Did Jesus, Buddha & Mohammed really exist?

[JoeB131]

[

I would say the evedince is fairly strong for Jesus. .

Not really.

In fact, the major evidence is that Jesus is a fictional character.

What we have is the Gospel of Mark, which is very, very vague on specifics about Jesus' life and most recounts his teachings. This is the first gospel written that has survived to the present day. But a lot of stuff in Mark indicates that he never visted the Holy Land and was unfamiliar with Jewish/Mosaic law. For instance, he has Jesus giving an admonishment against women seeking divorce when they had no right to seek a divorce.

Then you have Luke and Matthew, who go into a lot of detail. Except they get things wrong- or they contradict each other. Matt places Jesus birth around the time of the death of Herod the great. (4 BCE) while Luke places Jesus birth during the governorship of Cyrrenus (Quirennius) (6 AD). Both of these are stories that try to explain how someone from Galilee could be born in Bethlehem. They both reek of plot contrivance. Both try to tie Jesus to the HOuse of David through genologies through Joseph (who was not the biological father) but they disagree on how many generations or what ancestoral line it took.

And don't even get me started on the Gospel of John, where they were just drinking the bong water.

 

[PratchettFan]

[

I would say the evedince is fairly strong for Jesus. .

Not really.

In fact, the major evidence is that Jesus is a fictional character.

What we have is the Gospel of Mark, which is very, very vague on specifics about Jesus' life and most recounts his teachings. This is the first gospel written that has survived to the present day. But a lot of stuff in Mark indicates that he never visted the Holy Land and was unfamiliar with Jewish/Mosaic law. For instance, he has Jesus giving an admonishment against women seeking divorce when they had no right to seek a divorce.

Then you have Luke and Matthew, who go into a lot of detail. Except they get things wrong- or they contradict each other. Matt places Jesus birth around the time of the death of Herod the great. (4 BCE) while Luke places Jesus birth during the governorship of Cyrrenus (Quirennius) (6 AD). Both of these are stories that try to explain how someone from Galilee could be born in Bethlehem. They both reek of plot contrivance. Both try to tie Jesus to the HOuse of David through genologies through Joseph (who was not the biological father) but they disagree on how many generations or what ancestoral line it took.

And don't even get me started on the Gospel of John, where they were just drinking the bong water.

I disagree. Ancient history is never exact. You are being too specific and referring to writings written long after the fact. There is considerable evidence for the existence of the early church, which would have been populated by contemporaries of Jesus. That church was basically a personality cult and I see no reason to think such a cult would have just sprung up in the absence of a personality.

I might well be able to demonstrate to you that it would be physically impossible for George Washington to have thrown a dollar across the Potomac. It was simply a myth which grew up around the man. I might demonstrate the story of the cherry tree was pure fabrication. However, that does not mean that George Washington never existed.

 

[Saigon]

Does it really matter?

I think it does.

I have immense respect for the Buddhist religion, but any thoughts I might have had of joining them went out the window when I visted shrines devoted to Buddha's fooprint, Buddha's hair - and even his toe nail.

Folks - that's just silly. To me it makes the whole thing impossible to take seriously.

I believe Jesus did walk the earth, but only as another paint-by-numbers prophet. He was likely one of dozens in Judea at the time. His message is clear and attractive, even if many of his followers are not.

Ditto Mohammed - though with a far more complex and abstract philosophy. I am sure he did exist, but I don't find his example one I'd choose to follow.

 

[jtpr312]

Ignoring what it says in the holy books themselves, what evidence is there that any of these three gentlemen actually walked the earth?

Or, to put it another way, even if they were real people - what evidence is there that they were 'special'?

Do you really exist? Ignoring what we see written here, what evidence do we have that you exist?

 

[jtpr312]

Tacitus writes that Nero blamed "a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace." He goes on to explain that "Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty [crucifixion] during the reign of Tiberius at the hand of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome ..." ( Annals, 15:44, quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, 1998, p. 82).

