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https://www.history.com/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence
Tl;dr: No.
My opinion: It's a nice story. And with stories the most important thing is what it teaches us or makes us feel. Not that it's true. Maybe they took inspiration from several preaching hippies who lived back then and made one story out of that. Exaggerated everything and made stuff up. Probably all of it because the bible was't even written close to his supposed lifetime. It'd be like you now writing a story about a dude who died in
1870. Without any previous records to get information from. [Edit: The first things have probably been written down like 40-50 years after his death.]And I mean if Jesus existed, he would certainly disapprove of what people do (and did) in his name.
I don't know that the History Channel is a good representation of academic consensus. It should basically never be relied upon.
The tl;dr of that article isn't even "no". It provides both sides of the accounts and references academics that argue both ways.
I read it to make the same argument you did, but ended up considering it a surprisingly well written article.
My summary is oversimplified. I still think it's the correct answer to OP's question: is there physical evidence. Because there isn't anything physical. But there are written records from a bit later, suggesting that somebody with that name must have existed. Glad someone else thinks I picked the correct article. Seems it's not that easy to find good information. The English speaking internet is filled with low quality efforts to portray the facts in a way they'd like to have them.
I have a few good books though. Back when I was young (and became an atheist,) I used to read a lot about philosophy, the political message of the New Testament. And what life was like in that time.
Agree. But that specific article seems pretty alright. Also talks about the relics and history records for example by Tacitus.
There also is a Wikipedia article which I think is not written that well. And a lot of education material by churches or religious organizations which I did not cite for obvious reasons.
(And the German Wikipedia article about sources for the historicity of Jesus seems very good. But it's not exactly OP's question and I don't know if it helps: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Außerchristliche_antike_Quellen_zu_Jesus_von_Nazaret )
There also is a Wikipedia article which I think is not written that well. And a lot of education material by churches or religious organizations which I did not cite for obvious reasons.
That's because Christian apologists constantly brigade those articles.
Edit: lol, and downvote lemmy comments I guess