Non-Christians - what do you know about Jesus ?

[Babybirdmum]

Atheists, agnostics, maybe raised as a Christian’s but not that into it…
I am just interested to see what ideas you have about Jesus. I was talking about it to my dad the other day and I said that I felt that a lot of people think Jesus is a made up fairytale, they don’t realise he is an actual historical figure.

What about it?

If they want to convince me, all they need to do is present some convincing evidence. Until then, I'll remain sceptical.

An important and influential figure, possibly based on a real person. Some people believe him to be a prophet while others that he was the literal Messiah.

I think as a human being he probably existed, and sounds like he had some clear ideas on divinity and spirituality, and he got a group of people to follow him around, and hang on his every word. But at that time, from what I understand, there were a lot of these kind of personalities, and cults, claiming to be god, the messiah. But given that the bible was written by men who had never met this Jesus person, (it’s always men, right, like in all other religions), over many, many years, after his death, and then subsequently over many centuries, the bible can not be considered an actual nor legitimate historical document, in this regard. The bible consists of pass me down stories, hearsay, and musings about what they think this Jesus really wanted to convey in his supposed teachings. Jesus’s actual true divinity was only finally established in the 5th century AD! So for all those centuries, was he or wasn’t he the son of god? It takes a lot of mind gymnastics to believe.

I'm a huge sceptic and feel it's all a myth. I have my reasons for this... I was brought up in a Christian household, went to church twice on a Sunday as a child (was forced to), I was confirmed took communion etc, I even became a Sunday School teacher (again, made to).

As I reached my late teens and onwards and listened to so-called Christian people gossiping, back biting, being thoroughly nasty for all sorts of reasons, I had an epiphany.
These are probably the sort of people I really don't want to know and I walked away from religion. I would rather do my best to be a good person in as many ways as I can, without having to buy into christianity. My DH, adult DCs are caring loving people, we don't need it in our lives.
My brother, SIL and other family members are seriously religious, they know not to talk to me about it. One even has his own spin off Church, I have listened to his preachings... never again.

I'm not a Christian, But I do believe he existed.
There is a historical record for him -Josephus etc as PP pointed out.

But even more compelling for me is the massive societal change that happened in the first century. Something happened to change the religious views and social attitudes of millions of people from Israel to Greece to Rome. Those kinds of changes only happen with a charismatic leader. And that person is as likely to be Jesus as anyone.

As an atheist I think it is pretty irrelevant whether or not there was a real person on whom the entire edifice of myth and church structure has been built.

If he existed, he was not the son of god, as god does not exist; he was probably a charismatic preacher whose followers created a massive backstory and mythology around.

The bible as taught today is just today's version. There are lots of books and teachings that were once accepted but no longer are.

So why should today's version be any more "correct" than those that have been put aside?

I think it just comes down to believing or not believing, and there’s little point in attempting to apply reason to that.

I don’t believe, there’s no way you can attempt to reason me in to believing. I doubt there’s any way of me reasoning you in to not believing. Experience can change minds in either way - and one thing that fascinates me is that the same experience (bereavement, ill health, etc), can lead one person to believe and another to lose their belief.

But whether or not Jesus was a real person, that’s kind of irrelevant to the topic to me.

That Christians believe he was the Messiah as foretold in what they call the Old Testament and that Muslims believe that he is a prophet and the Qu'ran bangs on quite a bit about God not having a son.

That there were a lot gospels written about Jesus (my favourite line from the Gospel of Thomas is 'I have come to set the world on fire. See how I watch as it blazes') and the final selection was chosen from those. That there was a lot of discussion in the early church as to the precise detail of the man/god nature of Jesus.

That Jesus was Jewish and Christianity was essential an offshoot of Judaism which grew and grew to become its own religion. Numbers boosted by opening up this Jewish sect to non-jews as well.

That the 'gentle Jesus meek and mild thing' is not really what I see in the gospels and he actually had quite a cutting tongue and quite a temper. That he once called a woman a dog for asking to hear his teaching.

Your (rather smug-sounding, if I may say so) position seems to be that you "know" a lot more about Jesus than those silly non-believers. By the sounds of it your "knowledge" comes purely from reading the bible rather than being an expert on archaeology or theology for example.

So what you're really asking is whether people who aren't Christians - or who are less committed Christians than you - know as much as you about your specialist subject, which is of little interest to people who are not Christian.

Have I summed it up?

I would like Jesus the man to have existed, I love some of what he had to say and what he did.

He probably did exist, but what can never be proven is that he is the son of god/god because there is no evidence for that. The bible is not proof either, because it was written by men who had never met him.

Well we don't actually know what underhand tactics anyone may have used to get followers of any religion to sign up, because obviously the hagiography only tells us what people want us to hear!

