Atheist Memes

I am still waiting for the evidence. We have Paul who didn't see anything, despite being in the area when it all supposedly went down, we have him call into question the credibility of the eyewitnesses, and despite spend decades with Christians only seems to know 11 facts about Jesus. Then we get complete silence for 50 years and an off-hand mention of the some hearsay by a man who believed in a literal Adam and Eve as historical fact.

Meanwhile every single part of the Jesus con is found in the stories and history that was around at the time. It is a hacky unoriginal derivative work with all of the evidence conveniently missing.

His name was Joshua, or Yeshua, not Joseph. Joseph was his father's name. Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua or Yeshua

The reduction Jesus doesn't even work. Even if you reduce him down to some guy named Jesus who pissed the Romans off you wouldn't be able to account for the community that popped up. Additionally you still can't prove that this diet Jesus event happened, you just lowered the claim so much that it is not plausible instead of impossible.

What does explain the the community would be deliberate fraud. A cult lead by James and Peter about an mythical being.

Ok, Pompeii. Less than a century later, before Constantine reskinned the Roman religion with the Christian label, we've found hidden shrines and symbols used by followers of Jesus. And uncovered very recently - not much room for it to be falsified. There's also contemporary accounts that spread extremely fast throughout the Roman empire and beyond, but those weren't buried under ash until the modern era.

That's a long way to go in very little time - that's only maybe 3-4 degrees away from the original source. Not nearly long enough for a mythical figure to develop organically

You can dispute the details, but someone must've been the figurehead at the very least. The gospels themselves hint at the events being staged to some extent by a small group spreading an ideology according to a literal plan - the public events literally start with Jesus's cousin gathering support for the movement, and then Jesus goes around recruiting specific people as apostles

The Romans also kept records - there's a lot of corroborating evidence for certain events spread too far and wide for a pre-information age society to fabricate. Even things like his birthdate - I think they've been able to narrow it down to a few days in July, during the census, where we had accounts of a temporary new star in the sky

Even the papers that are given clickbait-y headlines like "historians dispute the existence of Jesus" generally dispute certain aspects, there was almost certainly a historical figure named Jesus who was killed by the Romans for inciting a resistance movement

Secular scholars consider the historical account of Jesus existing in the writings of the Roman Jewish Historian Josephus. There are extra biblical references to him. Enough so that secular historians consider the person known as Jesus of Nazareth to be a historically real person. His ministry wasn't even that uncommon at the time. There were many apocalyptic preachers around that time and other magicians/miracle workers, like Simon the Magician.

but we know that the guy that the Bible was written about existed

How do we know this?

Now the evidence is essentially that the book exists about him,

Spiderman must exist as well. Also all the books about him were written multiple decades later.

and that he is referenced in other adjacent religious texts,

You mean the Gnostic stuff written two centuries later or the Talmudic stuff written only a mere 150-400 years later?

but that evidence is still more than the evidence that it was made up,

Means motive and opportunity. Means, the early stories are all ripped off. Motive, sex and greed. Opportunity, if Paul is to believed in his 7 undisputed letters the only two people to see the resurrection are Peter and James and "the twelve" who he doesn't name and never met.

There probably is, the irony is just that it's a document all churches will fight tooth and nail against recognizing as partially authoritative over their own records.

In general, I've found that the best evidence for a historical Jesus having existed is in the history of the "other versions of Jesus" Paul makes mention of in 2 Cor 11:4. A city where only decades later they deposed appointees from Rome in a schism.

The assumption that if a historical Jesus existed that the surviving tradition of that individual would be the one that succeeded against its rivals centuries later is grossly irresponsible, and yet a common scenario unexplored to avoid upsetting modern day believers in that version of the history.

The odds are much, much higher that the most accurate picture of a historical Jesus would be found among the competition. Particularly given the available evidence that the church's monetary fundraising practices were at odds with the earliest versions of Jesus.

What's more likely to survive the filter of the Roman empire?

A version of Jesus against dynastic rule and religious fundraising, or a version pro-fundraising and pro-dynastic monarchy?

Which version would be more likely to have the temple or Rome wanting to execute them?

Does no one think it odd Peter, the founder of the modern church, denies him three times around the time Jesus is brought to trial around three times, at least one of which Peter is allegedly seen firsthand being let by the guards back to where the trial was taking place?

Or that Paul, who never met him and was known to be actively persecuting Jesus's followers, shows up to areas he can't persecute in telling people he's one of them and to ignore other versions of Jesus?

People argue back and forth about a particular version of history when it comes to the Bible that's both less interesting and less likely than other options for historical events and people that just may have been less attractive to people in power when editorial choices are being made for the current collection and editions of them.