Reddit reviews Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
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At the more apologetic end, there's the recent book by Brant Pitre: The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ.
In addition, the article is misleading. In writing the article, Valerie Tarico tries to make the claim that the idea disputing the existence of a historical Jesus includes scholars that have written whole books arguing against this very idea! Her very first argument, in fact, does this very thing:
> 1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. ...
She goes on to give a lengthy quote from Bart Ehrman going on about the lack of Pagan sources for the existence of Jesus. While Professor Ehrman does indeed say these things, he goes on to say that there is little written evidence of most of the people who lived in the ancient world and this, in and of itself, does not prove or disprove anyone's existence. (see Bart Ehrman, "Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth")
Clearly, this is another attempt to make an unaccepted and unscholarly opinion look more mainstream than it actually is.
You may find this discussion of interest.
Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar of the NT, wrote a book called, Did Jesus Exist? (Spoiler: he concludes, "Yes.")
That prompted a review from one of the leaders of the mythicist movement, Richard Carrier.
Ehrman responded with this article on his blog.
There's a lot more that's been written around this on the internet, so I'll leave it to you to Google the rest.
I can't watch the youtube video right now, but I can guess what it's about. I wrote a few things about an alternate view to the "sola scriptura inerrancy" view - here, here, and here. As to doubting whether Jesus even existed - I'd suggest you read a couple books on that. You might want to check out Bart Ehrman, yourself - he is an agnostic and definitely doesn't pull his punches when it comes to challenging dogma, but nevertheless he thinks it's a bit ridiculous to say Jesus never existed. And one thing I've seen him point out in an interview (which I'm having difficulty locating right now - sorry, maybe I'll try again later) was that there's more "evidence" for Jesus' existence than for other historical figures that we have no problem with such as Hannibal or even Pontius Pilate. Here is an article Ehrman wrote about this, but you might want to check out his book Did Jesus Exist?. Also, I'd recommend the following:
The Meaning of Jesus (Two Views)
The Historical Jesus: Five Views
Bart Ehrman's book convinces me he was.
From Wikipedia:
> American New Testament scholar, currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a leading scholar in his field, having written and edited over 25 books, including three college textbooks, and has also achieved acclaim at the popular level, authoring five New York Times bestsellers.
He's also freely admitted transforming from an Evangelical Christian to a liberal Christian to an agnostic during the course of his studies, so I trust him as an objective commentator as well as an expert on the subject.
Plus, the book's a pretty interesting read.
The consensus among even liberal scholars is that he most likely existed.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_historical_existence_of_Jesus_Christ
Also, see Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
I loved and hated Reza Aslan's Zealot.
I loved it because it gave me a real "you were there" historical sense of the time. I learned a lot about the politics, the religion, and the role of the Temple in Jewish life. The political dynamics between Rome and the Temple leaders were especially interesting.
What I hated was his attempt to construct Jesus from essentially nothing. I read Zealot shortly after reading On The Historicity of Jesus, Did Jesus Exist and End of an Illusion. (See my thoughts on those books here and here.)
Those books left me wondering whether Jesus even existed at all, as a historical figure, so I thought it was very interesting when Aslan said:
> In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of the first century C.E.; the second is that Rome crucified him for doing so.
Given that this is a book about Jesus, I was surprised that he admitted so openly how flimsy the evidence for Jesus is and how little is known about him.
But then Aslan start piling assumption upon assumption. He claimed to know all sorts of things that weren't those two facts we know. For instance, later he says, "That he came from this tightly enclosed village of a few hundred impoverished Jews may very well be the only fact concerning jesus's childhood about which we can be fairly confident." Here's another one: "That Jesus had brothers is, despite the Catholic doctrine of his mother Mary's perpetual virginity, virtual indisputable." Still more: "By then practically every artisan and day laborer in the province would have poured into Sepphoris to take part in what was the largest restoration project of the time, and one can be fairly certain that Jesus and his brothers, who lived a short distance away in Nazareth, would have been among them."
