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Who can forget when the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly declared in 2013 that Jesus, like Santa Claus, “was a White man, too,” and “that’s a verifiable fact,” a remark she later said was meant in jest.
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First, while the classic Nordic Jesus remains a popular image today in some churches, a movement to replace the White Jesus has long taken root in America. In many Christian circles — progressive mainline churches, churches of color shaped by “liberation theology,” and among Biblical scholars — conspicuous displays of the White Jesus are considered outdated, and to some, offensive. In a rapidly diversifying multicultural America, more Christians want to see a Jesus that looks like them.
But in some parts of the country, the White Jesus never left. The spread of White Christian nationalism has flooded social media feeds with images of the traditional White Jesus, sometimes adorned with a red MAGA hat. Former President Trump is selling a “God Bless the USA Bible” with passages from the Constitution and Bill of Rights — a linking of patriotism with Christianity that reinforces a White image of Jesus that is central to Christian nationalism.
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Blum says the image of a White Jesus has been used to justify slavery, lynching, laws against interracial marriage and hostility toward immigrants deemed not White enough. When Congress passed a law in the early 20th century to restrict immigration from Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe, White politicians evoked the White Jesus, he says.
“One of the arguments was, ‘Well, Jesus was White,’ ‘’ Blum says. “So the theme was, we want America to be profoundly Christian or at least Jesus based, so we should only allow White people in this country.”
The MAGA movement uses the image of a White Jesus to weaponize political battles, he says, pointing to signs at the January 6 insurrection displaying a White Jesus, sometimes wearing a red MAGA hat. To Blum, some Christian conservatives see a White MAGA Jesus as “an anti-woke symbol.”
A majority of academics agree that Jesus existed and Jesus Denialism is regarded as a fringe theory by almost all academics
Jesus definitely existed. The real question is how similar his teachings were to the modern teachings of the churches.
Right, but he was actually called “Brian” and always denied being a holy man.
The only evidence the person existed is the Bible, and the Bible isn’t much proof of anything. There is no actual, tangible archeological evidence of Jesus’ existence as even an ordinary person.
While there’s no “archeological” evidence yet as that would involve literally finding a relic of Jesus or his followers from the short 10 year timespan that his ministry existed, there’s enough other literary and historical evidence to believe he definitely was a person, and the link I sent goes through all of that under the “reception” tab.
I haven’t found a single professor who still adheres to a Mythicist/Denialist view.
bros like “there’s no proof other than the book curated from antiquity”
And also the writings of the “enemies” (Mostly Jewish writers, some Pagan though) of the followers of Jesus 10-30 years after his death (Where his name starts in written records iirc). These are the more reliable sources to academics because it’d be odd/unlikely for the enemies of the followers of Jesus to act like Jesus was a real, historical, and existing person if he was actually just a mythological or figurative invention of the followers.
Is that a broadly accepted historical criteria, or just one of the many made-up ones used by biblical historians? Why would the “enemies” themselves have any reason to think that some dude a lot of people talk about isn’t even real? In a world with no photography, no printing press, no telegraph? How, was there not one single first-hand account? Evidence of belief is not evidence of existence. If it were, we’d have to acknowledge the historical reality of God, Satan, Zeus, Thor, and Bigfoot. At least there are contemporary first-hand claims from people who say they saw Bigfoot.
It’s accepted by literally everyone, there’s fantastical reports about Caesar and Augustus, and yet we don’t think they were just myths. Why? Because they’re well attested by multiple sources.
For the same reason you’re doing it now?
The closest thing we have to a first-hand account of the life of Jesus is the Gospel of Mark, a book of uncertain authorship (likely wasn’t the Mark the Evangelist or Mark the Apostle that the churches claim) written 30 years after the death of Jesus. The reason it took so long for a record we have to be written is of some debate, but the most agreed upon is that the followers of Jesus likely would’ve been illiterate, and likely so would’ve Jesus himself, and the first gospel was likely only written after decades of “playing telephone” across Hellenistic Jewish communities in the eastern mediterranean. It’s also possible that there was an earlier written record that Mark copied from, but if it exists we haven’t found it, which isn’t exactly surprising for what would likely be basically a 2000 year old pamphlet/small novel.
True, but it is usually the first step towards finding something that does exist, Jewish writers like Philo of Alexandria believed he existed and apparently had reason to believe he existed since him and all of his contemporaries never thought to question Jesus’s existence. That doesn’t mean that they believed the “divine son of God” Jesus existed, they clearly didn’t and thought of him as any other man.
That’s an entirely different criterion, though. I honestly don’t even know how to respond to this non-sequitur.
You mean to say these “enemies” would have doubted that Jesus existed because they heard that there is some historical debate on the matter, and that there may not be any good evidence to support the claim, looked into it, agreed, and found it to be an interesting topic to debate on the Internet? That seems really unlikely to me.
Look at it this way: if I told you that a guy I know claims that his buddy Frank, who died ten years ago, had made certain religious and political statements, which I agree with, and you found those statements to be blasphemous and offensive, would you argue back with “well, uh, how do we know this Frank guy even existed? Huh?!” Or would you take his existence as a fairly trivial given, and argue against the actual statements he allegedly made?
It’s honestly bizarre to me that anybody would imagine this “enemies” argument has any weight at all. That’s not how people work.
I don’t mean no first-hand in-depth account, that’s some serious goal-post moving. If anybody even remotely describable as a historic Jesus existed, that dude made waves. He would have been a public figure, of great interest, and some contemporary would have probably at least written down something about him that would have survived to the historical record.
