Religion
In reply to the discussion: Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up. [View all]DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)the ideas of "jesus, religious figure" and some guy that may have lived in modern Israel/Palestine circa 30 c.e. are apples and oranges. No, there is no birth certificate, but most of the subjects of the Empire did not have them. The idea that there was or was not some carpenter who lived in that area, with a commion name like Yeshua (a.k.a "joshua" in modern english) is not as relevant. I do not make this statement to prove the Jesus that christians belive exists; it is up to Christianity to prove that. But if you focus on the idea that "history says there was no historical Jesus" you run right into the quagmire of the fact hisotry is not that reliable about individual people, period.
For example, for the longest time, Troy was considered to be a fantasy. Then people went and did excavations in Turkey. No, they did not find Hector or Helen, but they did find that yes, there were several cities on the site of Troy, some dating before and after the Iliad was written.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy#Excavation_campaigns
Now of course, the people who say "there was no historical Troy" wind up being wrong, because they insisted that in order to kill a myth, they had to go past what could be proven and define exactly what is impossible. That works great for Physics, were the variables are the same if you are in Berlin or Brooklyn or Botswana, but History does not work like that.