Do you think jesus christ existed

[Aractus]

I take issue with anyone who refers to themselves as a 'scholar' they are serious published academics or they aren't. Personally I am inclined to think that there was someone of about that time who was at the very least the model for the biblical Jesus and may well have done some of the things reported of him.There is no evidence for anything else

Could you possibly have made a weaker argument?

Please list the evidence. Christian use Josephus when we know for certain at least some of it is faked and the gospels are incredibly weak evidence (in historical terms it would be wrong to state that they are not evidence at all, the just contain no reliability).

I already listed the evidence. All you responded with was a straw man argument. I'm well aware that Josephus didn't say that Christ was resurrected, that isn't news to me. Josephus writes that James of Jerusalem is the brother of Jesus (this is not disputed), he records the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist (also virtually not disputed), and finally the disputed section known as the Testimonium Flavianum, the consensus view is that while it isn't authentic it is partially original and that Josephus did record the death/crucifixion of Christ under Pilate.

There is that 'scholar' word again. I started out as a historian and I have never heard that term used by historians and I have a post graduate degree (masters) in history.

Scholar relates to people who specialize in the study of ancient literature in either the New Testament times or the Old Testament times (and consequently you have NT Scholars and OT Scholars), a person who is a Biblical Scholar is either an NT Scholar or an OT Scholar (or both).

To be a serious biblical historian you need to be a Scholar.

This is complete and utter nonsense I could within a day or two give you a list of 500 people who ,beyond any reasonable doubt' existed in the first half of the First century CE. Just off the top of my head without any checking at all

Yes you could, but you don't have the same amount of evidence for them.

Julius Caesar - well yes you have his bust don't you? But you still don't have any contemporary writings, and the writings you do have are not preserved anywhere near as well as the New Testament text is (there are some 5,800 ancient Greek manuscripts of the Net Testament text, on average each one of those manuscripts has about 40 pages intact, so you have a total of more than 2.3 million pages of ancient Greek text that are original copies of the New Testament text (copies as opposed to translations). You then have at least 20,000 translated manuscripts in Latin, Syriac, etc. So let's say the number is 25,000.

Do you have 25,000 surviving ancient manuscripts relating to Julius Caesar?

Pontius Pilatus

There are only three references to him, counting the New Testament as one reference - counting Josephus as another - and finally counting this as the third:

Oops there are 4! Tacitus is number 4.

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Aractus, I keep running into claims that an "overwhelming majority" of Biblical historians accept certain details about a historical Jesus, with no citation to support such claims. I understand that you no longer question certain details, but help me out. I'm curious to know if there is consensus amongst current historical scholars -- both Christian and non-Christian.[/font]

Yes, there is current consensus on those three points - well beyond consensus, they're virtually undisputed. There are more points that are undisputed.

His existence. Evidence: New Testament (minimum of 8 different authors), Josephus, early church fathers, the Jewish Talmud, Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan, and the Roman historian Tacitus (and he also counts as a 4th reference to Pilate's existence, I forgot about that, so I'll amend that list from 3 independent references to 4 for Pilate's existence).