I thought the consensus was that Jesus was a very real person, but just a normal dude?
At that point, does it matter? I’m quite sure there was a Harry Potter born in England matching the year given by the books. But if they match in name only, the book version is not real. Same with Jesus.
That is absolutely a fair point: Jesus, as Christians believe in him, did not exist, even if there was a religious teacher named Jesus (or Yeshu, whatever) who was alive at that time.
But, there’s a part B for that point, and I think it’s an important one: there is no “book version” of Jesus. The Bible isn’t one book, it’s a collection of many separate writings, written over many years by many different people, and they didn’t even agree on what they were writing about. Christians like to think of the Bible as one consistent work, and it isn’t. (The scholarly term for that is “univocality” – the Bible is not univocal.) So it’s not even possible to point to a Jesus figure as described in the Bible, since there is not a singular, consistent Jesus described in the Bible.
The general consensus among historians is that there probably was a real Jesus. Not the walk-on-water Jesus, but some kind of Jewish religious leader, and he was executed. Which means that some of the books of the New Testament describe a real-ish version of him, especially the earlier books. Then, as the messiah narrative starts to take off, the later books in the New Testament get increasingly magical and describe a very unrealistic version of him.
The Wikipedia page about historically-accurate Jesus is a good starting point for info about “real Jesus.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
I also recommend looking for podcasts and YouTube videos featuring Bart Ehrman.
What I’m saying here does not at all contradict your comment, I just think it’s a good idea if we atheists are always very keen on the fact that the Bible doesn’t consistently describe much of anything. That does mean, though, that some parts of the Bible may describe something historically accurate, and that gives no credibility to the more magical parts of the Bible. Seems like the consensus in this thread is to throw away the whole idea of Jesus, and that doesn’t match what real historians believe.
Even the earliest writers in the bible wrote about him only decades after his supposed death. Outside the bible the earliest is Josephus 50 years after his death and it is a single sentence which doesn’t quite fit in with its surroundings so it might have been inserted later. Usually you would not consider that convincing evidence of a historical person.
While that’s true that the earliest non-Christian source was Josephus, that doesn’t mean Paul (very contemporary figure) or the Bible aren’t good sources. We can read around the obvious fabrications and their bias doesn’t per se remove all historical value.
The standard for historians (even critical ones) strongly support treating Jesus as a real person.
This isn’t at all a win though for Christians. The Dead Sea scrolls are very indicative of Jesus as a non-unique figure. It was common for there to be Jewish apocalyptic teachers. Jesus was one of those.
The better way of thinking about him in my opinion is that he was a real Jewish teacher who never claimed to be the son of God, that was mythologized by early Christians.
Highly recommend a Marginal Jew by Meier or anything by Bart Erhman for Atheists.
Real real Jesus: Some guy why starts a cult that goes on to write an embellished biography.
What I don’t like about a lot of atheists is that they want to force a narrative thats simply not true. I myself am an agnostic, fyi.
Although most claim they are men of science, they often simply fall back on striking populism.
I understand what this picture is trying to communicate, but Jesus was most probably a historical figure, just not the one that the Bible is trying to make of him and he most certainly did not have SUCH a dark skin tone, just take a look at the average Palestinian.
Other than that in a religious context Jesus gets portrayed very different in different regions with different common phenotypes so that there is more room for identification for the average Christian and making it easier for the particular population to convert. In East Asia for example Jesus gets portrayed quite East-Asiatic, whereas in Western countries he often gets portrayed more like an average Westerner. Thats because in a religious context his actual phenotype doesn’t really matter.
Look, I get what the image is trying to say in the first part, but maybe take a look at actual photos of Palestinians: Most of them don’t have particularly dark skin; yes, it’s darker than what the average Norwegian has to offer, but someone from central Europe who regularly sunbathes can easily get a skin-tone that is darker than what many people in Palestine/Israel have.
Duh. hes a ghost now