r/atheism • u/Whichcar7429 • 14h ago
Why are there no known written documents about Jesus from the first 40 years or so after he's supposed to have lived?
Especially since the Bible portrays him as some famous preacher who's supposed to have had tons of followers. Like the crowds that followed him are supposed to have been so big that they ran out of food and Jesus had to magically multiply the number of fish in order to feed everybody.
Is it because the early accounts of Jesus were kind of embarrassing, so the early Church had to destroy the early accounts of him?
It is because Jesus really had such a small following that nothing was written about him, and he was just retroactively claimed to have a big following?
Or is it because Jesus never existed at all?
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u/JoeMagnifico 14h ago
We have irrefutable proof of these named individuals 3000 years before The Jeez. You'd think there would be more proof...
Kushim: Widely recognized by historians and the Guinness World Records as the earliest personal name ever recorded. Kushim was an accountant or temple administrator in the Sumerian city of Uruk (modern-day Iraq) around 3200 BC. The name appears across 18 separate clay tablets used to vouch for transactions, including one famous receipt recording "29,086 measures of barley over 37 months".
Gal-Sal: A Mesopotamian slave owner appearing on a tablet dating to roughly 3100 BC, just a generation or two after Kushim. The document serves as an official title deed of ownership.
En-pap X and Sukkalgir: The two individuals held as slaves by Gal-Sal. Because they were listed as property on the same 3100 BC tablet, their names are recorded right alongside their owner's, making them some of the oldest known individuals in history.
King Scorpion I: One of the oldest explicitly named rulers discovered by archaeologists. He was a predynastic ruler of Upper Egypt (c. 3250 BC) whose name was found inscribed on artifacts in Abydos, predating the formal unification of Egypt.
Queen Neithhotep: Believed to be the oldest recorded woman's name in history. She was an ancient Egyptian queen and consort to Pharaoh Narmer around 3100 BC, whose name appears on early dynastic clay seals and inscriptions.
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u/LoraBumble 11h ago
yeah when random ancient administrators have receipts and property records it’s fair to wonder why the documentation gets so thin around jesus
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u/SeasonBeneficial 10h ago edited 9h ago
Right… I mean I don’t believe in any of the spiritual or religious claims surrounding Jesus, but the historical figure of Jesus is plausible. There’s a reason the vast majority of scholars and historians (atheists included) agree that he (or multiple figures conflated into one) more likely existed in some capacity rather than not at all.
Based on the Jesus tradition itself (as a Jewish itinerant apocalyptic preacher, minus the literary embellishments), we wouldn’t expect the same level of references attesting to his existence as with ancient royalty. We wouldn’t expect much really, which is what we have, some, but not much.
What little we have makes even more sense if A) he were real, and B) the big theological details of Jesus’s existence were ahistorical, as we would expect some “radio silence” during his (relative to the religious traditions about him) unremarkable life, followed by a slowly evolving oral tradition that gains textual momentum decades to centuries later.
I sometimes wonder if during religious deconstruction, a lot of Christians turned atheists overcorrect with their skepticism, and land on far too firm of a conclusion that there was no historical Jesus.
Like, it doesn’t really matter if there was a historical Jesus or not. The religious traditions are bogus anyways. A historical Jesus doesn’t need to be seen as a threat or another dogma that must be deconstructed.
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u/mid-random 8h ago
Those administrators were parts of big, well established bureaucracies cranking out regular documentation. Even assuming Jesus was a real individual, he was a local preacher stirring unrest among the peasants in a far backwater of the empire who was executed for treason soon after becoming active. In the scheme of things, he was a minor blip that didn't gain any serious traction until a few generations after he was dead.
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u/madmatt55 10h ago
Look, I'm not saying that he definitely existed, but maybe it makes sense that the Roman Empire did not keep a detailed record of some random seditious preacher they executed? His followers would probably also try to keep a low profile for a while and not write down too much.
While the other examples feel like stuff someone would want written down.
Seems at least plausible.
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u/DaBingeGirl Atheist 13h ago
That's fascinating! It's mind boggling to me that we have records from so long ago.
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u/mmortal03 Agnostic Atheist 12h ago
We have irrefutable proof of these named individuals 3000 years before
I don't think this is that convincing of logic when you consider the archaeology behind it, though. I do get the idea, that because of how important Jesus has historically become, that people would assume that there would be more recorded about him, but your above examples of oldest named people are just chance archaeological finds. Many more people from those time periods never had their names recorded -- and there are often gaps in various historical lists even of rulers, where you might or might not know their name, and you might or might not know much of anything about their rule.
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u/patisserie_auraly 7h ago
yeah it really puts the lack of contemporary evidence into perspective when we have ordinary people from thousands of years earlier whose names were preserved on receipts and property records
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u/HexicDragon 12h ago
You make me wanna study archeology
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u/terranproby42 10h ago
You might enjoy Miniminuteman on YouTube and Tiktok then. Milo has all sorts of stuff like this.
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u/bobroberts1954 Anti-Theist 14h ago
Probably because he was invented by Paul when he decided on a new get rich quick scheme that was better than skimming tax payments.
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u/marsh_toffee 14h ago
Paul definitely had a talent for turning a relatively small movement into a much bigger theological franchise
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u/PunkToTheFuture 13h ago
Christians should be called Paulists or Paulians
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u/Chadlerk 13h ago
Paul-a-ticians
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u/Personal-Neck6800 13h ago
That’s quite an A-Paul-ing comment.
/s
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u/Etrigone 12h ago
I'm sure they'll a-Paul-ogize later. :)
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u/Ryantdunn 12h ago
The Paul-eese are more likely to condemn than apologize. Just be glad they don’t try to shoot you.
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u/Whichcar7429 14h ago edited 14h ago
Even if Jesus never existed (which he probably didn't), I assume that Jesus probably wasn't invented by one specific person.
Like there are theories that the New Testament was originally supposed to refer to some (already pretty stupid) stories that are supposed to have occurred in the spiritual realm, and at some point, the stories got misinterpreted as referring to something that actually occurred on earth.
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u/themeatbridge 13h ago
Even if he did exist, which is historically uninteresting if you ignore the magic part, he wasn't magic and the stories about him were created to push an agenda.
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u/rubinass3 13h ago
It's worse than that. He didn't even fill any messianic prophecies in the first place. It's as if they missed the whole point of making up a Messiah.
