Did Jesus Exist?

Looking at the history of humanity, there are many people who could be considered important and who have impacted the world to varying degrees, but I believe that very few people can compare to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, at least in retrospect and assuming that he

exist

ed must Being considered one of the most famous people who ever lived and wants to have had a huge impact on the world and its culture and history, at least symbolically, he is a central figure of some of the world's largest and most influential religions. including, of course, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í faith, but Jesus can also be a rather elusive figure and different people often tend to have very different ideas and views about who he was, if he was one, and what it represented, is a much debated topic. among historians today too and of course there are disagreements here too, but of course it is a very interesting topic and will be the main topic of our discussion in this video who was

jesus

of nazareth i like

jesus

according to the way he is described in the New Testament Gospels seems like a pretty good guy, but that's precisely the problem, isn't how accurate the Gospels and New Testament are in describing the real life or teachings of Jesus?

Of course, it serves as a basis for the perception of mainstream Christianity. and understanding of who Jesus was, but this is by no means the only perspective. The figure of Jesus is one that, despite the great importance of him to so many people, there is great disagreement and many different peoples have very different ideas and opinions about who this man is. actually was and what it meant to mainstream christianity, jesus is the embodiment of the word of god, the son in the holy trinity and therefore identical with god himself for bahá'í muslims and certain minority groups of Christians, he is a great prophet, although human, who brought revelation from God similar to other prophets such as Muhammad or Moses for some Hindus Jesus is sometimes seen as an avatar of the god Vishnu for others Jesus is a myth that never really

exist

ed, but it was the creation of early Christian writers entirely in new age circles.

Often seen as a great enlightened being who taught about the Christ consciousness, even today there are theories that Jesus was actually a psychedelic mushroom or rather that the figure of Jesus is a kind of metaphor representing a mushroom that provided enlightenment, but outside of this myriad of different perspectives, how can we know which is the most accurate? Well, to put it simply, we can't, but it's also much more complex than that, of course, historians and academics have been trying for a long time to figure out who the historical person of Jesus actually was, but as I said, There is also a lot of disagreement and debate among scholars and academics on this topic, but what I am going to do with this video is, through academic academic historical sources, explore what we can really know about one of the most influential figures in history. and we will do so by answering two main questions: first we will ask if Jesus really existed and how we can know if he really existed and then secondly, if he existed, who he was, what he taught and how.

Did he see himself well? So before starting any discussion on this topic, we should discuss the methodology and how scholars and historians view the criterion of historical sources. What scholars look for when retelling history is to find sources or material that are as reliable as possible and that there are usually different levels of reliability. The best kind of evidence for a historical person like this is, of course, direct material evidence from the person themselves. Things like a house, objects that the person owned or literally remain as books written directly by the person, if there are none.

If this exists we have to rely on secondary sources such as stories about the person told by other eyewitness accounts and the more material the better of course and the closer to the actual event in time the better contemporary sources that come from. directly from the period of a person's life, so a person's life is of course the most reliable, but if this is not possible, then we want the sources to be as close as possible in time, this means than, for example, when it comes to the life of Jesus from a purely academic point of view.

For perspective, the Bible is a more reliable source than the Quran, since the latter appeared 600 years after Jesus lived and the New Testament only a few decades. Ideally the sources we employ should also be unbiased and neutral, but of course in most cases this is more or less a Lost Cause in some respects, this means that if we have mentions of a person like Jesus by People who are not Christians, this is often considered more reliable than the Christian sources themselves for obvious reasons and with all this in mind, what do we have in terms of Evidence or sources for the life of Jesus, unfortunately there is not much, actually In terms of material evidence, we basically have nothing.

There are no archaeological remains or findings that can prove the existence of Jesus. There have been some claims in recent years that they may have existed. I found the house of Jesus, the house where he grew up in Nazareth, but this is not at all certain, so we cannot rely on that as a source as such in terms of contemporary written material for written sources of Jesus' own life, there is no nothing. In this case, this is not so surprising since, of course, most people in first century Palestine could not read or write and Jesus during his lifetime probably would not have been famous enough to be mentioned in any way either. official document, but this lack of evidence is certainly problematic and there are many who today argue that Jesus never really existed as a historical person, that he was a later construction of Christian writers and that this is a somewhat serious idea or theory that does not It can be overlooked completely, as there is at least some merit to this idea, however, the fact is that most academic historians working on this topic hold the view that Jesus was in fact a historical person. real who lived in 1st century Palestine.

