cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/49389144
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Sorry - you're wrong in this.
There are non-Biblical contemporary accounts of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, the travelling preacher who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It's generally accepted that he was a real person.
As for the magical side things attributed to him - the immaculate conception, the miracles etc - well, that is a matter of faith.
To use another historical figure, look at William Wallace. There is contemporary evidence that he was a real person, but we don't have much at all. Most of what we have is works created long after he died - legends and stories that have fashioned him into the person we think of. He was a real person, but Braveheart isn't a true story.
If you want another example of how distorted things can get over time - just look at the current "American" version of Jesus.
The Biblical Jesus was a Jew who said people should look after the poor, love our neighbours, respect cultural differences, and that nothing God has made is unclean. He said pursuit of money is the root of all evil and, angered by the commercialisation of the temple, flipped over the tables of the money-changers.
The American Jesus is a white Christian who hates foreigners and their ways, hates gay people and hates atheists. Conversely, he loves billionaires, mega-churches and capitalism.
Historical Jesus is probably real, but that doesn't mean the Bible is an accurate account.
Tacitus and Josephus aren’t particularly reliable in the question of Jesus’s historicity.
Their only sources seem to be Christians, or recorded testimony of Christian’s. Tacitus in particular was writing decades after the cruxifoction supposedly happened.
Josephus has similar problems, but also, his works may have been altered to include descriptions of Jesus as “a good man who did great works leading to his execution.”
We don’t actually have any surviving first hand accounts- not even the gospels were first had.
Edit to clarify: we wouldn’t really expect there to be any evidence; so the lack of it is quite unsurprising. The only right answer here, as far as I’m concerned is “we don’t know.” But that’s less fun. In any case, even if Jesus were historical; he’d likely be quite surprised by the things he supposedly said and did.
LOL good point. 👍
Whether the Testimonium Flavianumin (Josephus' description of Jesus in Antiquities) was entirely a Christian insert or the section was just edited by Christians is debated, however there's consensus that Josephus' reference to "he brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" in Antiquities is authentic.
And you think that a guy basing his stories on third or fourth hand accounts of believers decades after the fact is… credible evidence a guy existed?
Particularly given that his source was probably the gospels of mark and Mathew, and maybe Luke- and none of those are particularly credible- for one thing they’re not eyewitness accounts, and for another, anonymous.
Mary was the immaculate conception (born without sin), Jesus was the virgin birth. Joseph was just some smuck, I guess. I can also list the original origin story for dozens of super heros.
Ah! But Joseph was an heir to David! He wasn’t just some schmuck! He had an incredibly necessary role of explaining how Jesus could be David’s heir.
Too bad he wasn’t Jesus’s daddy.
I can see the family resemblance with David, another historical figure with limited archeological evidence for their existence. Doesn't mean they didn't exist, just that the past is poorly preserved.
The last being poorly preserved doesn’t mean they existed. It means we don’t know.
I put it in the same category as Arthur or Achilles- there may have been a guy named that, but the stories told are so out of sync with what really happened that it doesn’t matter; the real David, Arthur or Achilles, and indeed Jesus may as well be different people.
No there isn't. Simply not true, you've been led to believe the bible is reliable, but even the bible description of Jesus is written a lifetime after the fact by third parties, based on hear say (or fantasy).
There is not a single verifiable or first hand historic evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, continuing to claim that doesn't make it so.
Well, I'm certainly glad that I wrote out all that, for you just to reply to the first paragraph!
Anyway, you're wrong. Literally minimum effort required to dig these out, but I'll do it for you anyway.
Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus
Annals by Tacitus
Antiquities has two mentions, along with a rather grim description of what Nero was doing to Christians. Annals has one mention.
And I think you're fundamentaly mistaken about what the Bible is. It's just a collection of works. The Old Testament is pretty much the same stuff as the Jewish Tanakh, and predates Jesus fairly significantly. The New Testament is composed of works created after Jesus's death. This includes several letters by a guy named Paul.
"OK, and...", I hear you say.
He was absolutely a contemporary of the historical Jesus, carried out missionary work after his conversion.
I'll grant that there are no first-hand accounts - even Paul's accounts were second-hand from people who actually knew Jesus. But it doesn't mean anything - there are few first-hand accounts of anybody from before the early middle ages, let alone a commoner born 2000 years ago.
???
