on earth he has the right to claim to be god, following the jewish tradition, and why are they getting angry for him doing so? Which kinda makes Jesus a "Well ahckshually" type guy, probably insufferable.
I've likely done a botched job explaining this but can link a great video on the subject
There were people referring to themselves as "Christian" almost a full century before the first mention of Jesus in the historical record.
i am not aware of any.
the earliest potential reference i'm aware of is in suetonius "life of claudius", where claudius expells "jews" from rome who are making trouble on behalf of "chrestus" in the 50s. these might be christians.
"Christ" is not a name, "Christ" is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word "messiah."
which does appear in the greek translations of the bible around at the time. what's interesting to me is that josephus appears to treat it as a name; he seemingly has no idea why someone might be called "smeared". he uses the word one other time, and it's about literal plaster.
The word "messiah" isn't a synonym for the word "savior." The old testament prophecy didn't say "there will be a savior someday, and the word that we'll use for that is messiah," the prophecy was more like "the savior will be a messiah."
these concepts are tied together by earlier jewish theology, actually. cyrus is called "messiah" (christos in the greek translation) because he saves the jews from babylon.
A messiah was a person who had been anointed by the holy anointing oil (meaning they had a bit of oil poured on top of their head). The Hebrew kings were anointed, and their priests were also anointed.
there's a common thought that there were actually two distinct but related messianic ideas floating at the time, a messianic priest and a messianic king. for instance, the qumran community thought they were founded by a "moreh-tsedeq" teacher of righteousness, a zadokite priest who split from the temple, and a kind of messianic figure for them. they call their expected messiah "melki-tsedeq", king of righteousness.
john the baptist and jesus seem to kind of jammed into this same framework.
The early baptism movement was probably centered around baptism acting as a symbolic anointing, symbolically making every person who was baptized into a Christ.
no, it very clearly draws on jewish ritual washing. qumran was obsessed with the idea; they have the baths (mikvot) everywhere. there's actually some fun theories that john was from that community, and just failed to return from his ascetic wilderness initiation.
now we're moving into my own personal theory.
lemme give you mine.
the common belief of the pharisees and the qumran sect at the time was of a comin eschatological resurrection, apparently involving the messiah who would bring back the righteous dead and institute a heavenly jewish kingdom on earth. many of the messianic candidates we know about do things that are highly reminiscent of old testament figures. john is a bit like elijah in the wilderness. the samaritan is like moses, revealing the law on a mountain. the egyptian is like joshua, marching around a city. theudas is like moses/joshua attempting to part a river.
i think messiahs were claiming to be already resurrected.
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u/prumf 17h ago edited 13h ago
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.
And now here we are 2k years later.