This is because the sources we have are convincing. Enough that scholars think this is the most likely option now, as I said there are no contemporary sources for the time or life of Jesus, but some sources begin to appear not long after and the oldest sources on the life of Jesus are actually Some of the New Testament books, of course, based on the criteria I talked about above, the New Testament accounts would definitely fall into the category of biased, but this does not mean that they should be discarded completely. The New Testament gives us some very significant historical information and much of it is considered reliable.

The first written books of the New Testament are generally considered to be the letters of Paul, probably written sometime around AD 50, this is only about 20 years after the commonly believed death of Jesus. which is quite close in time, of course, Paul never met Jesus personally, so he cannot be considered an eyewitness as such, but his letters show that very shortly after his death, there was a community of followers of Jesus that spread throughout the Roman Empire. They also suggest that there was a community of leaders in Jerusalem at the time, including apostles like James and Peter, who actually met Jesus, but although Paul's letters suggest to us that there was some kind of community established at the time, they do not. .

There really is a lot of talk about the life of Jesus to a great extent. Instead, this is left to the four gospels. When it comes to the gospels, there is universal agreement among scholars that they were not written directly by Jesus' disciples, but by later Christian writers. A widely accepted theory is that the earliest gospel, the gospel of Mark, was written around the year 70. The gospels of Matthew and Luke were written a little later, around AD 80 to 85, and the later gospel of John sometime time of the 90s AD, these gospels may often have seemingly different and contradictory views and perspectives on who Jesus was and on certain details of his life to which we will return later, but they all describe him as a person who lived and He walked through the lands of Palestine and, although they are not contemporary sources, they were written between 40 and 60 years after the life of Jesus, which in fact is relatively close in time.

Many accept the books of the New Testament as sufficient evidence for the existence and life of Jesus, but others are not so convinced. Fortunately, however, we also have sources from outside the Bible that are also written just a couple of decades after the Bible. life of Jesus and of course they meet the criteria of being an external source, so they are not a Christian source and therefore they are also not so subject to prejudice in at least not an internal bias, of course, it is You could argue that there could be a bias in the opposite direction, but we have sources outside of the Bible anyway, which is also very significant.

The first and most significant of these is from the Jewish historian Josephus. He is often considered one of the most important Jewish figures of his time and an enormously important source of what we know about first-century Palestine. In his writings there are sections that are undoubtedly very important for our current discussion in his book Antiquities, written around the year 93. ad josephus speaks of an event that supposedly took place in the year 62 AD. when a religious leader named ananis misused his power and had several people executed, the text reads the quote, then he assembled the sanhedrin of judges and brought before them james, the brother of jesus, who was called christ and some others , and when he formed an accusation against them as transgressors of the law, he handed them over to be stoned, this not only mentions jesus and the fact that his followers called him the messiah or christ, but also talks about the brother of james jesus, who was one of the first leaders of the community, this is a significant historical document and one of the best evidence we have for jesus, but josephus also provides another perhaps even more surprising section which is known as the testimonium flavium. a much longer reference that reads as follows quote at this time Jesus appeared, a wise man, if one should call him a man, for he was a doer of amazing deeds, a teacher of people who received the truth with pleasure and gained followers both Among many Jews and among many of Greek origin he was the messiah and when Pilate, due to an accusation made by the leaders among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had previously loved him did not stop doing so because he appeared to them on the third day living on new just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wonderful things about him and to this day the tribe of Christians that bears his name has not disappeared now most consider this quote to have been manipulated in some way.

In this way and for good reason, Joseph, being a devout Jew who never converted to Christianity, would obviously not have referred to Jesus unequivocally as the messiah or that he was resurrected on the third day, so it is widely accepted that the original quote It was probably edited by later Christians who added some theological flavor to it, but still, if we look beyond those obvious theological statements, Joseph's original message seems to give us significant basic information, namely, that there was a wise man named Jesus who gained a large number of followers among Jews and those who were believed in.

