Christianity has a very rich scholarly history. If you find yourself discussing it often, i would absolutely recommend looking up some of the real scholars on the matter (rather than listening to me or any other random person online).
Otherwise I don’t see why Christians would have made up the whole trip to Bethlehem story about a census which we have no record of. They needed the real jesus to have some reason to be in the prophecied place.
At that time in that region there were a lot of cults. It’s very likely that the Jesus figure from the bible is an amalgamation of multiple cult leaders from that period.
It is impossible to know for certain what jesus did or did not teach.
Elaborate
Jesus never wrote any of it down, neither did anyone who ever met Jesus, as far as we can tell.
Gotcha, thank you for elaborating
You’re so welcome, thanks for asking
Thank you for this! I’m now going to add “Objection: Hearsay!” To my list of “How to argue with Christians using the Bible”.
It will slot in very well right after the “Jesus said we don’t have to follow Leviticus” arguments.
Christianity has a very rich scholarly history. If you find yourself discussing it often, i would absolutely recommend looking up some of the real scholars on the matter (rather than listening to me or any other random person online).
But also, you’re welcome :)
You have to exist to be able to write stuff down, so that’s probably why he didn’t.
There probably was a historical jesus.
Otherwise I don’t see why Christians would have made up the whole trip to Bethlehem story about a census which we have no record of. They needed the real jesus to have some reason to be in the prophecied place.
At that time in that region there were a lot of cults. It’s very likely that the Jesus figure from the bible is an amalgamation of multiple cult leaders from that period.
Of course, by the definition of cult used at that time all monotheistic and henotheistic religions are cults.
Yes they are. The only difference between a cult and a religion is the number of followers.
Well no, in the first century a cult is a group which worships a single god. Like the various mystery cults that thrived in ancient Rome.