this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I like this reasoning a lot, however:

#2. In terms of there being a real-life Y'shua, AFAIK it's hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated 'King Arthur' / 'Robin Hood' type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.

AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person's existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

One Theory I like is that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of multiple Messiah figures that were walking around around that time, one of them was the basis for the religion and then other stories about those other Messiahs were folded in over the years

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Almost like every lauded, 'perfect' figure across history?

In fact, "The Messiah" is a concept that certainly goes back long before some dude allegedly named "Y'shua" was branded that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah

Now, modern humans being ~300Kyrs old, I would guess that it's not just an ancient fixation, but even endemic to our very species... our very way of hoping and wanting and longing for a return to 'the good times,' directly embodied via mythological figure.

Mais non, mon ami..?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 10 points 3 days ago (4 children)

In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[13] Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church's imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus's non-existence "a thoroughly dead thesis".[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, "there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy."[19]

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Maybe he existed... but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Oooohhhh

I mean, yes, obviously. It all of a sudden makes the other commenter's steadfast insistence against me make sense, if they thought that I meant this person actually existed who could do real life magic tricks and came back from the dead and he still watches to see if you're masturbating.

Yes, I was talking about the historical figure, not the superhero. I thought that went without saying but maybe not.

(Edit: What the heck, their original argument is clearly saying that they think there's no evidence that the historical figure existed. But whatever, we got there in the end, I guess.)

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

(Edit: Also I think it is dishonest of them to edit their comment...

Dude, I did nothing of the kind.

Wow, it's almost like you managed to copy-paste the known fact that the body of Christian scholars agrees that someone existed, later known as "Jesus," and then seemingly couldn't deal with a rebuttal upon your notion of 'that clearing up everything.'

So now you're getting weird about the fact that I had to re-do my comment, simply because I responded to the wrong commenter at the time? So, did not see my rebuttal at all? Did you not see my attempt to explain that?

Go ahead, tho-- consider this your opportunity to fairly reply to what I said above. Sound good?

EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!

For the record, the downvote was from me, and it was because you are being an ass.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Do you mean, being just like you... my fellow freakazoid? :D

Hahaha, nice!

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I realized after that you were talking about archaeology up in your original reply to me, not in the pre-editing version of some other comment. Sorry about that, I had already edited my comment to take out the accusation (within 5 minutes of originally posting it.)

I pretty much agree with this comment of yours. I have absolutely no reason why that would mean we have to continue to bicker. I do think that comment is pretty firmly in contradiction to your earlier statements ("King Arthur / Robin Hood"), but whatever, I see no profit at all in us having a dispute about that part of it.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, but why are we 'bickering' in the first place, and why the need to accuse me of re-editing a comment? (which never happened)

What you are seemingly trying to tell me here, "PhilipTheBucket," is that you're not really able to countenance the actual arguments I'm making above.

Now would you say that's a fair or unfair statement? If unfair, could you give me some facts & reality-based reasons as to why not?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

why the need to accuse me of re-editing a comment? (which never happened)

You edited this comment after I posted my reply to it which talked about archaeology. I thought you'd edited the comment to remove mention of archaeology, but I was wrong, that mention came from this comment of yours.

But then, I realized I'd been wrong, and retracted the wrong thing I'd said, and apologized about it. Not sure how you even managed to see my wrong accusation within the ~2 minutes or whatever that it was on Lemmy, but in any case, my bad.

What you are seemingly trying to tell me here, “PhilipTheBucket,” is that you’re not really able to countenance the actual arguments I’m making above.

Now would you say that’s a fair or unfair statement? If unfair, could you give me some facts & reality-based reasons as to why not?

I don't know how to upload an image within a comment in Piefed. Presumably it's not that hard and I'm just thick. Anyway, please in the meantime enjoy this ASCII art of a sea lion:

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Have a good day. Like I said, I have no interest in continuing a dispute with you about this.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

Congratulations! Not only do you manufacture stuff that never happened, but you're about as disingenuous a religious creep as I've ever encountered, so far upon the FV.

Hehe, the 'donkey-ears' fit well, amirite?

[–] KneeTitts@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe he existed… but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later

Lets consider that jesus did exist and did someone have a cure for leprosy. Why didn't he give that cure to everyone??? We still have leprosy today, kinda proves he didnt have the cure. But again lets say he did and he only gave it to a couple people, not a very godly thing to do, to withhold that cure from the entirety of humanity.

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

Maybe he cured a strong headache (maybe some herbal remedy) but they grew the anecdote and he ended up "curing leprosy".

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 0 points 2 days ago

As I see it, there's pretty much a landslide of evidence, from almost every studied angle, that points to what you just postulated.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.

While "Jesus" likely had something to do with an actual person who once lived, nailing down the details of his life and history seems highly problematic from a scholarly & historical POV, and as for embellishment, amalgamation and distortion... all such things are highly possible, and even highly likely, AFAIK.

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You are thinking about this the wrong way. From the scraps of information that we do have, which includes volumes of work by Jesus's followers, there are two extremes one could take: we know absolutely nothing about Jesus or whether he even existed, or we know absolutely everything about Jesus. I agree that the later extreme is wrongheaded, but surely treating it as a binary choice so that the only other possibility is that we can say nothing at all about Jesus is also wrongheaded.

You might argue reasonably, of course, that his followers cannot be trusted, so we can learn nothing from their writings. This is not true, however, because if nothing else we can learn from the editorial choices that they made; for example, when a Gospel goes out of is way to explain a detail that would have been embarrassing to contemporaries, this actually provides potential evidence that this detail was true and widely known at the time so that it needed to be explained, because otherwise it would just have been left out.

At the end of the day, scholarship is essentially about weighing probabilities rather than certainties, and good scholars do not pretend otherwise.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You are thinking about this the wrong way.

I consider that a terrible way of framing things, and then to make matters worse, you propose only a binary set of conclusions.

Please do better then that if you want to debate fairly.

Thank you.

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It must be very convenient to be able to declare victory in a discussion without hanging to present an actual argument. 😉

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Except for the fact that... I did indeed present multiple arguments, and the fact that at no point did I 'signal victory?'

EDIT: Ruh-roh, downvotes! :D

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

Whoops; apologies.
I borked up my last reply-comment, and so deleted that, and re-created from scratch.