There is actually evidence that Jesus existed in Paul’s Letters 50-60 AD although he did not have direct contact with him but he met his followers and wrote about him.
Evidence for him being God is completely different question and can probably neither be proven or disproven.
“Paul” is an anonymous author, and therefore has no credentials.
By your own account it was written decades after the fact, and based only on 3rd party account, which in itself is similar to hearsay in a court, which for good reason is inadmissible as evidence.
That does not count as reliable historical evidence. It’s actually 3 steps removed from it, as there are 3 obvious sources of error.
I think more likely “Paul” or whatever his actual name was, was one of the original authors of the story of Jesus Christ, similar to being the author of Harry Potter.
As in the whole thing was completely and totally made up, and there is no rational reason to believe otherwise.
You can then pretty much say that most classical history is made up since it’s just some accounts of people often written post-mortem.
Often in history from the time of the Roman Empire the sources are few and far between since it’d have to survive 2000 years to get to the present.
All we know is that suddenly a bunch of people starting talking about a rando in the desert called Jesus. Even though we don’t have an eye witness writing we have a person that spoke with the eye witnesses.
Then also, it’s just some letters he’s sending to a Christian community in modern day Turkey that happened to survive.
I’m an atheist but I feel the evidence is pretty solid for Jesus existing. Rest of it is exaggeration I think.
There is lots of physical archaeological evidence of her existence in the form of numerous contemporary relics, and there are numerous famous contemporary literary sources, and actual first hand accounts, where she is called a seductress.
Regarding Cleopatra we even have a decent idea how she looked. We know when she was born and when she died with good accuracy, we know she had an affair with Caesar. And we know who here parents and grandparents were.
If Jesus had just 1% the evidence of Cleopatra, there would be no doubt about his existence. And Jesus allegedly founded the biggest religion on earth, was the son of God, and performed numerous miracles. Yet crickets from everybody living in the area at the time, and stories first came out far removed in both time and distance from where they occurred.
You know almost or is it exactly like in a fairy-tale “In a country far far away long long ago…”.
I’m an atheist but I feel the evidence is pretty solid for Jesus existing.
Then show a single piece of solid evidence!! As it is, you are just parroting fundamental Christian rhetoric.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Cleopatra, she was married to the Consul of the Roman Empire and was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. Of course documents on Jesus are going to be a lot more scarce.
Jesus was not a big name during his lifetime, he was literally just a random guy in the desert that led a cult. It’s hard enough to find data on literal Roman emperors during the crisis of the third century.
To get some data on Jesus you first need a guy that can write (rare), writing stuff on a person of little renown (very rare), that is predominantly followed by poor people (also rare), and for it survive 2000 years. I’m frankly surprised there is any data at all on him that’s this close to him being alive instead of people just writing down oral history like they did for rise of Muhammad.
I’m not saying that there is a lot of data but that there is some. I personally think it’s very plausible that there was a cult leader that essentially started Christianity. Oral history points to Jesus as well as second hand witnesses.
Other writings include Tacitus (known for being unbiased on his writing about roman emperors) writing on how he was crucified during Tiberius’ reign. Tacitus had access to a lot more data than we have and was a very competent historian.
I don’t believe he had any powers or was in any way magical godly or anything but Christian writings refer to him as well as Romans in a situation where it’s very plausible that a religion is started by a leader of some sort. I find it very likely that he existed.
There’s no smoking gun but all the guns are pointing in the same direction.
Your claim was that most of classical history has a similar lack of evidence to the lack of evidence for Jesus. Which I showed by example is decidedly false, and now you agree that Cleopatra from before Jesus in about the same area, has lots of evidence because she was significant! So we can probably agree that significant events of the time actually generally have reliable historical evidence. So basically your claim now is that Jesus wasn’t really significant!!
Jesus was not a big name during his lifetime,
So at what point was it decided he performed miracles and was the son of god?
Or was that not enough to be a big name? But none the less, he was the founder of the biggest religion of all time!
The more logical reason he wasn’t a big name at the time and place of the stories about him, is that he actually never existed.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Cleopatra, she was married to the Consul of the Roman Empire and was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Jesus Christ, he performed miracles and was the son of god.
What I was saying was that if Jesus Christ had just 1% of the evidence Cleopatra has, there would be no doubt.
The constant special pleading about Christianity is mind boggling, always with the double standards!!
I’m not saying that there is a lot of data but that there is some.
Oh for Christ sake no there isn’t, rumors and hear say is not data, that’s little more than noise. The whole point I made is the lack of reliable data, of which there is none.
People keep claiming here that there is, but nobody can show anything, because there isn’t.
I don’t believe he had any powers or was in any way magical godly
Then it isn’t really Jesus Christ is it? Yes there were probably a few hundred people in the area named Jesus, but NONE of them were Jesus Christ. I also know a taxi driver called Jesus, that friggin not evidence of a Jesus Christ. That you don’t believe he had magic abilities, only proves you are not entirely delusional, but you still believe without evidence what’s akin to Harry Potter once walked the train stations of England, based on a bunch of children coming straight from a Harry Potter movie saying so.
