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Was Jesus a real person?

Does anybody think that jesus may have been a real historic figure? Not the son of god but maybe there is a kernel of truth.

KevinBrown 4 Oct 4
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1

I do believe he did exist. I think he was on the same level as Gandhi or the Buddha. I reject any thought of him being born of a virgin, or the Son of God, or a sacrificial lamb but I do believe he had a message to teach.

8

There is more than a kernel of truth. Read the books by the late Prof. Barbara Thiering, starting with Jesus The Man. She was a world leading palaeographer, specialising on the Dead Sea Scrolls. She found that the 'pesher' method of interpreting scripture used in the scrolls could also be applied to books in the New Testament, because Jesus, his father and mother and brothers, his wife and his disciples, and John the Baptist, were all members of the Essene sect in Qumran where the scrolls were written. Her interpretation gives a new and believable story of the beginnings of Christianity, sans miracles, which is of a political campaign to restore the monarchy of Roman occupied Judea to the rightful Davidic dynasty, to which Jesus was the heir.

I agree. And, thanks for the info on Prof.Barbara Thiering. I hope they have e-book free to download

Other books may have a similar theme but are not backed up with the palaeographic, linguistic and archaeological evidence that Professor Theiring brought to her thesis. See:
[peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com]

Thank you for the link. I'll definitely check it out. Reading similar books, I have come to the conclusion that both John the Baptist and James the Just were Essene. I have found no evidence for the existence of Jesus. There is plenty of evidence however that the New Testament stories about Jesus are allegorical. I've been reading the latest Dead Sea Scroll translations and they support your conclusions about John and James, nothing about Jesus though.

4

I lived in Los Angeles for three years and there was a guy named Jesus that worked at a taco place by me. I wasn’t sure if he was the real Jesus, because he didn’t have blondish hair and blue eyes like the pictures I see of him.

4

There is no real evidence to support the idea of Jesup being alive ~2000 years ago. Just stories from after the alleged event.

4

Pure fairy tales. Jesus was a name used by many ... no different than any other given name. It really doesn't matter since the Bible is nonsense.

4

All of the "Jesus" stories in the bible and those books removed from it by Constantine all trace back to the dozen or more pre-christian crucified savior religions. There is no historical evidence that the bible-story Jesus actually existed. Bible scholars and historians have written to this fact for more than 150 years. People can "believe" whatever suits them, but knowledge isn't belief, and the knowledge says that everybody's Jesus is a composite character made from the previous "saviors".

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1949 it has been possible to find the real history of Jesus and the movement that he founded, Try reading "Jesus The Man" by Barbara Thiering.

No. But that would be because Jesus was the son of the Essene mission to Gentiles and wanted to have Gentile converts admitted to the rank of Bishop, which was opposed by the school of John the Baptist who was called in the scrolls the Teacher of Righteousness, while Jesus was given such opprobrious labels as Wicked Priest and Man of a Lie.

4

After 75 years of attending church--reading everything related to the old and new testament, I am a humanist--even when I was a very naïve child, and loved my Sunday school experiences-singing mostly---I believe that Jesus represents the group of young Jewish men who rebelled against the Romans AND the Jewish leaders who did everything they could to destroy the poor Jewish community---Jesus(and those he represents), knew that would be crucified and experience horrible pain--BUT, they continued their rebelling--IMAGINE--he knew what would happen to him--and he was a man---NOT going to rise from the dead--and ascend into heaven--BUT continued his quest--I APPRECIATE HIM EVEN MORE! As a man!

Paul often spoke of Jesus in terms that cannot be understood correctly in any way other than as a historical, flesh-and-blood human being. Paul used the name “Jesus” 218 times in his writings (Strong, 2001, p. 453)

4

I believe he was an amalgamation of radicals of that time with the legend of many "messiahs" that came before him.

so jesus is plagiarism : )

4

see im an atheist but i think a man named jesus lived and sacrificed his life.people don't understand. if i wear a crucifix they thinki i believe in god. no,no no i just believe in a noble man that died on a cross. weird huh?

Wear a crucifix or put a four-leaf clover in your wallet for all we care. What matters is you stand by your beliefs, you believe in yourself and you keep the faith!

