• SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    4 months ago

    AFAIK most historians/scholars agree that Jesus was a real person (even if a lot of the Bible’s claims about what he did are not true). But I’m not a historian. What are you basing your opinion on?

    • nyctre@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Exactly this. The person did exist. There’s proof of that. It wasn’t the son of god and didn’t perform miracles, but he was real nonetheless.

      • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Important notion that Jesus never claimed to be the son of god and that entire line of thinking was established some four hundred years after.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

        So we have to differentiate between what is the actual Gospel and life of Jesus and what the more creative parts of the churches invented on top of it over time.

        • nyctre@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. John 8:58

          Which is from one of the original 4 gospels. Apparently there’s evidence of it being written as early as 70AD. There’s a couple other quotes I found in a link some other person linked in this thread but this one seems most direct.

          • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            I think this is a terminological confusion. The original Gospel as in the life and teaching of Jesus, that got lost as it wasn’t documented in his lifetime.

            The four gospels that made the choice are as you said collections written later. And there were many more Gospels that the early church decided not to put into the bible. On top of that there is the issue how those gospels got translated multiple times and each translation inadvertently adds a layer of interpretation.

            • nyctre@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Ah, okay. But then we can’t really make a claim either way, can we? We don’t really know who he was or who he claimed to be.

            • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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              4 months ago

              Alright but he quoted a gospel from 70AD, and the idea that in the “true gospel” he wasn’t the son of god or never claimed to be is a concept present in opposing religions like Islam first written down 500 years later, which famously mistranslated Marry with “she flowed like a river” instead of “she was chaste” when the region was constantly caught between Phoenician based alphabets like Greek, Hebrew, multiple Arabics, and much later on Cyrillic.

              The Roman’s artistic licenses aside, their accounts of history are the most reliable source on all of this.

              • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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                4 months ago

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

                Jesus as literal son of god was only established some 400 years later. And when later the records of the gospel got translated through multiple languages it seems very plausible to me, that under the assumption that Jesus should be the literal son of god, this sentence is supposed to be worded to confirm that. It is as easy as forgetting a half sentence like “HE said” or turn a third person into a first person form. Or to loose the context that he was announced already before Ibrahim etc.

        • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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          4 months ago

          Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that there was (most likely) an actual historical person who is the origin of these stories, i.e. Jesus. He’s probably not really as fantastical as the Bible would have you believe, but he did exist, as opposed to being just an entirely fictional character.