As an atheist I always hear that all the accounts of Jesus's life were written hundreds of years after his alleged death, and that there are no independent records from the time he supposedly lived to corroberate his existence. Is this true?
Follow up question if anyone wants to answer: is it true that Jesus's life story is the same as other gods before him like horus and krishna?
Hi there!
Not to discourage further discussion but we have our own FAQ section on Jesus with great answers from /u/jasoncaspian, /u/talondearg, and related answers from /u/yodatsracist.
Thank you!
As u/commiespaceinvader has mentioned, there's a ton of threads on this on the FAQ (I think "Did Jesus exist" is the most commonly posted question on this subreddit).
But I will reply to your specific points, if that's okay. The very earliest mentions of his life are Paul's letters, which appear to have been written about 20-30 years later. The gospels you can read in the Bible were probably written about 30-70 years later, with Mark closest and John furthest away. Now, there are actually lots of accounts of Jesus' life that were written 100-200 years later, but those aren't the ones that are in the Bible. Here are the dates reckoned by scholars. Note that these are not the same as those given by conservative Christians, but they're not hundreds of years later either. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
There are no independent records from the time he lived to corroborate his existence, but that's not particularly strange. The Romans had no particular reason to record a religious teacher of a religion they didn't follow, in the peripheral province of Palestine. A province that was full of people always arguing about a religion the Romans didn't follow. He is mentioned by the Roman historians Josephus and Tacitus, but they were writing a fair while afterwards.
As for other gods: not really, though there are a few similarities with certain Gods. Of course, there are so many different Gods that it's inevtiable there will be some similarities somewhere.
Krishna is supposed to be the mortal incarnation of Vishnu, in a somewhat similar way to how Jesus is supposed to be the incarnation of God... but not exactly. That's mostly where the similarities end. He was born into a royal family, but his uncle the King wanted to kill him to avoid a prophecy that Krishna would kill the King, so he was born elsewhere, and became a cow herder. As he grew up, he killed various demons, and eventually returned to kill his evil uncle and restore the true king. He became a powerful prince and general, rescued damsels from demon kings and married them, fought a giant war against evil, etc. It's not really very similar to Jesus. Nor is there really any reason it should be, as 1st century Jews had no contacts with Hindus.
Horus (who represents Lower Egypt), the son of Isis and Osiris, fought for aeons with Set (who represents the desert). Set tried to seduce him, but Horus caught Set's semen and threw it in the river. Then he put his own semen on a lettuce and Set ate it. They summoned the other Gods, who discovered Set's semen in the river and Horus' semen inside Set, and so sided with Horus. But Set wouldn't accept his loss, so they had a boat race. Horus won, and so Set had to accept him as ruler of Egypt. But Set got to keep the desert. Which is even more different from Jesus' life.