Was Jesus A Real Person Or A Spiritual Concept?

Amy x

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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?
 

public hermit

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May God bless you in your search. Take it from someone well versed in the historical-critical methods. What you're searching for won't obtain in that way. If you seek, you will find. My suggestion: Try to live as he taught, ask him to reveal himself to you, and trust.

"They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them." John 14:21
 
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paul1149

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Luke's genealogy is through Mary.

Articles can say anything. The history of Jerusalem is pretty solid.

The early disciples had their lives turned upside down for Christ and went to their death rather than deny they had seen Him risen. There are early secular references to Him as well.

The NT spends a lot of time refuting gnosticism and insisting that Christ came in the flesh. And the "latency period" between the writing of the NT and our earliest extant copies of it is exceedingly small for ancient documents. The whole thing is pretty tight.
 
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Amy x

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Thank you Public Hermit!

@Sabertooth: I went to church as a child, studied the bible, asked Jesus to come into my heart.

@JackRT: I kind of see things your way at the moment. Perhaps Jesus was a real person in history, that gradually gathered around him a mythos, and after a thousand years, became a spiritual concept?
 
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mtatertayte

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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?
Jesus is a real person.
 
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com7fy8

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After reading that article, what is your reason for being concerned?

I do understand that people can just make up the idea that something true is not true. And they can say things, but they are not true what they say, or how they interpret their facts is the problem.

So, what do they have, that you consider to be actual evidence?? I mean, not going into a bunch of details, but what really gets your attention? Or, are they just theorizing, which can be mere second guessing.

In my case, I know if there is God, He is the One who knows. So, He can get through to me. And my experience is He has . . . why me? No thanks to me, is all I'll say, for now.

But I have fun with this. I look at the Bible and consider if evolution of atoms and molecules would have produced beings that are physical only and these would just invent all we have in God's word. I am not so sure natural selection would have humans coming up with all that. But people can argue.

And the reporting about Jesus has an historical context, I would say. There are things which seem indicated to be metaphorical, in some places in the Bible. But there is God's love message, in and through what is presented as history.

What certain ones do not want is for it to be true how God actually entered human history as God's own Son Jesus. Because this means there is God so superior to evil and Satan and selfish people, and ones wrong will answer to the One so superior > ones do not want that to be true, to say the least; they have their motives for questioning and denying this.

And it means God is not conceited, though He is so superior, if He came as Jesus to reach us and share with us and go through suffering and death, as part of so personally sharing with us. But humans have our ways of not being so personal and interested in others. So, Jesus indeed does not match with how we can be selfishly loving. So, considering how humans can tend to be . . . I'm not so sure we would just invent a Jesus thing.

So, I see the Gospel doesn't match with what humans would want to think up, but the Gospel does match with there being God who loves us and had His Son come to visit us and invite us to spend eternity with Him.
 
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~Anastasia~

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Hello and welcome to CF.

There are many sources out there whose goal is to discredit matters of faith. Reading them can create all sorts of angst.

Normally if someone wants to search out historical proof, I would suggest writings that go back to the earliest days of the Church - both Christian and non-Christian (even anti-Christian) sources.

Even those who vehemently resisted the idea that Jesus could be the Christ did not try to deny His existence and ministry. He was far too well-known to people who were still living. It’s like someone trying to argue one of our recent presidents never existed. They didn’t even try, but did acknowledge the controversies surrounding Him and in some cases laws resulted, so historical facts will reflect this as well.

I wonder if you might like such books like Lee Strobel’s - The Case for Christ and others, or Dr. Gregory Boyd’s Letters from a Skeptic.

I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?
 
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Jok

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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?
People who begin to think that Jesus didn’t literally exist should go into an exercise where they try to argue it in reverse, completely assume that it is 100% fact that he was not real, then go into historical Jesus studies and see how many brick walls you run into that begin to not make any sense. In geometry this would be similar to what’s called proof by contradiction, arguing to an absurdity. You will discover for yourself that it takes much more glue to hold the historical picture together that Jesus didn’t exist than that he did exist.

First of all, lumping in historical Jesus studies with how many concepts from the Old Testament were symbolic, or how many concepts were shared between cultures, is only going to confuse you. That’s a a topic by itself. The different cultures DID reference identical symbolisms quite often on purpose because it was a form of argumentation between them, they were trying to correct each other in a way. The Israelite prophets were constantly trying to pull the people away from false idols, and in doing so it was common practice to draw analogies between common symbolisms, places, etc.

