• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    there’s zero evidence that he was even real.

    There is abundant testimonial of his existence, enormous bodies of archeological evidence dating the nascent Christian church to the period immediately following his life, and plenty of contemporary evidence describing the more prominent figures central to the gospels and the various letters that follow.

    We have at least as much evidence of Jesus as we do Socrates or Confucius or Boudica or Pakal the Elder.

    I’m saying if you read the Bible, Jesus’s teachings align with socialism.

    Not exactly. Socialists are not a Millenarian Cult eagerly awaiting the end of the world. The early disciples believed the apocalypse was nigh and material wealth would be of no consequence in the Next Life. Their socialist policies were heavily informed by their dogmatic belief in a Final Judgement coming within their lifetime.

    Modern socialists don’t hold this view at all. On the contrary, they tend to be deeply concerned with the long term health and well-being of their communities, their economies, and the global ecology. One of the major distinctions between modern Friedmanian free market thinking and MLM economic central planning is the focus on fluctuations in market price relative to the long term socio-economic consequences of current economic policy.

    If anything, it is the capitalists (particularly the more Millenarian-minded Protestant cults) who behave like there’s no tomorrow. The socialists are the ones talking about the next century of climate change and the next millennium of biodiversity / sustainability.

    • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      We don’t really have evidence of Jesus’ historicity. I mean absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence but, all in all, there’s pretty much zero direct evidence of his existence. Almost nothing that would point to historicity in the gospels is corroborated by archeology… like was Pilot a person who existed? Yes, very likely he was. Is there biographies of him? Yes, there are contemporaneous sources showing him to be real. Is there anything, outside of the gospels, recount him meeting Jesus in any capacity let alone a whole trial and execution? No, there’s nothing like that. The whole scenario of Jesus’ life as chronicled by the gospels doesn’t hold up to scrutiny… sure, some of the people and many of the places do exist, but just because New York exists it doesn’t mean Spiderman is real.

      As for the early church, even Paul doesn’t claim to have known a historic Jesus but rather only recounts experiences of visions of Jesus and angels.