Did Jesus Really Exist?

i have read some other texts/letters besides this particular one, where people who have met Jesus personally describe his physical characteristics:

This is a reprinting of a letter from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar describing the physical appearance of Jesus. Copies are in the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C.
TO TIBERIUS CAESAR:
A young man appeared in Galilee preaching with humble unction, a new law in the Name of the God that had sent Him. At first I was apprehensive that His design was to stir up the people against the Romans, but my fears were soon dispelled. Jesus of Nazareth spoke rather as a friend of the Romans than of the Jews. One day I observed in the midst of a group of people a young man who was leaning against a tree, calmly addressing the multitude. I was told it was Jesus. This I could easily have suspected so great was the difference between Him and those who were listening to Him. His golden colored hair and beard gave to his appearance a celestial aspect. He appeared to be about 30 years of age. Never have I seen a sweeter or more serene countenance. What a contrast between Him and His bearers with their black beards and tawny complexions! Unwilling to interrupt Him by my presence, I continued my walk but signified to my secretary to join the group and listen. Later, my secretary reported that never had he seen in the works of all the philosophers anything that compared to the teachings of Jesus. He told me that Jesus was neither seditious nor rebellious, so we extended to Him our protection. He was at liberty to act, to speak, to assemble and to address the people. This unlimited freedom provoked the Jews -- not the poor but the rich and powerful.
Later, I wrote to Jesus requesting an interview with Him at the Praetorium. He came. When the Nazarene made His appearance I was having my morning walk and as I faced Him my feet seemed fastened with an iron hand to the marble pavement and I trembled in every limb as a guilty culprit, though he was calm. For some time I stood admiring this extraordinary Man. There was nothing in Him that was repelling, nor in His character, yet I felt awed in His presence. I told Him that there was a magnetic simplicity about Him and
His personality that elevated Him far above the philosophers and teachers of His day.
Now, Noble Sovereign, these are the facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth and I have taken the time to write you in detail concerning these matters. I say that such a man who could convert water into wine, change death into life, disease into health; calm the stormy seas, is not guilty of any criminal offense and as others have said, we must agree -- truly this is the Son of God!
Your most obedient servant,
Pontius Pilate
Blessings in His Word.
Robert.

 

honestly, if this is indeed a hoax, it wouldnt even matter to me at all, because i could care less what Jesus looked like. the point of me posting this is to just further provide proof that Jesus did indeed exist.

well, God has no basis in reality, so thats not surprising.

 

The true question is what is the history behind that letter. I found no details on the Library of Congress site, none at all, except the origins are apparently "Chicago, Illinois"



Does the possibility not exist of it being a hoax, or in some other capacity invalid.

It truly does not seem like the writing of a occupying Roman Governor, for who sentencing death was a very regular prospect on people. Especially keeping in mind that having somebody claim to be a religious messiah was not uncommon in that time period.

Upon further investigation, wikipedia labels this letter as a pseudepigrapha, which is literally:

So in fact that letter was not even written by Pilate, but it was an artists rendition of the events, some time later.

I would speculate that is why the very bottom of the letter is signed...

So it was a nice find, but unfortunately it is bunk, and does not prove a thing. Please try again.




EDIT: damn, i'm a slow writer, LT got to it before me.

 

ok, now let's move to the Bible and read about all of the people who knew and met him personally...see ya there.

 

The Bible is notoriously historically inaccurate. It's like citing the a Sylvia Browne book to educate people on pathology.

Besides, it provides no reason to believe that the entire Bible itself is not just a colourful fairy tale.

I can read to you Little Red Riding Hood, but that doesn't mean a wolf had ever dressed up as an old woman.

 

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

Ftw.

 

No, my arguments are based on evidence, your arguments are based on skepticism.

Am I claiming that the gnostic gospels are concrete evidence for the existence of Jesus? No, I have done so nowhere in this thread so please stop the madness and quit attempting to attack evidence that I never attempted to use, It's getting you absolutely no where bro . Have you even looked at my proof? probably not.

Like I've been saying over and over...that argument has little legitimacy...it could be nothing but mere coincidence that others have more "press" and you also have to postulate that more evidence could have existed but has been destroyed considering the man existed 2,000 years ago. How many times do I have to repeat myself, are you just ignoring me due to you solely being skeptic or is it something else?

Umm.....what?

Well it only has to matter, because it's all we have considering empirical evidence can not recreate or accommodate for evidence for someone existing so long ago. Jesus' proof of existing is proportional to other historical famous men existing around that time. So what's stopping you from criticizing their sources? Your skepticism of Jesus overall and beef with Christianity is what the only thing is, and it's sad.