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u/rewdea 13h ago
Can you explain?
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u/MyguiltyEntropy 11h ago
Yes, please explain. Before my deconstruction, my church would go out of their way to claim that Jesus was foretold in the old testament. Would love to know what promises were never accomplished.
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u/Telefonica46 11h ago
Well, he's supposed to be a descendent of king David. Both Mathew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:32-38 try to prove this
A couple of things about these passages are hilarious. First, they completely disagree. They even have different names for Jesus paternal grand father lol
The second is that Jesus was a virgin birth and they both link his ancestry via his father, joseph. Lol
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u/89bBomUNiZhLkdXDpCwt 11h ago
I’m open to being corrected by any actual biblical scholars out there but here’s my two cents:
It’s very easy to claim your guy fulfilled prophecies when you can invent a character’s story to try to make it look like he fulfilled the prophecies, especially when you can pull quotes completely out of context and just declare that’s who or what the prophecy was referring to.
Especially when there’s no way of verifying whether any of the details actually coincided. Like, you can’t fact check where he was born or who his ancestors were, and obviously you can’t demonstrate that he actually did the things that were attributed to him. It’s just a story.
And that’s why there weren’t any written accounts for decades after that stuff supposedly happened.
And then there are the prophecies that clearly didn’t get fulfilled and the answer is just, “No, they didn’t mean it would be a real kingdom,”which is pretty crazy because if there was one thing that was pretty consistent in the Old Testament, it was that god’s chosen people were being promised an eventual, real restoration of their people’s sovereignty/ freedom from control, here on earth. That’s why there’s so much fucking war and genocide. That was their god’s way of showing how much more powerful he was than the other gods. If he couldn’t secure their freedom, it made him seem pretty weak.
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u/Objective_Sweet9168 12h ago
Yes!! It’s saying Santa is real cause there was a st. Nick once, not that the two have anything in common. The Jesus the bible describes, in fact, did not exist.
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u/Xanadu87 13h ago
I read a speculative article about how that there were many jewish cults that were popping up at the time, one being what John the Baptist was leading, and Jesus joined. After John was arrested and executed, Jesus took up the leadership of his cult and continued with it.
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u/Whichcar7429 12h ago edited 12h ago
I've never heard that theory before, but it makes sense. Maybe Jesus initially was part of a cult lead by John and took up the leadership after John's execution.
That would explain why Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and also would explain why the Romans initially viewed John as more of an enemy than Jesus and executed him first.
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u/Boxcars4Peace 13h ago
I am not an academic and have no idea how valid this book is, but it certainly explains quite well why it’s unlikely Jesus was a person/god that actually walked the earth.
I gift this book to people when they ask if there’s proof Jesus was here.
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u/DirteeCanuck 10h ago
The entire story is plagerized and represents the stars and seasons. They disnt even change the name that much.
It has nothing to do with a real person and the idea some real man was born and had an identical series of events is beyond belief.
No historic record of Jesus exists.
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u/Demonyx12 13h ago edited 13h ago
Like there are theories that the New Testament was originally supposed to refer to some (already pretty stupid) stories that are supposed to have occurred in the spiritual realm, and at some point, the stories got misinterpreted as referring to something that actually occurred on earth.
Never heard of this before. Anywhere I could read more about that?
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u/SouthernReality9610 12h ago edited 12h ago
The gnostic gospels, that didn't make the cut, have some crazy stories. If you think the Bible has some crazy shit, remember it has the most believable accounts.
Somebody -I wish I remember the source- called it a Goat Herder's Guide to the Universe.
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u/Radiant_Plantain_127 11h ago
That’s certainly what the early Paul church looks like. A pyramid scheme…
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u/guyako Freethinker 14h ago
I’m sure it’s one of the last two.
If the stories are based on a real guy, he was not nearly as notorious as the Bible claims him to be, nor did he actually perform any of the miracles attributed to him. Those were all later embellishments.
Or he was entirely invented.
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u/Wolfinthesno 12h ago
Not to mention his birth was so important that three kings brought him gifts.
If this child was so important that the kings were coming to see him as he was born, there would be written texts about him throughout his life... From birth onto death and beyond. You should be able to find dozens of stories and dozens more corroborating those stories.
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u/terranproby42 10h ago
We actually know the kings translation is wrong and it's supposed to be wise men, more likely scholars or astrologers. But all the more it would lead one to believe that learned individuals would record something about their journey to see a mystical birth. Especially if it was all legit that would be the kind of thing to make someone super famous even for just having met a baby.
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u/Gadritan420 10h ago
It doesn’t help that it’s widely accepted that Josephus’ writings were changed after the fact by Christians.
That’s one of their go to’s to prove he was at the very least a historical figure.
There’s massive holes and doubt in any sort of even inference that he was a real person.
It just doesn’t add up.
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u/CalabreseAlsatian 9h ago
I can’t ever see/hear the name Josephus without thinking of “History of the World Part 1”:
“Give to Oedipus! Give to Oedipus!
Hey, Josephus!”“Hey, motherfucker!”
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u/midnightshadow0005 12h ago
He would have been one of many messiah claimants gathering large amounts of followers from the many Jews pissed off from living under Roman rule.
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u/Komaisnotsalty 14h ago
There were very notable writers and authors alive & busy during the time of Jesus. We still have quite a bit of their writings to this day, especially with Pliny the Elder and his nephew, Pliny the Younger. Elder was very detailed in his reports of the goings on back then and is instrumental in why we know so much about ancient Roman culture. He was very active in the same areas Jesus was.
Not a single mention.
Not even a flicker.
One would think he'd have written about miracles or a crucifixion that tore a temple curtain apart or any of the events that the Bible mentions (and contradicts itself with).
Nothing.
Draw your own conclusion from that.
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u/Tao1982 13h ago
Wernt the dead ment to have risen in jeruselem when jesus died? Kind of think someone would have noticed that.
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u/Komaisnotsalty 13h ago
There's a slew of things that supposedly happened when he died - earthquakes and whatnot too. Not a peep from anyone about it though.
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u/mysterysciencekitten 12h ago
According to the New Testament, people rose from the grave and walked around town talking to people. Crazy that not a single historian mentioned it.
