Don’t forget about the Star of Bethlehem - if you date the birth by it - you will get other numbers in the mix.
Wouldn’t it be funny if somebody went backin time and found our that he was just some toothless guy Northern India.
How would a white guy have ended up in Northern India at the time?
A white guy?
By technical definition. You can look into why Arabs are considered white by US definitions.
You want me to google “are Arabs considered white in the US in 2026?”?
As far as the census department is concerned, yes they still are. There is a reason the select race option says white/caucasion instead of separating them. That reason is Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States
I mean just look at his image:
A cult leader that supposedly started off as a carpenter, that was born from a virgin birth and “performed miracles.” You know what the real thing is, it’s the, “Well what if he is?,” feeling. I’m guessing that’s what scared the shit out of everyone back then too and throughout Christianity’s existence. That one fuckin’ feeling.
'Cause being scared, hopeless, in shambles or something of the sort is when people turn to religion or drugs… Or both…
It’s just comfort shit though and I don’t hate on it, it’s just something that I have no ability to truly put belief into.
Who asked?
No one in antiquity would have thought he was born of a virgin, the word used in the original greek is parthenos, which also just means young woman. The virgin reading is just a translation error afaik.
Hence the creation of the term Before Common Era, or BCE
I do miss the way both terms hugged each other, though.
AD is both big spoons and BC is both little spoons. ABCD
ABCDE
Big spoon little spoon and the cat
After Dinner and Before Cake
7-4 BC? So 3 BC?
I’m not a historian but the math checks out
Wouldn’t it be 10BC? I think it goes backward when you’re in negative numbers…
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Apparently we all suck at math :)
The maths work in mysterious ways
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AfaIk, it’s undisputed that he was a real person.
It is not undisputed. We have no contemporary evidence of his existence, but scholars agree on a consensus that he most likely existed, based on a range of secondary conjectural evidence.
It cannot be undisputed though, since we have no certainty, and the scholars involved in the consensus are freely admitting to that.
It is extremely disputed that he was a real person.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.[7][8][9][10][11] Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: his baptism and his crucifixion.[12][13][14][15]
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Look at the sources, they have dissent amongst themselves…
“Robert M. Price, an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.”
A fun excerpt…
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists, from the late 19th century (Oskar Panizza[279][280][281]), through the 20th century (including Emil Rasmussen, George de Loosten, Charles Binet-Sanglé, William Hirsch,[282][283] Władysław Witwicki[284]) to the early 21st century (Evan D. Murray, Miles G. Cunningham, Bruce H. Price[285][286][287]), have suggested that Jesus had a mental disorder or psychiatric condition.[288]
Christians are the majority religion, so I would say “of course the majority agree”. It’s the very easiest position to take in the Bible scholar field, regardless of their personal beliefs.
your exceptional claim lacks exceptional evidence to support it.
think about all the records in the region, and wonder: if someone was miracling around, wouldn’t the romans have noted it?
if someone was miracling around
I don’t remember having said anything about “miracles” or sky-daddy stuff.
it’s kinda central to the whole jesus thing.
No, that’s religion, but not history.
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Sure, there were lots of guys named Jesus. It was a very common name at the time.
Like trying to prove that all of the “Mike” stories in the 80s refer to the one true Michael (Mike Tyson, of course).
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How many? I don’t know, ask the historians who say it was a common name at the time, with dozens of graves of dead guys named Jesus at the time of Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
The Hebrew/Aramaic name was common among Judean Jews at the time of Jesus’s birth,[32]
He is one of the best documented historical figures ever
If that were true then this thread would be full of people providing citations to that excellent documentation, but you will notice a complete absence of that here.
The closest we’ve come in this thread is the Wikipedia page with citations to several historians saying “yeah we mostly think he was probably real based on it would be weird if he wasn’t”
That is a waaaay lower level of certainty than you’re presenting here.
The consensus is that he probably existed, but he’s far from one of “the best documented historical figures ever”, there’s like 2 or 3 mentions of him in sources outside of the early proto-Christian movement from the first century CE. That’s better documented than most, which is why he probably was a real guy, but we can’t really say more than that with any level of confidence. Calling him one of the best documented historical figures ever is genuinely unhinged imo.
Not a huge margin of error given how long after the events the Bible was written.
