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Do you think Mary, Joseph and Jesus existed?

342 replies

Papergirl1968 · 28/11/2018 20:02

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 Smile.
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.

OP posts:
todayiwin · 30/11/2018 05:57

No

BartholinsSister · 30/11/2018 07:13

There's loads of hiistorical evidence and contemporary writing about Mary, Jesus and his brother James and Joseph of Arimathea.

There really isn't.

KayM2 · 30/11/2018 07:16

It is perfectly valid to think that the essential message of the New Testament is factual. Except in those cases where we know it isn't, of course. Like dates, places, family relationships, and so on.

We are talking about Christianity because the Roman Empire imposed it, in an " agreed version" a couple of centuries after Jesus died on the cross. A standard death under Rome .

If the Eastern empire based in Constantinople had not carried on till the 15C, unlike the Western part which crumbled in the 4th and 5th, we would not have heard of Christianity, which was a very minor eastern-origin cult for two or three centuries.

There are bags of religions to choose from. We might like to ask why there were so many popping up at roughly that period, and in roughly that area of the world. We might be talking about any of half a dozen different religions, had things turned out only a smidgeon differently.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Philosophy & religion
sandgrown · 30/11/2018 07:19

I have been to Bethlehem and I believe the Christmas story. Bethlehem had a lovely strange aura that was acknowledged by everybody on our trip.

gamerwidow · 30/11/2018 07:27

I thought it was believed she was meant to be about 11 or 12. At what time would a girl normally have been married off then?
Probably at puberty, even in Tudor time 1500 years later the average age of marriage for a girl was 12

gamerwidow · 30/11/2018 07:31

It wouldn’t have been uncommon for her to have a much older husband. Daughters and wives were property usually bartered to secure position and money marriage for love is a very recent invention.

Vitalogy · 30/11/2018 07:32

I'd say Jesus existed yes. An enlightened human being, there have been many. I also think that yes he was God, as we all are. He was no more God than We though.

PinkAvocado · 30/11/2018 07:37

I do.

AndhowcouldIeverrefuse · 30/11/2018 07:39

I am an atheist and believe that, based on preserved written evidence (not the Bible), Jesus did exist. Obviously IMO he was human and must have had parents. Maybe he had children, too. We don't have evidence about his relatives though.

KayM2 · 30/11/2018 07:44

sandgrown; and yet The Bethlehem you visited is not the same Bethlehem that was thought to be the "right one" for the first few centuries after Christ. The other Bethlehem is further north, and fits the New testament story better, geographically.

BehemothPullsThePeasantsPlough · 30/11/2018 07:44

There’s a few people on MN who are weirdly overinvested in the non-existence of Jesus, but as an atheist I reckon he probably did exist as a human but was no big deal at the time to the Romans. St Paul’s original letters in particular and the gospels were written very close to the time of Jesus’s death - they may well have made all sorts of stuff up to make it fit their narrative and the OT prophecies but I can’t see them making their hero up completely - they’d never have got away with it.

Brahumbug · 30/11/2018 07:47

The evidence for a historic Jesus is very weak. The gospels for example are anonymous. Paul of course never met Jesus and the references in josephus are obvious interpolations.

CherryPavlova · 30/11/2018 08:01

I do. The existence of Jesus is proven beyond reasonable doubt. It would be impossible to prove Jesus was the son of God made man but that is where faith comes in.
I don’t think necessarily it’s quite as cutesy as portrayed. They were fairly grim times for many. Forced to register in the town of your birth was a pretty unpleasant thing and done for not very nice reasons. No doubt Caesar Augustus did insist on that.
A cull of baby boys? Yes, historically accurate; Herod wasn’t your bucolic and meek monarch.
Mary probably was a virgin but in those times virgins were simply unmarried, young women. My understanding is Mary was about 15 years and that was fairly normal at the time. There would be few records of her as she was a Jewish woman.
The star could well have been a comet but more likely was a triple conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn - with the two planets coming close together in the sky three times over a short period. Halley’s comet appeared in about 1300 ad so our modern story could have grown from early artwork that included that although the star is mentioned in St Matthew.

BartholinsSister · 30/11/2018 08:10

The existence of Jesus is proven beyond reasonable doubt.

This is not correct.

pancaketosser · 30/11/2018 08:17

I think someone called Jesus may have existed. I think that those seeking to convert people to a new religion, chose to embellish stories about him and/or added him to stories not about him to make him seem more messiah like.

explodingkitten · 30/11/2018 08:28

I once read somewhere that the virgin birth is a more recent idea but that the original concept was that Mary was born without the curse caused by Eve. The curse was menstruation and pain in childbirth. So that would mean that she got pregnant without menstruating first. Maybe she was young or had pcos?

There are passages in the bible indicating that Jesus had brothers. Imagine being a younger brother of Jesus, you'll never be the golden child.

sashh · 30/11/2018 08:38

I feel genuinely quite saddened by how blithely people say quite contemptuous things about the central (human) people in my religion

If your religion is true then no amount of criticism matters, it will stand up to that criticism and provide evidence for it being right.

Topseyt · 30/11/2018 09:04

Jesus might well have existed, but the immaculate conception is tosh.

ApplesinmyPocket · 30/11/2018 09:19

This census bothers me - doesn't it seem really unlikely the Romans would insist on people travelling back to the city where their ancesters came from for a census? why would people comply with this, how could they leave their homes and their animals unattended to undertake a journey? and I don't think there's a shred of proof that this happened.

There's no really conclusive evidence that Jesus existed either, despite many people on here being 'astonished' at the ignorance of those who know there's no hard evidence!

Sitranced · 30/11/2018 09:20

They probably existed but that Mary ain't fooling no-one about that immaculate conception nonsense.

DameSylvieKrin · 30/11/2018 09:42

The immaculate conception is the conception of Mary by Anne, not the conception of Jesus.

Sitranced · 30/11/2018 09:49

Really? Well shows how much attention I paid to the make believe story Grin

lynnepot · 30/11/2018 09:51

I think something might have happened but perhaps its been blown out of proportion a bit over the centuries with Chinese whispers Grin

OutPinked · 30/11/2018 10:10

I honestly think he was a crazy Jewish preacher who believed he was the son of God and managed to get people to believe it. They were a lot more naive back then Grin

DGRossetti · 30/11/2018 10:29

This census bothers me - doesn't it seem really unlikely the Romans would insist on people travelling back to the city where their ancesters came from for a census?

At the time the area was occupied, and the Romans left a lot of the heavy lifting to the local godfathers who were doing quite well out of Roman rule thank you very much (and didn't want some upstart messing up their cushy little number.) It's entirely possible the census was their idea ...

why would people comply with this well, blame the Romans, and kill people who didn't ?

how could they leave their homes and their animals unattended to undertake a journey?

Didn't J&M take their donkey ? I don't think leaving your home had the same ramifications in turn of the millennium Palestine.

and I don't think there's a shred of proof that this happened.

As many historians and archaeologists have noted, the further back you go, the less likely you are to find anything for a specific event. But the framework of the Bible is definitely rooted in fact - the names of the Pharaohs for a start.

There's loads of fascinating documented history around Palestine/Judea ... the siege of Masada where the Romans basically built a ramp around a mountain and eventually crushed the first (?) rebellion. All the more fascinating as it pits definitive archaeology against contemporary writings and finds them .... inaccurate at best.