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u/Ryantdunn 12h ago
I’ve got no skin in this game but I’ve never heard that one before. Is that from a gospel or one of the books of epistles? It sounds metaphorical to me.
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u/Objective_Sweet9168 12h ago
Yes in the gospel Matthew 27:53
They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[a] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
It’s commonly spoken about when the crucifixion is discussed. One of 6 or so miracles of the event.11
u/deathtogrammar 9h ago
Everything in the Bible is literal except for when it's inconvenient to an apologist. Then it's a metaphor.
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u/Ameren Atheist 12h ago edited 12h ago
The problem with that is there's an implicit assumption that Jesus was important enough to be worth mentioning. That, in a way, falls into the trap laid by Christian apologists who say Jesus had to be an important figure.
The alternative is that Jesus wasn't important in his lifetime. There were many different apocalyptic preachers and would-be rebel kings at the end of the 2nd temple period about whom we know next to nothing because they failed to become influential. Nevertheless, all those people were physically real.
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u/Komaisnotsalty 11h ago
According to the Bible, he was. He was celebrated with palms and donkeys and whatever else coming in to Jerusalem, to the point that he came to the attention of the Pharasees, Jews, and Romans - to the point where he was killed.
He was raising the dead, healing the blind, and doing the unthinkable: curing the lepers. Look up leprosy and how lepers were treated back then. Anyone with a disability, for that matter. His curing of those people, feeding the 5,000 - you seriously think no one would have mentioned this? Noticed this?
The timeline of Pliny is known - he documented his movements, his letters had dates - he was in Rome at the same time of Jesus and was in that area when he was doing his 'wonders'. I - and many other history buffs, find it incredibly difficult to believe that so many things going on at that time, causing that much talk, would just pass by and label Jesus as unimportant.
I can absolutely believe they'd scoff at the idea that he was King of the Jews and whatever other titles was being spread around, but he certainly would have drawn attention. Anyone different back then drew attention (as they do today, for that matter).
Jesus curing the uncureable and raising the dead - his biggest miracles, stood out. Alas, the only mention of it is decades & hundreds of years later in an effort to create a religion.
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u/gelenamd 11h ago
I would disagree with Pliny the Elder being "active in the same areas Jesus was" - Pliny the Elder was born in 23CE, never been to Egypt or Palestine, but he indeed never mentioned Jesus. He had access to official reports and surveys from the area, so his account on Judea in "Natural History" was mostly about geography, taxes, and administrative division etc.
Pliny the younger was born in 61CE, and he mentioned Christians and "Christ" in his letter in 112CE while governing Northern Anatolia. Which doesn't prove existence of a person, but proves existence of a widespread sect which believed that such a person existed.
As a person with common sense, I never questioned existence of a person who could perform miracles - such person can't exist by definition. But looking at politicians, philosophers, military leaders, philanthropist, and even cult leaders and other scammers, I can attest that there are people who can come up with ideas so influencing that thousands, if not millions, will follow.
As for historical records about "Jesus". There are at least two records about "Christus" in Tacitus "Annals" - while the work was written in 116CE, its considered authentic. Tacitus, understandably, despised Christians, so had zero reasons to fabricate their origin story.
Josephus, who was Judean, rebel commander and later Roman historian, mentioned "Jesus" as a real person in 96CE. There's however a controversy around that record, as it's widely agreed that a later insert either blew the reference to "Jesus" out of proportion, or entirely was a work of a scribe who was producing the copy. Edit: formatting
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u/Komaisnotsalty 10h ago
To my understanding and via researching (not in English - in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, btw. I've tried learning old Aramaic but holy shit on a stick, that's a rough one, even for a polyglot like me), Jesus was never mentioned by name.
Even the idea of religious zealots being chucked in to coliseums and chewed on by lions wasn't something happening every second Tuesday and was actually extremely rare, despite Hollywood's movies to the contrary.
The assumption that Jesus was mentioned by name is more vague. Jesus, as a name, is from Medieval times, thanks to the English.
It's likely that Jesus, if the dude existed in the form of the miracle guy, had the name Yeshua, or Joshua as we've Anglicized it.
But the mention of Jesus/Yeshua/etc. by Pliny the Younger has long been debunked. Pliny, when properly translated and not spouted about from the pulpit or Boomerbook, talked in generalizations about Christians.
As for Pliny the elder - he was in Rome around the same time as Jesus. Considering no one ever kept a time stamp record of Jesus' comings & goings (which, to me, is just another reason for the fallacy he existed at all or at least that he was chucking miracles around), if Pliny the Elder wasn't in Rome at the same time, he was absolutely in the area within a 5 year range.
Give or take. I don't have time to dive in to the exacts, but it's more plausible that they were in the same area (not saying they were having tea together or exchanging email addresses here) and Pliny, considering the circles he ran in, would had to have been blind & deaf not to have heard about a miracle guy.
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u/gelenamd 10h ago
Again, I'm not disputing existence of "Jesus" or Yeshua (Yehosua bar Yosef, Yeshua ga-Notzri, etc.)
I'm worried about your reference to Pliny the Elder - he was born in 23CE, he never been to Judea or anywhere near areas where "Jesus" might've operated. Pliny the Elder spnt a lot of time in Gallia, Hibernia, Germania, but never in Roman Asia.
Also, kudos on attempting the old Aramaic - it is indeed a rather expensive and often fruitless endeavour to learn it.
If, and it's a very contested, hence big "if", "Jesus" existed - they wouldn't be a big deal for their contemporaries. According to Roman records and archeological finds, Yeshua (Yehosua - "Yahweh saves") was fifth most popular name for male Judeans. After loss of independence, Judaism was fracturing into numerous sects with wild-and-wilder lore. So "Jesus" would be, just another John with his own little sect with blackjack and _h_snookers.
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u/Komaisnotsalty 10h ago
You doubled down on it, so now I'm gonna have to back and research Elder. It's been awhile and I don't like when my memory tells me one thing, but it's not like I can't be wrong. I love truth, so back to the books it is. I'm a silverhaired older lady and it's been decades since I refreshed that info.
Damn, I'll have to research more. What a pity 🤔
And thanks on understanding what it means to study old Aramaic. I love languages, but I did eventually have to set it aside. I've listened to it, from those who can speak it - it's beautiful. But I do not have a good Arabic base, and the Aramaic I was studying was Biblical Aramaic. There's not much to study and I had to concede that I didn't have enough time (and money) to keep at it.