To make things notable, he was executed by crucifixion by Pontius Pilate, but continued to have devoted followers even after his death. These statements of Joseph are some of the most important non-Christian sources we have, but there are more and another frequently cited. The source is the Roman historian Tacitus in his annals of imperial Rome written in 115 AD. He talks about the great fire in Rome that broke out in the year 64 and under the emperor Nero and while talking about this event he writes quotes that Nero falsely accused those who the populace called Christians the author of this name Christ was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate while Tiberius was emperor but the dangerous superstition, although repressed for the moment, broke out again not only in Judea the origin of this evil but even in the city of Rome these and some other sources from this time, as well as the books of the New Testament and the Gospels non-canonical, is basically what we have to follow when it comes to reconstructing the life of Jesus and the early community that formed around him and based on this, as I mentioned, the consensus among scholars is that Jesus was in fact a real person and that there are some guarded things we can know about him and this brings us, of course, to the second question we must ask. boardIn this video who then was Jesus again.

There is great disagreement on this question both among people of different religious traditions who conceive of Jesus in different ways, as well as among academics and modern scholars, but there are some things that seem more likely. true about him and his life and what most scholars agree on is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish man who was born sometime around the year zero, some scholars have suggested that it was in the year 4 BC. and he grew up and lived in 1st century Palestine. In his adulthood he seemed to have gathered a following among his Jewish brothers through his preaching.

It seems that one of the main characteristics of this preaching was that the kingdom of God would soon come around In the year 30 he had aroused the suspicion of the authorities and he and his followers seem to have caused some kind of disturbance in Jerusalem perhaps because of this or that the authorities in general saw him as a problem the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had him executed by crucifixion It also seems fairly certain that very soon after his death his followers were convinced that he had risen from the dead, this basic outline is a somewhat safe way of thinking about Jesus based on the historical sources we have.

This is what we can know with at least some level of certainty and anything outside of this framework immediately falls into the realm of speculation and theories and boy, there are a lot of we've already talked about some of the many ideas about who Jesus was. Because so little is known about him as a historical figure, he is almost infinitely malleable and different people like to include him in their own narratives. Jesus was a socialist, he was a feminist. Jesus was a capitalist, he was a radical revolutionary, he was a pacifist. Of course, there are different types of interpretations from the historical perspective of what we know, some of these representations are arguably more accurate than others, but at the end of the day it is a topic so shrouded in mystery that it is difficult to say anything definitively.

If we look again at the older sources, which are, after all, the Christian sources themselves in the different gospels, they also seem to show a variety of perspectives. The main churches of Christianity that gradually developed over the centuries accept the idea that Jesus was the messiah promised in the old testament that he was the son of god or the incarnation of the word of god who took human flesh and died in The cross to bring salvation to all human beings The question of the nature of Jesus' divinity was a hot topic even for 300 years after he lived.

Thus, one would expect similar discussions in this early period. Scholars who hold ideas similar to those of Bart Ehrman argue that the idea that Jesus was divine or a divine being gradually evolved in the years after his death influenced by Greek culture and religion, not everyone accepts this idea of ​​the gradual development of the divine identity of Jesus in the canonical gospels, of course, but it certainly seems that different gospels sometimes tell different versions of events and when we start to look outside the canonical gospels things become even more complicated. The literature found at Nag Hamadi in 1945 includes what are often known as the Gnostic gospels.

Scholars today generally reject this term as the literature appears to represent several different movements, only a few of which can be correctly attributed to the so-called Gnostics, but regardless of what they are about. What it gives us is a deeper look at some of the different forms of Christianity or Jesus movements that did not become part of later Orthodoxy. When we look at early Christianity, we should not see it as an orthodox current that continues from Jesus and his disciples onwards and that there are various sects that diverge from this orthodox root; Instead, early Christianity is actually an explosion of a multitude of different interpretations and ideas and perspectives on Jesus and the Bible and all kinds of different questions, and it's just a few centuries later. that a supposed orthodoxy would be established and in the nag hamadi text the writings of some of these survive that would become unorthodox forms of Christianity and often have very different ideas and perspectives on who Jesus was in places such as the gospel of The themes of Thomas like the crucifixion are not present at all, which is not to say that they denied the crucifixion, but they did not share the ideas of proto-orthodox thinkers that it is the saving nature of the crucifixion that is central to Christian belief or salvation. of human beings, however, the Gospel of Thomas and other ancient texts emphasize that gnosis, the knowledge of God and the divine kingdom, is the only way to achieve salvation.