Caius Suetonius Tranquillus (ca. 69-140), overseer of Rome's libraries and court official to several emperors, writes that the emperor Claudius "banished the Jews from Rome, who were continually making disturbances, Chrestus [Christ] being their leader" ( Lives of the First Twelve Caesars: Life of Claudius, quoted by Grant Jeffrey, Jesus: The Great Debate, 1999, p. 163).

"Pliny the younger, the Roman legate of Bithynia-Pontus (what is now north-central Turkey) in the early second century, wrote to the emperor Trajan, requesting advice on how to deal with Christians who refused to reverence Caesar's image. Pliny noted that these Christians met regularly and sang hymns 'to Christ as if to a god' ( Letters 10:96.7).

Flavius Josephus;
"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works,—a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; ( Antiquities, Book 18, chapter 3, section 3).

"Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of the judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others [or some of his companions;] and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, He delivered them to be stoned,

An eclipse of the sun’unreasonably, as it seems to me (unreasonably of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died.” Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.

Lucian of Samosate; Speaking of the Christ and the followers of Christ;
“He was second only to that one whom they still worship today, the man in Palestine who was crucified because he brought this new form of initiation into the world.”

“Having convinced themselves that they are immortal and will live forever, the poor wretches despise death and most willingly give themselves to it. Moreover, that first lawgiver of theirs persuaded them that they are all brothers the moment they transgress and deny the Greek gods and begin worshiping that crucified sophist and living by his laws.”

“They scorn all possessions without distinction and treat them as community property. They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time.”

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus commonly known as Suetonius (ca. 69/75 – after 130), was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of twelve successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, entitled De Vita Caesarum. The description of his writings states:

The emperor Claudius reigned 41 to 54 AD. Suetonius reports his dealings with the eastern Roman Empire, that is, with Greece and Macedonia, and with the Lycians, Rhodians, and Trojans. He then reports that the emperor expelled the Jews from Rome, since they “constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Christ” (Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit). The name appears in manuscripts of Suetonius as Chrestus, a form also used by the Roman historian Tacitus to refer to Chrestiani

As for what he did that was so special, no need to answer that, if you don't already know it's because you've already been given over to a reprobate/debased mind. There's hope though that God may still have mercy on you and call you to His Son.

By the way, what you call Holy Books, are really just letters and first hand accounts of those who met with Jesus and those who witnessed his life and execution.

 

[editec]

Ignoring what it says in the holy books themselves, what evidence is there that any of these three gentlemen actually walked the earth?

Or, to put it another way, even if they were real people - what evidence is there that they were 'special'?

There is far more documentable evidence that Mohammad existed than Jesus.

Still I think the claim that any of them are ficticuious characters is sort of silly.

 

[Saigon]

As for what he did that was so special, no need to answer that, if you don't already know it's because you've already been given over to a reprobate/debased mind. There's hope though that God may still have mercy on you and call you to His Son.

So if I do not believe Jesus literally turned water into wine, I am "debased"?

Interesting.

 

[PratchettFan]

Does it really matter?

I think it does.

I have immense respect for the Buddhist religion, but any thoughts I might have had of joining them went out the window when I visted shrines devoted to Buddha's fooprint, Buddha's hair - and even his toe nail.

Folks - that's just silly. To me it makes the whole thing impossible to take seriously.

I believe Jesus did walk the earth, but only as another paint-by-numbers prophet. He was likely one of dozens in Judea at the time. His message is clear and attractive, even if many of his followers are not.

Ditto Mohammed - though with a far more complex and abstract philosophy. I am sure he did exist, but I don't find his example one I'd choose to follow.

I'm not following your thinking. You found the religious beliefs of certain Buddhists silly, but how does that figure into the question of whether or not Siddhartha ever lived? If he did not, would that make those shrines disappear? Would it change the belief of those people?

For that matter, does the fact you find those beliefs silly change any of those beliefs or the impact of those beliefs?

Once the founder of a religion is gone, he/she no longer matters at all. All that matters is the idea of that person and an idea is extremely flexible. That idea can be molded to suit the needs of a very diverse group of people.

