This is a semantic argument. I say that Jesus is not a Christian, because Christians are those who follow Christ.
I think that Jesus is a Jewish reformist.
Never, he is a fictional figure and the world would be so much better if people start seeing religions for what they are
There’s a good chance he existed. The religious stuff you can say what you want but can’t confidently say he didn’t exsists.
If a historical person existed named “Jesus” who was also a vocal proponent of Jewish reform, existed that does not make the “Jesus” in the bible a real person. These two people would be mutually exclusive. Real people can’t preform magic. Real people are not born to virgins. Real people cannot be resurrected from the dead after days. There is no person who ever existed who could walk on water and turn water to wine. That “Jesus” is fiction through and through. The Bible is a story book. A book of fables. At best it’s historical fiction. Christian Jesus is a fantasy.
So what you’re saying is if Bob tells me (your name) has a flying tiger, and I later find out you don’t have a flying tiger… you no longer exists?
Hate religion all you want but don’t shit on history. In all likelihood there was a Jesus the story is based off of. Who was probably real. We have lots of non religious documents that mention him. The Quran mentions him. He probably existed as a person.
Like you exist as a person even though you don’t have a flying tiger.
Militant atheists are just as problematic as religious zealots.
Both annoying, pushy, and insisting you’re way is the only way. Everyone else is damned.
It’s the same playbook lol.
Militant atheists are just as problematic as religious zealots.
Lol
Trying to be the enlightened centrist and saying this. Show me the genocides being committed currently in the name of atheism.
I dont particularly care, I have religious friends but come on.
Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Enver Hoxha
Pick up a book every once I a while.
Religion isn’t the root of all evil lol. People have been killed in the name of aithism, capitalism, science, expansion, gold, resources and yes sometimes religion. It’s not like religion is the big thing we go to war over.
We are at war with Iran right now and religion has nothing to do with it at all.
So i don’t really want to read for this subject but i like conversation. Not trying to facetious.
Did Stalin, Zedong, etc really kill because of atheistic principles? Or more politically?
Dude! You should’ve said that from the beginning! I’m a reasonable person too who just likes to talk!
Stalin killed arguabley for aithiesm. He definitely killed people for thier beliefs….
But I understand your question “did they kill for aithiesm (why can’t I spell that lol)”
No…. But if you acknowledge nopolean of France wasn’t killing people FOR aithiesm. You also have to admit no one was fighting the crusades to actually protect the holly land.
He’ll Donald trump and his followers say he was appointed by Jesus and practically worship him. Does that make the Iran conflict a holy war?
No religion doesn’t have anything to due with it.
I’ve been drinking so go easy and assume I meant things in good faith
So what you’re saying is if Bob tells me (your name) has a flying tiger, and I later find out you don’t have a flying tiger… you no longer exists?
They did not say someone named Jesus did not exist.
There’s a difference between believing “Joe who had a tiger and a bear and an elephant”, and assuming that there might have been 3 different Joe’s, one with a tiger, one with a bear and one with an elephant, each of them in a different period. Saying “Joe with 3 animals did not exist” does not imply that those Joe’s did not exist.
I’m not a historian but what I’ve heard (must have been on Alex O’Connor’s podcast) is that even some of the possible historical Jesuses (or “Jesusi” :D) had things going on that were not compatible with what the biblical Jesus was all about. (Such as being cult leader proclaiming that world will end in few years.)
He said Jesus is a fictional figure. He probably existed and yes there were more than one person with similar but that doesn’t change my argument.
If you say “this is Bob and he has a tiger” and I find out he does not have a tiger… he still exists as a person.
But you say “the stories about Bob don’t line up with any specific Bob”
Okay, that doesn’t stop Bob from being just because someone got a story wrong.
now you are just talking about some different guy named bob.
mario is based on a person, but mario is a fictional character
Mario is based on a plumber. Do plumbers exist?
So you say non religious stuff mention him then mention the Quran. Yep good argument there.
