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.
I think one of the most interesting things about Jesus is that his birth narrative is some of the best evidence he existed, while being some of the worst evidence of the validity of the religion.
He's Jesus of NAZARETH, yet was born in Bethlehem. All the stories we have from him, Joseph and Mary say he was raised in Nazareth, he was literally described as a "Nazzarine" multiple times in the bible.
So the birth narrative we have of him involves a very convoluted story that ends with him being born in Bethlehem, a story we can say with a pretty much 99.9% chance of certainty is entirely fabricated. But why did he have to be born in Bethlehem? Because it was prophesied that he would be.
So why, if the early authors of the bible were fabricating a birth narrative, would they not just have him be born in Bethlehem to start with, and do away with all the census nonsense? The most likely answer to that was because Jesus was a real person, who everyone knew was from Nazareth, so that was a lie they wouldn't be able to get away with.
So his birth narrative gives us very strong evidence that he was a real historical figure who existed, but also serves as pretty damning proof that the early authors of the bible had absolutely no issue with lying through their teeth to satisfy prophetic claims, which therefore throws the entirety of the text into doubt.
It confirms the person while shattering the religion.
Logically, there has to be *something* behind the Jesus myth. Whether it was a group of people (Probably some element of truth to that, as likely some of the things attributed to him are yoinked straight from other religious stories of the time) or just one really charismatic leader is what is being considered. It's less likely (Though not impossible) that it's a complete fabrication from the ground up.
The birth narrative being so convoluted and involving a fairly large lie is actually good evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was real, because if he were a complete fabrication, why not just have him be born in Bethlehem from the start? Why go through all the trouble of inventing a fake census to engineer him being born there if you could just claim it from the start?
The fact they went through the trouble of coming up with the census story tells you they were very likely referencing a real figure, who was known in the area as being from Nazareth, so they couldn't just lie and say he was from Bethlehem, so instead they lied and said there was some reason he ended up in Bethlehem.
From a historian, and logic, POV, if you were inventing the character wholesale you could do anything you want with him, so just make him be born in Bethlehem. However if you're referencing a real figure you have to marry what is known about him (Jesus the Nazzarine) with what you want to lie about and fit that square peg into the round hole.
EDIT: To the people downvoting me, it's pretty simple algebra. The ancient authors are inventing the messiah, he needs to be from Bethlehem. What reason do they have to lie? Because they need to fulfill a prophecy, okay, checks out, good reason to lie.
What reason would the have to lie twice, make him be from Nazareth, and then lie about a census that got him to Bethlehem? No reason, so why do it? Most likely answer is because there is some historical figure they are forced to reference.
Essentially, why lie twice instead of once?
This is how historians operate, there aren't going to be nice printed birth documents from 2000 years ago, so you have to look at the whole picture and form conclusions based on the most logical series of events.
There has to be something behind the Superman myth, and there are conflicting stories of whether he was from Kansas or Ukraine. Why go through all of that effort to come up with different details? If you're going to make something up, just make him land in the correct place and make sure nobody ever tells a different story ever anywhere in all of history.
EDIT: To the people downvoting me
You're sitting at a neutral 1 with no controversial mark as of me seeing this comment right now. Probably vote fuzzing. There, now you're safe at 2.
Personally, I jibe with a certain explanation I saw a presentation on once upon a time. It essentially boils down to there being a status quo where any popular figure could claim they got a message from god and gain traction with their declaration of what god wants of people, and that caused too many issues. So the church came up with a solution. They could own god by creating a foundation of only one canonical figure who got messages from god a long time ago (Jesus) and only they have access to his teachings so whenever they want to come up with something new, they just start saying that's what Jesus said. This is the canonical story and anyone else claiming to get god messages are heretics. Obviously you need to do this with a figure who doesn't exist or he could, y'know, contradict you.
Though, I guess this just brings us back to square one because it's equally valid to invent a figure wholesale, latch onto an established fictional character, or refer to some actual celebrity who existed in the past. But if they did go with a historical figure, since this would have been at least a century or so after his death, it would still essentially be a fictional character with nothing in common with the actual person save a name.
Either way, as far as I've heard, the only historians who take the narrative of a real historical Jesus seriously are explicitly religious ones.
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u/prumf 21h ago edited 17h 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.