These are just a few examples I highlighted while reading the book. The point is, the books about whether there was really a historical Jesus got me very sensitive to how little evidence we really have about Jesus. Maybe somebody with that name preached and was crucified, but almost all of the details in the bible appear to be made up decades after Jesus died. And yet Aslan builds and builds and builds on this shaky foundation to create a Jesus who — to me — seems entirely implausible. Or maybe I should say it differently. His Jesus is plausible, but not particularly likely.
For a look at both sides, I recommend these two books:
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-ebook/dp/B0053K28TS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1375195604&sr=8-3&keywords=bart+ehrman
http://www.amazon.com/Ehrman-Quest-Historical-Nazareth-ebook/dp/B00C9N0WBI/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1375195604&sr=8-8&keywords=bart+ehrman
I say this having only read the sample of the second one. The second book seems a very good showing of the arguments against Jesus existing. I'm not sure if there is a better example of the arguments for Jesus existing.
Bart Ehrman wrote a book Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth to explain why historians of that time and place are so confident that Jesus did exist.
One thing that mythicists often forget is that the idea that Jesus didn't exist is also a theory that needs to be supported. It isn't enough just to criticize the historical evidence about him. The theory that he didn't exist has serious problems.
Well, it's impossible to argue with someone who wants to remain ignorant. You simply have no idea what you are talking about. New Testament historiography is a disciplined academic skill, which is engaged in by atheists, agnostics, Christians, liberals, and conservatives. Each and every one of these scholars with a teaching position at a university not only believes that Jesus existed, but that many things can be known of him.
Here is a book for you:
[Did Jesus Exist, by Bart Ehrman] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053K28TS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). Bart Ehrman is not some trying to "push their religion". He is an agnostic who has spent most of his career criticizing biblical Christianity.
If you don't like books, then here is a short presentation of his.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnybQxIgfPw
A debate on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIxxDfkaXVY
Well technically those records from the mid 100s are saying that christians exist, and they did. The epistles of Paul were written in the 50s, the gospel of Mark written in the 70s, Matthew and Luke written in the 80s or 90s, and John, the revelation of another John, the revelation of Peter, and the ascension of Isaiah and many other Christian stories written in the 100s to the 300s before the ecumenical councils were started in 325 when they decided to narrow down Jesus eventually settling on the trinity by the fourth ecumenical council pushing out Gnosticism like the gospel of Thomas, Marcion, and Origen as well as Aryanism, Nestorianism and other "heresies" leading to the church of the East, Coptics and other early schisms. After the next four councils they came to the idea about iconoclasm where the Eastern Orthodoxy was against the use of iconography and the Catholics stuck with icons such as the crucifix, statues of Mary, and other icons. This was all by the time of the 600s.
Soon after this time the orthodox christians, Coptics, Islam and other sects went their own ways. In Islam Jesus is the chosen human messiah but not the son of God nor was he crucified before his ascension. In some Eastern religions Jesus is sometimes seen as another transcendent beings like the Buddha and Buddha is sometimes seen as a reincarnation of Vishnu in some forms of Hinduism.
Zoroastrianism heavily influenced monotheism and the traits of the supreme god found in most abrahamic religions. It added the concept of heaven and hell. It added armageddon. Many forms of Christianity didn't start out believing in an afterlife but the Catholic concept of heaven, hell, and purgatory was under question by Martin Luther especially the concepts of the church selling something that allows them to skip purgatory and changing the message of the bible from the originally intended meaning. As a result most protestant religions don't have a complicated hierarchy with bishops, archbishops, popes, and such but they'll have a pastor and perhaps deacons and that's about it. The eastern orthodoxy has a few of their ecumenical decisions but the Catholics kept it going up until they went from 7 to 21 with 15 or 16 being related to the protestants being excommunicated and doomed to hell. In the first Vatican council (ecumenical council decision #20) the church rejects rationalism, materialism, and atheism and anything that could cause problems with the church doctrines. More recently (since the 1960s) they have gradually adjusted to science and with the removal of hell and the acceptance of evolution and the ongoing pedophilia the church is falling apart and might again break into multiple denominations.