You’ll notice the Quran was said separately from the other stuff. I separated the two because it’s a religious book but not the Bible.
I can fairly confidently say he didn’t exist because half of his back story is stolen from older stories still. At best there was a guy (not named jesus, that is for sure) who started a cult and got some followers and got a lot of the older lore mixed in. Either he did this himself, or (more probably) writers later mixed in things to create “JFC”
Oh so believe he converted water to wine was born from a virgin mother and died and reerected three days later.
No I’m saying don’t ignore history. I’m not pushing any religion. Just saying the man probably existed .
probably existed
Or probably not, as most of his backstory is taken from older stories
A lot of stories about dinosaurs. We are confused about exactly how their feathers would look.
We know they existed tho.
It’s not probably not. It’s probably so. It’s just an argument about what exactly happened.
Do we know how the pyramids were built? No. But we know it wasn’t aliens.
There is confusion but not like people think.
Much like the pyramids we can assume Jesus existed. What exactly happened to which Jesus… that’s confusing but no one is denying there was a man. The pyramids are fact.
Oh god, another one of those…
Dinosaurs existed, so Jeebus must have existed too!
Much like the pyramids we can assume the easter bunny existed and continues to exist today.
NO WE CANNOT!
But we can see the eggs! The eggs, man!
…
Seriously, this is how you sound. You are defending that santa claus really exists because pyramids exist too.
One of those? Is there a lot of people who say dinosaurs existed so Jesus must exist? That would be a very strange argument for anyone to make.
Nice straw man argument. Have you named your straw man yet? I’ll call him Dylon . Right bring the Easter bunny in. Do you enjoy wrestling with the straw man argument you made up? Be careful its tick season lol
I’d say jesus never was christian. His followers were a jewish sect. In 70 CE with the temple of jerusalem destroyed it evolved into gnostic christians, paulician christians and jewish christians.
gnostic faith has quite interesting ideas, it kind of makes a lot of sense too imo. its also a bit concerning about some things. I also heard it would have been the mainline christianity at some point but then something happened and it was branded heresy and we got the current one instead.
Have a look into cather and bogomilists. The “kristijani” and waldenser are also very interesting with their theologie!
those are indeed quite interesting. i’m also not impressed with the church for branding them heretics. the religious reasons provided seem more like excuses to cover secular reasons they wanted to silence these.
some of these seem quite apt for modern day too, as a resistance to how things are.
and ironically one could likely draw more people in by openly declaring yourself as a heretic if you wanted to revive these 😆
I don’t think he “converted” like that.
You know how the Queen of England never had a drivers license or passport because she’s the one who issues them and it would be silly to give yourself your own passport.
Jesus didn’t convert to Christianity . He was Christianity. It formed around him he didn’t convert.
He never converted to Christianity, he started a religious movement that eventually evolved and, long after his death, came to be named Christianity
That’s kind of like asking ‘when did Rogue become a rogue-like?’
He wasn’t. His death was the birth of it around 30-33CE. They were still considered of Jews of Judea but followed the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and that’s how it’s referenced in the bible until later revisions.
It was a sect of Judaism until re-written as Christianity.
Once he believed he was the son of god, I guess.
He is his best fan.
Why the eagles didn’t just take the ring to mordor?
answers we will never know because the author is dead
when did jesus become a christian?
in a world where dictionary meanings are peak: didn’t happen if you consider Jesus as “christ”
a “christ” cannot be a “christ-like”.
however, a lot of people have their own meaning of “christian” and could be a point of confusion. e.g., Paula White’s “christian” is an oldie-timey version of customs when Jesus wasn’t even born yet.
wait. if jesus is a christian is god a jew?
Actually yes, the Old Testament is basically the Torah or “the Jew book”.
Esoterica channel on YouTube has a merkavah series you may find helpful. It’s about 10 episodes so I don’t recall exactly which addresses it, though.
He never existed. He is a figment of a religious groups imagination. He is a fictitious character based on ideas of what a religion needs as a figurehead.
