In my previous blog post I criticized in detail the evidence given for the existence of Jesus as a real person, which I find exceptionally weak. I made three major points that can be summarized as:
- Appealing to an "overwhelming consensus among historians", which is what many Christian apologists do, is nothing but an appeal to authority and an argument from popularity. Also, the claim itself (ie. that the overwhelming majority of historians and scholars agree that Jesus did exist) is dubious given that I'm not aware of any study or research done on the opinion of secular non-Christian historians.
- No matter what Christian apologists say, there are no non-Christian historic sources for the existence of Jesus. Not a single one. Every single non-Christian source that mentions Jesus in any way, shape or form, even the oldest ones known, were written by people who were born after Jesus's alleged death, and were thus hardly contemporary eyewitnesses. There exist no contemporary records or writings mentioning Jesus or even Christianity. There exist eg. no Roman records or histories mentioning Jesus or Christians. Every single non-Christian source mentioning him was written well over half a century after Jesus' alleged death, by people who weren't even born at the alleged time of Jesus.
- Even the Christian sources are highly dubious. Even Christian scholars agree that the gospels were written at least 50 years after Jesus's alleged death by unknown authors. From a secular point of view they are quite clearly almost or fully 100% fictional. The scriptures that can be most reliably attributed to an actual nameable person are Paul's letters, and they were written by a person who according to his own writings never met Jesus in person and never witnessed any of his life, acts or speeches.
There are also many other arguments made for the historicity of Jesus that are very weak and illogical, such as the "criterion of embarrassment". The argument is that if some people merely invented the person of Jesus, the promised Messiah, the Son of God himself, the Savior and hero that would liberate them, surely they wouldn't make him weak and ignominiously humiliated and killed by the oppressors who he was supposed to oppose and liberate the people from. Why would anybody invent a hero and a Messiah who gets humiliated, tortured and killed by the enemy, achieving absolutely nothing to combat their oppression?
This argument ignores the fact that the martyr trope has been a staple in mythology and fiction since ancient times. Martyrdom has always been seen as a virtue, for thousands and thousands of years, for pretty much as long as there have been myths and fictional stories. Storytellers have understood since early antiquity that people empathize with the underdog, with the martyr, with the person who exudes virtue and good deeds and who nevertheless gets harshly punished and even killed by evil people, even without them getting any sort of retribution or punishment for their evil actions. In fact, if you want to rile people up against those in power, what better way to do that than to vilify them by having them commit an atrocious heinous act and not get any sort of punishment for it? If the enemy gets no punishment for a heinous crime, that only makes the listeners crave to raise up against the enemy all that more.
From this perspective it actually makes more sense to make a fictional Jesus a martyr who was ignominiously killed by the oppressors, rather than make him a triumphant hero. The "criterion of embarrassment" works in the exact reverse here, as it's the most logical approach at making Jesus a revered figure to be admired and defended, and to rile people up against the Romans.
But, to the question at hand: Did an actual real-life person exist who these stories are based on (no matter how embellished, fictional and mythological they might be)?
I'm inclined to say that probably. A quite weak "probably", but still a somewhat high probability. But not for any of the reasons listed above, nor anything that the Christian apologists often give as an argument.
I'd say "probably" because of the mere reason that I find it somewhat unlikely that Paul would have tried to invent a completely fictional Messiah out of thin cloth. It's possible that's what happened, but I would say that it's somewhat improbable. I'm somewhat convinced (not strongly, but somewhat) that Paul genuinely believed Jesus to have been a real person, even though he himself (according to his own words) never met the man. If that's the case, I think there are only two possibilities:
- Somebody else, or a group of people (eg. a religious sect) invented a completely fictional Jesus and then convinced Paul that he was real, or
- there actually was some kind of Jewish preacher or cult leader, perhaps even named Yeshua, and Paul's knowledge and claims about him are based on that person (likewise by having been told and taught by the cult members).
I find the second option more plausible. What I think is most probable is that there was indeed a man named "Yeshua" (or something similar, which might or might not have been his original name) and he was some kind of cult leader, and Paul's letters are based on the beliefs of that cult that were relied to him by the cult members.
Most likely, however, the cult was relatively small and inconspicuous (so inconspicuous as to not having been written about in any non-Christian sources, records or histories, at least not any that have survived). It's also very likely that much of the ideas, words and speeches attributed to this man by Paul and other authors were invented by these authors or by other cult members. Some ideas may be based directly on what this Jesus person did actually say.
It may even be that this cult leader was actually executed by Roman authorities, and the crucifixion story is based on this. (However, once again, even if this happened it was most likely such an insignificant event that no Roman or other historic record of it has survived. Most likely he was just executed among many other criminals and dissenters, without much show or ruckus.)
However, as mentioned, it's highly, highly likely that the gospels are pretty much completely fictional. A fictional "origin story" by a couple of authors (who may have concocted these narratives based on the oral myths that had quickly formed around the man and spread among the congregations of early Christians).
Thus, even if an actual person did exist, he most probably was nothing like what the scriptures describe him to be like, and quite probably most of the speeches and ideas attributed to him were embellished or even invented by later authors.
Of course it's still not completely out of the realm of possibility that the initial sect, or even Paul himself, just invented Jesus out of thin cloth because he wanted a Messiah figure to make his new religious ideas to gain traction.
