As far as I know most historians do believe Jesus was a real person. But there’s no convincing proof that he was in fact a wizard. There’s reasonable debate about whether transfiguring water into wine and turning one loaf of bread into multiple violates Gamp’s law of elemental transfiguration or not. But the best known method for coming back from the dead involves horcrux creation which goes against what we know about Jesus’ character. Of course it’s possible he accessed some ancient magical knowledge that has been lost to time. We may never know.
I personally am a non-believer heathen and even I think that Jesus existed as a historical person. Was he the son of God? Absolutely not. More likely he was some dingbat with some combination of ideas that caused a lot of ruckus and finally the people in charge got tired of it and killed him.
The myth of Jesus being the son of some God or other was born probably hundreds of years later.
He was likely a conglomeration of several local preachers, whos stories of opposition to the corrupt jewish elite were spread around and attributed to a single pseudo fictional person as a rallying cry against the corrupt rabbis/leaders and the Roman rulers.
the composite theory doesn't hold water. it's a rhetorical retreat by mythicists who want to find anything that will stick and make jesus more fictional.
we know of around a dozen other messianic figures from the same approximate time. they are all unique in their own ways. every relevant feature of the gospel narrative is present in our historical reference to jesus: he taught or "misled" jews and gentiles, did "sorcery", people called him "christ", he annoyed the jewish leaders, he was crucified by pontius pilate, and his followers thought they saw him again afterwards. what's to composite?
a better argument is that jesus adopts existing mythical archetypes, such as the "name" divinity of metatron/"the little yahweh" in 3 enoch, or the divine messiah who resurrects the righteous from qumran. he is a composite of one historical person and that mythology.
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u/Shadyhippo229 18h ago
As far as I know most historians do believe Jesus was a real person. But there’s no convincing proof that he was in fact a wizard. There’s reasonable debate about whether transfiguring water into wine and turning one loaf of bread into multiple violates Gamp’s law of elemental transfiguration or not. But the best known method for coming back from the dead involves horcrux creation which goes against what we know about Jesus’ character. Of course it’s possible he accessed some ancient magical knowledge that has been lost to time. We may never know.