That’s incorrect. Virtually all scholars agree that Jesus was a real historical figure, based on many non-religious sources.
Of course most of the stories about him are made up, but the scientific consensus is that he existed.
Could also be an amalgamation of multiple people of a particular movement or philosophy. This happens a lot when you adapt a book to a movie, for example and you end up with characters that are a combination of characters from the original text.
based on many
Yeah I dunno about “many”
Definitely enough for a whole separate Wikipedia page to list them all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
From that article:
The non-Christian sources that are used to study and establish the historicity of Jesus are Josephus (a Jewish historian and commander in Galilee) and Tacitus (a Roman historian and Senator).
So two. Not “many”.
That’s what the article calls “key sources”. There are many more below (Mara bar Serapion, Suetonius, The Talmud, and more under “minor sources”).
Not that many independent sources actually. The best evidence for me is that if he didn’t exist then why make up the ridiculous Roman census Nazareth story?
There are so many sources that there is more evidence for his existence than for any other person living at the time.
This article mentions at least 14 independent sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
You are of course free to dismiss all of the sources and have your own opinion, that’s perfectly fine, but do acknowledge that you would be going against established scientific consensus.
That evidence seems sufficient. Not sure why you would assume I would dismiss good evidence. I guess that is common, but I am strictly rational as far as I know.
He did. That is a fact that this person existed. If all that really happened like writen in the bible, what he did eeh who knows. Roman scribes wrote of him for example.
It is suprising what all from the bible is actually true. Especially old testament. ( please do correct me on this im not that deep in the thora and judeism) the old testament is basicly the thora and the thora is among other things the history of the tribes of isreal.
The 10 plagues are proven, that there was a “tower of bable”, Sodom and Gomorra, the city, from what i know are also proven to have existed.
But i’d gladly would like to hear, why you think Iesus of nazared is supposed to be fiction? The apostals all existed and their letters are one prove for that. that romans persuated christians is a known fact. Plus what would’ve been the goal to make up such a figure, like jesus? To create even more unrest in the roman empire? The jews were tolerated by romans. Early christianity was not an organized centralized power structure that it grew to become with the byzantium empire and then, after the big schism, the papacy.
“The 10 plagues are proven, that there was a “tower of bable”, Sodom and Gomorra, the city, from what i know are also proven to have existed.”
None of those are proven. Egyptians kept good records and there are no records of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and no records of the plagues or their escape. Furthermore, the Bible says the hebrews had 600,000 men in their army, which means easily 2-3 million people in all. This is roughly the same as the population of Egypt at the time.
I’ve never heard anyone claim there’s any evidence for the Tower of Babel so I can’t comment on that, but people claiming Sodom and Gammorah existed point to naturally occurring Sulfer deposits as proof.
“But i’d gladly would like to hear, why you think Iesus of nazared is supposed to be fiction?”
Mythicism, the idea that Jesus wasn’t a real person, is not new but has risen in popularity on recent years because of historian Richard Carrier. There actually isn’t much real evidence that Jesus existed but there is a little. Carrier basically ignores or misinterprets this evidence and isn’t well regarded in scholarly circles. His most recent work failed peer review, which he attributes to a conspiracy against him.
“The apostals all existed and their letters are one prove for that.”
We don’t have a single thing that we know were written by the apostiles. They were most likely illiterate anyway. The Bible books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written anonymously. Hundreds of years later, the church put names on them.
At the moment of conception when the roman soldier raped her I guess.
He didn’t. Up until the time of Paul (decades after the Jdog’s death), Christianity was a Jewish sect seeking to become mainstream Judaism. It was only then that early Christians shed their Jewish identity.
That’s in the story, but in the History, Christianity arose from Greece and Rome, not Judea. It was never a Semitic religion. Instead borrowing elements of that combined with Paganism.
Either way, a Historic Jesus would have died a Jew. The mythological Jesus may do whatever and I’m aware of Christians who’ll deny he was ever a Jew.
