- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- exchristian@lemmy.one
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- exchristian@lemmy.one
I describe it like this… the earliest presumed mention of Jesus is in the work of Josephus around 93 AD.
Now, there is evidence that this mention is, itself, a 3rd century “insertion” by the Christian transcriber Eusebius, but aside from that, let’s take 93 AD as “gospel” ;)
So from the time of Jesus, to 93 AD, there is not one, single, contemporary reference. If you take the dating of his death sometime around 33 AD as accurate, that means, even following his death, nobody mentioned him for SIXTY YEARS.
If you are to believe that story, you have to believe nobody was talking about a guy who did miracles. Or leave that aside as a later invention, nobody was talking about The Sermon on the Mount, which was likely his biggest claim to fame in his lifetime.
The comparison I like to use is Elvis. We know Elvis existed because we have the photographs, recordings, contemporary evidence, and so on.
Now, imagine NONE of that exists. Not only that, Elvis died in 1977. We would be, right now, 13 years away from the first written record of Elvis. (1977 + 60 = 2037).
Unlikely doesn’t BEGIN to cover it.
More on how Josephus may have been “modified” around the 3rd century to meet Christian ideas:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7437
https://vridar.org/2015/01/16/fresh-evidence-the-jesus-passage-in-josephus-a-forgery/
This is an obvious example of the presentism fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(historical_analysis)
Photographs and recordings did not exist in the 1st century. Not even the printing press. And most people were illiterate at the time. So it is far more likely that nothing would be written versus anything being written during that timeframe.
We have loads of written records of far less impressive things from the period, this argument holds no water.
We do not. Almost no written records from that time period has survived. Everything that we “know” comes from a copy of a copy, often made many centuries after the event.
There are also countless surviving frescoes, statues, carvings and monuments from the period that had every chance to record, you know, miracles.
Those are a handful of fragmentary texts. That actual proves my point.
You are conflating the biblical version of Jesus and the historical version of him. The mythicist position has always been that neither existed, but the historical view has always been that the latter (and only the latter) existed.
Just like how historical spider-man existed, but the comic version didn’t, right?
Don’t do religion, kids.
You’re just another brain dead mythicist. Might as well claim all historical figures are comic book characters.