Consensus does matter when it’s a consensus of experts in a specific field. When I look at evolution, I follow the consensus of evolutionary biologists. When I look at the historicity of Jesus, I follow the consensus of historical scholars who study that era. I’m not an expert myself, so I have to trust someone else. I think that’s true for everyone outside of their expertise.

Plus I would probably agree with you that if a “scholar” believes that Jesus did miracles, I wouldn’t trust that scholar.

All I’m saying is that most likely, some guy named Joshua was baptised and crucified, and in between probably did some preaching that inspired a religion. Given that this is the consensus view by experts on the subject, the onus is on others to provide evidence that this isn’t the case. But acknowledging that this is the case doesn’t threaten my belief in materialism.

Is something true because the majority says that it is true or because it is true?

This is pseudo-skeptical nonsense. These scholars have done the research and digging into sources and have the evidence that Jesus, the man, existed in the time that the gospels Bible describes. Until you have evidence that either disproves his existence or disproves all the historical records, this is contrarian nonsense with no basis in how historical research is done.

You sound like an anti vaxxer

What does explain the the community would be deliberate fraud. A cult lead by James and Peter about an mythical being.

It’s a lot easier to convince people you’re the successor to the of some kind of deity rather being some kind of deity yourself. A LOT easier. Also… sets up plausible deniability if things get caught out. “I DIDN"T KNOW, HONEST…! he duped me too!”

I am not interested in consensus, if I were I would still be a theist. I am interested in what is true.

All of three of those men were born decades after the events.

That’s a long way to go in very little time - that’s only maybe 3-4 degrees away from the original source. Not nearly long enough for a mythical figure to develop organically

It went down in 79AD, a fully 43-46 years after the supposed events and at least 41.5 to 39 years after Paul began his missionary trips across the Roman Empire. To be clear you are arguing a strawman. I believe Paul was real and I believe James was real. I think it was a con job. This wasn’t a myth that organically made itself, this was centuries of Jewish legends/stories/culture that was hijacked.

Also I asked for contemporary source not hearsay “3-4” times removed.

You can dispute the details, but someone must’ve been the figurehead at the very least.

Sure they had a mythical figurehead. It would explain why the Romans left them alone for decades after the supposed events. They were running a mystery-cult / charity organization and were saying that their leader had already been killed. Also would explain why Paul didn’t know pretty much anything about the details.

The gospels themselves hint at the events being staged to some extent by a small group spreading an ideology according to a literal plan - the public events literally start with Jesus’s cousin gathering support for the movement, and then Jesus goes around recruiting specific people as apostles

Could be. I admit I hadn’t thought of that. I promise to look into it. I assumed that they were sorta reverse engineering the “known” events. Building a narrative after the fact, a retrocon.

The Romans also kept records - there’s a lot of corroborating evidence for certain events spread too far and wide for a pre-information age society to fabricate. Even things like his birthdate - I think they’ve been able to narrow it down to a few days in July, during the census, where we had accounts of a temporary new star in the sky

And those records don’t show anyone by that name in that city or being crucified. As for the star thing keep in mind the Gospel writers were multiple decades later well enough time to fit the data to the narrative. The census is a classic example of this. It was known that a census had been done around that time it was also “known” that Jesus was from Nazareth but was supposed to be from Bethlehem so the census is given for the reason.

Even the papers that are given clickbait-y headlines like “historians dispute the existence of Jesus” generally dispute certain aspects, there was almost certainly a historical figure named Jesus who was killed by the Romans for inciting a resistance movement

I don’t care about consensus or other writers. I care about evidence. Please present it. You gave me evidence that there were Christians decades later, which is not what I asked for.

Not really. There isn’t any contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus. The historical consensus that he was likely real was constructed from later sources.

We know this because a group of followers doesn’t just form and grow without someone they are following. The entire teachings of everyone within his group revolves around Jesus, and if he didn’t exist then Christianity never began. People need a leader to form a group, they don’t just all be together and say hey, let’s make up a dude and then follow what we made up. They believed enough to die for their group, and they believed enough to dedicate themselves to growing it. That doesn’t just happen if you made it on a whim or made up a key point of your story which could be validated. Additionally just because books were written multiple decades later doesn’t mean that they were completely made up. People can live multiple decades, and stories of experiences and knowledge of people can survive this long easily too. We also don’t know what they knew at the time because lots of information about Jesus that would have survived had been altered much much later by kings who wished to use Christianity for control, we of course know he didn’t completely make up Jesus as there are books referencing him from before this happened, however it does mean our information now is more limited than theirs, so we can’t assume they made this up based upon the same information we have now. It is both logical and just true that they would have had access to more valid information than we do today. They where also often scholars who’s job it was to write about true people and to prove together missing info and validate this sort of thing is even real. With all the information that was available at the time they still believed he existed. We can’t say just because such evidence was lost doesn’t mean that they all came to an invalid conclusion or all made it up. It’s just illogical. As for actual biblical events that had few witnesses, it’s fine to believe that that was made up, or information was lost so it was believed that something happened when in reality there is an entirely different reality that we just don’t have what we would need to piece together today. As we are assuming many stories are being made up or are incorrectly accounted throughout it, it’s not fair to say any events in his life happened based on the book alone, so this a mute point.

TLDR Jesus was real because he formed a group that still exists and followed his teachings from the beginning. Groups don’t just form and follow a fake persons teachings and still believe it and constantly lie about his existence. Scholars closer to his life who had more information than we do now believed he existed, and we can’t invalidate multiple scholars with more information than us just because we don’t have that information anymore.

