Did Jesus exist?

[Pat Mustard]

Jesus definitely existed. I know that a lot of people try to dismiss his existence entirely because the accounts we base his existence on are second-hand and/or written many years after he died, but people have to understand that by classical historical standards that's pretty good evidence.

But like others said, no, the miracle man definitely did not exist.

Actually for the perid that jesus lived in one second-hand mythically based attestation of his life and death is a horrifically bad level of evidence. The Roman empire was obsessed with record keeping and histories of all sorts, and due to various events there still exists toda a good number of preserved documents, especially from the early principate. In fact we've far more evidence for Jesus' contemporary Apollonius of Tyana, enough that we can be confident he existed as a historical person and that his message is largely intact. This is something no proper historian can say about Jesus (nor Mohammed for that matter)