Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[DeistPaladin]

So nothing. Are you posting in the right topic? I thought we were debating on whether or not there was a historical Jesus?

I've said before and I'll post again, someone needs to define for me what "historical Jesus" means before I can comment on whether or not I think it's likely he existed.

To me, it's like saying "historical Superman". Superman without the super powers? What's left? The powers are so interwoven into every part of his story that there's nothing left once you hollow out and remove all the super feats. Same is true with the "historical Jesus". So many of the episodes of his story are either punctuated by or revolve around the performance of some miracle. Take away the supernatural and many of these stories simply must be removed because there's nothing left.

So what do we have left? The ministry that spread far and wide to different provinces, that attracted followers from all over, that had even notables sitting up and paying attention? Yet there's nothing from either Roman or Jewish sources in the 1st century, barring the controversial TF by Josephus. This too must be discarded as exaggeration.

How about his teachings? What were they? We have nothing from him. There is no "book of Jesus" in the Bible. All we have are the Gospel accounts, and these are the same accounts we'd have to regard as questionable because we've agreed to reject the supernatural claims. Or should we accept their testimony of what Jesus said but reject the same testimony when it makes claims of what he did?

What do we have left? Some guy named Yeshua (common name) who was a doom crier (commonly found) of the early 1st century, regarded as the messiah (frequent claim) by his small group of followers? There were probably several.