It’s one of the black-and-white irreconcilable contradictions in the Bible. The gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew puts Jesus birth during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. The gospel traditionally attributed to Luke puts Jesus birth during the census of Quirinius. Quirinius wasn’t Herod’s successor, he was Herod’s successor’s successor, and his reign didn’t begin until around 6 CE. The other canonical gospels don’t have nativity accounts.
My understanding is that any sort of a census of the sort described in Luke (requiring males to return to the towns of their birth for registration) probably did not actually occur, as it would have created impractical logistical issues.
searches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_of_Quirinius
Most critical biblical scholars agree that the Gospel of Luke is erroneous.[10] Its author seems to have invoked the census as Joseph and Mary’s motivation for departing “their own city”[11] of Nazareth, Galilee, for Bethlehem.[12][13][14] Additionally, the author may have wished to contrast Joseph and Mary’s obedience to the Roman edict with the rebelliousness of the Zealots, and also to find a prophetic fulfilment of Psalm 87:6: “In the census of the peoples, [princes] will be born there.”[12][b][c] (Luke and Matthew also give different accounts of the family’s departure from Bethlehem.)[17][d] Catholic priest and biblical scholar Joseph Fitzmyer states:[20]
It is clear that the census is a purely literary device used by him to associate Mary and Joseph, residents of Nazareth, with Bethlehem, the town of David, because he knows of a tradition, also attested in Matthew 2, that Jesus was also born in Bethlehem. He is also aware of a tradition about the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod, as is Matthew; Luke’s form of the tradition, unlike Matthew’s, tied the birth in a vague way to a time of political disturbance associated with a census.
Scholars point out that there was no single census of the entire Roman Empire under Augustus and the Romans did not directly tax client kingdoms; further, no Roman census required that people travel from their own homes to those of their ancestors. A census of Judaea would not have affected Joseph and his family, who lived in Galilee under a different ruler; the revolt of Judas of Galilee suggests that Rome’s direct taxation of Judaea was new at the time.[21] Catholic priest and biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown postulates that Judas’s place of origin may have led the author of Luke to think that Galilee was subject to the census.[22][e] Brown also points out that in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke the Evangelist (the traditional author of both books) dates Judas’s census-incited revolt as following the rebellion of Theudas, which took place four decades later.[22][f][g] Protestant theologian and biblical scholar E. P. Sanders concedes that, because revolts followed both Herod’s death and the census, Luke’s author may have “decided to elaborate the event [as] a reason for Joseph to travel … to Bethlehem”, calling this “a relatively slight historical error for an ancient author”.[8]
Also Luke was written ~20 years after Matthew. The oldest copy of Matthew 1-16 predates our oldest copies of the other gospels by a long time IIRC. Kind of circumstantial but it is indirect evidence that the Matthew account might be older and less embellished.
Just picking a small nit: Matthew is not considered the oldest gospel, Mark is. There may be fragments of Matthew that are the oldest, but it is generally agreed that the writer of Matthew was influenced by the already-written gospel of Mark. Luke was written around the same time as Matthew, or a few (5-10) years later.
It’s an early form of a 419 scammer’s typo-riddled email or letter. Filter out anyone who pays attention to inconsistencies and you can squeeze some easy money from the gullible leftovers.
There’s also a lot of stuff that’s not meant to be taken literally. The text is full of similes and metaphors that are a lot less clear today than they were at time of writing. For example, many numbers in there are just used to convey a vague serve of size. Sometimes concrete numbers just mean “many”, which was well-understood back then.
On top of that we have later edits for various reasons and assorted other sources of imprecision. The Bible makes a lot more sense as a book that’s not meant to be taken literally in it’s entirety. Of course figuring out what’s really meant isn’t very easy all this time later.
Plus what you pointed out. That’s also in there, probably especially by means of edits.
Numbers were often imbued with a mystical significance. For example, 40 with spans of time indicated that the time was chosen by God. 40 days and nights of the flood, the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years, Jesus going into the desert for 40 days.
People in groups of 12 were chosen by God. 12 tribes of Israel, 144,000 (12x12x1000) saved in the Rapture, 12 apostles, etc.
3 and 7 were similarly associated with God. Tions of examples.
I also like how Jesus has two different lineages depending on which gospel you read. Apologists try to say one of them is about Mary’s parents and not Joseph’s, but the text is explicit.
Matthew 1: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus…”
Luke 3: “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli.”
So was Joseph’s father Jacob, or Heli?
