Of course there’s a lot of information about Cleopatra, she was married to the Consul of the Roman Empire and was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. Of course documents on Jesus are going to be a lot more scarce.
Jesus was not a big name during his lifetime, he was literally just a random guy in the desert that led a cult. It’s hard enough to find data on literal Roman emperors during the crisis of the third century.
To get some data on Jesus you first need a guy that can write (rare), writing stuff on a person of little renown (very rare), that is predominantly followed by poor people (also rare), and for it survive 2000 years. I’m frankly surprised there is any data at all on him that’s this close to him being alive instead of people just writing down oral history like they did for rise of Muhammad.
I’m not saying that there is a lot of data but that there is some. I personally think it’s very plausible that there was a cult leader that essentially started Christianity. Oral history points to Jesus as well as second hand witnesses.
Other writings include Tacitus (known for being unbiased on his writing about roman emperors) writing on how he was crucified during Tiberius’ reign. Tacitus had access to a lot more data than we have and was a very competent historian.
I don’t believe he had any powers or was in any way magical godly or anything but Christian writings refer to him as well as Romans in a situation where it’s very plausible that a religion is started by a leader of some sort. I find it very likely that he existed.
There’s no smoking gun but all the guns are pointing in the same direction.
Of course there’s a lot of information about Cleopatra, she was married to the Consul of the Roman Empire and was the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt. Of course documents on Jesus are going to be a lot more scarce.
Jesus was not a big name during his lifetime, he was literally just a random guy in the desert that led a cult. It’s hard enough to find data on literal Roman emperors during the crisis of the third century.
To get some data on Jesus you first need a guy that can write (rare), writing stuff on a person of little renown (very rare), that is predominantly followed by poor people (also rare), and for it survive 2000 years. I’m frankly surprised there is any data at all on him that’s this close to him being alive instead of people just writing down oral history like they did for rise of Muhammad.
I’m not saying that there is a lot of data but that there is some. I personally think it’s very plausible that there was a cult leader that essentially started Christianity. Oral history points to Jesus as well as second hand witnesses.
Other writings include Tacitus (known for being unbiased on his writing about roman emperors) writing on how he was crucified during Tiberius’ reign. Tacitus had access to a lot more data than we have and was a very competent historian.
I don’t believe he had any powers or was in any way magical godly or anything but Christian writings refer to him as well as Romans in a situation where it’s very plausible that a religion is started by a leader of some sort. I find it very likely that he existed.
There’s no smoking gun but all the guns are pointing in the same direction.