Was Jesus a real person?

Robittybob1 · October 25, 2014

Jesus was a prophet with some of God characteristics ,he was not divine, he escaped from being crucified, putting the person who guided the soldiers on the cross as a revenge , in Islam the Romans crucified a person who had the shape of Jesus and not Jesus himself. this give the feeling that Jesus was a powerful man and this is more important fact about Jesus being the messiah than other things like raising people from death you perhaps know how God mentioned the power of Moses and what he did to the Egyptians, the power of Jesus was escaping from being crucified, getting revenge from the person who guided the Romans to him by putting his shape on him, and finally rising to heaven.

So is the whole of the Koran spoken to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel or is this version of what happened to Jesus just Mohammed's own thoughts?

It sounds like you are saying that it was Judas Iscariot who took the place of Jesus on the cross? For he is the one who is blamed for betraying him.

ajb · October 25, 2014

Jesus was a prophet with some of God characteristics ,he was not divine, he escaped from being crucified, putting the person who guided the soldiers on the cross as a revenge...

Jesus seeking revenge is well outside of the image of Jesus given in the Bible....

Romans 12:19-21

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I think we have a clear contradiction here.

Robittybob1 · October 25, 2014

Jesus seeking revenge is well outside of the image of Jesus given in the Bible....

Romans 12:19-21

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I think we have a clear contradiction here.

Doesn't your quote support their view. It says "leave it to the wrath of God". Once Jesus was arrested he is hardly in the position to organise any revenge.

ajb · October 25, 2014

Doesn't your quote support their view. It says "leave it to the wrath of God". Once Jesus was arrested he is hardly in the position to organise any revenge.

Well, the old testament god is very vengeful, but the picture painted of Jesus in the new testament is quite the opposite. It seems that Jesus, if real etc. would be very unlikely to seek revenge on anyone. Remember this dude is magical and could have escaped at any time he wanted. Rather he would let that be in the hands of god. Now I guess you have to decide if Jesus was 'just' the son of god, or a representation of god on Earth and so on.

Edited October 25, 2014 by ajb

Robittybob1 · October 25, 2014

Well, the old testament god is very vengeful, but the picture painted of Jesus in the new testament is quite the opposite. It seems that Jesus, if real etc. would be very unlikely to seek revenge on anyone. Remember this due is magical and could have escaped at any time he wanted. Rather he would let that be in the hands of god. Now I guess you have to decide if Jesus was 'just' the son of god, or a representation of god on Earth and so on.

He cursed a tree simply because it didn't have fruit on it (out of season) and he drove a herd of pigs over a cliff. He overturned the tables of the money lenders and made whips and used them.

OK maybe a charge of drunk and disorderly could be laid.

I'll try and answer the the other questions later.

ajb · October 25, 2014

OK maybe a charge of drunk and disorderly could be laid.

Okay, Jesus seems to have lost his temper now and again... he was only human ;-)

It still feels very different to the idea that Jesus would seek a bloody revenge on someone. That does not seem to fit with the general image of Jesus. Which of course, says nothing about if Jesus was a real person, many people or simply fabricated. The Muslim interpretation that yahya515 has given us is not the only Muslim interpretation of these events; it is however one that really seems at odds with the whole message of Christ, which is separate from reality of Jesus the Christ having ever actually existed or not.

Eise · October 25, 2014

Caesar was clearly a real person whose amazing feats were real as well.

Exactly. We have many references to Caesar. But having less references does not mean 'non-existence'. Of course, in the case of Jesus the base is small. But it is not zero.

Even after he died only self professed followers wrote anything about his life.

Yes. And pretty short after his death. Estimates of the first sources are only about 10 years after his death. Taken into account that most followers of Jesus were peasants and fishermen who of course were illiterates, that is not too bad.

