Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are "mythologized history." In other words, based on the evidence available they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provide...
Third option: no historical character but no conspiracy either. Just a bunch of folkloric stories evolving across few generations, before there was even a church to speak of.
They all start from a simple common ground, as simple as “what if the messiah already came?”. That idea spawns a bunch of stories, highly divergent from each other. The stories with no narrative appeal get forgotten; some survive, and people telling those stories add small details to them and “update” a few details. Eventually what used to be just “the messiah already came” becomes “the messiah already came, his name was Yehoshua ben Yoseph, he multiplied fish and bread, the Romans killed him, he said «LOL JK» in the third day. All accordingly to Yahweh’s plan”.
Eventually one of those stories catches the attention of a few Greek writers, and Christianity is born.
Some of those stories don’t make much sense to be developed that way. For example, the Gospels go to great lengths to attach Jesus to King David, and part of that is a conveluted census story to get him to be born in Bethlehem. If you want your Messiah to be from Bethlehem, then why not just make him be from Bethlehem?
Conversely, if he was a real person from the poduck village known as Nazareth, then it makes more sense. They still want to make the King David connection, so they invent this census story so he can be born in the “right” place.
Then there’s the problem that he died in a manner reserved for the dregs of society. What kind of god does that? This is a really big deal to people of the time. They care a lot about having a decent burial, and crucifixion victims are left to have their bodies picked at by carrion animals and then tossed into a mass pit grave. No one at the time would have come up with this fate for their revered figure.
So again, they’re dealing with a real person with widely known facts about his life, and it’s really inconvenient for spreading their message. So they cram this Nicodemus guy in the story as a rich benifactor. He has some political pull to take Jesus body down and put it in a brand new fancy tomb. He has little else to do in the story, and isn’t mentioned in Acts or by Paul or anywhere else. He only gets mentioned by John, which is the latest gospel.
So likely Nicodemus gets inserted in there to deal with the manner that Jesus died, but the story of his death wouldn’t have been a method they’d make up in the first place.
Narrative appeal. Compare the alternatives:
The second one is simply more appealing. People like “meaty” stories, full of details and twists.
For comparison: #1 is like having Superman being simply an Earthling mutant, instead of as the prince of an alien planet. The former is boring, thus less likely to catch the attention of the people.
Look at Greek tragedy.
Achilles dragging Hector’s body behind a chariot, something so dishonourable that the gods had to intervene - because a half-god was desecrating the corpse of a prince.
Or Heracles killing his own mortal half in a pyre to avoid the excruciating pain, while his immortal half ascends to godhood. It’s a half-god committing suicide, after being tricked by his own wife.
And yet neither Hector nor Heracles are historical.
Is Jesus being crucified so odd, in the light of those? It’s tragedy - it delivers emotional impact, and plays really well with the theme of the story: “He might be the son of a god, but he’s still treated as so disgusting that his corpse is not allowed to touch Mother Earth, to not dirty Her. That is not a problem - because the flesh is not the soul, his soul is divine. As him you should endure suffering of the flesh, as your own soul is also being prepared for The Kingdom of God.”
@frezik @lvxferre
How can he be descended from king David AND be the product of a virgin birth from God?
I mean, I wouldn’t expect consistency here. In fact, a lot of the argument in favor of a historical Jesus is that the story doesn’t make much sense unless they were trying to work around inconvenient facts about an actual person. Kinda like how L Ron Hubbard has a story about how he saved a young woman from a satanic cult (in actuality, he stole Jack Parsons’ girlfriend and life savings).
If you want an apologist answer, then it’s that both Mary and Joseph were descended from David. Several generations removed, mind you. They weren’t closely related as far as we know.
Matthew and Luke both give alternate genealogies, and apologists say that one is for Mary and the other for Joseph. Which one is which isn’t clear. These are usually the same people saying that you can’t read between the lines of the Bible; you must take the words as they are. And yet, you can’t reconcile those two genealogies without somehow assuming something that isn’t in the text.
@frezik
The bible itself is the best evidence against the truth of the bible & the existence of God. 🤔