Was Jesus Christ real and did he die on the cross for our sins?

Read this article https://www.quora.com/Was-Jesus-Christ-real-and-did-he-die-on-the-cross-for-our-sins – I asked Chatgpt to analyze and give me an answer:

Here’s the prompt I gave > “ANALYZE AND REDIRECT AN ANSWER FROM THE STAND POINT THAT JESUS NEVER EVER CLAIMED TO BE GOD BUT STRONG DEFENDED HIS POSITION AS SON OF GOD “

Gemini said

This is a dense, provocative critique that hits on several major pillars of biblical scholarship, historiography, and theology. To address your request, I will analyze and redirect these points through the specific lens you requested: that Jesus viewed himself as the “Son of God” (a distinct, subordinate messenger) rather than “God the Almighty.”

By shifting the perspective away from the later Trinitarian dogma, many of the “logical loops” you mentioned—like God praying to himself—resolve into a different set of historical and literary questions.

1. The Theological Redirection: Distinguishing the “Son” from the “Father”

If we accept the premise that Jesus never claimed to be God, the internal logic of the New Testament changes:

• The Prayer in Gethsemane: Jesus isn’t “praying to himself.” In this view, he is a human agent or a divinely appointed Messiah experiencing genuine dread. His plea, “Not my will, but yours be done,” emphasizes two distinct wills.
• The Cry of Dereliction: When Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (quoting Psalm 22), it is not God talking to himself. It is a man—the “Son”—feeling the biological and spiritual weight of abandonment by his Superior.
• The “Murder” Question: From this standpoint, God didn’t “murder himself.” Rather, a prophet was sent to a hostile environment, and his death is framed as a sacrifice or a martyrdom allowed by God to fulfill a specific covenantal purpose.

2. The Historical “Silence” Argument

You noted a lack of first-century evidence outside of “Christian cult propaganda.”

While it is true that there are no contemporary Roman records (standard for a provincial execution of a non-citizen), historians generally point to two non-Christian sources from the late 1st century:

1. Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, c. 93 AD): While the “Testimonium Flavianum” contains later Christian interpolations, most scholars believe a “neutral” core exists where Josephus mentions Jesus, the brother of James.
2. Tacitus (Annals, c. 116 AD): He mentions “Christus,” who “suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.”

3. The “Jesus ben Ananias” Connection

The parallels between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus ben Ananias mentioned by Josephus are a major point of “Mythicist” study.

Redirect: If Mark did use Josephus as a literary template, it suggests the Gospel is a theological biography rather than a transcript. However, many scholars argue that both accounts simply reflect how the Romans dealt with “mad” prophets in Judea: a standard procedure of interrogation and scourging.

4. Legal Irregularities in the Trials

Your points regarding the Sanhedrin’s laws (no night trials, no trials on Passover) are historically accurate according to the Mishnah. Critics use this to argue the trial was a fiction.

Defensive Standpoint: Apologists often argue that the “rules” were ignored specifically because the authorities viewed Jesus as an emergency threat to the peace. If Jesus was merely a “Son of God” (Messiah claimant) and not God, his arrest becomes a political move to prevent a Roman crackdown on the populace.

5. The “Zombie Apocalypse” and Solar Eclipse

The “Saints rising from the graves” in Matthew 27 and the three-hour darkness are widely regarded by modern historians as midrash or apocalyptic imagery, rather than literal weather reports.

• In the ancient world, the death of a “Great Man” or a “Son of God” (like Julius Caesar) was often accompanied by “portents” in literature to signal the cosmic importance of the event.
• The absence of these events in contemporary Greek or Roman astronomical logs suggests they were literary devices intended to tell the reader: “This was no ordinary execution.”

Summary

If Jesus never claimed to be God, the “absurdity” of God forsaking himself vanishes, replaced by the story of a subordinate messenger caught between religious law and imperial power. The question then shifts from “How can God die?” to “Did this specific human messenger actually exist, or is he a literary composite of several first-century figures?”