There are many more. The bible is literally unbelievable. Chapter 2 lists a different creation order from chapter 1. Anyone claiming it contains no contradictions is drinking the kool-aid. It would be funny if people weren’t dying for it.
This feels like one of those riddles where the answer is that the doctor is a woman. Today, Heli is considered a feminine name.
However, the biblical figure was male.
A slightly longer quote from the verse makes that clearer
Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi […]
Luke I’m Your Fatha… sorry wrong fake story.
So on average our calendar is mostly close enough
Well, not so much. Because the bible doesn’t mention the dates of life and rule of the two figures, so you have to go outside the bible to find the problem - so it’s not a contradiction in the bible but a contradiction between the bible and other sources.
(And for biblical literalists, there is no contest of course!)
It’s not really about “what should be year 0,” it’s that the gospels can’t both be right. The date ranges they give do not even come close to overlapping. Either one of them is wrong, or both of them are.
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Okay, but prove he existed
The scholarly consensus is that a real Jesus existed, and it’s actually a really fascinating topic to read about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus?wprov=sfla1
Yea, but are the majority of scholars really free from bias with 3 major religions notorious for killing people over disagreements (and funding those that agree with them) all having a vested interest in perpetuation of the myth?
Every wikipedia source to the contrary is essentially an agrument to authority and didn’t even discuss the underlying “evidence” or points to sources long after the fact and calls on:
Multiple attestation across independent Gospel traditions (Yea, right, that can all be made up)
Criterion of embarrassment: (Once again, not evidence. Religions are not aways rational, or correct)
Tacitus (Annals 15.44, c. 116 CE): “Christus… suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.” This is the key non-Christian corroboration. (And a hundred years later, press X to doubt)
So, I’m not impressed.
To your first point, no one is free of bias, but it’s not the Middle Ages dude. People are free to not be Christian or to criticize or contradict Christianity, and they do all the time. Even non-Christian historians agree that Jesus likely existed.
Between the canonical and apocryphal gospels there are a good amount of people who wrote about Jesus for decades after his death. In my personal opinion as an armchair historian it just seems more likely that early Christian writers, intentionally or not, mythologized a real person that people already knew existed rather than invented one whole cloth.
That consensus is knowingly based on the complete lack of any contemporary sources though. So the consensus is that he most likely existed, based on a wide variety of conjectural evidence, but there is no way to confirm with any certainty that he did.
No we don’t have any historical sources or archeological evidence. But why would we expect to have them? He was just an average, albeit radical, Jewish preacher who got himself in trouble with the authorities and only much later did he become significant.
I look at it using Occam’s Razor: is it more likely that early Christian writers mythologized a real person after the fact, or that they made one up whole cloth? I go with the former.
And why not? We know for a fact that singular people have started all kinds of movements and religions throughout history. And when you strip away the fantastical elements of the story, it’s really not unbelievable. A preacher is teaching radical things, enough that he gets in trouble with Jewish and/or Roman authorities and is eventually executed for it. His followers take his message, filter it, and spread it, and it catches on.
For what it’s worth I’m an atheist as well.
Scholars aren’t called historians for a reason.
Anyone claiming Jesus existed is chilling for Christianity. They try to use it as a fine pointed needle to try and wiggle their bullshit into the real world.
Simply put, you can’t separate the myth from any kind of grain of truth at this point, so any and all points of so called proofs are invalid. Once you mention Jesus, there is so much package it’s just over.
I think you’ll find pretty much all secular historians of the time and place will agree that there was personall probably an itinerant preacher by the name of Joshua going around in the area who was baptized by John, got in trouble with the local authorities, and got himself executed, but his followers eventually regrouped and built myths around him.
The gospels themselves, including the ones that didn’t make the cut in the Council of Rome, are a form of documentation, and Jesus is independently attested a several other times withina century of his death and not always kindly. It’s pretty decent documentation for a non-elite of that era, though.
Anyone who claims much more than that likely is shilling for Christianity, but it’s wishful or even conspiratorial thinking to insist that Jesus was completely made up. Better to attack the notion of his being divine, because that actually is sky-daddy nonsense.
That’s exactly what the shillers keep saying, but the evidence just doesn’t seem to be there.
Concrete archaeological evidence is tremendously unlikely to ever surface. The afforementioned statement is a plausible conjecture based on what circumstantial evidence is apparent weighed against what we consider reasonable human behavior at the time. The purpose of the statement isn’t proof, but to be an academically sound conclusion to a mystery a lot of people take very seriously.
