People in bible never existed according to head of Theology at a university in UK!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I always am not sure what people mean when they say something like "Jesus never existed" what qualifies him existing or not? What percentage of the gospels have to be accurate for him to have existed?

If there was a jewish preacher who traveled the roman empire, preached about the virtures of poverty over wealth and living a life of astetic seperation from the world, and was killed by the Romans,  is that man Jesus?  There were probably multiple people like that. Do the stories have to be 90% true? 50%, 10%? Nobody on either side of the debate ever really clarifies what they mean by saying what qualifies a biblical figure to have existed in the first place.

I think it renders the whole debate pointless until that is worked out first.

What I usually mean by 'Jesus never existed' is that the Gospels are not biographical to any meaningful extent.  That is, there wasn't a person who was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth (after a sojourn in Egypt), performed miracles involving wine, bread, fish, water-walking, weather control, healing and necromancy, ran afoul of the local authorities, suffered torture, death by crucifixion, was resurrected and ascended into Heaven.

Were there Jewish heretics that went about preaching as you described?  Almost certainly, but that doesn't make them 'Jesus' anymore than (to return to an earlier point of mine) a 12th century highwayman who may have helped poor people qualifies as Robin Hood, or a Romanized Briton giving some Saxons a rough time matches up with the king described in 'Morte d' Arthur'.

Boru