I thought this was a thread about the WWE wrestler Roman Reigns. His record-keeping regarding crucifixions is notoriously sloppy.

OR DID THEY??? Where is the Records? Where is the proof? Where is Jesus?

I lean towards the view that the idea of "Jesus" is a compilation of a bunch of different mythologies that had been popular in the region at the time. I don't think there are any good reasons for believing a real person was involved.

Why?
1 - No records of birth or death of such a person. There is no tomb. To those who say these weren't kept, that's nonsense, we have plenty of such records from Greco-Roman Egypt for example.
2 - Quite a large number of Roman and Jewish historians and other literary figures alive at the time of Jesus or shortly thereafter do not mention him, despite large numbers of writings. Nor do they mention his supposed disciples.
3 - The two non-Christian writings which are supposed references to Jesus are forgeries. First there is Joseph, who in a handful of words manages to expound in detail on all the major points of the Jesus story very conveniently. Yet other Christian writers familiar with Josephus and who quote Jesus - like Origen, for example, make no reference to this strange passage. The other well known forgery is Tacitus. Tacitus makes reference to Christians which is not a term that was in use at the time of his writing. Furthermore no Christian writer mentions this Tacitus passage until centuries later.
4 - Christian beliefs are largely copied from other regional mythologies, mainly Egyptian, Jewish and Greek. Jesus's resurrection for sins is a direct rip off of Osiris. The afterlife being a period where people are judged for their sins is also Egyptian. Baptism is also a rip off of the Isis cult. Jews had a pre-Christian belief in a dying messiah, which is evident from 89:38-52 and other Jewish sources like the Dead Sea scrolls. The interrogation by Pontius Pilate is a rip off of a Euripedes play about Dionysus.
5 - The 'gospels' cannot be regarded as independent sources because three of them (the synoptics) are copied from each other. The 4th, John, is replete with mythological embellishments and was written long after the death of Christ. As has already been mentioned, many of Paul's letters are considered to be fake and those that aren't considered fake are at least, highly suspicious. Furthermore "Paul" never claimed to have met Jesus and certainly wasn't on good terms with the so-called apostles.

*Psalms 89:38-52

Jesus was a socialist, no question

The Jesus described in gospels upheld slavery and class inequality more generally, even chastising his "disciples" for wanting to use money spent on rubbing down Jesus with expensive oils to feed the poor.

All these progressive types trying to make Jesus a socialist miss out on a key point, that the Roman state and its aristocracy would have never adopted this religion if it had been remotely subversive to the social standing of the powerful.

Clark is a scrub.

@Putin: Because messages and philisophies can never be distorted to suit one's own purposes and not those of the founder.

Jesus existed. A denial of that is disregarding the facts

"God is an invention of Man. So the nature of God is only a shallow mystery. The deep mystery is the nature of Man."
-Nanrei Kabori

My point is, let's stop taking Jesus so seriously, and think about what led us to create the myth instead. That's much more interesting.

First off, ishirkmywork, do you believe in God or are you stating that humans created the 'myth' of there being a God, or are you just refuting that Jesus existed?

well i think my previous comment states that god is an invention of man.....so i believe whether or not Jesus existed as a person is borderline irrelevant. if he did exist, he wasn't god.

@general diragarding of which facts exactly? the fact that your father told you he existed? the fact that you have a book that tales a fantastic story about that?

or maybe the fact that wikipedia states 'there's a consensus among scholars that most probably Jesus existed'?

Why is Buddha any less of a savior?

ishirkmywork. The first cause argument, which I'm sure that you are aware of, proves that God exists. However you believe that we came to exists, whether it was the big bang, or whatever other theory, there had to have been something to put it in motion. This does not prove why Jesus is the savior, however.

I feel that these are two different arguments all together.

principians. I would like to point to Tactus, a hitstorian in the Roman Empire who despised Jesus. Tacitus writes that Christians derived their name from a historical person called Christus (from the Latin), or Christ. He is said to have "suffered the extreme penalty," obviously alluding to the Roman method of execution known as crucifixion. This is said to have occurred during the reign of Tiberius and by the sentence of Pontius Pilatus. This confirms much of what the Gospels tell us about the death of Jesus. All of this is written by Tacitus, one of the most accurate historians from that time period and someone who hated Christianity with a passion. If you acknowledge that Jesus existed, then he was either a crazy person or God. He was not just a prophet because he claimed to be God and performed miracles by the power of God. No prophet would've ever referred to himself as one with the father. Buddha is no savior because if Buddha never existed, the Buddhist religion would not be affected at all, something acknowledged by Buddhists. Of Jesus never existed, then Christianity falls to pieces

It pretty much does in both practice and in the malcontent of its sheepish self righteous following that defines heaven as being exclusive as opposed to inclusive.
Christianity affords to tolerance or room for Polythiestic Ancient Faiths of India for example.

