Clean hands, Cool head, Warm heart.

GP, Gardener, Radical progressive

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: May 7th, 2024

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  • I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here but both Suetonius and Pliny are talking about Christians in the 2nd century, Tacitus speaks about Christ only in the context of Nero blaming Christians for the great fire. These are literary evidence for the existence of Christians in the second century but are not direct literary evidence of the existence of Christ as an individual which was the question I was addressing.

    I’d be delighted to be shown to be wrong but I believe my original post stands.


  • I’m by no means an expert but I was briefly obsessed with comparative religion over a decade ago and I don’t think anyone has given a great answer, I believe my answer is correct but I don’t have time for research beyond checking a couple of details.

    As a few people have mentioned there is little physical evidence for even the most notable individuals from that time period and it’s not reasonable to expect any for Jesus.

    In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus. Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus mentions him twice, once briefly telling the story of his crucifixion and resurrection. The second is a mention in passing when discussing the brother of Jesus delivering criminals to be stoned.

    I think it is reasonable to conclude that a Jewish spiritual leader with a name something like Jesus Christ probably existed and that not long after his death miracles are being attributed to him.

    It is also worth noting the historical context of the recent emergence of Rabbinical Judaism and the overabundance of other leaders who were claimed to be Messiahs, many of whom we also know about primarily(actually I think only) from Josephus.



  • I have a personal website, not a business one but if all you want is to display some information and contact details etc then Hover for domain hosting and Squarespace for the website, they are easy to use and relatively cheap for a simple website that looks professional. If you want things like e-commerce or online booking you might want something else although linking to another service from a Squarespace site could work.

    I’m currently shifting to self hosting and having troubles with Hover, but for an easy to use service that doesn’t require any technical knowledge it works fine. They also offer [email protected] which I use as my main personal email with no worries.

    Please don’t just have a Facebook page, it becomes a real pain for non-facebook users, especially on mobile, and it makes you look like a complete amateur.