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Real Jesus
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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Atheism
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Even the earliest writers in the bible wrote about him only decades after his supposed death. Outside the bible the earliest is Josephus 50 years after his death and it is a single sentence which doesn't quite fit in with its surroundings so it might have been inserted later. Usually you would not consider that convincing evidence of a historical person.
While that's true that the earliest non-Christian source was Josephus, that doesn't mean Paul (very contemporary figure) or the Bible aren't good sources. We can read around the obvious fabrications and their bias doesn't per se remove all historical value.
The standard for historians (even critical ones) strongly support treating Jesus as a real person.
This isn't at all a win though for Christians. The Dead Sea scrolls are very indicative of Jesus as a non-unique figure. It was common for there to be Jewish apocalyptic teachers. Jesus was one of those.
The better way of thinking about him in my opinion is that he was a real Jewish teacher who never claimed to be the son of God, that was mythologized by early Christians.
Highly recommend a Marginal Jew by Meier or anything by Bart Erhman for Atheists.