I don't believe that Jesus existed. There is no evidence for his existence that I know of outside of the Bible. I know of forgeries in the writings of Josephus, but no writing about from contemporary authors. Even the Gospels were written at least a century after he was supposed to have lived.
The earlier scriptures that talk about Jesus don't talk about him as a man, but as a spiritual being. It's only the later ones that turn this spiritual being into a mortal man. There are also attempts in Matthew to equate Jesus with the prophesied Immanuel from Isaiah 7 and 8. This attempt includes the preposterous story of the Romans asking everyone to return to their place of birth to do a census (rather than just having them stay put and simply asking them 'Where were you born?'), to place Jesus's birth in Bethlehem. The actual prophecy said that Immanuel would be born into the house of Bethlehem, referring to a family, and was supposed to have come to pass within the lifetime of Isaiah, not centuries later.
The lack of reliable evidence leads me to believe that he never existed.
The earlier scriptures that talk about Jesus don't talk about him as a man, but as a spiritual being. It's only the later ones that turn this spiritual being into a mortal man. There are also attempts in Matthew to equate Jesus with the prophesied Immanuel from Isaiah 7 and 8. This attempt includes the preposterous story of the Romans asking everyone to return to their place of birth to do a census (rather than just having them stay put and simply asking them 'Where were you born?'), to place Jesus's birth in Bethlehem. The actual prophecy said that Immanuel would be born into the house of Bethlehem, referring to a family, and was supposed to have come to pass within the lifetime of Isaiah, not centuries later.
The lack of reliable evidence leads me to believe that he never existed.