The protestants went on another path and in the 1900s the rise of fundamental literalism led to a resurgence of young earth creationism and flat earthers while just a few decades earlier the seventh day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah witnesses and Baha'i came out of the various religions holding fast to creationism and the existence of Jesus.
While these beliefs account for the majority of held religious beliefs (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism) only the abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i rely on Jesus being historical. Scholars who hold these beliefs will claim they have evidence that Jesus matches their religious idea such as an empty tomb pointing to a resurrection. The scholars who try to establish historicity on either side will fall back to some random Jewish rabbi, perhaps Jesus ben Annanias or Yeshua ben Yosef who was a preacher mulch life the more established John the Baptist and like John was killed and remained dead while his followers shared their memory of him by word of mouth so that he gradually gets more and more absurd and magical by the time the gospels were written. Others will point out that Jesus was a spiritual being probably hundreds of years before the first century when Paul, Peter, Timothy, and others spoke of their visions (related to gnostic Christianity) and it was another couple decades before a Greek speaker unfamiliar with Judaism and the geography of the region wrote the gospel of Mark. Other stories were also in circulation in the following decades such as the Q document so the authors of Matthew and Luke took the various gospels at the time like Mark, Q, and possibly a couple others and combined them with the contradictory birth narratives I pointed out previously. The kept the same crucifixion but added a resurrection which was later added to mark and gave Judas different reasons for betraying Jesus. Then in the next five decades wildly different concepts of Jesus arose such as an attempt to state he was just an ordinary person that was possessed by the son of God. The gospel of John, using gospels like the gospel of Thomas and a sayings gospel was written so that he became more of a superman character. He left off the birth narrative starting with the popular baptism cult of John the Baptist and this time he wasn't turned in by Judas at all but instead told Judas and his army that he is the one they seek. After this there were various acts of the apostles and revelations about Armageddon and various apocrypha that the early church leaders decided to leave out so that they could say Jesus was born to a virgin, died by crucifixion, and had a bodily resurrection from the dead. They left behind just enough contradictions that they decided upon the trinity so that he could be an eternal being equal to the father and spirit and after the death of the son the holy spirit is released to the apostles to spread to the early church.
Basically by the 300s there was a dominant sect holding to a divine human Jesus and that was the sect that set up the early church considering everything else to be a heresy including Islam when it rose up out of Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity. Throughout the middle ages they produced a lot of hoaxes like cups, foreskins, pieces of petrified wood, and a shroud. As time went on it was just assumed that Jesus was a historical figure and it was the consensus about 100 years ago. Since then the consensus has come under scrutiny so that Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier are at the head of each side of the debate and neither of them hold fast to the gospels being reliable depictions of Jesus nor are the documents that came 100 years later saying that christians exist. There are many people holding many different religions. It doesn't automatically make their beliefs true. Josephus was tampered with by Eusebius and the rest don't really make any claims about a Jesus being real but only relaying what the christians had said about their beliefs such as a messiah who was crucified by Pontius Pilate 100 years ago. By this time everyone who could corroborate his existence had died and while he would have been still alive Philo of Alexandria wouldn't be wondering where he was and Justin Martyr wouldn't be saying that he predated the demigods that were being worshipped by at least 1500 years before Jesus was supposed to have lived.
Here are some books from both sides of the debate:
Richard Carrier: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Jesus was probably a spiritual mythical being first and a man later)
Bart Erhman: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053K28TS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Jesus was probably an ordinary man but we can figure out more about the historical Jesus)
Robert Price: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0OPUZM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Debunking the religious apologetics put forth by Lee Strobel)
Lee Strobel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01863JLK2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Defending the divine human Jesus of Christianity)
I'll let you decide.
I can see you are searching every square inch of Google in the desperate attempt to falsify my claim.