 

[Lipush]

Just because you've never seen (evidence) of something, doesn't mean it's not real.

 

[Saigon]

Does it really matter?

I think it does.

I have immense respect for the Buddhist religion, but any thoughts I might have had of joining them went out the window when I visted shrines devoted to Buddha's fooprint, Buddha's hair - and even his toe nail.

Folks - that's just silly. To me it makes the whole thing impossible to take seriously.

I believe Jesus did walk the earth, but only as another paint-by-numbers prophet. He was likely one of dozens in Judea at the time. His message is clear and attractive, even if many of his followers are not.

Ditto Mohammed - though with a far more complex and abstract philosophy. I am sure he did exist, but I don't find his example one I'd choose to follow.

I'm not following your thinking. You found the religious beliefs of certain Buddhists silly, but how does that figure into the question of whether or not Siddhartha ever lived? If he did not, would that make those shrines disappear? Would it change the belief of those people?

For that matter, does the fact you find those beliefs silly change any of those beliefs or the impact of those beliefs?

Once the founder of a religion is gone, he/she no longer matters at all. All that matters is the idea of that person and an idea is extremely flexible. That idea can be molded to suit the needs of a very diverse group of people.

Sorry, I didn't make myself very clear.

The endless shrines dotted around India devoted to Buddha's toenails struck me as being contrived and unrealistic. It convinced me that probably Buddha is, perhaps like Jesus, a person who only became revered long after his death.

To me this means that probably they performed no miracles, and were not superhuman. They were just people.

I think that if Buddha had performed miracles or been revered in his own time, his burial place would have become a pilgramage site from the time he died.

 

[JoeB131]

I disagree. Ancient history is never exact. You are being too specific and referring to writings written long after the fact. There is considerable evidence for the existence of the early church, which would have been populated by contemporaries of Jesus. That church was basically a personality cult and I see no reason to think such a cult would have just sprung up in the absence of a personality.

I might well be able to demonstrate to you that it would be physically impossible for George Washington to have thrown a dollar across the Potomac. It was simply a myth which grew up around the man. I might demonstrate the story of the cherry tree was pure fabrication. However, that does not mean that George Washington never existed.

The existence of a cult is not proof of the existence of the person at the subject of the cult.

Fact is, there were a shitload of these cults that popped up in ancient times- Mithraism, Sol Invictus, etc... that we are fairly certain no real person was at the center of.

It is equally possible that Saul of Tarsus made up Jesus as a literary device in his epistles, and as the cult grew, they suddenly had to make up a backstory about him. And it probably didn't help that there were probably a dozen or so "Messiahs" and "holy men" named Yeshua (Jesus or Joshua) in that time period.

The thing about the legends around George Washington is that they sprung up after the man's life had been documented, and later writers tried to spice up the story. And they were almost immediately debunked.

In the case of Jesus, all we have are the legends. Documented fact is conspiciously absent.

 

[JoeB131]

Tacitus writes that Nero blamed "a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace." He goes on to explain that "Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty [crucifixion] during the reign of Tiberius at the hand of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome ..." ( Annals, 15:44, quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, 1998, p. 82).

Is Tacitus Reference an Interpolation?

This story, in nearly the same words, omitting the reference to Christ,
is to be found in the writings of Sulpicius Severus 360-420 CE, a Christian of the fifth century. In the meantinme, the number of the Christians being now very large, it happened that Rome was destroyed by fire, while Nero was stationed at Antium. But the opinion of all cast the odium of causing the fire upon the emperor, and he was believed in this way to have sought for the glory of building a new city. And in fact Nero could not, by any means he tried, escape from the charge that the fire had been caused by his orders. He therefore turned the accusation against the Christians, and the most cruel tortures were accordingly inflicted upon the innocent. Nay, even new kinds of death were invented, so that, being covered in the skins of wild beasts, they perished by being devored by dogs, while many were crucified or slain by fire, and not a few were set apart for this purpose, that, when the day came to a close, they should be consumed to serve for light during the night. In this way, cruelty first began to be manifested against the Christians.
Chronicles 2.29

 

[Unkotare]

It's no surprise that someone so busy worshipping himself would find faith so hard to understand.