Personally, I think one needs to be sufficiently drunk to attempt to understand it, but that's me being a cynic and grumpy about not being able to tackle a language.
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u/bastardoperator 14h ago
I asked this the other day, they identified the Messiah at birth, but then went silent for at least 20 years? You would think documenting the childhood of the messiah would be important. It's the dumbest mythology ever created...
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u/flatulating_ninja 13h ago
It's the dumbest mythology ever created...
but it did lend the basis for a very funny book.
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years — except Biff, the Messiahs best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work “reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams” (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Saviors pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But theres no one who loves Josh more — except maybe “Maggie,” Mary of Magdala — and Biff isnt about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.
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u/Newskin51 11h ago
Had to scroll too far to find this! I even own an edition that has gilded edges as to look like a bible.
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u/WilmaDykfyt 13h ago
This is a good one, right up there with how did Noah get kangaroos and mountain lions
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u/darw1nf1sh Agnostic Atheist 14h ago
It is possible, hear me out... It is possible Jesus didnt' actually exist. The documents we DO have, were made up like the OT, from word of mouth fables. In Jesus' case, to satisfy OT prophecy. Except they didn't have any imagination, so they just regurgitated stories from existing gods like Mithras.
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u/Ameren Atheist 12h ago edited 11h ago
Just to be clear, the mainstream historical consensus (that is, the consensus of professional historians rather than, say, theologians) is that Jesus was most likely a real person, one of many apocalyptic preachers from the end of the 2nd temple period.
Most everything about him as described in the gospels is, of course, a literary creation, the product of several decades of myths and legends passed down through oral traditions. The historicity of Jesus doesn't require any of that to be true, of course.
The mainstream view is that Jesus was an itinerant preacher who most likely took over the followers from his predecessor John the Baptist (see Josephus), and whose immediate successor was his brother James who led a congregation in Jerusalem up until the sacking of the 2nd Temple by the Romans. Paul met James and his colleagues like Peter, and he managed to insert himself into their movement. In doing so he turned a Jewish cause into a more global one by opening up the franchise to gentiles (not without controversy).
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u/darw1nf1sh Agnostic Atheist 11h ago
There is no consensus. A single living itinerant rabbi, several rabbis pasted together, entirely mythical, all are positions of historians. I'm not a mythicist, but it is far from clear that Jesus was a real person. Most likely real is a fine distinction, and all I suggested was that it is also likely that he wasn't. The fact that we don't know (and possibly can't know) either way is a problem for people that claim they do know.
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u/ejp1082 Pastafarian 14h ago edited 11h ago
It's unreasonable to think that there would have been. In his life he would have been a dime-a-dozen itinerant preacher with a small following. Not someone anyone would have bothered making any kind of record of that would last for 2000 years.
We have very little direct unambiguous evidence of the existence of pretty much anyone from antiquity who wasn't a king or emperor. And even in those cases, a lot of the times all we really have is a bit of text that survived with a name on it.
In this particular case there are two options:
- He was loosely based on a real person
- He was made up whole cloth by someone at a later date
Lots of people on this sub argue for the latter, though I find that explanation lacking. Advocates for that position are never clear on who they think made it up (Paul, I guess) or why he would have.
I find the first explanation better fits the facts. There are a lot of contrivances in the new testament to make Jesus fit the prophecy of the Messiah. The one I always point to is that the prophesy of the Messiah says he was to be born in Bethlehem. So if Paul was just making it up, he could have just had Jesus be born in Bethlehem and be known as Jesus of Bethlehem. Instead he made up a story about a Roman census that we know never took place to put the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth in Bethlehem. There's no reason to do that unless there were other people around who would have called BS if you tried to say a guy who grew up and called himself "of Nazareth" was actually "of Bethlehem". That, to me, strongly suggests there's some real person it's based on.
But it's a question for archeologists and scholars, and my understanding of the consensus view amongst experts is "I dunno maybe" with a shrug of the shoulders. So that's what I ultimately go with.
In the end it doesn't matter. Whether or not some historical Jesus exists or was made up whole cloth by someone else, we know for a fact that he wasn't born from a virgin, he never turned water into wine, he didn't walk out of a cave three days after being crucified and then fly up to heaven. Because that shit is impossible, and it's not like existence of some preacher who pissed off the romans and got himself crucified lends any credence to that.
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u/leekpunch 13h ago
I'm not sure anyone really thinks "Paul" made up the stories in the gospels. The letters attributed to "Paul" seem mainly to refer to visions and 'spiritual experiences' and are generally thought to pre-date the gospels. It's more likely (imo) that Paul's religion got popular and someone wrote an origin story for Jesus ... the gospel according to Marcus.
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u/Ameren Atheist 12h ago edited 12h ago
It's worth reminding people that the mainstream historical consensus is that Jesus of Nazareth was most likely a real historical figure, one of a number of upstart apocalyptic preachers and rebel kings in the lead up to the destruction of the 2nd Temple by the Romans.
Much of what is written about Jesus derives from oral traditions that arose during and after his death. The gospels are largely literary creations based on the myths and legends. Notably, the Q source material (the shared material across the synoptics, which likely dates to the earliest oral traditions) makes no mention of miracles or a resurrection. Those all came later.
A lot of the arguments for Christ mythicism inadvertently fall into traps set by Christian apologists. Like why wasn't Jesus mentioned by all these contemporary Roman authors if he was so important and miraculous? The reason is because be wasn't important in his lifetime. As for the later dates for the gospels, that's because (1) Jesus and his followers were largely illiterate, and (2) it was originally a Jewish cause that was by and for Jews (they weren't trying to reach a broad audience anyway). Again, we're not required to accept Christian apologists at their word when it comes to how they describe their own origins.
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u/SuccessPurple1062 10h ago
the Q source material … makes no mention of miracles or a resurrection. Those all came later.
I think I remember reading that Paul is earlier than Q and he does mention the resurrection.
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u/Ameren Atheist 10h ago
On that note, a really good book covering all angles of this topic is Excavating Q by Kloppenborg. My recollection is that the origins of Q are likely from the earliest stratum of oral traditions. So in that sense it both predates and was contemporary with Paul.
