Did Jesus exist?

[Mudhammam]

Way to poison the well and present yet -another- bale of straw in place of my position.  At least you got the last bit nearly right.  I think that the NT should be approached like -all- works of fiction, ancient and modern.  Because it's clearly a work of fiction...even if it's historical fiction...........

That is too simplistic for me. The New Testament is a collection of diverse texts, representing different views and genres. To say it's "clearly a work of fiction" is starting from a position that is both naive and on many points demonstrably rubbish. It's a larger assumption than I could comfortably make, even from the outset, but moreover, it's false. A great many aspects within these writings, such as names, titles, and locations, can be corroborated by extrabiblical and archaeological sources, which adds to their credibility when mentioning the sorts of important and useful mundane facts that you seem to only disregard, out of an unfortunately misplaced and irrational prejudice, when it concerns anything having to do with their central purpose: their religion. The entire concept of a historical novel didn't exist in the first century, so reading the texts from that vantage point, even though they might contain fictional elements, is flawed.

There is no point at which the level of belief or commitment of an author to their work turns into -it really happened-.  There just isn't.  If you can't acknowledge this we can't have a rational discussion.

A rational discussion doesn't involve a wholesale dismissal of every word because an author is writing to expound or propagate their beliefs, whether political, social, or religious. When we have multiple authors whose writings include a number of statements which can be verified as accurate - take the role of Pontius Pilate as he concerns the province of Judea as a single example - and not one, not ONE source makes as much as even a hint towards your thesis; not one small iota of documentary evidence supports the mythicist argument; but, on the contrary, we have many reasons to believe no sane person, especially - of all people - religious Jews, would create a new cult concerning a Jewish Messiah whom was to be worshipped as a god AND was humiliated by crucifixion - of all penalties - if they had complete determination of the narrative; this is one of many facts that you can't actually deal with in any serious way. Given this, among other considerations, it's quite easy to say that one is completely unjustified in calling your view credible, rational, probable, etc., and it is very much difficult for even moderately informed people to treat your pseudoscepticism with any more respect than would be deserving of, say, the resurrection hypothesis put forward by fundamentalist Christians.

Who had a reputation as a miracle worker?  Historical jesus or the character of jesus in the NT narrative (and all discarded narratives)?  You think that at some point people not doubting their beliefs translates into -it really happened-?  We have creationists who don't doubt their beliefs -today-..here, on these boards.  Go apply that knockdown argument to them.  

An obvious red herring, as the views of creationists and how they arrive at them have nothing in common with the issue at hand - well, except that they, like yourself, are "skeptical" about the evidence we do possess and the consensus of the experts who have analysed it using the methods accepted by everyone else working in the field.

I have no reason to doubt the claims about Jesus being a flesh and blood human being, born under the law, as Paul writes, shamefully put to death as numerous second generation followers describe it, and the catalyst for a movement that all of subsequent Western history reflects. I do have reasons to doubt that the miracles, or the birth narratives, or post-mortem activities, occurred as they tell it. But none of that adds weight to the notion that nothing they wrote contains any historical veracity. That, quite obviously, is not the case. And neither would you have reason to doubt it if you could see the forest for trees.

Why would I dispute the claim?  Im asking for the evidence, and failing that, some valid means of inference to get from the claim to the conclusion.  I can read the claim just as easily as you can.

What other evidence could you possibly expect us to have?

Are you really going to end this response with "The bible says so, so the evidence is on my side".......?  We're clearly not having the same discussion.

Well, considering that we don't have a ton of writings from the ancient world, and the Bible was written in the ancient world, it might contain some useful information about, you know, the ancient world.

Lets say we've winnowed down the story to a pool of candidate historical jesi..after we get rid of all the "obvious fantasy", how do we decide from that remaining mundane pool which are the true historical details, and which are the narrative details?  

Why should we expect to have detailed historical information? We have scant information on the lives of countless average people who lived only a hundred years ago. I recently reviewed the lives of William Ockham and Duns Scotus, some of the greatest and most well-known philosophers of their day, in the 13th and 14th centuries, and we have very little details about them - next to nothing besides a few lists that happen to include their names. Fortunately, they wrote, and left works, and their followers give us a little more information about them decades upon decades later. But you'd expect an abundance of evidence, on top of that which already exists, for the leader of a small religious sect in the first century, whose friends were simple fishermen, and probably didn't write himself...? I mean, with all due respect, get real. 

That's the trouble all the historical jesi have -always- faced.  We acknowledge from the outset that at least some of it is myth and legend -this is fiction-, and we don't have valid means to determine true from narrative detail among what is left.  Fiction isn't limited to the ghostly details of a ghost story....and that people believe in some or all of the details of such a story is no argument or evidence of their accuracy.  Meanwhile mythical and legendary jesus is remarkably easy to demonstrate..it's right there on the page..no shitty inference required....whatever vague notion of a historical jesus you have is irrelevant to it.  There's just no need.

That's not "trouble" for most people who consider the historicity of the man Jesus, which is all that is being disputed here. The details are less important than the general portrait of the character, which is what they're aiming to paint anyhow... And the character that emerges is far too historical, and fits much better in the historical narrative of Christianity arising out of a Greek speaking, Jewish world, in the first-century, much better that is, than any other alternative narratives.