Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Aractus]

And by the way let me just say I'm willing to accept Richard Carrier as a bonefied scholar - however he's just one scholar. Why should his views eclipse those of the majority? Why should he have more influence than other critical scholars?

In the absence of any hard evidence, all we have is what's written, and there are mythicist interpretations that are about as likely as historicist ones, if not more so. The fact that you side with the consensus claim is up to you, but don't act like your position is better or more likely just because more people agree with you. Unless they're agreeing with you for really good reasons (which, considering the level of evidence, they basically can't be), the number of people who believe the same thing you do technically does not matter. For a long time Galileo was virtually the only person who believed the Earth orbits the Sun, and look what happened there.

Also I bet you didn't bother looking at the information I gave you, for example in the interview where Ehrman says that different portrats of Jesus emerged but that there was only really one Jesus - and that's a view that is shard by a majority of scholars. And then I quoted Hurtado saying the same thing:

As for historical Jesus studies, Neil, once again I ask you to see if you can distinguish between the particular constructions of this or that scholar (which often differ) and the agreed basis on which such scholar argue with one another (which is that there is a historical figure to try to characterize rightly). Scholars differ over how rightly to characterize Abraham Lincoln, but they agree that he did exist, and that there is something to try to capture. So, I simply ask you one question, Neil: Do you really want to understand the field of Christian origins, and how scholars go about it, or do you wish to take insufficiently-informed pot-shots from the sidelines? I have little interest in engaging the latter.

In the absence of any hard evidence

I already addressed this. If you'd bothered to listen to the Youtube clip you can hear Erhman say in no uncertain terms "there is hard evidence" for the existence of a historical Jesus.

http://youtu.be/WUQMJR2BP1w

So between Erhman and Hurtado I gave you two critical scholars that say there is hard evidence. You haven't yet given me one that says there isn't - but if you're going to claim that Carrier says that then fine- that's still just one- and he's categorised by his own peers as an outlier- so I would take his view with a grain of salt.