Well, of course I have never claimed that everything in the Bible was able to be proven, not everything in it is to be taken literal so I myself don't consider everything in the Bible is exactly true, humans are imperfect.
And if that is going to be your logic, than you have to apply it to everything and not just the Bible man, what is entirely true if not every single thing in it can be historically or empirically proven? answer me that.

I'm quite aware of what falls under logic and what doesn't thank you. It maybe painful for you because all you have against me is an Ad Hominem argument based on skepticism and that's it.

Uhh...how bout you take a look at page 4 of the thread buddy...opinion? what I've provided is unbiased evidence, nothing has to do with mere opinion, I'm not using the agnostic gospels or the Bible in my argument.

I'm not assuming at all man, there is evidence to suggest the historians were not Christians. Therefore they are completely unbiased, thanks.

sadly that has little legitimacy, The references and documents written about Jesus were written much closer to Jesus than the documents of Alexander The Great, and many others. Yet, scholars regard them as credible. And why? simply because no one is skeptic about the existence of those individuals because they have no religious or spiritual aspects applied to them...

lol dude calm down you're overreacting...Perpetual Burn claimed there was historical evidence to disprove Jesus (he didn't provide it, I wonder why) and I was asking to prove the claim wrong...and all you're doing is helping me do that, haha.

What Josephus wrote is only a small part of the non-biased historical evidence in my argument It's funny how you only keep singling him out...and skeptics absolutely love to criticise it because it probably holds the most ground of any historian. But if his writings were altered by Christians, why would they only alter the little that people claim they did? please answer me that, I asked earlier but apparently you non-believers were too busy high fiving eachother in what you consider a celebration of there being no evidence of Jesus to answer my question.

So what? Jesus isn't the only person to have that happen and people consider it credible work to others so what is your point? And by your logic you pointed out earlier just because someone said something about someone is true doesn't mean it is, right? do you see my point?

I explained above.

Not true? so you can convince that many people to believe what you do? you're having trouble just in this forum. Delusion is one thing but how far can it go? that is my point dude...can 2.1 billion people be delusional? What exactly does that say about human intelligence? I hope you see what I'm getting at LT.

And why isn't that the imagery that comes to mind when the average person thinks of the Bible? because overall the Bible has positive morals associated with it. Again I'm not arguing that those aren't existent in the Bible, so where are you going with this? tally ho! indeed

I'm not saying we should base our life around it, I'm just saying it has a major influence on modern literate despite being written so long ago, so how bad can it be?

I'd say more people willingly convert to Christianity than are bred into the religion, so yep all our just mindless sheep under a 2 billion sized delusion, great point man.

That's a far stretch, I've researched other religions and have remained Christian...If you were born in India what would you be? an anti-Gandhi elephant riding atheist?

Again, great logic there. How civilized and understanding were people back then? If it already promoted what was understood, what's the point of a book about common knowledge being written?

I already have given evidence. look for yourself, the search button is your friend.

The evidence I've posted has nothing to do with the New Testament, lol how ignorant can you be??

so you admit you don't know what the quote interprets to yet you feel the need so figure out any way you can to apply it to Christianity...nice.

How is basing your knowledge and thought process on a movie any different from you calming Christians base theirs on a historical book? who are you trying to convince you don't worship the movie...me or yourself?

Exactly, you assume based on skepticism

"absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

~ Carl Sagan

Well, is the world perfect? people hold on to faith despite suffering and the negative. You assume all religious blindly follow instructions without question when that is no where near what the case is.



To MelT: I fail to see how a historian who is believed to maybe live near Nazareth who didn't write about Jesus qualifies as proof. What if he didn't believe in Jesus?

EXACTLY. it's real easy to comment on information that is lost isn't it?


lemme ask you skeptics this,

If Jesus was simply a fictional character designed to give weight to teachings created by the early church...wouldn't there be consistency in the stories about him?? the fact that texts represent different points of view than that of orthodox Christianity, tells that they were either a very unlikely coincidence, or that there was a real Jesus who's fame and teaching was co-opted by others. hmm.

 

Because veyr few people have actually read the entire Bible and seen it for what it is, or just choose to ignore it an exemplify the positive messages only.

Riiight.
I'll believe that.

 

If Jesus existed, and people saw him, I'm sure they'd at least get his description right, don't you?

Jesus had short hair, or else he'd be breaking his own Word... So if someone saw a guy with blonde hair and a beard, and said it's Jesus of Nazareth, he's lying.

 

No, you clearly are not.

