Where was Jesus written about contemporaneously by someone who wasn't a member of his cult and so didn't have a vested interest in persuading others to believe as he did?
The earliest credible mention of the Jesus sect in Judaism is dated to around 100 CE.
Just like all religions, Christianity is a meme. The Jesus sect developed and spread because its tenets happened to resonate with a particular group of people living in a particular place at a particular time. The religion was successful because those tenets were flexible enough to be used by people to further its spread, often by very violent means.
Those in power loved Christianity because it's an ideal religion for slaves and the down-trodden: be nice to each other, render unto Caesar, accept that it's the will of God that your life is shitty, and trust that you'll get your reward in heaven.
As for the existence of the Jesus sect in Judaism proving the historical existence of someone resembling the Jesus described in the gospels, that just doesn't wash. Look into the history of the gospels - including the ones that didn't make the cut because they didn't tell a story that was consistent with the line that the early leaders of the cult wanted to follow. None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. They're just tales that were passed around by word of mouth until someone decided to write them down, and everyone knows how stories get embellished and altered as they spread.
There were loads of charismatic Jewish religious figures active in the centuries either side of the time when Jesus was supposedly born. That's not surprising, given that a group of people who believed they were specially chosen by Jahweh to do great things had suddenly been conquered by an irresistible power that accepted a whole pantheon of gods (not including the one that spoke from a flaming bush and used his finger to write on stone tablets).
Maybe there was someone who bore some resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels, but it's also possible that what he's described as saying and doing is a mish-mash of the teachings of more than one person.
What is certain is that the supposedly infallible gospels get one of the few verifiable historical events they mention wrong. The census mentioned in Luke is known to have happened in 6 BCE, but it's also stated that it occurred under the reign of Herod the Great, and it's known for a fact that he died nine years before that. If the author of Luke got something as simple as that wrong, it's daft to assume that he got anything else right.
Do you believe that Jesus existed historically?
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Where was Jesus written about contemporaneously by someone who wasn't a member of his cult and so didn't have a vested interest in persuading others to believe as he did?
The earliest credible mention of the Jesus sect in Judaism is dated to around 100 CE.
Just like all religions, Christianity is a meme. The Jesus sect developed and spread because its tenets happened to resonate with a particular group of people living in a particular place at a particular time. The religion was successful because those tenets were flexible enough to be used by people to further its spread, often by very violent means.
Those in power loved Christianity because it's an ideal religion for slaves and the down-trodden: be nice to each other, render unto Caesar, accept that it's the will of God that your life is shitty, and trust that you'll get your reward in heaven.
As for the existence of the Jesus sect in Judaism proving the historical existence of someone resembling the Jesus described in the gospels, that just doesn't wash. Look into the history of the gospels - including the ones that didn't make the cut because they didn't tell a story that was consistent with the line that the early leaders of the cult wanted to follow. None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. They're just tales that were passed around by word of mouth until someone decided to write them down, and everyone knows how stories get embellished and altered as they spread.
There were loads of charismatic Jewish religious figures active in the centuries either side of the time when Jesus was supposedly born. That's not surprising, given that a group of people who believed they were specially chosen by Jahweh to do great things had suddenly been conquered by an irresistible power that accepted a whole pantheon of gods (not including the one that spoke from a flaming bush and used his finger to write on stone tablets).
Maybe there was someone who bore some resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels, but it's also possible that what he's described as saying and doing is a mish-mash of the teachings of more than one person.
What is certain is that the supposedly infallible gospels get one of the few verifiable historical events they mention wrong. The census mentioned in Luke is known to have happened in 6 BCE, but it's also stated that it occurred under the reign of Herod the Great, and it's known for a fact that he died nine years before that. If the author of Luke got something as simple as that wrong, it's daft to assume that he got anything else right.