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

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not contesting the existence Geranimo for fish sakes!! I mean, duh. I'm pointing out that disbelieving miracles associated with someone is not the same as disbelieving they existed. Also trying to get clarity as to what qualifies Jesus to have existed.

We've agreed between us that miracle stories can be discarded without necessarily discarding the figure around which they center, I thought?  

YOU said " "miracles" are why I don't believe in the christ myth. "

Because they are, it's the same reason that anyone who doesn't believe in the supernatural doesn't believe in myths.  However, if we're discussing a hypothetical historical jesus, we're not discussing the mythical version, christ.  We're discussing the legendary jesus of the new testament and trying to determine what among that might be historical.  The guy who flipped tables, not the guy who cast demons into pigs. Thing is... the guy who flipped tables was fiction too. Thats no more historic than the demon bit.

So I pointed out that lots of historical people have miracles associated with them, and it was a poor reason to disbelieve in an ancient person.

I specifically responded to that assertion with a correction.  The supernatural is why I don't believe the christ myth.  I mentioned that I don't believe the christ legends either, for reasons all their own.  I don't think there was a jesus due to what I know about the christ myth and the christ legend and how the latter formed as a derivative of the former..not any singular person or even a conglomerate of people.  

Then you turned around and started defending the existence of all these other people which is ironic and pretending like I'm somehow attacking their existence.

Do you know HOW we got to the conclusion that it was 'Ghenghis Khan' who left behind left behind. " a trail of broken potentates and empires behind him" ? That's a serious question by the way.

Actually you are now arguing for my original point. So I think my case is pretty well made.

There are myths about all four examples.  There are legends about all four examples.  There is demonstrable historicity for three.  You decided to make the comparison. It;s a poor comparison, and..as I said, probably unfair to any hypothetical historical jesus, but them's the breaks. "By my standard" historical persons are comfortably safe even though jesus isn't, and it isn't on account of miracles in any case. It's the baffling lack of credible information about a historical person and there being absolutely no need or reason to assume there ever was one, in addition to being able to identify the fact that the notion of the person was retconned onto and out of a myth in the first place. Christ I discard out of hand. The legendary jesus is explicable by the myth and the political and social reality of the second century. The man, himself, as it were...is nowhere to be found or seen in any of that, or anywhere else - because there is nowhere else for him to be.

The jesus of the new testament is a character in a story.