Not weird, a commonsense response to the obvious fact that there was a real man called (in English) Jesus, and who precipitated a major shift in world history. Because power-seeking elites have covered up the real story of his life, often by imprisoning, torturing, and killing any who pointed out the illogicalities, impossibilities, and inconsistency of the cover story, it has taken until now for the truth to be revealed, i.e. that he did not die on the cross but was taken down and hidden in a cave where he was resuscitated; that he was not a god but the heir to a usurped throne who tried and failed to retake it but went on anyway to found a world-wide philanthropic movement. That that movement became corrupted by greedy power-seekers was not his fault.

He was not crucified in Jerusalem, he was crucified in Qumran. When he was taken down alive from the cross he was placed in one of the caves to be resuscitated.

3

There was never any Jesus. He was invented by the Romans to help quell Jewish uprisings, being the son of the God of peace and love! Jews always knew this, hence certainly don't believe in Jesus with a lot of them not even believing in God anymore, but identifying their religion as part of their cultural heritage and being 'Jewish'.
Joseph Atwil wrote a book about this in 2006 Caesar’s Messiah, that describes Titus Flavius’s Roman campaign through modern Israel. Jesus is a metaphor for Titus Flavius – the Jewish messiah as seen by the Romans.

3

0.02% chance the guy ever walked the Earth, is my guess.

3

I think he was a real person, but that's it.

Why, so, no more talk of Jesus for you? But He's the most popular guy of our time . . . next to the Beatles?

3

Some Marco Polo type guy, looks like Brad Pitt, knocks up Mary,and books! She lies to Joseph, He doesn't buy it so he take her out to the desert ,either to kill her, the baby, or both .Ends up in Bethlehem and is about to do the deed ;When the Magi just by coincidence show up! They have been riding in the desert for months, because King Herod Has seen some celestial phenomenon!!They're tired of riding their camels and just want to go home see their kids and sleep with their wives!! And behold right there in a manger is the first Moletto child they have ever seen!! Blue eyes? WOW Here's their excuse!! So they unload their gold and franck-in-cense and meer, head home ,report to the king! And the story just gets bigger!! Hell no , He didn't even exist!! But that's a better explanation than "emaculate conception"!!!

3

if they were it is extremely unlikely their name was jesus. it's just not a name you would find in that area at that supposed time... the only way it makes sense is if jesus is an english interpretation of another name

Maybe we could ask JimEdwards to explain

Jesus is the same as Joshua, a very common name in New Testament times.

2

I am beginning to have my doubts, whether he is or not, the myths around him are so tenuous the he may as well be made up.

Geoff Level 5 Dec 29, 2017

"where the body is, there the vultures will gather."

2

If Jesus was a real person, he probably wasn’t no more than an ordinary man, who people made him out to be a God because he did something unusual back then that the people around him were superstitious about them turned him into a God.

2

No doubt there were Middle Easterners around 2,000 years ago who were named Jesus or Yeshua or whatever. That's about as much as I can say.

2

What I "think" is there is no proof he existed. Only stories passed down over 2000 years... he may or may not have been a real person. Besides it doesn't really matter anyway. To me he's just a fictional character in a story book fairy tale.

If he was real, he was probably from another planet sent here with plans to enslave the human race with religion. Why didn't his alien people rescue him when he was to be crucified? Because he was cast away from his home planet for claiming to be a profit.... or something like that. 😀

2

Who care? Probably, same as Lao Tse, a mixture of many characters.

2

Jesus was hand picked stories to prove he might have existed...i doubt it was all based on one person

2

Could be a composite of various people, not an actual person.

2

I say yes because the Muslims claim he was a prophet.

SamL Level 7 Oct 8, 2017
2

There is proof to back up Jesus existed, but that doesn't mean he was the son of god.

The Son of God was his title as the political leader (king) in the Jewish sect called the Essenes. Anyone interested in finding out the real story should start with "Jesus The Man" by Barbara Thiering. Writing off the Bible as a "silly cult book" is as foolish as taking every word literally, neither contributes to the enlightenment of humankind.

What proof?Lore?