The problem is that you refuse to look at the new testament. The question is how to explain in what way these scriptures have developed. With philological analysis it is possible to distinguish several distinct sources of the gospels and of the pauline epistles. Most of the NT is written in Greek, but at some places it can be recognised that there were also Aramaic sources. So these must be older than their translations, namely from Palestine, where there were Aramaic speaking people. The opposite is also interesting: there is somewhere a misunderstanding, because in a discussion a homonym is used. Jesus corrects the wrong understanding of the listener. However, the word is only a homonym in Greek. So this was later addition that cannot go back to an Aramaic speaking Jesus. This is an example of how you treat ancient texts. You look at them, and analyse them as good as possible to find out something about their history. You do not sweep them away in one stroke. If we worked with the same prejudices in physics we would not have got very far. ("The earth a sphere? Then the people at the other side would fall off!".)

If one puts all these kinds of analysis together, you get a pretty nice overview of the history of this texts. And based on this, the assumption that Jesus was a real person is the most probable.

Until things are known I consider them unknown. I don't not consider things unprovable but most likely. If Jesus is most likely to have exist than solid evidence should support such a belief.

No. The first thing is to admit that we cannot be 100% sure, because the sources are too vague. The next is to weigh the different options, and take the most probable assumption. It is true: we can be nearly 100% sure that Caesar existed, the situation with Jesus is definitely worse.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Eise

For Prose · October 25, 2014

No. The fist thing is to admit that we cannot be 100% sure, because the sources are too vague. The next is to weigh the different options, and take the most probable assumption. It is true: we can be nearly 100% sure that Caesar existed, the situation with Jesus is definitely worse.

Well put Eise.

Ten oz · October 25, 2014

The truth is often quite rough, I feel no obligation to hold your hand and tell you the universe cares about you or anyone else. People who hallucinate have problems, some are bad enough to be medicated. If you honestly thought that wine turns to blood and crackers turn to the flesh of someone long dead you would be labeled a kook unless of course you are talking about religion.No other part of our society gets a pass on evidence except religion.Whether or not I have unusual experiences in my life is only relevant if I believed it to be true despite a lack of evidence. I have sleep paralysis, yes with the little aliens and everything, I've had visions of red numbers and symbols float in my field of vision while completely awake, Both these things have explanations, if I had not been skeptical these things might have ruined my life..

People often say seeing is believing but that really isn't true. The mind is easily fooled. We have all seen things that weren't. An example we all have experienced something akin to; walking through a neighborhood at night and clearly see a dog standing in a yard. It appears to be looking at you and it breathing can ever be heard. As you get closer it turns out to just be a bush and the breathing is just it moving in a light wind. The more we learn about the brain the more we realize how little of the world is actually seen at any one time. And that everyone has false memories. http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont-study-shows-false-memories-afflict-us-all/

In my opinion people place too much trust in their own opinions and ideas. The mind is too easily manipulated and biased to be completed trusted. That is why in science things must be peer reviewed and repeatable. Because through no purposeful fault of my own I can be way off the mark regardless of what I think I have seen or experienced. It is why a fresh set of eyes should always be welcome in problem solving and nothing that isn't provably real should be treated as such.

Moontanman · October 25, 2014

What did you teach them in order to cope with sleep paralysis?

My stance was I was going to see if I can prove who wrote Gospel of John, but I have had a day in the garden pulling weeds, so it has been out of my mind today.

I explained to them the hallucinations were not real and if you just wait it out you will wake up, you just have to be calm and keep trying to get up, for all of us this results in the hallucination of getting up and walking to the door and looking back and seeing your self lying in bed, the instant you look back and see yourself you are back in the bed, sometimes it takes as many as a dozen tries before you over come it..

Robittybob1 · October 25, 2014

I explained to them the hallucinations were not real and if you just wait it out you will wake up, you just have to be calm and keep trying to get up, for all of us this results in the hallucination of getting up and walking to the door and looking back and seeing your self lying in bed, the instant you look back and see yourself you are back in the bed, sometimes it takes as many as a dozen tries before you over come it..

That is super interesting, for you seem to be saying the same method results in all of you (3) having a similar experience, what they commonly call an out of body experience (OBE). I must go back and see if that fits in with sleep paralysis. Has anyone called what you get as an OBE?