I'm gonna do this one more time, as it is a real pain in the ass... but hopefully just possibly you can see the error in your logic and correct your mistakes. That is after all, what Jesus would do.

I would never claim such irrational things. Because there is no evidence to "disprove" anything. Only a lack of evidence to prove Jesus existed. Like Liquidtruth alluded to earlier, there is a mountain of evidence to support Julius Ceasar's existence but only an anthill of evidence to support Jesus.'

I still haven't seen any proof that does not cite the Bible as a resource and use that as an Appeal to Authority, which is all any Biblical reference is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

This is simply an Appeal to the Majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

I would never even fathom using the rhetoric that the other 4.6 Billion people in the world are correct because they are the majority. Only a religious person could be pompous enough to believe that 2.1 Billion people "have life figured out" without knowing them all. Do you tap into the entire collective conscious of the Christian race at church these days?

If anyone would like to know my opinion. I think humans are extremely dumb and unintellectual. Now, I'm trying my hardest with the little congitive ability I have to root my entire understanding of this world I live in in logic, reason, and science. It seems, to me, that religious folk try to remain ignorant from things they do not or might not understand and would much rather "believe" in outdated philosophies and understandings of this physical universe. I find these ideologies to be directly in opposition to the evolution of the critical thinker.

We are only self-identified intelligent beings. Much in the same sense that 2.1 Billion of us are self-identified Christians. You can claim whatever you want about your place in this universe, it's going to have no affect on reality.

Can you prove this claim?

Other than a lot of writers and artists throughout history having been self-identified Christians, I fail to see any correlation. When is the last time you read your Bible? Please, pick up any modern book and try to find the literary influence.

Not only is this claim unfounded, it is also an Appeal to Authority. It wouldn't matter if all art up to this point in history was Biblically inspired; we can do whatever we want now.

Prove it. Seriously.

I'm going to make a rash statement in saying that the overwhelming majority of religious, especially American Christians, are bred into their religion.

Please, show me some evidence that the majority of Christians are not bred into their religion but rather come to their faith later in their life through spiritual understanding.

The fact is, the majority of religious belief stems from social stigma. Richard Dawkins speaks on the subject of Inherited Religion...

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I wonder how many Pastors "learn things" in their lectures...

It's a Geographical/cultural probablity.

At what age did you first identify yourself as a Christian? 3, 4, 5? Or did you wait until after you had finished all your life's schooling and spiritual learnings before coming to such a profound decision? Or have you simply been justifying these beliefs in your life for years on end now? You will find it much harder when you start rooting your beliefs in logic, I promise.

And your "joke" was an Appeal to Ridicule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

But, yes, I would have eventually become an anti-theist in India aswell... after living through the charade of being Hindu during my childhood, much the same way I was once a good Christian Boy... before I started applying my logic and knowledge of this world to my religious beliefs aswell.

To control the masses.

Could you show me some evidence that doesn't allude to the Bible? After clicking your first 4-5 links I realized they were the same propaganda you use in the thread... why should I argue them when I can just argue you? We're here on the front-line of the grassroots, let us debate and compare our own reason, not the reason of others.

I never "admitted" that. I know exactly what the quote means. So do you. We've both got basic English comprehension skills.

Ad Hominem.

For the third and final time, I do not worship Zeitgeist The Movie... and I damn sure don't base my "thought process" on it. That is the new most rediculous thing you have ever said. I really am trying to convice you... as you are the only person I have never met that thinks I worship this or any movie. It is only through your religious predisposition that you can entertain the idea that I could possibly "worship" a movie and then you take it even a step farther in actually accusing me of performing an act that I most adamently denounce. You obviously don't even try to apply reason to anything you blurt out.

Skepticism based on lack of evidence... of course.

An Appeal to Authority.

That's a highly philisophical assertion, in my opinion... probably not something to be applied literally when it comes to whether or not people existed.

 

for the record, the Robert guy is the person who posted this text. like i said before, i could care less if that letter is genuine or not, as it doesnt make a difference anyways. though, i wouldnt be surprised if Jesus really was a good looking man. afterall, he is God's Son.

i also want to ask that out of the hundreds of thousands of notorious human figures throughout human history, why is there so much dispute over the existence of Jesus?

is it some sort of subconscious cop-out? seems quite convenient to believe the Son of God never even existed at all... though, this is of course my own way of rationalizing the situation.

also, myself and many others on this forum would be glad to give our testimony that Jesus did in fact exist and he is in fact who he said he was. WE are the proof that Jesus existed.

 

think about this statement and how it relates to my argument.

 

I dont think he ever does.