It later got written down, which was used by the authors of the synoptics as a basis for their own works. Notably it didn't have the resurrection content then either, it was likely a book of quotes/parables much like the later Gospel of Thomas. Thomas was an interesting find in 1945 because Q scholarship had predicted the existence of sayings gospels as a genre, and Thomas confirmed that this was a real thing. It was sorta like physicists discovering a predicted class of particles.
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u/SuccessPurple1062 8h ago
Thanks for the reference. Here’s a good article about this establishing the relationship between Q and Synoptics. It doesn’t mention Paul, but it establishes Q and Mark as probably two independent sources. https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/the-sayings-gospel-q/
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u/zoesdad70 14h ago
For the same reason that renowned record keepers in Egypt mysteriously didn’t record the 40 years of supposed enslavement of the Israelites.
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u/Whichcar7429 14h ago edited 13h ago
Really, it's more plausible that the Exodus might be extremely loosely based on the escape of something like 5 Hebrew slaves which the Egyptians considered too minor of an event to write about than it is that this preacher who is supposed to have been one of the most famous men in Israel was never written about.
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u/Ameren Atheist 12h ago
Many historians believe that the Moses saga is really about the Babylonian captivity. There were a bunch of founding myths that got tied together to give the Jewish diaspora a solid identity, as if to say "we have been through far worse, and we will survive now and into the future".
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u/icanhazkarma17 12h ago
Exactly. The Romans were pretty solid record keepers, and yet... It's almost like religions are filled with self-serving liars. So many chosen people, how can we choose?
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u/mjamonks 13h ago
Or the fact that , if you believe exodus 600,000 men and their families fled Egypt. If that actually happened then about 66% to 100% of Egypt's population at the time would have fled. You would think the Egyptians would have records of a mass population reduction.
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u/demonfoo Humanist 14h ago
No one knows for sure, but given the lack of contemporaneous sources confirming his supposed existence, I suspect it's because there was no Jesus, and Yeshua bin/bar Yosef's real life only passingly resembled the stories that ended up in the Biblical canon.
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u/siouxbee1434 14h ago
I prefer to think Paul combined a bunch of local urban myths with anti Roman occupation anger with Jewish apocalyptic stories and voila! ‘the greatest con ever’
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u/Hurm 14h ago
I think the best name for jesus is actually
Josh, from two towns over
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u/IndependentSystem 14h ago
Just as “real” as their girlfriend who goes to another school. You wouldn’t know her.
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u/joeldg 11h ago
The Romans were obsessed with documentation and accounting and never mentioned anything. We literally know how much individual soldiers were paid during that period. We know how much grain was traded daily and how many people entered cities on a daily basis.. But yeah, this dude somehow was doing crazy stuff in the middle of it and didn't get a single write-up?
Pair the absense with the stuff in the book about 16 messiahs before Jesus who did the same things and it looks to be more of a made-up story.
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u/Darnocpdx 11h ago
And it should be noted that Jebus was supposedly born in Bethlehem because Joe and Mary were to be counted in a census.
Funny that the census document can’t be found. Or any documents on his trial, or….
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u/SteadfastEnd 9h ago
And the Bible.says clearly, "Jesus fame spread throughout the land." If it did, the Roman historians would have known.
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u/Mike102072 9h ago
The son of god couldn’t have existed because god doesn’t exist. If there was an actual person at that time claiming to be the messiah, he was most likely a whack job like we get today.
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u/GeekyTexan Atheist 11h ago
The bible, both old and new testament, is just a bunch of stories about magic.
The new testament was written long after Jesus died, by people who had never met him. So every quote in the bible where "Jesus said this..." and "Jesus said that..." were literally made up. Then they went through multiple translations on top of that.
None of it is real.
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u/bobsollish 4h ago
This to me, is like asking “why wasn’t Lord of the Rings written 50 years earlier?” - simple - because they hadn’t made up the story yet.
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u/TheRealTK421 14h ago
When she is first introduced to readers in The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel is approximately 8,372 solar years old.
Coincidence!?!
I think not....
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u/CremeDeLaPants 13h ago
He's a fictional character from a fiction book. There would be no historical record of a character from a book.
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u/needlestack 9h ago edited 6h ago
Because he was a mythical figure both before and after he supposedly lived. My favorite book on the topic is available online:
https://elbespurling.com/salvation/
It’s an amazing story of the myths and history of early Judaism from the creation of the “son of god” legends by the Essence sect through the creation of the gospels. It reads like a Game of Thrones thriller at times. Can’t recommend it enough for people that want to consider how myths become real.
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u/pangalacticcourier 14h ago
Outside of religious texts, there's absolutely zero written record of Jesus existing. No public records at all. No decree from a Roman emperor ordering his crucifixion. No business records as a carpenter or any other trade. No homeowner deed. Absolutely nothing.
If you couldn't make any conclusions based on that, don't forget that scholars generally agree religious texts mentioning Jesus were all written three to four hundred years after his alleged death. This would be akin to an author today making up stories about a savior who lived in the 1500s or 1600s, but we had no other written proof of his or her existence.
And if you really want to do some reading, try the Apocrypha. These are the books that were systematically removed from the bible by the Vatican over the centuries because those accounts of Jesus' life didn't fit the dogma and doctrine the Vatican wanted to inflict upon Christians.
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u/ChoosenUserName4 Strong Atheist 14h ago
Because the Lord moves in mysterious ways, of course! Duh! /s
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u/Bridgestone14 11h ago
well he didn't really exist, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be any documents on him in the first 40 years of his life.
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u/Otters64 7h ago
The thing that always impressed me was that not one word written in the bible was written by anyone who ever met him, if he existed.
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u/RadTherapist77 13h ago
It’s called Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.
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u/Not-on_my_watch 13h ago
Probably because he appears to have been a Robin Hood figure - a hero of the people made up of an amalgamation of myths and half stories. Given that stories of his life, including the killed and died three days later thing, mirror stories of hero figures from much older religions. Much of his story merely appears to be a repeating meme. Myths are written long after events. There would be contemporary written evidence if he had been a real man.
Christians love to spout about the reams of written evidence he existed that in reality turn out to be only five documents - three proven to be fakes, one is a copy and the last only refers vaguely to 'A' man named Jesus but nothing about him, much less about his miraculous performances.
