Socrates and Christ, the two most influential figures from the Western

  • Thread starter Thread starter Demervaldo Austragésimo
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Demervaldo Austragésimo

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civilization. Did they really exist? Please, first and foremost, I want to clarify I'm not discussing religion here. So, I think I can reserve for me the rights to report those who can proselytise here.

There was a magazine which has published an article about the scientific proofs about Jesus Christ's existence. They made a large exposition of the places where he was, there were photos from the Jordan river's point where he was baptised, etc.However, I don't know if that magazine told the truth or it's just an article whose publication was motivated by religious defence. Anyway, it's very curious the fact that we have no one reliable proof of the two most influential characters' existence in our Western civilization. Socrates really existed or he was just a character created by Plato? What do you think about these questions? Thanks in advance for your answers.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, "Duh. Of course they both existed."

A couple millennia from now, how will people know that you or I existed? Remains of photographs, records, maybe? So, how do we know anything about people who existed a couple millennia ago? From books.

While a fair amount of the Bible may be up for debate, the nature of the NT is historical record - not necessarily infallible, but historical. Some people saw this Jesus dude doin' his thing, so they wrote it down. I don't think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John got together to start a conspiracy, and I don't think they could convince a whole bunch of people that this guy they made up had been their savior.

You can question Jesus' claim to divinity, but his existence? I don't really think so.

As for Socrates: what we know about his life is not just from Plato but from Xenophon (also one of Socrates' students) and the plays of Aristophanes. While conspiracy theories are possible and all, I wouldn't say they're probable. Besides, even if Socrates never existed, we'd just start citing Plato as the influential guy instead, so it's not like it would make much of a difference. It would only alter how we read Plato in a relatively minor way.
 
They probably both existed, altough we don't know much else about them other than that.

Socrates almost certainly did. There are records of him other than Plato's. Aristophanes made fun of him in "The Clouds" while he was still alive, and Xenophon also wrote about him. And he was probably a very popular and controversial thinker.

Jesus is less clear cut. Some such figure probably existed; the Jewish historian Josephus refers to him only thirty years or so after his supposed death. And the plethora of gospels that emerge within a hundred years imply the existence of some such figure. But we don't know much about him.
 
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