Most scholars of the New Testament are pushing a barrow of one sort or another. Either they are Christians looking for support for the credo, particularly the Resurrection, and therefore vehemently reject the findings of Dr Thiering that Jesus survived the Crucifixion. Others are not so committed but find little evidence in non-biblical sources for the very existence of the man called Jesus except one in Josephus which they claim may have been a later interpolation. The scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls are convinced that they were all written before the New Testament period, but Dr Thiering, an acknowledged leading expert in palaeography, makes a very good case that there were not only contemporary scrolls among them, but that these contained references to Jesus and John the Baptist as rival leaders of the Qumran sect. All the scholars accept that the writers of the scrolls used a technique called the 'pesher' in interpreting Old Testament books to find hidden messages to future generations. Dr Thiering guessed that Jesus and his disciples, being themselves trained in this method of study as members of the community, would have it in mind when writing their own record of their history. Their justification for doing so would be that they were a nationalistic movement that would be regarded as subversive by the foreign occupying power and their puppet ruler, Herod. It is therefore reasonable to assume that using the pesher technique to interpret the Gospels and Apocalypse would reveal a history that would be known to initiates but concealed to non-initiates. This history, as Dr Thiering extracted it, makes complete sense of this turbulent period, giving dates and even times of day, that tie in with the already known secular records. What is more, it is a history devoid of miracles and the supernatural, in which references to God are only found in ranks and titles and angels are, as the Greek word means, messengers. The title Christ, Greek for Messiach, refers to the chrism, the anointing oil used when the heir to the throne is anointed King, as Jesus was by the leader of the women's house at Qumran, Mary Magdalene.
Although she was a lecturer in the School of Divinity at Sydney University, Dr Theiring defined her own position as agnostic. I do not regard her claims as extraordinary, but rather as 'blowing the whistle' on the extraordinary claims of Christians based on literal interpretations of the cover story of a middle eastern independence movement from a decadent Roman Empire. More information can be found at the website preserving the late Dr Thiering's other writings: [peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com]

2

I think that there are two "messiahs" mentioned in the New Testament. There's Jesus, the Jew, the peasant from Nazareth, and Christ, the creation of Saul/Paul. Paul's "Christ" is a Hellenistic deity who came to earth, ascended to Hades, released the prisoners, and then came back from the dead. Paul never once mentions Jesus by name, talks about his family, or even talks about Jesus and what he thought his mission was supposed to be.

Jesus was one of many would-be messiahs in Palestine who thought he could bring God back to his temple and rule Israel. Unfortunately, the Gospels were written well after Jesus was killed, and were highly influenced by Paul, so knowing who he was and what he stood for is next to impossible.

They are one and the same. Jesus was not a peasant, he was the legitimate heir to the throne of David, and the town of Nazareth did not exist in Jesus' time. He was the Christ or Messiah, meaning the Anointed, because he was that King. He was the man Saul of Tarsus met on the road to Damascus, who was on his way to exile because he did not want the Romans to find out that he had survived his crucifixion and was planning to continue his subversive political activities. That is why Paul created the cover story of his miraculous 'Resurrection'.

So where are you getting your information? Do you have data? Cause no scholar that I have read (and I've read many) has made that argument.

Christians, then, were considered rebels/activists. I remember a line from the soundtrack album of the movie Jesus Christ Superstar which I find funny and amusing and sensible. Judas was sort of protesting to Jesus:

"Every time I look at you I don't understand
Why you let the things you did get so out of your hand
You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned
Why'd you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?
If you'd come today you would have reached a whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication
Don't you get me wrong - I only wanna know"

One of my favorite songs.

There's a really interesting theory that Jesus and Judas were up to something. The Gospels say that Judas was a "thief" because he took money from the purse, yet Jesus put him in charge of the money. There's also the comment Jesus made to Judas "That thou doest do quickly..." Judas' "betrayal" was more likely a failure. Jesus and he had a plan, it went south, and the Romans caught them both.

"So where are you getting your information?" Partly from my studies as a theological student at Sydney University and later private research. A lot of it comes from the works of former Sydney University theologian, the late Prof. Barbara Thiering, a leading palaeographer and expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library. Her first popular book, "Jesus The Man" (in US "Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls" ) shocked the Christian world with its radical reinterpreting of the New Testament stories, and scholarship was strained to its limits trying vainly to refute her conclusions. She followed it up with "The Book That Jesus Wrote" and "Jesus of the Apocalypse" which continued the life of Jesus and his descendants and followers, to his death in Rome in about AD70.

The first time I came across the theory was in a book called The Trial and Death of Jesus by Haim Cohn. He built the case for that. I've seen it scattered throughout some of the scholars I read. I realize it's controversial, but it also seems more right than Judas working for the priests since they already knew who Jesus was.

Actually, I don't play that game. I refuse fundamentalist thinking in all its forms.
Much of the bible is fiction, but, like many of the ancient writings, it has some reality built in, and it tells those stories based on their own political narrative.

2

probably

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