Did Jesus exist?

[Pat Mustard]

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:

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.

Ps I also see your "reputable" historian friend includes the Testamonium Flavinium for evidence of Jesus. Given that the evidence pretty strongly suggests thqt it is a later interpolation into the text by Eusebius at c 325 CE I would suggest that by rights it should be ignored.

Actually the whole thing with Josephus brings up a major problem with the biblical field of historical study. If the only evidence we had for Octavian was a partisan biography full of magical fantastic events and a couple of small passages of authors eaqually removed from the events, of very doubtful authenthicity then no reputable historian of that period in Rome would accept him as historical. Yet that's the standard under which we are supposed to hold Jesus. With the same stanard I can prove that Fionn McCumhail tricked the Scottish giant by pretending to be a baby.