For that Demos Shakarian guy ( talked about him earlier) had a type of OBE where he traveled around the Earth looking at the people, and that has been one of the driving forces behind his mission, even though they never make a lot of noise about it, for it seems an incredible thing to do,

The early Christians also had OBE experiences where they transported their consciousness to even places like Heaven etc.

Have you ever tried to go further away from your physical body, i.e instead of going back going on?

They have done studies on this too.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3351798/What-really-happens-in-out-of-body-experiences.html

The sleep paralysis that is linked with out of body experiences was once thought rare. But studies by Kazuhiko Fukuda, a professor at Fukushima University in Japan, suggest that it may strike between 40 percent and 60 percent of all people at least once.

Over the past decade, Allan Cheyne of the University of Waterloo in Canada has now collected around 30,000 tales of sleep paralysis. Many report sensations of floating, flying, falling, or leaving one's body.

http://fgbmfamerica.org/overview.html

Our mission is based on a vision that God gave to Demos Shakarian, founder of the International Fellowship, in 1952. In that vision, God took Demos around the world and showed him “millions and millions of men standing shoulder to shoulder.” Demos continued: “What I saw terrified me. The faces were set, lifeless, miserable. . . They stared straight ahead, unblinking, unseeing. With a shudder of horror I realized that they were dead. . . Then the vision changed. . . Everywhere it was the same. Brown faces, black faces, white faces – every one rigid, wretched, every one locked in his own private death.” The men whom Demos saw in the vision were spiritually dead, they were without Jesus, they were lost. . . Then God spoke (through Rose Shakarian) “My son what you see next is going to happen soon.” Then Demos was moving around the earth a second time. “Below me again were millions upon millions of men. But what a difference! This time heads were raised. Eyes shone with joy. Hands were lifted towards heaven. These men who had been so isolated, each in his prison of self, were linked in a community of love and adoration. Asia. Africa. America – everywhere death had turned to life. And then the vision was over.”

Edited October 25, 2014 by Robittybob1

Moontanman · October 25, 2014

That is super interesting, for you seem to be saying the same method results in all of you (3) having a similar experience, what they commonly call an out of body experience (OBE). I must go back and see if that fits in with sleep paralysis. Has anyone called what you get as an OBE?

For that Demos Shakarian guy ( talked about him earlier) had a type of OBE where he traveled around the Earth looking at the people, and that has been one of the driving forces behind his mission, even though they never make a lot of noise about it, for it seems an incredible thing to do,

The early Christians also had OBE experiences where they transported their consciousness to even places like Heaven etc.

Have you ever tried to go further away from your physical body, i.e instead of going back going on?

They have done studies on this too.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3351798/What-really-happens-in-out-of-body-experiences.html

http://fgbmfamerica.org/overview.html

This is no doubt off topic, yes I have traveled around like that, it's an illusion created by your mind..

yahya515 · October 25, 2014

Okay, Jesus seems to have lost his temper now and again... he was only human...........The Muslim interpretation that yahya515 has given us is not the only Muslim interpretation of these events; it is however one that really seems at odds with the whole message of Christ......

saying that Jesus was only human is a Muslim interpretation! and it is completely at odds with the whole message of divine Christ!

Robittybob1 · October 25, 2014

saying that Jesus was only human is a Muslim interpretation! and it is completely at odds with the whole message of divine Christ!

How does a divine Christ differ from Jesus just a man? He got tired and hungry and needed sleep like the rest of us.

yahya515 · October 26, 2014

How does a divine Christ differ from Jesus just a man? He got tired and hungry and needed sleep like the rest of us.

Jesus had both God characteristics and human characteristics that why an argument between a Muslim and a Christian continues forever, Islam considers Jesus as an ordinary human whom was given miracles like giving life, Christians consider him as divine who became flesh to do a particular job, however Qur'an refers to Jesus as the spirit of God, and spirits of God are angels ,in Islam we have the creator and the creation , the creator is God himself, the creation are angels, Jesus, humans, the devil, animals, etc, so I see Jesus as a unique creation of God like an angel in the shape of a human.