Christianity is not combined with paganism at all
Oh yes it was. Christmas is where it is because of winter solstice. Or do you believe Jesus was born then. It was just a day chosen to celebrate his birthday not the actual day. Then the whole Christmas tree and the list goes on. It is much easier to get people to convert when you can go see we are similar.
The Winter Solstice is on the 21st of December. Christmas is on the 25th of December (actually the 6th of January, if you use the old calendar.)
Christmas trees aren’t pagan, they are German and Jesus’ birth is celebrated 9 months after His conception, which was placed on the 25th of March to roughly line up with His death, as it was believed that Holy men died on the anniversary of their conception.
https://historyforatheists.com/2024/12/pagan-christmas-again/
We don’t know for certain that it wasn’t the actual day. It very well could have been.
Explain Christmas Trees then
Christmas trees are a German tradition. Originally they were “Paradise trees” and were representing the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden in Mystery plays. Typically there are readings around Christmas surrounding the Garden of Eden due to depicting The Fall and why Christ had to come. An evergreen tree was picked, likelt due to practicalities with the fact it was winter, but it also helped that they represented eternal life. They were decorated with fruits and later candles to represent the Light of Christ. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, was German, and he brought the tradition to the UK.
It’s a pagan celebration co opted by the church to expand the influence of Christianity.
December 25th is not even the correct day to celebrate the birth of Christ. That’s other pagan holidays being co opted to fuel conversion of “Savages”.
Yule is not a Christian celebration yet it has been supplanted by Christianity.
Some reading on the practice.
The article you provided is written by a creative writer for an interesting website - it doesn’t even make a scholarly backed claim that the Christmas tree is pagan. In fact, it backs up what I was saying:
The Origin Of The Christmas Tree In Europe Although many countries have declared themselves the home of the Christmas tree, historians have said it’s likely that the real first tree was erected in 16th-century Alsace, in modern-day France. At the time, however, Alsace was a part of German territory, and so the tradition technically belongs to the Germans. Historical records show that a Christmas tree was indeed put up in the Strasbourg Cathedral in 1539, and the tradition quickly became popular throughout the region.
So sure, it is possible that pagans decorated their house with trees common in northern europe during their winter festivals, and then Christians decided to erect a single winter tree in their house later on. It doesn’t mean they’re related. Many religions incorporate fire into practices and burning things without actually being linked to each other.
Yule, a scandinavian festival, used to be celebrated later in winter, typically December to February. They then changed the date to fit in with Christianity, not the other way around. In addition, we have earlier records for Christmas than we do for Yule.
Here’s some better sourced reading on the topic:
https://historyforatheists.com/2024/12/pagan-christmas-again/#Yule
Bro. Why else would Jesus be claimed to be a demigod. Jews never believed that God and humans mix. That’s standard Greek half god paganism.
Jesus never claimed to be a demigod, and is not a demigod. Jesus is and claimed to be God incarnate in Human Form. There are several instances in the Torah and Old Testament where God appears in human form.
A greek style demi god is when a god causes a human woman to give birth. Is that not the case here?
A demigod is half human and half god. This isn’t the case for Jesus. Jesus is fully human and fully God. The Virgin Birth was also prophecied in Hebrew
Both Christmas and Easter were appropriated pagan holidays.
No no, it’s just a coincidence that Christians celebrate the birth of the Son at the winter solstice, and the resurrection of the Son at the spring equinox. You can tell they’re not pagan festivals by all the mistletoe, Yule logs, horny bunnys and eggs.
Reserection is tied to passover, which in turn is tied to the spring equinox. Bunnies and many of the other things done then have pagan roots, but the date has a real meaning anyway.
They could have chosen any day but choose dates which the pagens had celebrations. And funny how the resurrection moves every year.
it uses the Hebrew calendar which is completely different from modern systems. It is always exactly the same day every year. That Catholics and orthodox sometimes use different days is historically correct usage of the Hebrew calendar. First full moon after the spring equinox is an easy simplification (and likely what the ancients were trying for desbite not having modern astronomy) - but it isn’t correct.