>Gunnar Samuelsson. Author of crucifixion in antiquity.
Gunnar Samuelsson does not deny the crucifixion of Jesus. His dissertation is on the linguistic scope of the term, and its usage in ancient sources. Crucifixion, he claims, can include more than mere traditional Roman crucifixion, a claim which is certainly well accepted in the field.
>Proponents of christian myth theory (fringe yes, demonstrates scholars do reject the existence of jesus)
There are about five mythicists among the thousands of NT scholars. And not one has a teaching position at any University. Mythicism is not taken seriously in the field of NT studies. It is a debunked conspiratorial view that is devoid of any historical credibility.
>Many jewish sects which reject the new testament entirely. Mant muslim sects do to. Idk? I'm sure plenty if asian cultures reject the story as factual too.
What does that have to do with anything? I was expecting you to provide Christian denominations where the crucifixion is denied. That Muslims and (perhaps some) Jews deny the crucifixion is historically irrelevant. Muslims do not believe Jesus was crucified due to historical considerations; they believe this because the Quran, written 500 years after the fact, says he wasn't. But either way, our discussion is about the historical credibility of the crucifixion, not what some religions believe about it.
>Like what else do you want? Just google skepticism of existence of jesus and you'll find plenty of biblical scholars who doubt the authenticity of the new testament.
What do you mean by the authenticity of the New Testament mean? And what has that do with our topic? A historian need not believe that the New Testament documents are 100% reliable to believe that they contain valuable historical information.
>Richard Dawkins. Bart Erhman.
Seriously? Richard Dawkins? He's an evolutionary biologist, not a New Testament scholar. His training in the field is no more than a person off the street. And I'm glad you brought up Bart Ehrman. He is a very skeptical NT scholar and has written numerous books in attempt to discredit the Bible. Yet even he believes that Jesus existed and was crucified by Roman authorities. He recently wrote an entire book defending the existence of Jesus. In a blog entry, Ehrman wrote, "The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans is one of the most secure facts we have about his life." (Why Was Jesus Killed? www.ehrmanblog.org)
If you are truly interested, get Bard Ehrman's book on the issue. He is an agnostic/atheist, but as a scholar/historian he thinks that Jesus of Nazareth the person did exist and he explains in detail why scholars believe that.
>For centuries few people in the Western world doubted that Jesus of Nazareth existed.
Actually Ehrman goes into this and according to him this is not true, that the concept that Jesus was not a real person is actually fairly new, dating to around the French Revolution and gaining traction when it was picked up by Lenin/taught in Soviet places. Before that even Christianity's biggest decriers were more focused on arguing that Jesus was a fraud rather than that he wasn't real.
He probably did
He probably didn't
No, it's more like, "I'm an historian, and the vast majority of historians, after examining the evidence, in accordance with the accepted standards, agree that Jesus existed"
And one can hardly expect Erhman to present all the evidence in a short radio spot.
But you can always check it out here
or here
or here
I recommend reading Dr Ehrman's book which gives a good overview. That is, if you are serious about this topic.
As I've stated, while I do believe he probably existed, I don't think we'll ever be able to say one way or the other definitely. If he did exist, he came from a poor family in Nazareth, a very small village in the middle of nowhere. It's hard to get records on anyone from that time, much less a backwoods preacher with limited success.
But read Ehrman's book for a good overview of the existing evidence. Keep in mind that 99% of historians also believe Jesus did exist, and no, they are not all Christian fundamentalists. They include Jewish scholars, atheist/agnostic scholars (like Ehrman), etc.
You can have your own opinion but not your own facts. What you state above is literally a falsehood. Don't believe me? This book outlines the mainstream scholarly position on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument-ebook/dp/B0053K28TS
Mythicism is the position with no valid acceptable proof.
I'm a skeptic, we take this very seriously. When the Christ myth theory is accepted by legitimate historians and academics I will happily accept it. Until then I put the mythicists into the same cateogry of creationists, fringe scholarship not accepted by the mainstream.