Did Jesus exist?

[Pat Mustard]

Yet the only evidence they seem to have is the self-serving garbage called, collectively, the gospels.

It's just bizarre to me. You believe in global warming, don't you? Sure, there are a select few scientists that don't think man-made global warming is a thing. But there's a scientific consensus on it existing. It's the exact same situation here. There is a consensus among historians that Jesus existed. So why are you only listening to the select few historians who disagree? I mean, purely from a logical standpoint, there must have been an historical Jesus for 1) the Jews to doubt the divinity of and 2) for an entire goddamn religion to form. How could a religion form over absolutely nothing? Every religion in history has had its driving force. But anyway..

Aside from the gospels, you have Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus (and Lucian, who never seems to get mentioned in these debates.) Here's a comment from an historian on the matter. I think he says it pretty well:

The evidence for the existence of Jesus isn't particularly flimsy: we have four biographies written within around 50 years of his death, two by ostensible eyewitnesses, we have letters written by a member of a religious group he founded written 15-20 years after his death, we have mentions in Josephus around 60 years later, and the existence of the religious group itself which claims to have been founded by him. I'm not certain there's a historical figure whom we have more or equal documentation for whose existence is ever questioned. I've certainly never encountered one, and I study folks whose lives are far less examined and documented than Jesus.

On top of this, we have to add the fact that history isn't simply picking holes in arguments, looking for "ah-ha! this guy never existed." If you're going to suggest that Jesus didn't exist, you need to provide an alternative account for the foundation of Christianity, for what's going on in the Gospels, in Paul, etc. Why, if Jesus never existed, did all this happen? Why did no one call Paul, or whomever, on the subject? Those who suggest that Jesus didn't exist have utterly failed on this front, largely because most of them aren't actual historians, don't actually have any expertise in the subject, and basically misunderstand the historical method.

I think the last bit is why you so often see responses like the, "Because historians all agree he existed, and if you disagree it's because you don't know how historians work" that you complained about. You're right, that's not a particularly good counter, but the problem is that the work of people like Carrier, who shockingly represents one of the best of his set, displays a basic misuse or ignorance of the normal tools and ends of historians. It's so pervasive throughout their work that it's almost impossible to properly criticize, this is common among all pseudo-history. You can also see this when evolutionary biologists or climate scientists confront the cranks in their respective fields, sure they can point out this or that error of fact, but the sheer breadth of wrongness, the way in which the authors seem to miss the point of the whole enterprise is extremely difficult to confront.

In short, it's not a question of "accepting the evidence". The evidence is there and is the same for the historian and for the dude on the internet who denies the existence of Jesus. Instead, the historian is seeking to create an account which accounts for the available evidence. The reason you should buy the claims of actual historians on this one, is because their account does this better, because the evidence does, in the end, point to the fact that there was really a historical dude, named Jesus (obviously not the English form of the name), who started a religion in first century Judea and was executed by the Romans. I think really the best way to understand what the Jesus-myth folks are doing wrong is just to read good history, it doesn't even have to be history about the historical Jesus. Read Robert Grant, Peter Brown, Carlo Ginzburg, Caroline Bynum, and read some historiography too, read Marc Bloch, G.R. Collingwood, Momigliano, Ginzburg, compare these guys to Carrier or Robert Price. The difference should be apparent.

On the global warming comparison, you're not even close. We have tons of independent evidence for anthropogenic global warming, we have testable theories and we have predictions that can also be tested. For Jesus we have one single piece of evidence, written after the fact under the control of the claimants and known to be massively doctored. To claim the same evidential status for Jesus as agw is to poiso. The well agains agw.