Why did pagans not take any notice of Jesus?

[EgoDeath]

The general consensus among scholars is that the historicity of Jesus has essentially been proved. The view of Jesus is myth is very much a fringe position. BUT that does not prove it is necessarily wrong..

I choose to use Occam's razor; based on the amount of information, it is more likely than not that Jesus existed. In discussions I usually treat the existence of Jesus as a given. Using formal logic, all logical propositions have the caveat "IF A------" IE IF Jesus' reality is true, THEN -----

A sound logical inference is true IF AND ONLY IF the premise is true.


The historicity of Jesus is the question if Jesus of Nazareth can be regarded as a historical figure. Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians, applying the standard criteria of historical-critical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain,[1][2] although they differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels.[3][4][5][note 1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

That doesn't change the fact that there is very little evidence for Jesus' existence. That historians throw religion a bone and say, "Yea, sure he was real" doesn't mean much to me. You're trying to use the argument from authority as if it changes how much we know about the evidence for Jesus. There's not very much of it and none of it was written while he was supposedly alive, some of which don't even mention him by name. The "evidence" is shaky, at best. I'm not 100% convinced he wasn't real, I'm just saying I'm not convinced the other way, either. I'm agnostic about it. I don't know and don't pretend to know. It's pretty unlikely, in my opinion, but yea, maybe he was real. Even if he was, so what?

I'm not arguing for his historicity. I just wouldn't expect to find mention of him in other sources. Folks in this discussion are acting like it is reasonable to expect that he would have been mentioned in one or more of the surviving pagan writings from that time. But I think that it would be a terribly long shot for him to be mentioned in any of them.

I don't know that he would be found in Pagan writings, either. I do think we would see some contemporary writings about him though if he was such an influential, controversial figure. I think the writing that's closest to the life of Jesus was written something like 150+ years after his death. Just seems weird that no one would write about the man during his lifetime.