For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Justtristo]

The existence of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that is attested by many scholars, even scholars that are hostile to Christianity. Bart Erhman just wrote a book on it, himself not a Christian.

I thought everyone by now had just accepted that Jesus was a human being?

The existance of a historical Jesus is only attested by those who either (1) could have but never met him or (2) were not alive at that time. It is akin to believing that there was a mass suicide at Masada: the only person in the world who wrote about it wasn't there and his sotry does not match the physical evidence. But people like to maintain stories.

And yes, I am certain, as a believer, that you would have thought that everyone believes that Jesus had existed. But due to the lack of any real physical evidence (and believe me, if the Vatican had any of that, they would have been pimping that monkey years ago).

I live a short drive from one of the 2 places where he was born and if I drive another 20 minutes, I can be by one of the two places where he is buried. The Church can't even agree on that.

The Shroud got debunked. The edited Josephus got debunked (an older version without "Jesus" got discovered, which is a problem with reality). Not a single Roman, Jewish, or Greek historian speaks of any of the tremendous miracles (or the object of them) - you would think that the living dead ("Zombie Alert"!) would have been noticed! Or that the Jews would have included in their dirge poetry from that period, mention of the massacre of all of their baby boys.

Nada.

You keep bringing up how it is well known and accepted, just like everyone knows that Rudolph gets to ride at the front of the sleigh should be a well known fact and proof that Santa exists. (Despite that fact that I have a picture of myself at age 3 getting a present from him, I still hold that it was a plot to fool us kids!)

The Church has decreed that the empty tomb proves that Jesus existed, because it requires an act of faith, which is the cornerstone of Christianity - faith despite appearances.

Might I also add that the Church and it's resources after it became the official religion of the Roman Empire would have meticulously preserved any extra-biblical works which attested to the events in the Gospels. Also "Church fathers" would quoted the same works in their apologetic works, however the reality is none of this occurred, which is significant in itself.

If you doubt they would have done this, look at all the works of various "church fathers" that have been preserved in their entirety to the present day. Not to mention the large number of manuscripts of the Bible which we have which date back to the 4th century (just after Constantine made Christianity a state religion). That is because the church made a serious effort to preserve those works at the expense of everything else that was written in the Classical world.