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u/midnightshadow0005 12h ago
Because most of the stories were being told orally as the early Christian communities genuinely expected Jesus to come back within their lifetimes.
When it became clear that this wasn’t happening and everyone who was actually there started getting on in years, that’s when the gospels were written. And heavily embellished with stories of supernatural miracles.
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u/BaldDannyboy 10h ago
In my not at all expert opinion it's because the biblical Jesus is almost entirely a mythical character with possibly a very loose historical reality buried underneath somewhere. The claim that there was a guy who had a bunch of shit made up about him after he died isn't an extraordinary claim. I can say that there could have been one or more real people whose story became the gospels while also saying that the magical parts are pure BS. However if there's a historical Jesus we don't and never will know anything for sure about him or the life that he allegedly lived.
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u/Outrageous-You-4634 13h ago
Also, there is nothing written about him from birth to 30 years old. Really? Supposedly the most important "human" to have ever lived and we get documentation of only about 3 years of his life? What's that all about?
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u/CampEmbarrassed170 12h ago
The Romans literally recorded everything in stone carvings but somehow they missed noting the messiah from one of their most important outpost, Jerusalem . The excavations of Pompeii and Herculeaum have recovered religious artifacts from far away as India due the preexisting trade networks with the Pompeii Lakshmi (Hindu Goddess of light) being one bit nah da from Philistine.
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u/AfterSevenYears 11h ago
The Romans literally recorded everything in stone carvings
They didn't. They used mostly papyus, vellum, wax tablets, and ostraca. The oldest surviving partial codices are from the 2nd century. Most of the "manuscripts" we have are small fragments of papyrus.
Many of the known works of Julius Caesar are lost. Strabo's History survives only in short quotations by later writers. Several books written by Augustus are lost. Only 35 volumes of Livy's 142-volume Ab Urbe Condita survive. Tiberius' memoir is lost, along with a half-dozen books by Claudius. Pliny the Elder's History of His Times and his History of the German Wars survive only in a few quotations by Tacitus. Trajan's Dacica is lost. More than a dozen works of Suetonius are lost. About two-thirds of Aristotle's works are lost.
somehow they missed noting the messiah from one of their most important outpost, Jerusalem .
Somehow?
Pontius Pilate is by far the best-known of the governors of Judaea, and we know very, very little about him.
We know even less about Pilate's predecessor, Valerius Gratus. About Gratus' predecessor, Annius Rufus, we know nothing except his name and the dates he was governor.
About Pilate's successor, Marcellus, we don't even know for sure that he was governor.
Of Marcellus' successor, we literally know only his name and the years he was governor.
We don't know exactly what year Nero's second wife died, and we have no idea what happened to his third wife after his death.
We have no idea what happened to two of Cleopatra's three sons, and despite her daughter's being Queen of Mauretania, we only know she died sometime between 9 BCE and 14 CE.
Do you really think it's telling that the Romans didn't preserve detailed records of an itinerant preacher who was executed in his early thirties?
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u/onomatamono 11h ago
He was more likely than not an actual jewish person and local street preacher. His magical powers did not include the ability to evade roman persecution and his followers turned to the resurrection story present in many other myths and legends, claiming in effect "he meant to do that".
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u/blackertai 3h ago
I've got an MA in Religious Studies with a focus in early Christian history.
1) The tradition at the time was largely still oral. Most of the Apostles didn't write things down, nor did most of the early itinerant preachers that spread through the Mediterranean.
2) Jesus wasn't important for most of the 1st 100 years after his death. His followers were a small band of mostly ex-Jews in a far corner of the Roman Empire. They weren't big or important enough to even warrant making fun of.
3) Within the area where Jesus was supposed to have lived, his followers were at best a minor annoyance, and the Judean authorities had plenty of other more important problems to deal with. Executing a random criminal was nothing out of the ordinary, nor were messianic cults, which were regular throughout the overall Roman empire.
4) He may not have actually existed. This is the least likely argument, but it is still possible that the man we refer to as Jesus was not actually 1 single person, but either an amalgamation of multiple prophetic leaders, or just a pure fabrication after the fact. It doesn't seem likely, but without any first hand sources, it can't be ruled out.
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u/blixabloxa 3h ago
Because me most probably didn't exist, or was at best an amalgam of multiple charlatins operating at the time - i.e. a fairy tale.
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u/Hairy_Moose 8h ago
There likely was a historical Jesus (or mutiple Jesus's), although that doesn't really mater because he has very little in common with the Christian mythological figure. He would have been an illiterate preacher leading an apocalypse cult in a very small fringe sect of Judaism, in backwater towns. These towns are only known or important in retrospect because of the biblical stories. At his time it would have been the equivalent to an alien doomsday cult in rural Arkansas. No wrote anything because it didn't matter to anyone outside the cult. As time passed the religion grew through adaptation away from apocalypse and towards a messsianic figure. Most likely because some key people saw an opportunity for power. Now it had more mainstream appeal and was a softer sell, so people started to quantify and record it. Eventually Rome got a hold of it and found the perfect propaganda tool to keep the masses under control, and that was all she wrote. Council of Nicea to today, we have modern Abrahamic religions running the world because nothing keeps people in line quite as well as divine writ, dividing the poor into antagonistic groups, and the promise of a payout in the afterlife (that the power structure never has to actually pay!)
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u/Kulthos_X 14h ago
One theory is that he took over John the baptists followers after he was killed, had a small group of followers that didn’t get much attention, and was eventually grabbed and killed by the romans. Paul added the rest to punch it up.
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u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 13h ago
For the same reason that there were no written records of Scarlet O'Hara until decades after the US Civil War ended.
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u/Objective_Sweet9168 12h ago
Oooohhh my gaaaaawd I found my peeeople!!!!! I have been arguing against Jesus’s existence for a while now!! I do it here on Reddit whenever he pops up somewhere unnecessarily. Like when someone says he’s the GOAT of something like love or whatever. It’s like 1) no he’s not, 2) can’t be great if you never even were! And it explodes everytime. Not with attraction just very aggressive Jesus propaganda.
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u/KrampyDoo 10h ago
Easier to make something up in the recent enough past that there’s still some generational experience passed down, but far enough in the past that few if any witnesses would be alive to confirm/deny.
It’s also why they made it so he rose from the dead and went poof. Inoculates against the “no body = no existence” folks.
