What do you believe about Jesus?

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Why do you say that?

Some guy made up by Paul and some of his drinking buddies.

do you think the new testement would stand up in a court of law? i dont, they dont even have this suposid q document that the books of matthew and luke suposidly came from. so i really dont know how your argument is valid. if you cant find the source of your religious books something smells fishy to me

I don't get what you mean by the court of law, but you measure the accuracy of the books with the stats I just gave, it stands a much better chance at being accurate than any other book in history. And what do you mean by Q document?

As far as sources go, the book of Matthew is the disciple Matthew's firsthand account of having walked with Jesus from his initial calling to seeing Jesus after his death, and the book of Mark is part eyewitness and part gathered by the testimonies of people who knew Jesus. The book of Luke is the work of a man who was very well educated (in profession, he was a doctor). He drew heavily from sources in that day that relied on eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies in order to carefully summarize them for an associate, and he would also write the book of Acts. Chances are too that he did personal interviews as well, considering he was in close proximity to the 12 disciples and many of the main characters in Jesus' life. The book of John was written by the disciple John, who was the closest disciples to Jesus, so this is a firsthand eyewitness account. As for Paul, after he was converted, he met with the disciples and spent a lot of time with them, no small thing for someone who hated Christians as much as he did. Luke would also travel with Paul on his journeys and record many of the events that took place. I don't know if Luke had qualifications as a professional historian, but scholars agree that his works are very professional, he shows a lot of attention to detail, and his very writing showed incredible mastery of the Greek language, showing a lot of education (the same can be attributed to Paul, judging from his letters), in case you were wondering why I keep bringing his name up. All four Gospel accounts relied heavily on eyewitness testimony and personal experience.

Obviously a great man, a great teacher, and as far as I'm concerned a prophet. Someone very wise who had a huge impact on a group of people; a fantastic leader with good morals and a knack for spinning a yarn. Not necessarily the son of God... as far as I know that was decided at a forum about 300 years later in Rome?!

why are you christians so dodgy all the time? what do you think i mean? i mean if the bible went on trial you'd be hard pressed to find actual evidence of matthew, mark, luke or john writing those books. and as far as i can tell the lliad doesnt say anything about jesus the man. or his diciples, and i guess since they talk about zeus and its a historical document, zeus must be real!
the q document is hypothetical document from wich christians think the book of matthew and luke were taken from

I vote other, because I'm not completely sure about jesus. Or muhammad, or krishna, or moses, or even buddha. Until I can find something solid to go on, they are all just theories to me. I'm not cancelling them out totally, I'm open to evidence if real evidence comes my way, but I have seen none at this point.

I'm surprised that you didn't put down "He never existed" since there is a hypothesis that he wasn't a real person.

Anyway, I think that he was a random apocalyptic rabbi who may or may not have existed and had some good ideas.

It was actually decided long, long before to where it's reasonable to just say that it's what He most definitely claimed about Himself. There are actually surviving copies of the New Testament that are dated back as long as 150 years before said council (one is dated 130 AD), and the New Testament describes Jesus as being the son of God.



I mentioned that Luke most definitely researched other sources, I know Mark did too, and if Matthew and John felt a slight need to do the same for memory's sake, I'm not really surprised. Besides, Luke makes mention of several eyewitness accounts circulating in his day, and said himself he drew from them for his research, so in his day there was more that just these four sources talking about the miracles Jesus performed, as well as His claim to be God.

And the Iliad isn't a biography of any kind, it's completely fictional. The Iliad and the New Testament aren't even in the same arena. Besides, the Iliad was written before Jesus ever walked the Earth, so its lack of mention of Jesus really isn't a surprise. As far as the court thing goes, I'm not being dodgy, I just didn't get your implication, I was trying to figure out when it's ever been necessary to verify historical manuscripts in a courtroom, though now I see you mean evidence. As far as knowing the authors go, the time between the earliest copies we have and the time of their initial writing is only about 70 years or so (keep in mind too that the further back you go, the more publications are lost, so this is an extremely rare find), about the distance between the original publication of "All Quiet on the Western Front" and today's publications, though there's still no doubt about Erich Remarque being author. For further scale, War and Peace was written 150 years ago, but we don't doubt Leo Tolstoy was the original author. We only have 643 copies of The Iliad, and some believe that parts were added and changed over time because it was orally passed down, though we still believe Homer to be the original author. The earliest copies we have the poetics of Aristotle are dated at approximately 1100 years after his death, and we have only about 5 copies or so, but we don't doubt Aristotle wrote them. As far as evidence goes (what I assume you mean by the courtroom thing), the New Testament holds its own perfectly well, and there is no doubt about who wrote them. If you wanted to cast doubt on who wrote the New Testament accounts, you'd have to cast even more doubt on lots of other ancient works as well.



I briefly considered it, though most debate is about His identity than whether or not He existed. Generally it's not doubted, though maybe putting it in wouldn't have hurt. If a mod wants to add that option (can't do it myself), I'm cool with that, or you can just insert it as a write-in.

I think Jesus was just a man who's simply become a historical figure. I don't doubt that he existed, just quite a bit of what the Bible says about him - Jesus was a very common name in the 1st century A.D.

I believe that Jesus was a criminal to the state, that he initiated an uprising against that state, and that he was punished for his crime.

I believe Jesus is the Son of God, a mighty prophet, and the Saviour of humankind.

im alright with that, the fact of the matter remians, there is no evidence of any of those people actually writing those books. plus most other ancient works are not a code of conduct on how you should live your life. the new testement is, so if anyone is going to tell me how to live my life i want more than hearsay . or someone who saw someone, who saw this one guy, who knew this one guy write those books(s)

If they were not the actual authors, or the accounts were somehow falsified, it would have been enormous news, because Jesus was always in the public eye. He was greatly adored by many people, but viciously hated by others (to the point of crucifying him), and the religious rulers would've exposed Him, the disciples, and their testimonies, as well as those of others who made similar claims, as fraudulent the very first chance they had, and anything worth being put in the New Testament would've fizzled out. To add to the pressure on Jesus, the Pharisees considered a claim to be God to be blasphemy and punishable by death, enough pressure to get some liars to come clean eventually. We already agreed too that Matthew and Luke probably drew some information from other sources (Luke most definitely did), so these obviously weren't the only four books back then claiming Jesus was God, or testifying to His miracles.



Even if so, there was only one Jesus though who was claiming to be God and actually performing miracles. A person who could help the lame walk, the blind see, or feed a group five thousand people from 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish with 12 leftover baskets would make headlines extremely quickly. It wasn't like He was without a last name either; besides the name Christ, He was also known to be the son of Joseph, and the name of the father figure would serve as sort of a last name (in addition to his career), so it'd probably be something like, "Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter." If there was any doubt there, they knew who His mother was because she was scandalized as being a fornicator for carrying a child before marriage, and He had brothers and sisters. He was also born in a town called Bethlehem, raised in a city called Nazareth, and spent a lot of time in the city of Galilee. There's more, but IDing which charcter named Jesus wouldn't be hard. If you put President Bush in a room with a bunch of other people named George, you'd still pick him out pretty fast because you've seen him so many times in the news, and heard enough about him to care. A hundred years from now too, we'll still be able to single out him and who he was, like we can George Washington (over 200 years ago).

I believe he was a man with divine powers, who worked under the command of God. I consider myself a christian, but I choose to take the bible with a grain of salt.

then show me some proof of matthew mark luke or john writing those books then. just because people believe something or in this case someone to be true doesnt make it true, infact im shure scribes wrote most of the bible