What is the actual evidence for the existence of Jesus?

Kylie said:
If he wasn't famous, how did he get a thousand people or more to turn up?


Doesn't the Bible talk of Mary and Joseph needing to go back home for their census? Were they not commoners?
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I'm not famous and I've spoken to over a thousand people at one time. If He WAS famous, why wouldn't the leadership know of Him? He wasn't famous yet, that's why.

I didn't say that commoners didn't participate in the census. I'm saying 1. no census records exist today from that place and time and 2. commoners wouldn't be kept in historical record.

Besides, last names weren't used back then. So there would be a LOT of random people named Jesus on that census if it did exist.

But if you want to argue the point, first provide a substantial census from that place and time. None exists, but if you want to push the issue you can prove me wrong and provide one.

I've been waiting over 20 years for someone to show me that census.... I won't hold my breath.
 
Kylie said:
Because there may be some people who don't know the full story, and for whom a thorough examination of the evidence could be eye opening.
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If you want people to know the whole story about reasons for thinking that Jesus did not exist, you might need to understand better what the reasons actually are, then explain them one by one. I'm working on that now. The book "Jesus Did Not Exist" by Raphael Lataster might be a good place to start, to learn what the reasons actually are.
 
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Longfellow said:
That doesn't count, because actually the story says that Jesus talked to 5000 one time. Even if you don't get famous from talking to more than a thousand, obviously anyone who talked to 5000 one time would have been famous.
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So 5,000 people is the magic number? If you spoke to 5,000 people that would automatically make you famous?

I did end up on television with an audience of over 50,000. Somehow I'm not famous. Or does that not count either?

As far as the 5,000 are concerned, didn't the crowd assemble because of John the Baptist's funeral? So Jesus wasn't even the reason they were there. So let's say 50,000 people come to a concert, and I speak on stage for a few minutes, does THAT make me famous? They weren't there to see me, but I spoke so now I'm famous?
 
Longfellow said:
If you want people to know the whole story about reasons for thinking that Jesus did not exist, you might need to understand better what the reasons actually are, then explain them one by one. I'm working on that now. The book "Jesus Did Not Exist" by Raphael Lataster might be a good place to start, to learn what the reasons actually are.
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You’ve been to Lataster’s websites?
 
Longfellow said:
The book "Jesus Did Not Exist" by Raphael Lataster might be a good place to start, to learn what the reasons actually are.
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I'm not so sure of that?

There's an extended review, with replies by the author, at DeeperWaters

Lataster seems to make a case for Bayesian Reasoning' as a valid means of addressing the question – There's a discussion of Bayes Theorem and probability here, and I offer the conclusion:
"We must reject the validity of the non-corollary and with it the Bayesian reasoning of Lataster’s argument as a means of historical criticism in both religious and non-religious studies. Also, Bayes’ Theorem concerns the ratios of data counts. Lataster invokes Bayesian reasoning for the purpose of historical criticism, which concerns datum content."
 
Longfellow said:
Only to download “Jesus Did Not Exist, which I mistakenly thought was a good way to learn about arguments against the existence of Jesus.
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It didn't have the information you were looking for?

I don't know what I'm missing, maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but I didn't seen anything downloadable on his site.
 
TheLightWithin said:
It didn't have the information you were looking for?

I don't know what I'm missing, maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but I didn't seen anything downloadable on his site.
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Sorry for the confusion. I forgot, I downloaded it from the Internet Archive, so no, I haven't been to Lataster's website. I don't know if the book has the information I was looking for or not, but after half an hour of reading I decided that it wasn't worth the time to try to find it, and got my list a different way.
 
Thomas said:
There's an extended review, with replies by the author, at DeeperWaters
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That review isn't about the book "Jesus Did Not Exist," which is the one that I mistakenly thought would be a good place to start, to learn about the reasons for thinking that he didn't exist. Also, I remembered wrong. I downloaded the book from the Internet Archive, not from any Lataster website.
 
It looks to me like all the arguments about something we don't have that we would have if Jesus existed, even if he actually did miracles. drew crowds and alarmed religious authorities, are based on unreasonable and poorly informed expectations. And sometimes the claim that we don't have something is actually false, like artifacts with the name "Yeshua" on them. We have those. What more does anyone expect, an inscription in English saying "this is the Jesus that scholars will be debating about 2000 years from now"?
 
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Faithfulservant said:
The rate of entropy.. I doubt we have 2000 years to keep questioning the existence of Jesus.
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If indeed humans are still discussing Jesus for another 2000 years, we won't have access to it unless the theory of reincarnation is true, in which case we probably won't recall the debate we had in 2025.
 
What I meant was, what more would anyone expect to see in an inscription on an artifact from the time of Jesus and where he lived, beyond the name "Yeshua," which we do have? Would they expect an artifact from that time to say, in English, "this is the Jesus that scholars will be debating about 2000 years from now?"

The argument is "Jesus didn't exist because if he did, we would have artifacts with his name on them." Um, Excuse me? We do. "But there isn't anything in any inscription that identifies it with the Jesus of Christianity." Like what, for example?
 
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How does it matter? Christianity is here irrespective of whether Jesus was or was not. The messiah theory of Judaism enlarged.
 
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