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Esoterica - Who was the historical Jesus?
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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Going from memory here, I heard it years back. Robert M. Price's podcast The Bible Geek covered the argument against a historical Jesus in an episode, noting that a major pillar in the argument is an obituary written by Josephus. Wikipedia has a page on Josephus's account.
Price's argument, such that I remember, has to do with the fact that Josephus' account outright calls Jesus the Messiah, despite supposedly being written in the first century CE when this would have been a niche argument, suggesting that this account was not actually written when it purports to be. But I haven't listened to Bible Geek in a long time, all of this could be a misrepresentation.
Yeah afaik the earliest record of the gospels and Jesus date to 90AD, which is of course beyond the memory of a single generation. Either the stories were passed down orally that long (telephone game), or the whole thing was really invented around that time, since there are multiple written records suddenly appearing in the early 2nd century.
The creation of Christianity around 90-120AD makes more sense than anything to me, given the geopolitics of the time.
A stroll through any necropolis back then would reveal many tombs marked Yeshua and Miryam and Yosef. Just common names. If someone were to invent myths around that time, they might just pick names like that, especially given the hebrew meaning of Yeshua (salvation through god).
I not a biblical scholar so grains of salt.
The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written about 70 CE. (There’s also evidence that a “Q source” and a “sayings source” were floating around earlier - the commonalities in Luke and Matthew) Paul’s epistles are even earlier; Galatians was written somewhere 40-60 CE. Paul’s epistles are written to communities of Christians, meaning that that Christianity has already spread by then.
It's not quite certain that Jesus and Paul actually met in person. So all his writing might be apocryphal. His word might have become christian canon, but he is not really a source one can trust.
While Jesus and Paul likely never met in person, the point is that Paul is writing to established Christian communities within a few decades of Jesus’s death. There are already churches with established leadership and community structures.
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Price is specifically referring to the “Testimonium Flavianum“ there, which most scholars agree was altered. The part of The Antiquities that refers to “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” most scholars think is original, and I don’t know if Price has made an argument about that quote.
Price is probably the only person with enough background to be a mythicist, but his arguments still just don’t seem to match how people act. “Oh, the Egyptians have Osiris, let’s make up our own god who gets resurrected!”
The evidence just seems more likely to show that the man existed, and had more elaborate details added to his biography as time went on. You can see a much higher “Christology” as you read each Gospel in the order they were written (details in the resurrection story, how many angels were at the tomb) until you get to John which makes Jesus the logos itself. The story needs to start with some sort of nucleus, something real, that has things added to it step by step.
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There is a lot of historical evidence that a lot of historical figures claiming to be the second coming of the messiah existed at the time. Jesus was just the most popular one. He’s the crème de la crème of messianic figures of the time. That’s all.
I remember stumbling into a book of all of said messianic figures, left out in the library.
In particular, I remember his name. Yeshua ben Yosef (sp? It's been 20years). I thought it funny that with a name like that and a Muslim ban in place (at the time) he would have never been allowed past customs.
People think that if it's not recorded, it didn't happen. That line of thinking ignores that entropy of historical documents. Records are lost in fires, floods, looting, improper care, and more. There is also the issue of conflicting information from different sources. Is the document written by Ancient Person A about Ancient Event correct or is it Ancient Person B's version correct.
STEM people are trained with principles that are consider absolute until a paradigm shift happens.
It's why historians have the 5 C's: context, change over time, causality, complexity, and contingency.
The profession what would under historical evidence and historical thinking would be lawyers. Lawyers get cases all the time were you don't have direct evidence. For example, it's a murder case. There is no murder weapon and no eye witness. The victim was found with multiple stab wounds. There's a suspect in custody.
How do lawyers prove the suspect did the murder? Lawyers bring in collaborative evidence, such as: the suspect was seen with the victim before the murder, the suspect was seen in the area after the estimated time of death, the suspect had blood on their shirt, the suspect had a motive, etc.
To circle back to Jesus. There is no fundamental law of physics nor experiment to prove Jesus. Historians have to apply the five C's to prove the existence of Jesus. Collaborating documents, events, archeological evidence, carbon dating of physical evidence, etc.
Of course as soon as religion is mentioned, people's biases go into overdrive.
STEM people are trained with principles that are consider absolute until a paradigm shift happens.
That's inaccurate at the very least for scientists. Scientists are trained to test and retest everything. We tend to give them names like "positive controls" when we run experiments on things we're pretty sure are going to work, but we still test them.
Chiming in here with no degrees or STEM training to say that I exist, but it's unlikely there will be any record of me in a couple thousand years. Though I haven't given the whole water to wine thing a go so don't count me out just yet.