Jesus is a divine teacher, even though he is the son of God in most places, who teaches us how to achieve gnosis, that is, through knowledge of ourselves and our true spiritual reality, the nature of Jesus and His role was a topic that continued to be debated for centuries with the exception of the Ebionites, a Jewish Christian group who considered Jesus to be a human prophet and messiah. Basically, everyone agreed that Jesus was divine in some way. The question was how the orthodox position that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine finally came to be.

However, the so-called Gnostics seem to downplay his human nature and now turn him into a purely spiritual being. We're not going to get into Christian theology right now, but the conclusion here should be that even in the earliest forms of the Jesus movements and Christianity there was great diversity and disagreement about who Jesus was and that, of course, does not aid. It really makes things even more difficult for us when we try to recreate an accurate picture of who he was. Of course, Jesus is also an important figure in the religion of Islam and, by extension, in the Bahá'í faith as well.

But in Islam and the Bahá'í faith, Jesus is only considered a human prophet very similar to Moses or Abraham in this long line of prophets that according to Islam ends with the prophet Muhammad Jesus or Isa, as he is known in the A The Quran is sometimes called the spirit of God, but it is never considered divine or the son of God, so its divinity or its affiliation with God is denied in the Quranic narrative, but as we have said, the Quran appears 600 years later of the life of Jesus and as historians and in historical research we of course do not operate from the perspective that the Quran is the real word of God, so this means that the Quran cannot be used as a source for the life of Jesus.

Jesus more than the Bible can, therefore we are left with something of a mystery, even the oldest sources of the gospels, both canonical and non-canonical, give us different accounts, therefore it is up to scholars to get involved. In educated speculation, some probably place it very firmly within the Jewish world. the tradition and message of him are a reflection that others may see him more as a kind of philosopher similar to the writers of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, etc. For me, I prefer the first option, I think if there is something we can know.

What is certain is that Jesus was a Jewish man operating within a Jewish context in first century Palestine with all that that implies, all the things that Jesus speaks of in the gospels as the son of man, the messiah, the kingdom of God, everything is present. Within the Jewish religion, when we look deeper we see that Jesus fits very well into his time and place, for example, a movement known as Jewish apocalypticism was very prominent at the time and thought that an apocalyptic event was soon approaching in which the dead would rise and all would be judged by god, either being sent to eternal damnation or to a kind of paradise and all of this is shown in Jesus and later in Christianity.

He is a man of his time in many different ways, as many scholars today view Jesus and consider that Jesus saw himself as an apocalyptic prophet and messiah who warned his fellow Jews that this apocalyptic event and therefore the kingdom of God would come soon. The fact that Jesus was operating within the framework of the Jewish religion seems inescapable and this is also corroborated. In any case, according to the Bible itself, the identity of Jesus as a Jew and the historical context in which he grew up and lived is the starting point on which all solid theories in this regard should be based, but it is a point that many still do not understand.

They take into account. a symbol that means many different things to different people and that is the way figures like him work, at the end of the day we are left with very little certainty, however scholars will agree that it is most likely that Jesus was a real person who lived in 1st century Palestine most of them will also agree on the basic points mentioned above he was Jewish he gathered a group of followers unsettled the authorities and was executed by crucifixion by Pontius Pilate around the year 30 AD and his followers believed that he had risen from the dead anyway, I hope this video has given you a broader image and perspective on the historicity of the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

Now this video is a collaboration with two other fantastic YouTube channels with whom it is a channel that mainly talks about the Islamic history that it has. He has beautiful images and is a great storyteller. You should definitely watch his channel. It is one of the best history channels on YouTube, especially when it comes to Islamic history. In his video he will talk about the historicity of the prophet Muhammad, so don't miss it. Secondly, I'm also collaborating here with the channel called useful graphics, which again is just a fantastic history channel that has a very nuanced and interesting perspective to share on various aspects of history and also topics like religion and in this case , useful graphics.

We will be talking about the historicity of the prophet Moses, so all of that will of course be incredibly interesting, so if you enjoy this video, you should definitely check out his companion videos and don't forget to subscribe to his channels again. I hope you will. I enjoyed this video and if you want to support this channel, like I said, you can become a patron or choose to make a one-time donation. I'll leave all the links to that in the description or of course you can just like it. the video or subscribe to the channel and leave a comment and see you next time