As far as reaching proof by contradiction for a real historical Jesus by assuming his non-existence, you can just jump in anywhere and run wild! You immediately run into the dilemma of what to do with all of the other 1st century Jews who claimed to be the Messiah and then got themselves killed because of it. It’s going to immediately look historically odd to simply scrap all such references, to conclude that all messianic movements and messianic leaders were simply made up! So either messianic movements that protested the rule of Rome were all made up, OR, were some of them real figures, yet only some of them were made up? What do you do with different categories of messianic movements, for instance did the Zealot movements really exist, yet the peaceful ones were false? A big problem that I have to the Jesus never existed argument is always to wonder why they decide to just lift Jesus out of the messianic movement era and ONLY delete him from the picture, but nobody else?

All textual references to the Roman crucifixion of Jesus must be completely suspect if you are to assume that Jesus was made up! So let’s just throw all of that out now! Why is there a Roman correspondence discussing what to do with James the brother of Jesus if Jesus isn’t real? Why are there a ton of arguments going back & forth between first generation Christians and non-converted orthodox Jews about how Jesus was a phony, yet nothing by way of an argument for the position that he didn’t exist instead? That argument certainly would be the easiest one to go with since it’s actually true that he didn’t exist (remember that we’re arguing in reverse, we’re assuming Jesus never existed). Why did the Gnostics argue that Jesus was 100% divine but not human, instead of arguing that he didn’t exist in the physical realm but was only a spirit? Why do Jews from day one argue with Christians that Jesus did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies instead of argue that he didn’t exist? Why waste your time with all those arguments, It’s pretty obvious that if someone didn’t exist they didn’t fulfill prophecies either!

You need to think harder about the weight of Jewish objections to Jesus, their disdain for him, and then consider how much sense it would make that early Jews never even made a single argument that he didn’t actually exist. If there ARE early Jewish arguments against Christians, and none of them involve Jesus’ non-existence, then this is not an argument from silence. Why do Muslims argue that he didn’t die on the cross, instead of argue that he didn’t exist? Why do Muslims consider Jesus to just be another one of the prophets? Why are there no counter arguments going on for Paul’s early letters in the form of “What are you talking about, who on Earth was Jesus of Nazareth?” Why is there this heated tomb/empty tomb argument going on? What tomb?

Why in Acts, after the made up crucifixion of a made up man, do you immediately start running into conflicts about what Jesus meant by this or by that? That one is extremely strange! So there is this made up messianic movement, by this made up Jesus, and he has a made up crucifixion date, AND THEN after the made up crucifixion date the followers literally start acting confused in regards to who Jesus would have sided with in this or that disagreement! Yet before his made up crucifixion date this made up man called Jesus settled all of the disputes with clarity. Peter & Paul parted ways over such disputes, because their made up leader who used to have all of the answers is now passed his made up crucifixion date, so now he can no longer settle disputes. Do you see how the story of a made up Jesus starts to become much harder to hold together than if Jesus was real?

How about how the earliest Christians struggled with what’s often referred to as the difficult sayings of Jesus? Such as Jesus saying “My God My God why have you forsaken me” or “The Father is greater than I.” If Jesus is just an invention, why on Earth would you invent him saying things that caused uncomfortable confusion between Christians right from the first generation? If Jesus was just made up it definitely would have made a lot more sense to pencil in a few Jesus quotes here & there that would have settled many of these very early disputes that have been going on for 2000 years.
 
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Paulus59

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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit can answer all of your questions! It doesn't matter what evidence I bring to you to answer your questions, spiritual revelation is not determined by reasoning or human wisdom, but by God's spirit, only God can show you the truth.

Watch this sermon from John MacArthur as he answers it all:

 
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Resha Caner

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Thank you Public Hermit!

@Sabertooth: I went to church as a child, studied the bible, asked Jesus to come into my heart.

@JackRT: I kind of see things your way at the moment. Perhaps Jesus was a real person in history, that gradually gathered around him a mythos, and after a thousand years, became a spiritual concept?

If God can't do the things described in the Bible, he's not much of a god and you might as well go JackRT's path of doing and believing whatever you want.

As to why people try to create a case why the history of the Bible never happened ... yeah, it's a messed up world.
 