This is factually untrue.
It’s absolutely, unequivocally not.
Ēostre ([ˈeːostre])[1][2][3] is an Anglo-Saxon goddess mentioned by Bede in his 8th century work The Reckoning of Time. He wrote that pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in her honour during the month named after her: Ēosturmōnaþ (April), and that this became the English name for the Paschal season: Easter.
Whatever fictional character you ascribe it to, the fact is that the modern Christian festival of Easter partly replaced, and is named after, an earlier pagan festival.
None of this makes it Pagan. That’s like saying the 4th of July originates in Julius Caesar. Might as well have just stopped at Christians having “Sunday Services”. Go after Muslims too having “Friday Prayers”. The Pagans had a celebration in Spring - so what? If China gets Christianised, are you going to claim that Easter actually had it’s origins in the Qingming festival because it has similar dates? Sure, for some former-pagans, their old feast days would have been replaced with Christian ones. Same way how Muslims who convert to Christianity would replace their fasting season from Ramadan to that of Lent and Eid with Easter. Doesn’t mean Lent and Easter would have Islamic origins either.
If China gets Christianised, are you going to claim that Easter actually had it’s origins in the Qingming festival
If the entire Christian world then adopts elements of the Qingming festival and changes the name of it’s spring solstice festival to “Qingming”, then yes, of course.
Except that never happened with pagan festivals either, apart from Easter taking the name of the month that was named after a pagan deity.
It’s not.
Look up the history of Christmas and Saturnalia. There is no mention of when Jesus was born in biblical text. December 25th is completely random. What’s not random: December 25th is the winter solstice according to the Roman calendar.
There are more examples of traditions that overlap with Pagan celebrations and don’t really have a connection to Christianity.
The 25th of December is not completely random.
The reason lies within Jewish superstition - that a prophet/holy man died on the anniversary of their conception. Someone, likely a century later, reckoned that Jesus died on the 25th of March (we reckon now that it was actually the 3rd of April) so this became the Feast of the Annunciation (conception). So a cycle was created where the day of the death happened on the same as the conception. Another factor is this was also traditionally believed to be the date of the world’s creation.
In fact, in the UK it was this date that was used to demarcate new years. So traditionally many people still commence and terminate land contracts on “Lady day” (the 25th of March) and the tax year begins on the 6th of April (today) which is the 25th of March on the Julian Calendar.
So simply add 9 months - you have the 25th of December.
Saturnalia ended before Christmas. The only “evidence” we have of Christmas potentially being a spin on Sol Invictus is from the Chronography of 354 which states that the 25th of December is both the date of Christmas and Sol Invictus… So it’s also likely that Sol Invictus was actually copying Christmas, not the other way around. In fact, more likely, as that is over one hundred years after Sextus Julius Africanus recorded the 25th of March as the date of Jesus’ conception.
Yep the completely made up story was not made up to coincide with the pagan holidays. Yep got it You know Jesus wasn’t even considered the son of god till long after he was gone.
The earliest writing about Jesus (1 Thessalonians) refers to Jesus as God’s son and it was only written 20 years after Jesus was crucified. That’s not “long after” in terms of ancient writings, legends typically take longer than living memory to develop.
Also Christianity was persecuted by pagans and was very anti pagan. If the early Christians, presuming some financial motivation, wanted to create a cult and had no issue pandering to Paganism, why not make it polytheistic? Why not worship the emperor of Rome? To compare your argument to swiss cheese would be too charitable.
They most certainly did: What do you think Easter is? Why do you think Christmas is in December when Jesus was not born during the winter? Many native pagan holidays were basically transformed into the modern Christian holidays you know today. They did this to help convert pagans. In Catholicism, the saints were originally used as a sort of proxy for the old pantheons too.