@ GeneralPutin: "The first cause argument, which I'm sure that you are aware of, proves that God exists. However you believe that we came to exists, whether it was the big bang, or whatever other theory, there had to have been something to put it in motion."

That being the case, what put God in motion?

If nothing can exist without being created by something or someone else, then how can God exist without being created by something or someone else?

i have to hand it to you General Putin, that was perhaps the most amazing display of nonsense reasoning I have ever encountered. thanks for the chuckle. i always enjoy the argument that because science can't quite explain something yet, therefore god. science has been pushing god further and further into the distance since way back when we thought the sun was hiding at night, and hasn't stopped yet.

Tacitus? Let me share this quote:

"When Tacitus wrote about Jesus there already was a christian community in Rome. That's likely where he got his information from. These christians must already have known some version of the Gospels - remember the hypothesis of the Q-document? So Tacitus is not independent until proven otherwise. Same for Plinius."

Regarding Josephus or the multiple biblical accounts, you migh want to see my answer to spyman above.

"If you acknowledge that Jesus existed, then he was either a crazy person or God."

why so?

@"first cause" - read the book 'a universe from nothing' on how the universe may spontaneously create itself.

Learn some quantim physics you will find the spontaneously created 'virtual photons' exist throughout the vacumn. Where-ever there is nothing, it is not nothing. Really fascinating stuff, especially when you realise the QM claims that there is no cause for these energy variations.

There are two possoble solutions, either the Universe created itself, or the Universe has existed forever; and the evidence seems to point towards creation.

(Of course in my Pantheist view, the Universe is synonymous with God, so no real problems with first cause)

princip -- that argument that christians use (cribbed from cs lewis) pretends that everything written about jesus is a fact. it is a circularly reasoned argument, since they use the bible as proof of what jesus said and did (and proof that he existed entirely as recorded.)

Religion made more sense when it had a more naturalistic set of tenants. Now you inject Jesus and man being God and Man simultaneously it becomes too contrived and has stank of corruption and agenda for 2000 years.
I think Hinduism is still worshipping the same legit gods for nearly double that time. We could talk about the bhagavad gita as being more inspiring and less politically motivated of a faith based text.

Anyone who is steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and can equally tolerate the onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for liberation.
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, The Bhagavad Gita

"The first cause argument, which I'm sure that you are aware of, proves that God exists."

No, it doesn't. It proves that "everything has a cause" and "there was a beginning" are logically incompatible. God is no more logical a solution to the incompatibility than a causeless beginning, or an infinite chain of causation, or anything else. The step of the first cause argument that purports to prove God is purely special pleading.

"If you acknowledge that Jesus existed, then he was either a crazy person or God."

Recycling our tired C.S. Lewis talking points, are we? Just because Jesus existed doesn't mean we have to believe he said everything attributed to him in the New Testament. It doesn't mean we have to believe *he* believed everything he said. It doesn't mean we have to believe *his followers' recordings and interpretations* of everything he said. It doesn't mean we have to believe Jesus was uniformly insane or uniformly genuine.

Please don't rely on religious 'gotcha' apologia as a substitute for grappling with faith yourself. It's a cheap sort of religion that falls apart upon honest examination.

Btw, there are curious theories about the politheistic nature of original jewish religion:

Yahveh would have a wife Asserah, and would be son of the supreme god El,
Noah would be a wine god like Baccus,
and the patriarch Enoch, who lived 365 years an then 'went to the sky' was a sun divinity

lethologica for the win --

"Because messages and philisophies can never be distorted to suit one's own purposes and not those of the founder."

Of course. But it is highly suspect that this religion in its "true" form was some kind of radical egalitarian ethos when instead of Christian inspired Taiping rebellion type movements we instead have the ruling class of the most powerful Mediterranean state converting to it.

If it's simply a matter of message distortion then Christianity did a terrible job of explaining itself.