Liar, lunatic or lord? Are there no other options?

Question

I know I've heard this line about Jesus before, but I was young enough then to not have any further options available. How about fictional?

OK, I'll put it to a vote, as I admit my bias in the "details." Have at it, voters!

Answer 1

imaginary

Answer 2

There is one other option, and it's the most rational one.

Jesus was a young Jewish radical; if he 'started' anything it was Reform Judaism; still Judaism, but somewhat more relaxed about some of the rules.

It was decades after the Romans killed Jesus that he was deified and hailed as son of G-d and so on. And the new testament was written by men who NEVER EVEN MET JESUS.

There is nothing wrong with this perspective, it is totally logical.

Given that outside the NT Jesus is not mentioned anywhere, I think this theory is a good one.

Answer 3

Fictional seems extremely likely.

Christians like to claim that there are tons of documents proving that Jesus existed. That claim is completely false. Almost all the "documents" were created by believers who based their texts on stories they heard from others. There are practically no documents that were written by independent, reliable, secular sources.

There are only three examples of independent documents from that time that mention Jesus. One of these is an obvious fraud, and the other two are very vague and indirect references.

Considering all the miracles that Jesus was supposed to have done, and all the people that were supposed to have followed him and his teachings, there is an amazing lack of any mention of him by all the writers from that time.

Fictional is definitely the answer that is most likely to be true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

Answer 4

Yes, there are other options. Jesus could have been genuinely mistaken. Or he could be none of those things, and the people who wrote about him could have made up some or all of the story or they could have been mistaken themselves. Or the people who copied and translated the documents over and over again before the first surviving copies were written might have messed up. Or they might have been lying, insane or mistaken.

Answer 5

Not an option.

Jesus is the most historically verified real person from antiquity.

The only problem is they can't seem to find his grave with any certainty. And that's because its empty!

Liar, lunatic or Lord? Those are the only options.

Pastor Art

Answer 6

The gnostic gospels suggest that his teachings may have been somewhat different than what the gospels in the bible imply. I definitely think that's one other likely option.

Answer 7

Well, if you're going to include "lord" as an option, you've pretty much thrown it open to anything.

If you're willing to consider that Jesus might have been the son of God, you might as well also consider the possibility that he was a small turtle, or a piece of bacon, or a telemarketer trapped in the past, or a figment of a leopard's imagination.

Answer 8

LOL I'm not sure. I used to be a Christian. Maybe now I'd say "lunatic"

Answer 9

Not fictional. Study the facts... I did.

Hollywood intends to re-write history but one only needs to research for themselves the validity of the claims. For example the quality of the New Testament documents can be validated outside of the Bible through the research of Josephus Flavius, Tacitus, Caesar's Gallic Wars, Herodotus, and Thucydides. In fact there are 5366 documents discovered so far to validate that the Bible we have today is 99.5% as accurate as it was way back then. For example:

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus referred to the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.” (The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus, Book XX, sec. 200) A direct and very favorable reference to Jesus, found in Book XVIII, sections 63, 64, has been challenged by some who claim that it must have been either added later or embellished by Christians; but it is acknowledged that the vocabulary and the style are basically those of Josephus, and the passage is found in all available manuscripts.

Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived during the latter part of the first century C.E., wrote: “Christus [Latin for “Christ”], from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”—The Complete Works of Tacitus (New York, 1942), “The Annals,” Book 15, par. 44.

With reference to early non-Christian historical references to Jesus, The New Encyclopædia Britannica states: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”—(1976), Macropædia, Vol. 10, p. 145.

Internal evidence is pretty clear as well. 2 Peter 3:15-16 clearly states that the canon was already in the process of being collected for what we have today in the Bible. There were gnostic books but they were not accepted because they were written by Hellenistic writers that intended to change the original message of the Greek translation to imply that Jesus was not the Son of God.

Answer 10

No other options. There is enough evidence to support the fact that Jesus walked the earth, so he is not fictional. You just have to decided who He is to you. To me, He is Lord.

Answer 11

I always imagine that maybe there was a young religious man who preached, but his existence was usurped and exaggerated by later generations of men.