Do you think that Jesus existed as an historical person?(not necessarily as depicted in the Bible)

Its hard to make any statements about a belief if you don't state what belief your talking about. The closest you came to describing the beliefs you talk about in your above post is cult. However, I don't think there are any religions from the same time that follow a recently deceased fictional(from your standpoint) human.

the problem you have is that you keep thinking the jesus guy was recently deceased. he wasn't ,he didn't exist..

The Christians believe he died roughly 30CE. And, according to the source i cited there were Christians 63CE. That means that there were people 30 years after Jesus's(according to the Christians ) death that believed he died 30 years ago.

Dont you find it strange that the birth day and death day of Ceasar, is well recorded and there is a 25 year deficite in the birth of this Jesus, And ceasar was around 1000 years before this Jesus.... HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

In the 1st century maybe 1 out of 100 people had any education, this made them gullible....

If I told you today that God came to me and told me "I want you to be my agent and collect 10 percent of everything people own, would you believe it???

True but that does not mean it based in reality. How many believers are in in other religions around the world that are based on nothing but myth. Face it like the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Mayan, Aztec and so many others it is all myth. Jesus as he is perceived may be nothing more than a bunch of different people made into one. He may be nothing more than a story. People believe in things because they are forced too or are too despondent not to believe in something better no matter how imaginary.

Do you realize that the stories of jesus were not approved until 325 CE and that at the same time he was voted as to being divine. Before that there is a whole different mythos about him.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in the bible (which is why I used a non-biblical source) but I do believe that Jesus was probably a real person that amassed a following, as hearsay about him spread the stories were exaggerated. All the other religions you mention don't believe in a person. I think that if people were saying a guy existed that died 30 years ago, it would be pretty easy for the people of the time to disprove it.

At that time they were pretty ignorant and hopeless people all over using superstition to try to believe in a better life. And yes all those religions had gods and people to believe in.

They had people to believe in but, they didn't base their worship on a single man. Also, people would have to be incredibly ignorant at that time to not remember facts from 30 years ago.

No they didn't base their worship on any sinle man (operative word man) that were pantheistic meaning multiple dieties. And yes mnay back then were incredibly ignorant compared to modern educated non superstitious peeople. Yet many educated people still believe in myths and fairy tales dispalying a childlike ignorance today. The you are basing your assumption that very m,any people at that time read Tacitus. They didn't there was a huge illierate population and very few books. Only an elite few would have read him at all. And again he speaks about christians not jesus

No, at that time they wouldn't need Tactius. People from the last generation would still have memories from the time that Jesus was supposed to live. If the Christians were trying to spread false beliefs grounded 30 years in the past, I would expect that the people alive 30 years ago would know if they were lying.

I would suggest you give people back then more credit than they deserve. And even if your supposition is correct after such a long period of whisper down the lane the stories and myth of jesus would have grown and become unrecognizable to any who may have know him. Also do to primitive communications and transportation the dissemination of information would have been very limited and very much changed from any truth or fact

I will admit even i won't say with 100% conviction that Jesus is real, I could be giving the people back then too much credit but, its hard for me to believe that the people of that time were too ignorant to base their current beliefs on memories. As for the rest of your post, concerning the unreliability of the bible, i completely agree.

Have you ever lived anywhere but Poodunk, WI? People all over the world are that ignorant. They still believe in creator gods and supernatural beings and spirits and other nionsense. I have lived and worked on 4 continents while getting my BA, MA and PhD in Anthropology and I will attest to the ignorance of adults believing in myths and make believe. If you really think about it believing jesus, whether as man or son of god, existed is no different than believing that Thor rxisted or Zeus or unicorns or any other mythical being. There is zero evidence of it.

if he had a following it wasn't mentioned by any reliable historians. and you can bet a person traveling about the country attracting crowds would have put the person on the roman's radar. they didn't tolerate sedition.

In my first post i reference a historical account of the existence of Jesus's following (Christians).

you point out yourself here that is about christians. BTW many of those in that time believed that jesus was a prophet and a man not god.

As I'v stated before I don't think he is a god, I'm not a Christian. I'm only arguing that he was a man. Also, Irish said "if he had a following it wasn't mentioned by any reliable historians." what else do you call followers of Jesus if not Christians?

Gullible is what I call anyone believing in imaginary beings. Actually Paul is the one that helped spred the idea. Should we call the folloers paulist or paulians?

So you would say that jesus was a man like anyone else. Would you equate him to stalin or hitler seeing how his followers and his so called father, yahweh, followers have probly killed more people that hitler and stalin combined? Or as Irish pointed out Jim Jones

I blame the bible and the church for those killings, and I really don't care if you do want to equate him to Hitler, in fact, I would be happy because then you would be equating him with a real person. Also, i don't understand what you were getting at when you said "you point out yourself here that is about christians".

If you can't understand simple English it is not worth discussing with you. Maybe if you read what you said about christians or understood what you claimed my response was about, it would have made sense.

Now I did not equate jesus the imaginary being to hitler, I asked if you would. As for blaming the church, which church? All the sects of the god of abraham be they jews, christians or muslim have committed mass murders and genocides in his name. You entire conjecture on whether jesus lived or not and the rise of christianity is based on his divinity as the son of god.

What does it matter how many genocides were (arguably) committed in his name. It doesn't change anything.

I understand that the sentence "you point out yourself here that is about Christians" is referring to my above post, and through that post the reference to Christians i made in my first post. I was only confused because i never acted otherwise.

You mean otherwise than ignorant of facts and history? Forget it, I can see you are undereducated and just like to provoke through ignorance. Probably even dumb enough to buy a book for dummies.

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No i meant that i never acted like the first post didn't reference Christians.

you can't use a source after the fact.

What do you mean by that?

if you want to validate the guy ,you have to have people speaking and writing of him before he died.

You're right if I wanted to completely prove his existence i would need a direct historical source, and even i admit that theres a chance he couldn't exist. At the same time, if you want to completely disprove Jesus you need a historical reference that lived during his time revoking his existence.

the absence of any contemporary source is more than enough proof he never existed.

There are alot of people that existed 2000 years ago of which there's no proof that they exist today, that doesn't meant they didn't exist.

you are speaking of one. and the one you speak of supposedly had done a lot to call attention to himself. that alone would make him remembered.

I'm sure there were other people back then that called attention to themselves and we don't hear of them either.

probably. but in this case the claim is even the romans were involved and killed the guy,the sun was darkened(an eclipse) and an earthquake occurred . none of which happened.

well,yes they do. look at how cults are formed.

Even if the beliefs they were following were incorrect, they still were following a real person.

no they weren't. the belief was christian.

I would like to know where in the christian religion it says to drink cool aid and kill yourself. And on a side note, even if their beliefs were christian i would think of them as being incorrect. I am not a christian as i'v said before.

all religious beliefs can be corrupted in some way. what of the martyrs? they actually tried to get the romans to kill them. the romans refused. told them to kill themselves if they wanted to die so badly.

You're picking this argument with the wrong guy, as I'v said 3 times before I'm not christian, I'm not trying to defend their beliefs, so I don't care if their beliefs can be corrupted. I only intend to prove that it is probable that Jesus existed as a man, nothing else.