Do you think Mary, Joseph and Jesus existed?

[Papergirl1968]

Do you think Mary, Joseph and Jesus existed? I thought about putting this under religion, but thought there’d be a wider range of views on chat.
I’m not religious any more (was raised Methodist) but the Christmas story is something I think about occasionally, usually when I’m singing carols to the cat .
My own view is that they probably did exist, but I don’t buy the son of god thing. I’d hazard a guess that Mary got pregnant by Joseph when they were being intimate, even if they didn’t technically have sex. So she panicked and either invented or dreamed a convenient story about the angel telling her she was carrying the son of god.
I believe there’s evidence that they would have had to travel to Bethlehem - although not at Christmas - and that there was a bright star in the sky etc.
And I think Jesus may well have had children. Or maybe I just took the Da Vinci Code too seriously...
Would be interested to hear what others think.

wabble wousing

Yes, I believe Jesus existed and yes, I believe he thought he was the son of God. I have a friend with Bi-polar who can become very delusional and his delusions take a religious form and he can believe similar so it is possible Jesus was delusional.

Or he may simply have been an unusually gifted political activist. Certainly his views were seen as 'dangerous' by at least one faction at the time, hence his being put to death.

In some ways, it doesn't matter to me. I appreciate that that was not the question and that some others may think that is flippant.
I consider myself a Christian and I repeat the Nicean creed in church and attend mass regularly but i also believe that whether he was literally the son of God or simply embodied God's work in his teachings, his message was powerful enough to offer hope in this life and that to come for 2 thousand years.

So in that sense he is 'real' to me.

his message was powerful enough

I disagree. The Roman Empire was powerful enough, once they decided to push it.

This thread will never get anywhere, will it?

I’m really interested and in the history behind the Bible, particularly the New Testament. I come at it with no actual knowledge, but with some beliefs that were told to me at school, Sunday School and various churches. What my Sunday School taught me was that Jesus was a good man. No one mentioned he was the Son of God. I was told the miracles were him bringing out the best in others. So turning water into wine-he persuaded someone to go home and get more wine. Loaves and fishes-he was so good that everyone decided to share their pack lunches. Until I went to a very High Church attaches to my children’s school I had no idea most Christians didn’t believe the same. I’m not religious at all, the school is just the local one.

Any ideas on what a lay person could read to get started?

KayM2

I guess we could condense it by asking:

Jesus: Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend?

But the OP's original Qu was: did Jesus, Mary and Joseph exist?.

To which the answer is:
probably, yes, but it's impossible to prove without a doubt.

Maybe because there's a truth among the other words that effects people at a profound level.

That oppression of women, slavery and murder are just dandy?

That oppression of women, slavery and murder are just dandy? They're the other words.

I am not sure why it is considered lazy to rely on the studies of people who have dedicated their lives to this question. Most of us have jobs and families and cannot possibly spend every spare minute studying this. One of the main reasons scholars think Jesus existed is that none of the early writings about him or Christians dispute his existence, they just say how stubborn and annoying the Christians were etc. Here is a link to another article about the subject and it talks about the Jesus myth and how two of the main critics of the Jesus. Myth group are ardent atheists. They just think it is a nonsense to try and disprove the existence of Jesus.

amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/what-is-the-historical-evidence-that-jesus-christ-lived-and-died?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHCAFYAYABAQ%3D%3D#aoh=15437770500084&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2017%2Fapr%2F14%2Fwhat-is-the-historical-evidence-that-jesus-christ-lived-and-died

Christians are followers of Christ and His teachings.
Christ elevated women way above their status of the day and also said ' in Christ there is no male or female, slave or free.'
He sent a converted slave back to his master asking for him to be welcomed and accepted as a brother. Jesus not only reminds people not to murder but actually says that even just wishing that on someone and being angry with them is wrong. He also intervened when they were about to carry out the death panalty on a woman, by challenging them to only throw a stone at her if they themselves were without sin. He was totally revolutionary and counter cultural .If you want to criticize Christianity then find something Jesus did that you disagree with.

Vitalogy, there are plenty of books that promote good values and don't contain any pro-slavery, pro-rape passages. What kind of truth is the Bible pointing towards that other books don't?

What kind of truth is the Bible pointing towards that other books don't You're right, there are lots of other books, writings, songs, music, poetry etc that contain the truth.

I am not sure why it is considered lazy to rely on the studies of people who have dedicated their lives to this question.
It isn't. It's the basis of serious study and research. Most of those who dismiss references to real, actual work as "lazy appeals to authority" are conspiracy theory crackpots who prefer to give credence to "Bloke with a Blog" because it confirms their previous existing bias.

Yes, I believe.

Possibly, I don’t think there is any way to know.

There isn’t any good quality historical evidence which proves his existence. There are significant gaps where he is actively missing from the record, which is suspicious. The historical consensus is based on inference, not actual strong evidence.

There is lots of evidence that 70 or so years after he was meant to exist, there was a significant group of people who very much believed he did exist, although we have no evidence that any of them ever met him. We can infer that these believers were unlikely to have existed if he hadn’t, their beliefs didn’t come from nowhere.

The problem is that this is locically no more sound than inferring that someone made up a very convincing story for their own purposes, spread it about, and people believed them. Given that we know people sometimes do this, and people believe them (Think Hubbard and Scientology) then I think either explanation is equally possible, and we have no evidence either way.

It’s like Socrates. No evidence of his existence, he may well have been a fictional device made up by Plato. The ideas expressed are interesting either way.

So yeah, all there is is opinion and hunch, and every person will have their own based on their own bias.

no

Seeing this thread reactivate, reminded me of this film from the late 80s

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_of_Montreal

Very art-house. Quite a bit in French (Quebecois) as I recall.

I believe Jesus existed. All the gospels were written a long time after his death so it's possible that the information about his parents is all entirely made up, but there is a reference to him having some brothers and sisters in one story, so maybe they had descendants who were able to fill in the gospel writers on a few details. I don't believe he was born of a virgin or that he was actually the incarnation of God (I don't believe in God). Nor do I believe he wanted to found a new religion, he just wanted to encourage the people in his region to be better Jews. After his death, I think the new religion grew faster because it was in a sense also seen as a resistance group against the Roman occupiers, which might have appealed to some people who wouldn't have been particularly interested in religion alone.