It would be just as foolish to declare the Jesus of the bible absolutely couldn’t exist as it would be to declare that he absolutely did.
and yet there’s concrete evidence for so many historical figures that predate this character; you can find engravings of profiles on coins, statues, the list is long for folks like pliny, archimedes, anthony and fucking cleopatra etc., but you’re asserting that there’s some guy running around performing MIRACLES - and we have to accept ‘well it would be foolish to declare this guy couldn’t exist’ without evidence.
furthermore, exceptional claims require exceptional evidence.
ooh but scholars - yeah, well, scholars were sure dinosaurs were giant lumbering lizards, and we now know there were feathers, evidence of warm blood and coordinated hunts. evidence for a literal christ is all circumstantial / apocrypha / dogma.
sorry, I don’t think skepticism is in any way foolish, in fact, I think your adherence to the 2000 year old hearsay is foolish.
Funny, I use that exact example as evidence that Dionysius Exiguus is full of shit. They didn’t know we’d have access to radio carbon dating and stylomotry.
The earliest texts were written 300-400 years after Jesus allegedly lived.
It’s far more likely someone in the 4th century wanted to start a cult and needed to come up with some lore to give them credence. Which exactly lines up with the fact that this whole Jesus dude didn’t actually fulfill any fucking prophecies, but instead the already ancient Jewish messianic texts were used as metaphors because they had to be. He didn’t exist.
Wrong. He was never born because he didn’t fucking exist.
You can be perfectly skeptical of the miraculous claims about Jesus, but he’s about as well attested in history as Alexander the Great.
It’s more or less impossible to come up with a standard of historical evidence that doesn’t allow Jesus “the guy from Nazareth who went around saying the end of the world was at hand” without throwing out… most everyone in history before maybe 200 CE?
You can be perfectly skeptical of the miraculous claims about Jesus, but he’s about as well attested in history as Alexander the Great.
This is an insane take. There’s like 2 or 3 references to him from the 1st century CE written by sources not affiliated with the early Christian/proto-Christian movement, which is enough to conclude he probably existed but not much more.
You can be perfectly skeptical of the miraculous claims about Jesus, but he’s about as well attested in history as Alexander the Great.
That is a blatant lie, and it shows great ignorance of the facts of the matter and the historical method in general since you chose as an example one of the best documented persons of the period. We have lots of contemporary direct evidence of the existence of Alexander the Great: epigraphy, coinage, archaelogy and transmitted written sources by contemporary authors.
We have no such contemporary evidence for Jesus at all. So no, your argument is nonsense and not how history works. The consensus of the existence of a Jesus is based on secondary evidence, which makes it very likely that he existed, but historians can never certify that with absolute certainty the way that they can with Alexander the Great.
I, uhhh… you got some sources for this that aren’t the bible? My spouse the religious studies major is here next to me saying that Jesus as real historical figure is extremely highly contested.
Josephus is like the only dude who maybe kind of mentioned a guy named Jesus.
Christians will literally believe anything that comports with their pre held beliefs.
Note 1 (not citation 1 because things have to be confusing) of Wikipedia’s Historicity of Jesus article lists ten different quotes of various sources (three of them are Bart Ehrman) reiterating that his existence as a normal guy is widely accepted, here’s one of them:
Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.
~ Graham Stanton (2002). The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford Bible Series) (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 145.
You are not providing a non-biblical primary source though, which is what they asked for. You are just hiding behind an appeal to authority fallacy.
There are not going to be any primary sources of Jesus or any other average person who lived thousands of years ago.
Do you think it’s more likely that early Christian writers fabricated a totally fictional person rather than mythologizing one that people already knew existed?
There are not going to be any primary sources of Jesus or any other average person who lived thousands of years ago.
Hence the continued, likely irreconcilable, dispute about whether there was a real Jesus
Historians and biblical scholars disagree with you. Perhaps your edgelord reddit Atheism isn’t doing you much good.
Why are .ml’ers regurgitating right wing talking points in every single discussion? “edgelord reddit Atheism” is a thought cancelling sentence used by right wingers when confronted with critcism that questions their very foundational beliefs.
I’m not a Christian dumbass, Jesus didn’t do all that magic shit, but historians, experts in their field, all agree that there was a Jewish guy named Jesus of Nazareth who had religious followers.
I’m not “Spouting a rightwing talking point” I’m dressing you down for denying a historical reality, as you walk around smugly thinking yourself superior to religious people for their incorrect beliefs. It’s a real ‘pot meet kettle’ kinda deal.