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Resha Caner

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People who begin to think that Jesus didn’t literally exist should go into an exercise where they try to argue it in reverse, completely assume that it is 100% fact that he was not real, then go into historical Jesus studies and see how many brick walls you run into that begin to not make any sense. In geometry this would be similar to what’s called proof by contradiction, arguing to an absurdity. You will discover for yourself that it takes much more glue to hold the historical picture together that Jesus didn’t exist than that he did exist.

That's an excellent suggestion. But then, my dad's a retired geometry teacher, so ...
 
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pescador

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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?

Stop reading nonsense! It seems to me that your looking for articles that try to disprove the Bible.

Jesus was a real person. John who was contemporary and an eyewitness, wrote "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

In the end, it's what you choose to believe: the Bible or people trying to disprove what it says.
 
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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?
It takes much more faith to believe all those tales and theories referred to in the OP than to believe the Bible to be an account of actual events.

We might as reasonably ask what proof there is that Christ was not a shape-shifting lizard person from the planet Neptune rather than an actual Jew from modern day Israel?

Besides that, the many geographic and time-related matters that are described in the Bible have been second-guessed many times through the centuries by unbelievers and have wound up being verified rather than debunked.
 
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Paul James

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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?
Josephus, and Tacitus both speak of a real person called "Christus" who had followers who believed that He rose from the dead. These were not Christian historians. There are other historians of the time who mention Christians and who mention that they are so sure about their faith in their "leader" that they were willing to die for their faith. This proves that Jesus was just as real as Julius Caesar, or any of the other Roman emperors spoken of by their historians. Pontius Pilate is also mentioned in the histories as well as the governor who put "Christus" to death.
 
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Jok

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Josephus, and Tacitus both speak of a real person called "Christus" who had followers who believed that He rose from the dead. These were not Christian historians. There are other historians of the time who mention Christians and who mention that they are so sure about their faith in their "leader" that they were willing to die for their faith. This proves that Jesus was just as real as Julius Caesar, or any of the other Roman emperors spoken of by their historians. Pontius Pilate is also mentioned in the histories as well as the governor who put "Christus" to death.
Adding some consistency to your post, the suffix after Christ was common as the same exact account doesn’t say Pontius Pilate but Pontius Pilatus.

“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our Procurators Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular (Tacitus 116 AD Regarding Nero 64AD).

To be strict it does not say resurrection, but I find it difficult to understand what else “mischievous superstition” would be referring to.

It shows up again “Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a body of people addicted to a novel and mischievous superstition.”
(Suetonius - Emperor Hadrian’s chief secretary)
 
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Paul James

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Adding some consistency to your post, the suffix after Christ was common as the same exact account doesn’t say Pontius Pilate but Pontius Pilatus.

“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our Procurators Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular (Tacitus 116 AD Regarding Nero 64AD).

To be strict it does not say resurrection, but I find it difficult to understand what else “mischievous superstition” would be referring to.

It shows up again “Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a body of people addicted to a novel and mischievous superstition.”
(Suetonius - Emperor Hadrian’s chief secretary)
You are right. I was depending on my memory. :)
 
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I've been questioning this for quite some time. It all started when I had read that Jesus traces his lineage to king David not through his mother Mary, but through Joseph. But Joseph did not father Jesus.

I've also recently read an interesting article HERE which seems to prove that king David and king Solomon were never real people and that the temple of king Solomon was mythical. The article goes into a lot of detail about Jehovah's origins, how Mount Zion isn't real and was a mystical mountain in the north pole. How Jews stole bits and pieces of other people's religious ideas to create Judaism. The article gives the etymological history of the word Zion, the name Yahwey, and even where the idea and concept of Satan came from. Are the things in that article true?

I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I'm wondering if the Cathars were right? They believed that the flesh was corrupt and that Jesus, being holy, was never a physical person, but a spiritual concept.

How can we prove to ourselves that Jesus was a historical person, of divine origin?

Be careful what you read online. Go to scholarly books. On Old Testament archaeology, see these books:

The Stones and the Scriptures, by Yamauchi;
Rocks, Relics and Biblical Reliability, by Wilson.

There is no evidence that David and Solomon are mythical.

As for the historical Jesus, the mythical view is fringe, not held by New Testament scholars and competent authorities.

Read
"The Historical Jesus," by Habermas;
"The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus," by Habermas and Licona.
 
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