[QUOTE="Acemaster27"][QUOTE="MyNameisaMeme"]
There is big debate around this. Much bigger than I thought. I thought that most people, even atheists, had accepted that Jesus Christ was a real person. I'm an atheist, but I don't think Jesus is a myth. Yet it seems there are many that do.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcno.htm
I've been reading a bit about the debate, but there is just so much information, so I wanted to know what you guys thought.
gameguy6700
No, there is no major debate. Only lunatics and conspiracy theorists don't believe that there really was a Jewish rabbi by the name of Jesus who lived in the early first century. The existance of the rabbi is accepted in all secular academia. But don't take scholars words for it. If it pleases you, you can also disregard any view points from Christians as well. But then you still have to contend with written and recorded documents from Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius. All of these listed men were first century Romans (except for Josephus who was a Jewish scholar) who all record record of a man of religious significance who lived in the early first century. And by the way, the roman scholars I listed were the same people that we get our knowledge of roman history from.The issue, and this is where the whole controversy stems from, is that none of those sources were contemporary. There is not a single non-Biblical contemporary reference to Jesus. The reason why this is important is that it doesn't take long for rumors and myths to get confused with historical fact, especially in societies in which the majority of people are illiterate and information travels primarily by word of mouth.
Personally I think Jesus did exist simply because it makes more sense that Christianity started out as a messiah cult that eventually managed to become mainstream, rather than to say that the religion came about on its own and invented Jesus along the way.
There are no primary sources for Alexander and the most trustworthy of the five secondary sources was written by Arrian approximately 470 years after Alexander's death. Now, should there be sceptical of Christ's life? I believe so, but to make a issue of his existence simply because we have no contemporary evidence or primary sources would mean that we must disregard Socrates, Alexander the Great, Plato and other well known ancient figures existence as well, simply because we have no primary sources to prove their existence.
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