Easter in Greek and Latin (the language of the first Christians) is Pascha. It’s around the same time as the Passover. That’s why it changes every year due to the lunisolar calendar. It’s just using the old Jewish calendar. The earliest record of Easter being celebrated is from the time when pagans were the ones persecuting Christians.
We don’t know for certain that Jesus wasn’t born in December.
The reason lies within Jewish superstition - that a prophet/holy man died on the anniversary of their conception. Someone, likely a century later, reckoned that Jesus died on the 25th of March (we reckon now that it was actually the 3rd of April) so this became the Feast of the Annunciation (conception). So a cycle was created where the day of the death happened on the same as the conception. Another factor is this was also traditionally believed to be the date of the world’s creation.
In fact, in the UK it was this date that was used to demarcate new years. So traditionally many people still commence and terminate land contracts on “Lady day” (the 25th of March) and the tax year begins on the 6th of April (today) which is the 25th of March on the Julian Calendar.
So simply add 9 months - you have the 25th of December.
As for the saints - most saints commenorated in Christianity are generally Biblical figures or early Christians such as St Patrick or St Nicholas
You can try to retcon it all you want. All this stuff existed way before the Christians came along and appropriated it.
What stuff? There’s no evidence of Sol Invictus existing before Christianity. The earliest record of the Ostara cult (which was only really an English thing) was 600 years after Christians were recorded celebrating Pascha(Easter) in Greece.
So Sunday is going to be the holy day, and December 25th is going to be a festival, are you sure that there wasn’t any plagiarism going on? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus
I think plagiarism was happening. Because the earliest record of the belief of Jesus’ conception being on the 25th of March from Sextus Julius Africanus predates the Chronography of 354 which is the earliest date of Sol Invictus being on the 25th of December, which interestingly enough also records this being Jesus’ date of birth. If I had to accuse anyone of plagiarism, it would have to be the Pagans.
In addition, Sunday being celebrated as a Christian Holy Day is recorded in the writings of St Luke which also predates Sol Invictus by a few centuries.
Ever heard of Baal or Osiris?
Don’t see how either have anything to do with Jesus
Now you have something to research
Okay. Found this.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/
Osiris is mentioned once in passing. Baal twice for a moment. Not what I was referencing but keep at it
Which sects? Some of them are very combined. Some of them are not. The puritans refused to celebrate Christmas because of the paganism influences.
There aren’t any pagan influences on Christmas, however it was a common myth floating about
Then why is it in December, when Jesus wasn’t born?
We don’t know for certain that Jesus wasn’t born in December.
The reason lies within Jewish superstition - that a prophet/holy man died on the anniversary of their conception. Someone, likely a century later, reckoned that Jesus died on the 25th of March (we reckon now that it was actually the 3rd of April) so this became the Feast of the Annunciation (conception). So a cycle was created where the day of the death happened on the same as the conception. Another factor is this was also traditionally believed to be the date of the world’s creation.
In fact, in the UK it was this date that was used to demarcate new years. So traditionally many people still commence and terminate land contracts on “Lady day” (the 25th of March) and the tax year begins on the 6th of April (today) which is the 25th of March on the Julian Calendar.
So simply add 9 months - you have the 25th of December.
If you’re ignorant, it’s trivial to research this issue. Google “pagan origins of easter” and find a source you like. There will be shit tons of options.
If you’re being willfully ignorant, you deserve nothing but ridicule.
I have researched this issue. “The pagan origins of Easter” is a common myth (often there are several variants of this myth) which has been debunked.
So. Willfully ignorant it is.
No, he’s correct. Jesus directly referenced what we know as Easter traditions in the Bible:
“While they were eating, Jesus took a box of Peeps, and when he had given thanks, he broke them apart and gave them to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; they’re honestly not that bad.”
No, it’s you lot with the trendy new-atheist dogma of “Christianity actually just copied xyz” which has been thoroughly debunked by scholars. It’s just a myth that secular society repeats without questioning at this point. I literally posted a link to an article debunking it. That’s not wilful ignorance. I used to believe that these holidays were pagan too, until I actually researched it.