Roman Jewish Historian Josephus.

Repeating stories he heard decades later. Hearsay by people who had an incentive to lie. Josephus also said things like this:

Now Adam, who was the first man, and made out of the earth, (for our discourse must now be about him,) after Abel was slain, and Cain fled away, on account of his murder, was solicitous for posterity, and had a vehement desire of children, he being two hundred and thirty years old; after which time he lived other seven hundred, and then died. He had indeed many other children, 1 but Seth in particular. As for the rest, it would be tedious to name them; I will therefore only endeavor to give an account of those that proceeded from Seth. Now this Seth, when he was brought up, and came to those years in which he could discern what was good, became a virtuous man; and as he was himself of an excellent character, so did he leave children behind him who imitated his virtues.

It’s interesting to me that you consider him a valid source for one thing you can’t prove but reject pretty much everything else the man said especially since you can’t really disprove the Adam and Eve story.

Enough so that secular historians consider the person known as Jesus of Nazareth to be a historically real person

Interesting because your boy Josphius was in the area and wasn’t aware Nazareth even existed. In any case truth doesn’t depend on how many people assert something.

His ministry wasn’t even that uncommon at the time. There were many apocalyptic preachers around that time and other magicians/miracle workers, like Simon the Magician.

And?

I am always curious about how the Jesus was real crowd explains all these things Jesus supposedly taught that no one seems to know about until about fifty years later. And why these things he taught just happen to be from a subset of the Greek OT that was popular at the time. Strange how an Aramaic speaking rabbi, in an area with a 1% literacy rate, would only quote from a book written in Greek. And no one is aware of these parables and sayings.

According to Paul these are all the things that Jesus taught:

1. Don’t get divorced and if you do the woman is never to marry someone else

2. Pay your preacher

The second one is debatable as well.

I see. What culture in particular are you discussing that we have this little evidence for? Also can I ask, if a low bar of evidence was accepted for one thing does that mean a low bar of evidence must be accepted for another?

There probably is, the irony is just that it’s a document all churches will fight tooth and nail against recognizing as partially authoritative over their own records.

No. There probably isn’t. Romans were only meticulous in keeping records of their citizens. He was not a citizen, was if not uncomfortable still working class, but probably poor.

The Jewish authorities were far more interested in stamping out a heretical cult.

That’s the thing. There is no surviving records. What existed is pretty much all destroyed. Every account comes decades after the fact- and can only say that Christian’s existed and that they believed christ existed. There is no evidence that anyone named jeshua existed- and even if it did, it would be impossible to verify he was that particular jeshua.

If I’m wrong, drop the proof. But don’t make assumptions on hope. The good news (pun intended,) is that the lack of evidence goes both ways. Which is why I’m not saying he didn’t exist and only that there is no evidence of existence.

Make sense?

Is the plural of opinions evidence? Is something about history true because the majority of people say it is true or because it did happen?

Why not just present evidence instead of an argument ad populism?

jeez you gotta close some tabs, but also “existing historically” literally means that it’s essentially hear-say whether Jesus existed or not, which in my opinion is incredibly weak evidence.

historical evidence never claims to be proven evidence, you’re incorrectly interpreting it to be that way.

It’s mostly due to inertia, because the entire system used to be 100% Christian, historians obviously believed in Jesus. This has carried over as fact, although it clearly is not.

Christian dominance has resulted in the scholarly consensus carrying over until today, plus many places you can’t work, if you deny the existence of Jesus.

It would be interesting to see what the consensus is among scholars from Japan, or some other non traditionally Christian country.

How do you know anyone existed in history?

For instance Independent contemporary reports, preferably 1st hand. There are none for Jesus. Not even 2nd hand. The oldest parts of the Bible are from 50 years or later after the fact, and written quite some distance away from where it should have allegedly happened, by anonymous writers. The names we apply are fake.

This lack of evidence, is despite the search for evidence of Jesus is by far the greatest ever undertaken. The Catholic Church have spend almost 2000 years now looking for it (since about 2nd century). They have spend huge amounts of money and manpower. That alone is more than anything else, but on top of that, you have for instance Later Day Saints, who have also attempted to find historical evidence. Along with many many other Christian and even non Christian organisations.

To be frank, it’s amazing nobody haven’t been able to make fake evidence that is widely believed. The so called evidence there is, is only called evidence by Christian historians, and does not pass the requirements for actual historical evidence.

Jesus is a fairy tale, It’s very clear if you investigate the history of Christianity, that Jesus was a myth.

It’s also clear if you investigate philosophy at the time, that it was widely believed that something imagined could be believed to be real if you believed it hard enough. We even have some of it today, with for instance faith healing, prosperity gospel, and the idea that if something is imagined to be perfect it must exist, otherwise it isn’t perfect.

Unless you already know, people 2000 years ago, on average, weren’t exactly smarter and more enlightened than people of today. They didn’t even have the scientific method, to show how real knowledge about our world can be achieved way more reliably than with religion. So superstition was widespread to the extreme, and myths were easily believed.

Christianity being probably the most powerful myth of the time, was believed exactly because it seemed powerful. The same way some Africans name their children Hitler, because it’s a name of power.

So Jesus and god were imagined as being perfect, ergo they must have been real. That’s what it basically boils down to. And there is a surprising LACK of evidence for his existence, making the only rational conclusion that he probably didn’t exist. Not even as one or more normal humans, that have later been build a story around.

Not sure if this a strawman or hyperbole, maybe both.

For most people we have very reasonable claims, consistent stories, and first hand accounts. For Jesus we have absurd claims, inconsistent stories, and hearsay accounts.