Is it? When has that happened? I think the first step towards finding something that exists is observing it, or observing its tangible effects that cannot be explained in other, simpler ways.
Again, why would they? Would you, honestly, in their place?
There’s very few contemporary words attributed to Jesus. Paul, the first “apostle”, started writing about Jesus 40 or so years after his death. Supposedly he met Jesus after resurrection… That’s just a way to say there are no first hand accounts of the real Jesus.
Around 20 years, not 40.
Paul is writing around 50-60 CE.
And there’s definitely at least one alleged firsthand account of what he said, it just isn’t cannonical so you don’t hear much about that claim by the Gospel of Thomas.
Yet you can sort of see Paul referring to some of those statements in what he argued against, such as:
The Thomasine form of the saying is also very relevant to Pilate’s timeframe, given that’s when Tiberius, the first emperor of Rome to achieve it not by life accomplishments but by dynastic birthright has literally abandoned the position to party all day without renouncing the position of emperor to anyone else.
It’s also the kind of statement that might have ended up with the person saying it killed by the Roman state.
And yet miraculously it doesn’t end up cannonized after Constantine, the Emperor of Rome, converts and had the council of Nicaea decide on what made the cut. Instead the texts that reflected Paul’s schtick and also happened to promote the idea of dynastic monarchy as divine made the cut.
Very convenient for Constantine that the Gospel of Thomas wasn’t cannonized, despite it claiming to have contained sayings directly from a historical Jesus.
Bringing in the non canonical books is funny because you have to accept most the stories are made up, if they were so happy to make up stories what’s to stop them making them all up?
While it’s true that all versions of Jesus can’t all be historical, that’s a very different matter from the claim that all versions are made up.
In fact, it would be one of the only cases I’m aware of in all of history where a made up person had bitter schisms leading to the majority of surviving writings within the first century of making up those stories dedicated to trying to silence the different versions.
But that pattern of behavior is extremely common among sects and cults focused around a real person who then dies or is imprisoned, where the groups fracture and claim different stories or interpretations of the historical figure quickly after they are out of the picture.
If Jesus was made up, we should probably expect one official story of him, similar to Mithrism which emerged around the same time, which had none of the Christian bitter schisms.
Basically, what Paul writes here only twenty years after Jesus’s alleged execution is extremely unusual if Jesus as a figure was entirely made up:
You basically have an official cannonized version of Jesus that’s dedicated to claiming the women around Jesus “totally saw the empty tomb but didn’t tell anyone” or that women should stay silent (1 Clement) and that women shouldn’t teach (1 Cor), and then a heretical group discussing Jesus’s teachings to female disciples to whom he basically says the men disciples are idiots and claim their female teacher had said Jesus’s sower and mustard seed parables were talking about Lucretius’s “seeds of things” (writing in Latin 50 years before Jesus was born he used the word ‘seed’ in place of the Greek atomos in discussing how randomly scattered atoms were the cause of life where where survived to reproduce is what multiplied).
A parable that btw is also the only one provided a “secret explanation” in the earliest cannonical versions.
I don’t see that level of nuance occurring if the entire thing is made up from scratch only decades earlier.
Corinthians 10 through 13 are widely considered to be written later than the first half of the letter, all Christian documents are heavily edited to try and prove their faith which is one of many reasons to acknowledge they could easily have rewritten early history of spiritual belief to apply to a fictional person.
plus he even sounds like he’s talking about a spiritual Jesus from heaven not a born son - receiving the spirit is how you meet spiritual Jesus, the only Jesus Paul knows - isn’t it weird he doesn’t say ‘other people talking about Jesus are liars, we have living people who knew him in person’… but actualy, where are those people? Why don’t the apostles establish the religion? Peter might have existed maybe for a bit but really in actual history there’s no sign of any affect from any of them - Paul is the first significant figure we can really see and feel in history nut he never met him - all the churches and gospels come from his actions.
We know why there are 12 apostles, no one actually believes Jesus met the magic number of guys and they followed him instantly, they’re not real people and they don’t act real either - but surely Jesus would have had followers so why don’t they run the religion instead of someone who doesn’t even pretend to have met a physical Jesus?
Paul went far far away from anyone that would know the truth and told his story, Christianity developed from these places, highly educated Greek scholars write the books of the Bible from Paul’s teaching - a man who never met Jesus, who only claims to have met James (inconsequential meeting) and Peter though mysteriously doesn’t even mention Peter when writing his letter to the Roman’s…
The bits of the early church we have historic evidence for all come from Paul, if Peter existed the biblical version of him certainly isn’t true and there’s no roman record of him until it’s invented much later and sites are ‘found’ for his resting place - again even the Vatica scholars n accept this.
When you really look at it there’s no room for a historical Jesus but a perfect pathway for a man we know invented his part of the story for personal gain (maybe he had an episode that put the idea of Jesus in his head but it wasn’t based on physical reality)
He didn’t definitely exist and pointing to an outdated consensus does nothing to prove it.
Scholarship is evolving as religious institutions lose control of biblical academia and we’re seeing the envelope get pushed further and further back. Go through a list of things the Bible says about Jesus and modern academics can demonstrate where they came from and that it’s not history. Scholars accept that virtually every aspect of Jesus life and acts is made up so it’s actually a tiny step to accept he was invented as a spiritual being just as the early writings seem to talk about him.
Lol alright bud, you got a source for that? Literally every class or professor I’ve ever talked to has said the mythicist view is a minority, and most likely not correct.
lol wat
What are you confused by?
Your response is completely unrelated to the comment you replied to.
Yes it was?
The second part of the comment I was replying to implied that Jesus didn’t exist. Which is what I was responding to?