Did Jesus exist at all?

[Redbeard The Pink]

What's trivial is squabbling over whether Earth's most popular imaginary friend is based on a singular, historical figure.


That said, even a mundane Jesus has less demonstrable historicity than, say, Socrates, so I still don't really see any evidence that justifies the certainty of the pro-historicity crowd in that case (not that it matters a jot).

It seems you may need to lower your notion of "certainty" when examining questions of which our data is chiefly, even exclusively, derived from the written record.

Except that virtually all "written record" of Jesus is Biblical/religious, and practically every secular source is highly suspect for one reason or another.


I have heard various mainstream historians attempt to defend the historicity of Jesus. Their arguments generally amount to appeals to popularity, appeals to early Christian writings, and appeals to Tacitus and/or Josephus, both of which are highly suspect texts.


I'm aware that history generally has a lower standard of certainty than other forms of science, which is exactly the problem. There seem to be three most-likely scenarios for the Jesus Myth: he was based on one real person, he was based on several real people, or he was based on a pre-existing character with no human story.


In my review, there's not enough evidence to be particularly certain which answer is most likely; in terms of supporting evidence, they all have roughly the same amount/kind of evidence, and the only real difference between them is that the first one is wildly more popular than the other two. That's not a good enough reason, however, to be more certain of that one, even if the popularity is among mainstream historians. They would still have to have good reasons for their certainty, and I have yet to hear one.