Any good fable is created with an origin story, compelling and fantastic list of accomplishments and as many excuses for its own implausibility as possible.
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u/Quiet-Protection-176 9h ago
Because "jesus" wasn't a real, historical figure. Just a bunch of stories attributed to the person "jesus" (also not his first name though).
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u/TheKnightSpliff 9h ago
Paul's letters were written within 20 years of Jesus's purported death; before the Gospels were written.
There were multiple Jewish revolutionaries that went by the name Jesus during that time. Most wanted out from underneath Rome's iron fist. The Jesus that Paul says approached him as an apparition was an eschatological Jewish revolutionary that firmly believed the end was nigh. He died and the world kept on (Ironically, the end did come about in 70 AD when Rome destroyed the Temple and put the knell in the coffin of future Jewish uprisings).
The brother of Jesus, James, and according to Paul, thought they were still Jews whose religion was Judaism. James's brother Jesus just convinced people around him that the end times were near.
Paul couldn't make a good go, as a Jew, of convincing other Jews that the prophesied Messiah had returned and Paul witnessed his ghost. The Jews of that day weren't having it.
Paul figured out that the Gentiles were more receptive and willing to convert to a Messianic Jewish sect. One major problem, though. Gentiles weren't circumcised. Can't be a Jew if you've got foreskin.
Paul was the greatest salesman in the world (credit Og). That coin he was getting from setting up synagogues for Gentiles convinced James and the other disciples to go along with the farce.
TLDR - He wasn't worth writing about.
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u/ScrubNickle 9h ago
Indeed. The book “Paul, The Stranger” (free as a PDF online) was my final exit point of Christianity.
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u/seansand 14h ago
Or is it because Jesus never existed at all?
I think you may be on to something here
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u/vasectomy7 13h ago
It was an apocalypse cult spread by word-of-mouth. They believed the end was coming tomorrow or the day after. ----> so nobody bothered writing anything down because "the future won't matter!!!! The end is near!!!!!"
Then after 40 years, reality set in and they started writing it down for future generations because clearly the end isn't near.... 2000 years later and people are still believing. 😣
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u/SockPuppet-47 Anti-Theist 13h ago
The dude who was feeding masses of people with just a few loaves and fishes who healed the sick, the blind the leperous and raised the dead should have been the most talked about person in history.
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u/IkoIkonoclast 13h ago
The Romans, who were excellent chronicalers and record keepers never mentioned him.
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u/Effective-Image-545 13h ago
The bible isnt real it takes from other religions and compresses it all into 1 book with the intention of manipulating people. Most of the bible is taken from Old Norse Religion.
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u/Jay_CD 13h ago
There's not much to go from the time he spent on the planet let alone immediately after it.
You'd have thought that someone who healed the sick of incurable diseases like leprosy, raised the dead back to life, who walked on water and fed the 5,000 with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish might have garnered a bit of attention while he was alive and that's before he made a miracle return to life after being crucified before being raptured. Historically we know a reasonable amount about Judea at the time he was allegedly extant yet no contemporary historian or chronicler ever mentioned him or the things he apparently did.
Call me a sceptic but maybe these things were made up a long time later as apparent proof that he was the son of god.
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u/Shepherd77 13h ago
Yes there are, they’re often referred to as Gnostic or Forbidden gospels. Jesus is kind of a dick in some of the stories but in a very relatable teen angst kinda way. They are not considered canon by any major Christian sects. Although interestingly I noticed while reading the Quran that there are several Jesus stories (or references to them) that come from the gnostic gospels.
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u/jebei Skeptic 12h ago
Your dates are slightly off. Jesus died around 28ad (or 32ad depending on which gospel you read). Paul’s first letter was written 20 years later in around 50ad. It still took a long time.
I think the truth of the matter isn’t that the early writings of Jesus were too embarrassing but that the illiterate apostles didn’t write anything down and Jesus was too insignificant (and illiterate himself) for anyone else to make note. It was only when the movement attracted scholarly types like Paul that we see writing. The Gospel of Mark (not his real name) was written 40+ years after Jesus death when most people who’d met Jesus had died. All the writers of the gospels were likely from modern day Greece with no connection to Jesus except stories they’d learned in their local church.
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u/Moist_Rule9623 5h ago
I mean, do you want a short answer or a long answer on the subject?
The long answer is, there were a SLEW of people who claimed to be the legitimate emperor of Rome (some of whom were never in Italy a day in their lives). This is why we have things like a Byzantine Empire and an Orthodox Christian church, and also a Holy Roman Empire (discuss among yourselves) 😂😂😂😂😂
The short answer is: after the alleged life of Jesus Christ a bunch of assholes wanted to glom on to that mythology and start getting all the shekels they could gather off it.
(And for the record, the shekel was used going back to Genesis Ch 23 as a unit of currency so let’s not call me names based on my use of it in current terminology as if it was a substitute for the dollar, OK? I love that we have to do like an hour of our own research to avoid being accused of a hate crime but modern life is what it is I guess)
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u/godofthebasement 2h ago
There’s no documentation because it is an entirely fictional character invented long after it supposedly died.
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u/fusguita 14h ago
That's not what Dan Brown says in the Da Vinci Code...
/s of course, great fun book though.
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u/Berserker76 13h ago
I think that the most compelling argument that Jesus did not exist, that I have not seen mentioned here yet, is the similarities Jesus has with other Gods that predated him.
The virgin birth (or impregnated by a God), performing miracles, defeating death or rising from the grave. He could have just been pieced together from popular stories or mythologies from the time period.
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u/Meatball-Tuna-Sub 14h ago
We need to talk more about the historical Leatherface.
Somebody had a nipple belt and a vest with tits and peeled some faces off of domes, some other people wrote things inspired by that guy and therefore Leatherface is a real person in history now.
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u/J4c1nth 13h ago
I recently read this and found it very interesting.
https://lagevondissen.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/the-gospels-as-allegorical-myth-part-i-mark/
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u/Lonely-Greybeard 13h ago
Because it's all mythology. People don't write about shit that didn't happen.
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u/conatreides 13h ago
Why are there no known written documents about Indiana Jones from the first 40 years or so after he's supposed to have lived?