OP, I know quite a lot about Jesus and have read the gospels. Some lovely principles to live by and beautiful stories. Atheist here.

I've studied Theology, I would describe myself as a Pagan though if I really had too.

I don't believe Jesus was a historical figure. Not in the form we are told anyway.

Wasn't Josephus himself born after the supposed death of Jesus Christ?

If that is the case, then he isn't contemporaneous, at least, not in the sense that he could have witnessed the existence of christ himself first-hand, and therefore, any account of Jesus Christ Josephus gives must, at best, be second-hand, and therefore the provenance is automatically dubious because we simply do not know from whom, or where, he took his account. What is inarguable though is that it was not first-hand.

For the avoidance of doubt, when I say "contemporaneous", I mean first-hand eye witness account of jesus by an unbiased source while jesus christ was alive and walking the earth. I do not consider reports of this or that years or decades after the event to be contemporaneous. It seems inarguable to me that if a man was walking around performing miracles, then that is extraordinary enough that someone would be documenting that as it happened, not years afterwards and only via second-hand (at best) accounts.

I should add- my knowledge comes from the bible’s depictions of him which I enjoy but don’t necessarily treat as factual. I do not have know based on secular historic sources. I would love to know more about what is and what isn’t verified.

I'm not sure if I'm going to word this properly to get across what I mean.

But in terms of him being a historical figure - if you have so much mythology around a figure (virgin birth, and resurrection being the two most immediately obvious ones but there are more of course), in what way can it be said that that person existed? If so much of the life story is fictional, how can he exist?
How loosely based on someone's life can it be before it's just a newly invented fictional person I guess is my question. If you take away all the miracle bits, is the person you're left with actually jesus?

@Babybirdmum "Hello! Would you say you were a Christian then or no? If no then why? Thank you"

No, I am an atheist. Or, I am a Richard Dawkins agnostic, in that evidence for the existence of God might turn up tomorrow, which would prove me wrong-but there is none at this moment.

Yes, this. Done the alpha course, and a similar other one somewhere. They showed all the historical stuff - and I agree there’s as good evidence for there being a man called Jesus around at the time, as there is for plenty of other historical figures. But I didn’t hear anything that made me believe he was the son of god. There are written accounts, from various times, but none of this feels like evidence to me. And frankly, I think it comes down to the question we were asked at church - “you know that feeling deep inside you that there is something more, something bigger, God?” And I could only answer “nope. Never had that feeling”. I just have absolutely no sense that there is a bigger higher power / god, nor do I feel there needs to be. So I continue to be atheist / agnostic (please don’t come at me for precise definition here because basically I don’t believe in anything like that, and hence give it very little thought now).

My background is brought up with non religious parents, though other extended family (grandparents, some aunts uncles etc) were / are religious, and we would always be respectful of that. I went along to alpha etc at uni because of friends who were Christian, to see what I thought. Results as above!

What? The the massive societal change was due to the collapse of the Roman Empire, as it was being overrun and destroyed by the Gothic and Vandals, and similar

And in that first century AD, it’s been estimated that there were only about 7,000 Christian’s or so. So where are you getting all these millions of Christian converts from in the first century after Jesus’s death?

This is my view too.

Any remaining flickers of belief I might have had in the authenticity of Jesus and the bible were well and truly doused by reading about the way the bible was actually assembled.

i see what you are saying, men usually are in charge of religion. I’d say that at the time Jesus broke the status quo because he had female followers. Mary Magdalene was a disciple among others, Joanna.
The ones who wrote were men, yes, but they did know Jesus - John was written by the apostle John who knew Jesus personally and was martyred for his belief, so was Matthew. Some believe Luke to be written by Luke who was a student of Peter who was a follower of Jesus. It was written surprisingly close to the time of his death, approx 40 years after, when you think Mohammed wrote about Jesus 600 years after his death then 40 years is still the same lifetime of his followers. His “divinity” was mentioned in those writings.

Exactly. I’m never very clear on why anyone would dispute the existence of Jesus as a historical figure, given that there clearly was a movement which began at around that time, charismatic preachers were fairly common and the name Jesus was a very ordinary one. What are people actually quibbling over?

TRIH podcast has done some good episodes on all this.

I think there's a good case that there could have been a man called Jesus who led a religious group, but I don't think that the written accounts of his life that form the Bible are compelling enough to believe he was the messiah (due to dates written, selection bias and the general human tendency to not recall events with great accuracy)

Add this to the fact that he is one of thousands of vaguely credible self-proclaimed messiahs across time and cultures and (for me) there is really nothing to persuade me that the collected accounts of his life are the One True Truth.

I also think we need to be realistic about human nature. Even if Jesus was a great prophet, we then have to accept that all the people who took up the mantle after his death were also pure of intention and not exploiting their positions for power or influence. We only know of his life through their words.