Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Aractus]

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.

Redbeard, with respect you've offered me no evidence, you haven't even pointed me to academic literature which would support your wild allegations.

Let's see if I can think of another example of trashing real history with unsubstantiated claims - ah yes. The internet has been buzzing with people everywhere saying that Adolf Hitler escaped the bunker and then fled on a submarine to Argentina. And they say that declassified FBI files prove it. In fact do a search on it and you will hear just about everyone on the internet saying "I think it's very likely that Hitler escaped", you can barely find any sceptics talking about why they think he might not have escaped.

But just because there are thousands of mindless unqualified quacks sharing their wild opinions on it doesn't mean diddly shit - you need to hear from actual bonafide WWII historians. And not a single one has come forward to say that Hitler might have escaped. Before the FBI files were declassified and released, WWII historians unanimously said absolutely no possibility that he escaped. They trashed the talk of him escaping as nonsense and not worth their efforts to discuss because the people making that claim aren't serious credible historians. And they still say the same thing.

The people making the claim do have a piece of evidence of course, it's just not nearly enough to convince anyone qualified that the claim is credible.

Now as for your argument about the historicity of the disciples - yes Jesus undoubtedly called disciples, but exactly who they were is well up to debate.