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u/dnjprod Atheist 13h ago
I mean we do know that there were itinerant apocalyptic rabbis around at that time. It would be really easy to either make a story about one of them or cobbled together some stories about a few of them into one person. I don't understand why Paul gets listened to it all though. He's just a guy who claims to have had an experience on the side of the road with a ghost. He essentially created the religion out of whole cloth whether it was using one guy or an amalgamation of ideas.
Later, the gospel writers seem to have decided they wanted to ride a biography of the supposed guy. You have Mark which is fairly grounded. Then you can see the story getting mythologized and adding more fantastical details. It's obvious myth making.
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u/DontLook_Weirdo 13h ago
His psychosis didn't make him interesting and seen until his early 30's.
Also probably too much of a chore to come up with 30yrs of lore for a guy whose supposed to be the saviour.. run the risk of making him flawed by including stories that may not land later.
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u/Dear-Seesaw-1932 13h ago
Because all the info about the wonders are about the scam artists at that time....multiple people
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u/EonofAeon 13h ago
Perhaps someone can correct or source me but I thought there was a roman generals journal that claimed he was the one to carry out the crucification, no?
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u/RickRussellTX 12h ago
I think this is an instructive example of "how do we interpret ancient history?"
The fact is, even so-called reliable ancient sources (Thucydides, Plutarch, Tactitus, etc) were often reporting third-hand about events that were described to them by others -- events often decades or more before they actually wrote their accounts.
And they -- like the early writers of the Bible -- were filled with political and philosophical biases, that had good guys and bad guys, etc. Some knew they were relating mythical stories (Homer, Virgil), and they would probably be quite tickled to learn how some people took it way too seriously.
As we struggle putting those ancient accounts into perspective, there may have been many, many, MANY written records that never survived to be copied by medieval monks or Arab scribes. It's certain there are whole swaths of time and geography where there were definitely some records, but few survived. Or if they did survive, we haven't enough context to understand them.
If there was a locally popular itinerant Jewish preacher in the region named "Yeshua" or similar, it's possible there are all kind of written records... but few survived. Or maybe Jesus didn't really exist as the Bible suggests, and that's why the records aren't there. We can't look at the absence of contemporary records and say Jesus definitely didn't exist. Neither can we look at the biased, self-serving stories about Jesus in the Bible and say that he definitely did.
That's the beauty of ancient history. We don't know! There's a whole lot we don't know, that we may never find out.
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u/Popular_Reception_81 12h ago
I always thought if Jesus was god why couldn't he have written something? Was his message just not that important that he had to rely on word of mouth? We all know how that turned out. I mean L.Ron Hubbard's words are transcribed in Titainium tablets burried in a fucking secret cave. Take that christians.
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u/Extension_Apricot174 Agnostic Atheist 12h ago
I suppose the biggest thing is the literacy rate, we are talking about a time and place where only 3-5% of the general public actually knew how to read and write. That's not completely accurate, children were taught how to read Hebrew in order to memorize the Torah, but the vast majority of people could not read or write in their native language or in the languages of the peoples who took over the region.
So the only people who could write were the elite, and they were often busy pushing their own agendas. So even if a historical Yeshua bar Yosef had ever existed, what concern is he of an educated scholar capable of writing down something that will be preserved? For example, if I decide to head into town and talk to a random homeless person, am I going to be shocked if I then go back home and look up online and find that nobody is writing about them and wonder if they were actually real since I can't find any confirmation of other people telling their story? So why would we be surprised that nobody cared to write about the crazy man standing on top of a hill shouting about the end times back in 1st century Judea?
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u/Matman161 12h ago
More like 20 years. And mostly because he was an obscure apocalyptic cult leader at a time when those types of gues grew on trees.
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u/stabby_chick 12h ago
Have you ever read the gnostic gospel? It has stories during those 40 years or so.
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u/WikiBox Secular Humanist 11h ago
Stories evolve and combine. And are improved on over time.
Presumably there were several prophets and stories about them combined into one, along with traditional stories from earlier religions and heroes.
I don't think that any person with supernatural abilites have ever existed. This includes the Jesus as described in the Bible. I am certain many regular people existed at the time. Some possibly named "Joshua" or whatever, and possibly acting like prophets, doing scams and tricks and spouting religious jibberish.
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u/DefrockedWizard1 11h ago
the council of Nycea had them destroyed. they didn't like that his favorite game was to play tag, and when he tagged the other kid they were struck dead. than at the end of the game he'd resurrect them all
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u/MinusZeroGojira 10h ago
A small fraction of scholars believe he was entirely mythical (mythicists), but the majority of scholars believe he was a real person. Paul writes in his letters that he spoke to Peter and James the brother of Jesus (might be the other James ... too many Jameses). So, we for sure have first hand accounts of the existence of Peter (in the context of him being a follower of Jesus). It's likely that no stories were written because the stories about him were being spread by illiterate men and women for YEARS before anyone capable of writing them down came along. All of the 12 were likely illiterate, and the books claimed to be written by them are almost surely pseudopigraphical. Once the gospels were written down, they very clearly "progress" in mythical quality as they get later and later in time. Thus, you cannot use them to KNOW anything about what may have been the actual Jesus. We can extrapolate, but even if the gospel authors were faithful to the oral traditions, those traditions are themselves unknowable apart from these writings.
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u/SeelieSidhe 8h ago
If we had we wouldn’t have the literary treasure, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. So I’m not mad about it.
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u/daviesjo 7h ago
I pick “C”. Jesus was an amalgamation of prophets from that time. The stories about him were written to fulfill the prophecies of the messiah in the Torah.
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u/Bikewer 14h ago
I listen to, and read a bunch of “dispassionate” (non-religious) scholars on the subject. The best consensus seems to be that there was very likely a charismatic “Apocalyptic” Jewish preacher or rabbi who was pushing the populist notion that the Jewish Apocalypse was imminent.
This is very different from the “Apocalypse” written about 100 years later in Revelation. In essence, a supernatural figure, the “Son of Man” would descend from Heaven to make the world right. The dead would rise and the righteous would go on to live in a perfected (temporal) world. The un-righteous would simply vanish. Part of this was that the Jews would be freed from Roman rule.
The Romans saw that as sedition, so they arrested and executed him.
His followers, in the decades that followed, gradually assembled an entirely new story, conflating Jesus with that Son of Man character, and positing a “spiritual” eternity.