Who was Jesus actually?

Narkissos

Well, there has been a lot of religious and historical debate going on this topic, as we are all aware.

But I'd like to know what is your personal take, at the moment being.

All contributions welcome. Thanks!

Terry

I remember my very first investigations into "who" Jesus really was. I went outside the Watchtower Society's reading list of make-believe scholarship and delved into historical investigation.

I was shocked!

There is almost NOTHING known, really, about the Jesus whom we call Christ.

It is all murky hearsay and convoluted politcs, opinion and dogma.

If we just take what Jesus is purported to have said in the existing canon of Gospel we find he is very much at odds with the inventor of Christianity, the apostle Paul.

Jesus was not even a blip on the radar of the Jewish world or Roman world.

A compassionate man with a gift for expressing himself, powerful in his convictions and truly empathetic to his fellowman. A man who was deified by the Roman Empire and without whom would have slipped into relative obscurity as many other great and influential people have over the ages.

Mulan

I have read books that argue that he never really existed, and is more of a legend. I tend to believe that he was a real person, with a wonderful philosophy for life, but he has become more since his death, than he was in life.

I do not believe he was a son of god, or the result of a virgin birth.

Satanus

Same as the above 3 posters. The gospels are based on what some enlightened person said. Other than that, there isn't even a blip, historically. The gospels are probably legends organised around this person.

S

mkr32208

If he existed at all he was just this guy you know! If he was anything at all like the gospel makes him out to be then he was simply the original David Koresh!

notice that when he's around his followers he's god; I and the father are one, he who has seen me has seen the father blah blah blah. Yet when the scribes and phar. accuse him of saying he's god... (what did the scribs make that up WTBS? NO thats what he was SAYING!) and say they are gonna kill him then he's all like no wait; the father is greater than I am, the son can do nothing without pops permission

if the bible is right he was a fraud but I Don't believe the bible either!

myauntfanny

I really wonder. I read a book by Robert Graves, who ties the Jesus story into a previously long-standing pagan king mythology, pointing out lots of similarities. So perhaps he was a pagan king, but one who changed the ancient pattern and revolutionised the human relationship to divinity. I don't know, I don't relate to it very well. Salvation, washing your sins in the blood of Christ, heaven, immortality, it all mystifies me.

Balsam

I got to hear Elaine Pagels who is a bible historian. She wrote a book called "Beyond Belief" taking about the rejected gnostic gospel called Book of Thomas. I've read many other bible historians books since leaving the JWs and have shocked to find really historically speaking it seems Jesus, if he existed at all, was a rebel and largly unknow by his contempories of his day. He had little importance until Paul decided he was something more than met the eye. Jesus the Christ is the fabrication of Paul and others who wanted a savior King.

I though this kind of facts just tear up those involved in Christianity, but all I can say is investigate it yourself. Try to find the historical Jesus outside of what the bible tells us.

The bible is wonderful book of principled stories, and is mostly myth.

Ruth

rekless

You can look up the "Gospel of Thomas" it deals with the early years of Jesus.

frankiespeakin

My take is that someone existed that we now call Jesus christ or it may have been more than one person that make up the figure we call jesus. He may have been a revolutionary,,and basically good hearted person.

I think that we need to remember they had no recording devices back then and everything about jesus was passed by word of mouth,, and then latter after he died they wrote about him,, and the people that wrote about him never seen him personally. So it would be extremely unlikely that the information that we find in the gospel about jesus is correct,, or factual,, at best perhaps maybe some of the things written about him are exadurations of what he did,, because we all know what happens to a story as it gets passed from person to person (everybody adds something as it gets passed around.