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

[CapnAwesome]

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

I'd say that you fall into that "need it to be 90% true" sort of range. The thing is that if you need that level of specificity, it's hard to say that anybody in the ancient world existed. That level of specificity in the ancient world means that nobody really existed.

Almost nothing was written without the flair of the supernatural. Did Marco Polo travel through Asia (there are doubters, by the way)? His journals are about 80% cyclopses and supernatural stuff. That is way later too, when literacy and record keeping is far better. Let's say we cut your list down to the bare essentials and assume the added stuff is just the normal supernatural flair for every religious documentation of the time: someone who was born around Bethlehem, someone who grew up around Nazareth, who traveled and preached a message of Jewish rebellion against the government and anti-materialism, suffered torture and was crucified.

I might call a 12th century highway man Robin hood. I think it's a good comparison to Jesus actually. Depends on the details. If there was a 12th century highwayman who supported the poor and operated around Nottingham, how is he not Robin hood?

To require details to match exactly seems pedantic. I'm an Atheist, obviously I don't believe in miracles. However Alexander the great, Ghenghis Khan, even modern people like Geranimo have miracles associated with them. I don't not believe they existed because people associated miracles with them.