Why do atheists even bother about debating Jesus?

[Confused Ape]

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pliny1.asp

No mention of a jesus. Nor Pilate. Nor crucifixion. Nor Jerusalem. Nor resurrection. Nor virgin births...mary, joseph, judas, magi, water into wine, etc., etc., etc.

I've just read Pliny's report. He doesn't give in-depth details of what the Christians believed so it's impossible to know what he meant by -

But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

Maybe Pliny classed things like resurrection and miracle stories as superstition so didn't bother to mention them. Looks like we need to find other sources which give information about what Christians believed between 111-113 AD.

There is a book by Bart Ehrman called Lost Christianities and deals mainly with the gnostics. I highly recommend it.

Thanks. I've made a note of it.

Jews never traditionally believed in gods in human form only human prophets. Pagans did believe in gods in human form so what seems likely is a fussion of Judiasm and classical paganism. Also themes such as a saviour child being born of a virgin goddess is a classical pagan theme, this goes back millenia before Christ.

The Gabriel's Ressurection tablet might have inspired the idea of Jesus coming back from the dead but the virgin birth and other ideas would have had to come from paganism.

I've just been googling for Paul and pagan ideas (all supposing he existed, of course). There seems to be some confusion as to whether Paul introduced the ideas himself or they had already been adopted by the first Christians and he thought they were Christianity.

The actual Jewish prohecy of the Messiah in it's original Aramaic just says that the Messiah would be born of a young woman not a virgin. This was a good religion for the pagan world to convert to as it had all the imagery and themes they were already used to. I'm sure Jesus was historical but there was a mixture of influences at work in the final dform the religion would take.

Virgin Birth Matthew

Hebrew has a specific word "almah", which may mean "maiden," "young woman," or "virgin". When Matthew 1:22 states: "Behold the virgin shall be with child" it uses the Greek term "parthenos" as "virgin" as in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah, while the original Masoretic Isaiah uses the Hebrew "almah".[32] This Greek translation "alters or refines the meaning of Isaiah's original Hebrew: where the prophet had talked only of a ‘young woman’ conceiving and bearing a son, the Septuagint projected ‘young woman’ into the Greek word for ‘virgin’ (parthenos)."[33] Raymond Brown suggests that the translators of the Septuagint may have understood the Hebrew word "almah" to mean virgin in this context.

Was the mistranslation a mistake or deliberate? Maybe it was deliberate to fit what Christians had come to believe by the time this Gospel was written.

Anyway, on to why I'm asking for help in going in to all this. If we say that Jesus never existed we'll just get into the same old arguments with Christians. If, on the other hand, we say it's possible that there was an historical Jesus we can then go straight to what's known about the early history of Christianity and Gnosticism etc.