Robittybob1 · October 26, 2014

Jesus had both God characteristics and human characteristics that why an argument between a Muslim and a Christian continues forever, Islam considers Jesus as an ordinary human whom was given miracles like giving life, Christians consider him as divine who became flesh to do a particular job, however Qur'an refers to Jesus as the spirit of God, and spirits of God are angels ,in Islam we have the creator and the creation , the creator is God himself, the creation are angels, Jesus, humans, the devil, animals, etc, so I see Jesus as a unique creation of God like an angel in the shape of a human.

Thanks Yahya. I have never spoken to a muslim before, but I have often wondered how we would differ. In my theory Jesus and John were twin brothers, so do you think Muslims could accept a teaching like that?

When you say you "see Jesus as a unique creation of God like an angel in the shape of a human" it sounds like your view of Jesus goes a bit beyond "Jesus as an ordinary human" unless you see all humans as a unique creation of God. How can you say the two things about the same person?

ajb · October 26, 2014

saying that Jesus was only human is a Muslim interpretation! and it is completely at odds with the whole message of divine Christ!

It is not just a Muslim interpretation at all, rational people think that if there was a single person called Jesus that started Christianity then he was only human.

If we accept that Jesus was a single person that actually existed, then the fact that he was just a man is no way at odds with the overall message of Christ. In particular, it seems very strange that Jesus would, if he existed, seek a bloody revenge on anyone. For sure, this seems at odds with the portrait of Jesus the bible paints. It seems inconsistent with the overall persona of Jesus as described in the bible, this is irrespective of if Jesus actually existed. This was my point.

Edited October 26, 2014 by ajb

yahya515 · October 26, 2014

Thanks Yahya. I have never spoken to a muslim before, but I have often wondered how we would differ. In my theory Jesus and John were twin brothers, so do you think Muslims could accept a teaching like that?

When you say you "see Jesus as a unique creation of God like an angel in the shape of a human" it sounds like your view of Jesus goes a bit beyond "Jesus as an ordinary human" unless you see all humans as a unique creation of God. How can you say the two things about the same person?

unfortunately we Quranists differ a lot from other Muslims, we reject a lot of Islamic books and we accept only the Qur'an , in addition we understand Qur'an differently , the first fact (Jesus is only a human) is a traditional Islamic view for Jesus, the second one is a Qur'anist's view, in Qur'an Jesus is called the spirit of God, he was given the holy spirit , which was not given to any other human . one of the Quranists says" Jesus is greater than what Muslims think and less great than what Christians think"

.......In particular, it seems very strange that Jesus would, if he existed, seek a bloody revenge on anyone.

this kind of act is called punishment rather than revenge , he was one of the disciples and was punished for his betrayal , I think any prophet will do the same , I am not sure about Moses's laws if such person should be killed but it is written in Qur'an that for those who fight God and his messenger should be killed or crucified or ,etc you can refer to Qur'an if you like.

Hendrick Laursen · October 26, 2014

unfortunately we Quranists differ a lot from other Muslims, we reject a lot of Islamic books and we accept only the Qur'an , in addition we understand Qur'an differently , the first fact (Jesus is only a human) is a traditional Islamic view for Jesus, the second one is a Qur'anist's view, in Qur'an Jesus is called the spirit of God, he was given the holy spirit , which was not given to any other human . one of the Quranists says" Jesus is greater than what Muslims think and less great than what Christians think"

Then certainly you're not a muslim.

A Muslim, follows both Quran & Ahl-Ul-Bayt as been said by prophet:

انی تارک فیکم الثقلین کتاب الله و عترتی اهل بیتی

ما ان تمسکتم بهما لن تضلوا ابدا

و انهما لن یفترقا حتی یردا علی الحوض

Ten oz · October 26, 2014

Exactly. We have many references to Caesar. But having less references does not mean 'non-existence'. Of course, in the case of Jesus the base is small. But it is not zero.

I am not arguing "non-existence" I am arguing that its not clearing known if Jesus did exist. I am not closed to either probability. When you say that Jesus most probably existed you are basically saying the same thing otherwise you'd drop the most probably or likely part and just state that he did. My Caesar comparison was meant to highlight the difference between known history and speculative history. A best guess is still merely a guess.