There is actually evidence that Jesus existed in Paul’s Letters 50-60 AD although he did not have direct contact with him but he met his followers and wrote about him.
Evidence for him being God is completely different question and can probably neither be proven or disproven.
“Paul” is an anonymous author, and therefore has no credentials.
By your own account it was written decades after the fact, and based only on 3rd party account, which in itself is similar to hearsay in a court, which for good reason is inadmissible as evidence.
That does not count as reliable historical evidence. It’s actually 3 steps removed from it, as there are 3 obvious sources of error.
I think more likely “Paul” or whatever his actual name was, was one of the original authors of the story of Jesus Christ, similar to being the author of Harry Potter.
As in the whole thing was completely and totally made up, and there is no rational reason to believe otherwise.
You can then pretty much say that most classical history is made up since it’s just some accounts of people often written post-mortem.
Often in history from the time of the Roman Empire the sources are few and far between since it’d have to survive 2000 years to get to the present.
All we know is that suddenly a bunch of people starting talking about a rando in the desert called Jesus. Even though we don’t have an eye witness writing we have a person that spoke with the eye witnesses.
Then also, it’s just some letters he’s sending to a Christian community in modern day Turkey that happened to survive.
I’m an atheist but I feel the evidence is pretty solid for Jesus existing. Rest of it is exaggeration I think.
That’s a whopping false equivalence, and actually must be regarded as an outright lie.
For instance Cleopatra lived before the time of the stories about Jesus:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/cleopatra-egypt-pharaoh-life-history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra
There is lots of physical archaeological evidence of her existence in the form of numerous contemporary relics, and there are numerous famous contemporary literary sources, and actual first hand accounts, where she is called a seductress.
Regarding Cleopatra we even have a decent idea how she looked. We know when she was born and when she died with good accuracy, we know she had an affair with Caesar. And we know who here parents and grandparents were.
If Jesus had just 1% the evidence of Cleopatra, there would be no doubt about his existence. And Jesus allegedly founded the biggest religion on earth, was the son of God, and performed numerous miracles. Yet crickets from everybody living in the area at the time, and stories first came out far removed in both time and distance from where they occurred.
You know almost or is it exactly like in a fairy-tale “In a country far far away long long ago…”.
Then show a single piece of solid evidence!! As it is, you are just parroting fundamental Christian rhetoric.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Cleopatra, she was married to the Consul of the Roman Empire and was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. Of course documents on Jesus are going to be a lot more scarce.
Jesus was not a big name during his lifetime, he was literally just a random guy in the desert that led a cult. It’s hard enough to find data on literal Roman emperors during the crisis of the third century.
To get some data on Jesus you first need a guy that can write (rare), writing stuff on a person of little renown (very rare), that is predominantly followed by poor people (also rare), and for it survive 2000 years. I’m frankly surprised there is any data at all on him that’s this close to him being alive instead of people just writing down oral history like they did for rise of Muhammad.
I’m not saying that there is a lot of data but that there is some. I personally think it’s very plausible that there was a cult leader that essentially started Christianity. Oral history points to Jesus as well as second hand witnesses.
Other writings include Tacitus (known for being unbiased on his writing about roman emperors) writing on how he was crucified during Tiberius’ reign. Tacitus had access to a lot more data than we have and was a very competent historian.
I don’t believe he had any powers or was in any way magical godly or anything but Christian writings refer to him as well as Romans in a situation where it’s very plausible that a religion is started by a leader of some sort. I find it very likely that he existed.
There’s no smoking gun but all the guns are pointing in the same direction.
Your claim was that most of classical history has a similar lack of evidence to the lack of evidence for Jesus. Which I showed by example is decidedly false, and now you agree that Cleopatra from before Jesus in about the same area, has lots of evidence because she was significant! So we can probably agree that significant events of the time actually generally have reliable historical evidence. So basically your claim now is that Jesus wasn’t really significant!!
So at what point was it decided he performed miracles and was the son of god?
Or was that not enough to be a big name? But none the less, he was the founder of the biggest religion of all time!
The more logical reason he wasn’t a big name at the time and place of the stories about him, is that he actually never existed.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Jesus Christ, he performed miracles and was the son of god.
What I was saying was that if Jesus Christ had just 1% of the evidence Cleopatra has, there would be no doubt.
The constant special pleading about Christianity is mind boggling, always with the double standards!!
Oh for Christ sake no there isn’t, rumors and hear say is not data, that’s little more than noise. The whole point I made is the lack of reliable data, of which there is none.
People keep claiming here that there is, but nobody can show anything, because there isn’t.
Then it isn’t really Jesus Christ is it? Yes there were probably a few hundred people in the area named Jesus, but NONE of them were Jesus Christ. I also know a taxi driver called Jesus, that friggin not evidence of a Jesus Christ. That you don’t believe he had magic abilities, only proves you are not entirely delusional, but you still believe without evidence what’s akin to Harry Potter once walked the train stations of England, based on a bunch of children coming straight from a Harry Potter movie saying so.