Did Jesus exist?

[Aegon]

Do I think that they knew the Torah well? Yes I do. Jewish mythicism is what we're talking about. And that's a poor analogy. Star Wars would be the only major sci-fi story anybody in the area cared about, and you'd have to make a sequel close enough to Star Wars for it to garner any attention. There was never any expectation in Judaism that the Messiah would be killed, so it seems improbable that a Messianic sect would make up a dead Messiah.

There's no need to suggest that they did.  So it doesn't matter whether or not it's improbable, whatever that means to you.

What are you giving me that link for? All that matters there would be the bit about Serapion of Antioch. I'm not sure why it says that he denied the human/historical Jesus though (unless I'm misreading it.) He never denied it. He accepted Christ's existence and the word of Peter being Christ's word. He said the Gospel of Peter as he read it was a forgery. "For we, brethren, receive both Peter and the rest of the apostles as Christ Himself."

The link describes precisely those scenarios you were describing, asking where they were.   There -were- people who thought that the human christ was bullshit.  Ultimately they were the losers in the dogma game.  None of the various machinations of different sects and trains of thought within the faithful speak to the veracity of the account upon which their faith is built.

No need to suggest they did? Yes there is? That's the whole "myth", no? 

And the only people I see from that link denying an historical Jesus are scholars from the 20th century. Otherwise I see arguments about the divinity of Christ and an argument over transubstantiation.

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The problem here is you thinking any historian who agrees that Jesus existed is a Christian trying to prove their religion.

Whereas you think that anyone who dares to question your obsession is an atheist with an agenda to destroy you.

The difference is "evidence."  I have forever insisted to any of your ilk who show up ( and that goes for muslims, as well) that I don't give a flying fuck what is written in your books of holy horseshit.  Where is the evidence to back up those books? 

Even as reasonable a writer as Bart Ehrman eventually has to fall back on "the gospels" and the irony is that he has spent an entire career pissing into that pond and now wants to say "It's okay guys, I found a clean spot you can drink from."  No thanks, Bart.  I'll pass.

Carrier exhaustively examines all the evidence....including your gospels and epistles...but you are right not to read it.  Your head would explode.  I sense that you do not want facts.  You want vindication for your beliefs.

I regard this as your problem.

I'm not a Christian. Didn't I say that already? I'll say it a third time. I'm not a Christian