 

[JoeB131]

Caius Suetonius Tranquillus (ca. 69-140), overseer of Rome's libraries and court official to several emperors, writes that the emperor Claudius "banished the Jews from Rome, who were continually making disturbances, Chrestus [Christ] being their leader" ( Lives of the First Twelve Caesars: Life of Claudius, quoted by Grant Jeffrey, Jesus: The Great Debate, 1999, p. 163).

snip...

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus commonly known as Suetonius (ca. 69/75 – after 130), was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of twelve successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, entitled De Vita Caesarum. The description of his writings states:

The emperor Claudius reigned 41 to 54 AD. Suetonius reports his dealings with the eastern Roman Empire, that is, with Greece and Macedonia, and with the Lycians, Rhodians, and Trojans. He then reports that the emperor expelled the Jews from Rome, since they “constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Christ” (Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit). The name appears in manuscripts of Suetonius as Chrestus, a form also used by the Roman historian Tacitus to refer to Chrestiani

.

Is Suetonius's Chrestus a Reference to Jesus? | Chresto | Chrestos | Christus

The Christian-preferred Latin of this sentence is as follows:

Iudaeos impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit
However, it is now the scholarly consensus that the original Latin of this passage must have been the following:

Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit

This latter version with the word Chrēsto, not Christo, is what our earliest extant manuscripts relate. Contrary to what Christian apologist Josh McDowell and other fundamentalists assert, and despite the fact that the two words are evidently related through the roots χρίω and χράω, "Chrēsto," the ablative of Chrestus, is not an "another spelling of Christ." These terms represent Latinizations of two different Greek words that sound quite similar: Chrēstos, sometimes a proper name, means "good," "righteous" or "useful"; while Christos denotes "anointed" or "messiah." Hence, although an earlier generation of scholars believed that this Suetonian passage reflected the uprisings of Jews against Christians in Rome, we are not certain at all that this purported "reference" in Suetonius has anything to do with Christ and Christians.

In addition, the event in which Claudius expelled Jews from Rome is recorded elsewhere in other histories - without the "impulsore Chresto" claim - and seems to date to around 49, 52 or 53 AD/CE, an incident that apparently was unrelated to a historical Jesus of Nazareth and cannot serve as evidence for his historicity.

"Seriously, dude, what are you trying to pull here?"

 

[JoeB131]

It's no surprise that someone so busy worshipping himself would find faith so hard to understand.

I understand faith perfectly

You are afraid to die.

So you want to believe that there's a magic land that when you die, you'll be reunited with all your childhood dogs or whatever.

And all the people you don't like are going to a place where they will burn forever and ever because they deserve it.

Frankly, that sounds more narcissistic to me than just an acceptance that there are no sky pixies.

 

[JoeB131]

Flavius Josephus;
"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works,—a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; ( Antiquities, Book 18, chapter 3, section 3).

"Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of the judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others [or some of his companions;] and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, He delivered them to be stoned,

An eclipse of the sun’unreasonably, as it seems to me (unreasonably of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon, and it was at the season of the Paschal full moon that Christ died.” Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18.

.

Josephus on Jesus | Forgery and Fraud? | Flavius Testimonium

Despite the best wishes of sincere believers and the erroneous claims of truculent apologists, the Testimonium Flavianum has been demonstrated continually over the centuries to be a forgery, likely interpolated by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century. So thorough and universal has been this debunking that very few scholars of repute continued to cite the passage after the turn of the 19th century. Indeed, the TF was rarely mentioned, except to note that it was a forgery, and numerous books by a variety of authorities over a period of 200 or so years basically took it for granted that the Testimonium Flavianum in its entirety was spurious, an interpolation and a forgery. As Dr. Gordon Stein relates:

"...the vast majority of scholars since the early 1800s have said that this quotation is not by Josephus, but rather is a later Christian insertion in his works. In other words, it is a forgery, rejected by scholars."