And while we’re at it, that “edgelord Reddit Atheism” that I’m making reference to was itself deeply reactionary and conservative.
All of New Atheism’s intellectual proponents, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, etc. Were all in on the US invasion of Iraq, because their Atheism was rooted in the idea that all religions were wrong, but that Islam was uniquely illiberal, and that we needed to civilize the Oriental savages.
So the Atheists and the Evangelicals walked hand-in-hand into one of the most significant imperial blunders of modern American history.
And then a bunch of those atheists started larping as tradcaths.
Cool country lol
this is like saying we know what year Poseidon was born.
But clearly a historical Poseidon existed or there wouldn’t have been so much literature written about him.
There are eye witness testimonies in the Illiad.
the logic is sound.
Bold of you to assume he existed at all.
Saying this as an atheist: we do know that this person existed. He’s been named Jesus Christ, do not know if that was his actual name.
In fact there hundreds of Messias in those days, some more popular then others.
We also know that not all the stories we have was linked to this one dude. Probably not. Probably multiple different messias-sayings have been attributed to him
Nothing proves the existence of a god though. Just a couple of people back then wanting people to not be dicks and don’t get rich (that’s not a good person they said)… and somehow THOSE stories have not been followed…
we do know that this person existed.
No the fuck we don’t. The only scholars who concede this are those who want to appeal to people already convinced Jesus is linked to a real person.
What you’re saying is like “Harry Potter exists because there’s plenty of British boys who wanted to be a wizard”.
When you concede this point, you give legitimacy to an otherwise illegitimate claim to Jewish roots. While also claiming Jewish people started Christianity. It just isn’t true.
It’s not perfect, but a good book on this subject is Christ Before Jesus.
Ok, yeah I see your point. Crazy how stories just stay with you. I just read up on some stuff, and yeah, complete myth!
In fact there hundreds of Messias in those days, some more popular then others.
Ah, I guess it’s time for another screening of The Life of Brian
Jesus Christ was probably born… Never. No contemporary historical records support his existence.
Jesus is a pretty well-documented historical figured
If you disagree and have evidence no other scholar is privy to, I recommend a PhD in history as a strong avenue to correct the record.
Paul Bunyan is better documented lmao
I don’t think you read your own link:
There is no scholarly consensus concerning the historicity of most elements of Jesus’s life as described in the Bible, and only two key events of the biblical story of Jesus’s life have been widely accepted as historical, based on the criterion of embarrassment, namely his baptism by John the Baptist and his crucifixion by the order of Pontius Pilate,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] though even the baptism-narrative has been questioned.[15] Furthermore, the historicity of supernatural elements like his purported miracles and resurrection are deemed to be solely a matter of ‘faith’ or of ‘theology’, or lack thereof.[note 3]
You clearly didn’t read the link either bud.
The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has had no support in critical studies for more than a century, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement.[22][2][note 4]
Not sure what your argument is here. You own quote says that:
two key events of the biblical story of Jesus’s life have been widely accepted as historical
Nobody here is arguing that everything ever written about him is historical, just that he existed.
I think the mythicists are wrong (especially Richard Carrier who is a stupid asshole), I think there was probably a guy called Jesus who had followers, but we really don’t have much, if any, real evidence to back that up.
We have the Bible and 10 non Biblical mentions of Jesus. Unfortunately, every single one of the non-biblical writings are just describing Christians. They’re like “Christians are people who believe in a guy named Jesus who was killed by Romans.” While they prove that Christians existed when they were written, none of them lend any evidence to the existence of Jesus.
One of the most widely accepted arguments for believing he was real is that the Bible makes up a ridiculous census story that forces his parents to go to Bethlehem in order to fulfill the (misinterpreted) prophesy that the messiah would be born there. The argument is that he must have been real and born elsewhere for them to make up this dumb story.
so is xenu. by your logic if there’s documentation it’s gotta be evidence right?
Plenty of scholars believe he didn’t exist. Please check out Christ Before Jesus for more information.
There isn’t a single definition here that backs your use of plenty
Also, do you have a link? I’ve searched a few databases and don’t see a single paper called Christ Before Jesus. Or are you talking about the TikTok channel?
There is a TikTok channel as well as a book.
Why didn’t just write 3BC
The theorem to do that was not yet proven.
Or better still 3BCE
