Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Redbeard The Pink]

What makes you qualified to decide what "hard evidence" means as opposed to actual serious historians like Ehrman?

When a historian says there is hard evidence, and he is qualified to make such a statement; then I'm inclined to believe there is hard evidence. Just like I believe Finkelstein in matters pertaining to ancient Palestine. I don't go and look for the crackpots at the extremes and then go and side with them when they claim that the evidence that the serious respected historians have is rubbish. If that's your argument then it's meaningless. If your argument really is that you think that the evidence that serious historians are interested in iss meaningless then perhaps tell me where I might find the hard evidence for the existence of Ned Kelly? Yes, OK they found his remains a few years ago and reburied them a couple of years ago, and they have a bust of him. Everything else is a written record. So that's just two pieces of what you would claim is "hard evidence" - and he only died 130 years ago. Perhaps you could tell me please what "hard evidence" we have that Shakespeare existed? What "hard evidence" do we have that Newton existed?

You aren't a qualified historian, and you aren't qualified to provide an answer for that. I'm not qualified either - all I'm qualified to do is quote the experts that are; and as I've shown you, they say there is hard evidence.

Ehrman is the guy stammering all over himself in that Youtube clip you played, right? I heard him say things like "you have to consider historical evidence," and "I think there is evidence to support the existence of Jesus," but he didn't really present very much if any of that, and his arguments were pretty dodgy and unreasonable. He sounded exactly like an apologist, actually. He just kind of said, "You have to consider the historical evidence, and there is historical evidence," and mostly left it at that. He may not have had time to go into more detail, but he barely went into any detail at all, really, which comes off as either not having the evidence or not knowing of any. He just kind of pussy-foots around what the actual evidence is and keeps using the "Well, why don't you just deny ALL historical claims?" argument.

In this vein, his mention of Abraham Lincoln is completely absurd and a false equivocation, as there is a significant difference in the kind and quality of the historical and physical evidence that Abraham Lincoln existed. There are photographs of Lincoln, people wrote about and recorded him while he was actually alive, we can theoretically go dig up his body and examine it to see if it's the remains likely belong to the man from the photos...it's just a whole different ballgame. He would have been better off sticking with older historical figures; Socrates comes up a lot in these debates, but he honestly has slightly more historicity than Jesus, as is true with many historical figures from both before and after Christ. Shakespeare, Newton...they both produced writings while they lived, people wrote about them and made images of them while they were supposed to have lived. There's also the annoying little fact that none of those people were said to have magic powers and resultantly were deified by roughly 30% of the globe, which immediately puts Jesus in an entirely different class than other alleged historical figures.

I also notice that historicists tend to throw the word "apostle" around as if ANY of the twelve disciples have any more historicity than Jesus, but it turns out they basically don't. Go figure.