In any event, as G.A. Wells points out in The Jesus Myth, not only do several Church fathers from the second, third and early fourth centuries have no apparent knowledge of the TF, but even after Eusebius suddenly "found" it in the first half of the fourth century, several other fathers into the fifth "often cite Josephus, but not this passage." (Wells, JM, 202) In the 5th century, Church father Jerome (c. 347-c.419) cited the TF once, with obvious disinterest, as if he knew it was fraudulent. In addition to his reference to the TF, in his Letter XXII. to Eustochium, Jerome made the following audacious claim:

 

[PratchettFan]

I disagree. Ancient history is never exact. You are being too specific and referring to writings written long after the fact. There is considerable evidence for the existence of the early church, which would have been populated by contemporaries of Jesus. That church was basically a personality cult and I see no reason to think such a cult would have just sprung up in the absence of a personality.

I might well be able to demonstrate to you that it would be physically impossible for George Washington to have thrown a dollar across the Potomac. It was simply a myth which grew up around the man. I might demonstrate the story of the cherry tree was pure fabrication. However, that does not mean that George Washington never existed.

The existence of a cult is not proof of the existence of the person at the subject of the cult.

Fact is, there were a shitload of these cults that popped up in ancient times- Mithraism, Sol Invictus, etc... that we are fairly certain no real person was at the center of.

It is equally possible that Saul of Tarsus made up Jesus as a literary device in his epistles, and as the cult grew, they suddenly had to make up a backstory about him. And it probably didn't help that there were probably a dozen or so "Messiahs" and "holy men" named Yeshua (Jesus or Joshua) in that time period.

The thing about the legends around George Washington is that they sprung up after the man's life had been documented, and later writers tried to spice up the story. And they were almost immediately debunked.

In the case of Jesus, all we have are the legends. Documented fact is conspiciously absent.

The existence of a cult populated by people who would have been aware of whether or not the personality upon which that cult was based ever actually existed is fairly strong evidence. This was not a cult which sprung up far from where the man lived. It was exactly where he lived and the members of the cult were his contemporaries. I simply do not buy the argument that they were somehow confused about his existence. They would have been eye witnesses and they were convinced.

You are free to believe otherwise. However, I see the denial of the existence of the man as pointless.

 

[JoeB131]

The existence of a cult populated by people who would have been aware of whether or not the personality upon which that cult was based ever actually existed is fairly strong evidence. This was not a cult which sprung up far from where the man lived. It was exactly where he lived and the members of the cult were his contemporaries. I simply do not buy the argument that they were somehow confused about his existence. They would have been eye witnesses and they were convinced.

You are free to believe otherwise. However, I see the denial of the existence of the man as pointless.

The problem here is that you have a different definition of "Evidence" than I do.

You have Mark, who wrote in the 2nd century, and got a lot of stuff wrong. He was definitely not a Jew, given his ignorance of Judean Law and Geography.

You have Luke and Matthew, who plagarized Mark (90% of Mark appears in either Luke or Matthew).

You have John Drinking the Bong Water. But as weird as John's Gospel is, most of what we call modern Christianity comes from John.

Now, keep in mind, a visit to a sight like SNOPES.com will show you just how fast bullshit legends can evolve and be believed by millions of people with no evidence. For instance, everyone and his brother will tell you Richard Gere had a gerbil extracted from his rectum, but that simply didn't happen.

 

[Saigon]

There would have been witnesses, definitely, but whether they actually saw miracles seems unlikely. Most likely the gopels are allergories, or oral history and stories - they may have had little basis in reality.

Did Jesus really turn water into wine?

I suspect not.

 

[there4eyeM]

"Did Jesus, Buddha & Mohammed really exist?"

Yes, and do exist in people's lives. That their presence and teachings are far removed from what 'followers' do today is altogether something else.

In any case, whatever comes to us from books, stories, teachings or other is the same sort of information. One chooses, even if unconsciously, what one believes. To choose to believe in, say, Mohammed is like any other choice.