Did Jesus Really Exist (and did he have a beard)?

Compare to Davy Crockett

There are some discussions around the idea that maybe Jesus Christ never existed at all. Largely this is a discussion by atheists for atheists. If you are a Christian you believe there is a god based on faith so it is easy to believe that Jesus of Nazareth existed.

One argument that Jesus did not exist looks at that word “Nazareth”. On the one hand, why would the gospel writers make up that story about the census and forcing everyone to go to Bethlehem? The Old Testament says the Messiah must come from the city of David which is Bethlehem but if Jesus is the “Nazarene” then you somehow have to place his birth in Bethlehem. In other words, this entire episode requiring a very pregnant Mary and her husband to travel from Nazareth seems to be a strong effort to have Jesus born in a particular city. If Jesus was completely fictional, there would be no need for that.

There are others who would say calling Jesus the Nazarene is largely a translation error. Words like Nazarene may not refer to a place but instead is related to a Messianic title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarene_(title) This gets complicated because Greek doesn’t have a direct translation so by the time we get to the bible written in English we have Nazarene, Nazarite, Nazorean as well as Nazareth and they may all mean the same thing or maybe not. Matthew says the family (now with 3 members) moved to Nazareth complete the Old Testament prophecy but no such prophecy can be found. There are other similar words that have different meanings so that Nazareth might not refer to any place at all. Perhaps it refers to sowing seeds. In that case, the word doesn’t bolster the case that Jesus existed.

It might be useful to look at another legendary person who doesn’t raise the same level of emotion. Davy Crockett died less than 200 years ago. We know that he died at the Alamo and we know some other details of his life. But was he killed in battle or did he try to surrender only to be executed by Santa Ana? Was he tall? Well, for that time in history 5’7” might be slightly taller than average but the reason we think he was really tall is because 6’6” Fess Parker portrayed him in the Walt Disney productions. He probably did not wear a coonskin cap but may have worn a hat from a beaver pelt. He almost certainly did not kill a bear when he was 3 years old but the song about him says so.

So the Davy Crockett that we think we know is part fact and part fiction. When we say he is a legend we don’t mean that he never existed but we acknowledge that not everything said about him was 100% factual.

We don’t say that Davy Crockett rose from the dead. Wait. Did he? Walt Disney was so impressed with the audience reaction to the Davy Crockett story that he wanted to produce more episodes about his life. There were 2 problems with that. First, there wasn’t a lot more known about Davy Crockett so some stories would have to be created using known facts as an inspiration. Second, the original Davy Crockett movie ends with Crockett dying at the Alamo and that is one fact that was going to be difficult to change. No matter, the folks at Disney created stories about incidents that occurred before the Alamo. Problem solved. Today no one thinks Davy Crockett rose from the dead but in some sense that’s what happened.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/born-on-a-mountaintop-on-the-road-with-davy-crockett-and-the-ghosts-of-the-wild-frontier-by-bob-thompson/2013/03/22/37f11b16-80ff-11e2-8074-b26a871b165a_story.html?utm_term=.689842c91672

Instead of 200 years, we have to go back 2000 years to get the stories about Jesus. And despite living in a time and place where a lot of writing was being done, there is little to suggest there was a single person named Jesus. But what if the story of Jesus is an amalgam: a story with bits and pieces from multiple sources and some stories written after the death of one such person. A lot of things start to make sense: the lack of historical evidence; the stories of miracles that seem rare and scattered; the apocalyptic references in the Bible.

There are questions about Jesus that you might think could be answered. How tall was he? (Estimates range from 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches. ) Did he have a beard? (Probably but how long?) Did he have long hair? (1 Corinthians 11:14 says “if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him” yet a lot of art depicts a long-haired Jesus).

The only point I’m making here is that some aspects of an American folk hero must not all be true. It seems probable that the same could be said about someone who lived 2000 years ago instead of 200.