Either way, I appreciate you providing those, it's a fascinating topic. Frankly even if Jesus was just some guy running around deceiving people into thinking he was the Messiah, he had some good lessons and based views and that's gotta count for something.
People have always known how to behave kindly.
His moral teachings were pretty bland, even relative to his era. (Which, for example, is why he never criticized slavery, despite it being something he’d encountered daily.)
Josephus:
I don't really have to look up those, I'm very well aware of them, because as I wrote, there are excruciatingly little, even when counting things that aren't really evidence.
First Josephus wrote that way after the fact, and they are NOT first person experiences (as you admitted), so even if truly written by him, it does not constitute reliable historic evidence.
In fact the entry was allegedly written a decade AFTER the oldest book in the Bible describing the life of Jesus. So clearly more likely faked by himself to seem more complete, or by a fraudster to create evidence, maybe to increase the value, or to please his church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_of_the_Jews
Actual meaning they don̈́t agree.
How is it both authentic and subjected to Christian interpolation.
Annals by Tacitus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus)
Notice not a single mention of Jesus until near the end with this comment:
It must be embarrassing to have to quote those as "evidence", for what billions consider the most significant event in the history of mankind, when both reek of having been manipulated.
The fact that you really believe I was unaware of these, just show your own ignorance. Because these are parroted over and over again by Christians, exactly because they don't have any historically reliable evidence.
This despite huge efforts to find this evidence, financed by Churches through 2000 years, combined using by far more resources than any other investigation into the history of anything.
Investigating the pyramids have been peanuts by comparison, yet we know several Pharaoh that are thousands of years before the story of Jesus Christ. Just Cleopatra which were slightly earlier than the fantasy figure Jesus Christ, But Cleopatra is an indisputable historic character, despite the Roman empire was way more notorious in cataloging everything.
But that's because Cleopatra and Pharaohs actually existed, and despite being way less significant, than if Jesus Christ had actually founded Christianity. Even without the miracles of the Bible being true!!!
If you think about it critically and regard the context and compare to the evidence of other historical events, it becomes pretty clear that Jesus Christ never existed as an actual person.
The claim about Tacitus not writing on Jesus comes from one "source" in the pop culture section. That source is a fictional character in a novel (one who's obviously portrayed as highly biased on this issue, ironically...) it gets even more embarassing when you look up what that novel is about...
There's also this which mentions that his writings on Jesus are pretty much agreed to be authentic. The Roman empire was indeed very good at keeping records, that's why Tacitus is considered such a reliable source...
You're making a lot of claims about the motivations of people, with no actual evidence to show for it, and using that to dismiss them as sources. This is painfully ironic. Not everything is a Catholic conspiracy, it's okay for the world to be nuanced.
Thanks for replying to this. This is everything I would have said, except in a far less exasperated way than I would have said it!
I'm going to draw a line under it now though. I honestly don't have energy to explain why a street-preacher who was active for a only a few years does not have the same quality of historical evidence as Cleopatra.
They're either stupid or a troll. A quick look through their profile shows a lot of posts in Danish, so I don't think they're stupid. Scandinavia, however, is famously home to trolls of all shapes and sizes.
Ahaha, that's very true Scandinavia is a mysterious place.
Yeah the comment on Cleopatra is just laughable on the face of it haha, I didn't even think it was worth addressing.
Glad you're stepping away there's no point getting worked up on this. I normally wouldn't have engaged to this degree myself, but I found that particular rebuttal to Tacitus to be so damn funny that I couldn't not.
I suspect they're genuine, I feel I've been this person in the past. Sometimes it's hard to learn to reevaluate and be wrong about things, and religion is a pretty stigmatising issue that can leave you with a lot of unresolved and misguided anger. It's unfortunate, but human.
The only verifiable fact is that the Romans were into crucifying people AND there were rebel sects in Judea.
The rest is just really good story telling
That's like saying that trains stations are a verifiable fact of Harry Potter.
Actually they made movies and we have the original text of Harry Potter so … it’s a less credulous statement than that.
Lots of folks getting their panties in a bunch about something they don’t understand, it’s not OUR fault no contemporary peers wrote of this “Jesus” fellow but instead we got tales of a rebel leader inflated over the years.
He’s just John Henry with a couple thousand years to simmer.
Yes by comparison the evidence for Harry Potter is overwhelming.