Do you think jesus christ existed

[Clueless Morgan]

Who Wrote the Bible?

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Students taking a college-level Bible course for the fi rst time
often find it surprising that we don’t know who wrote most of
the books of the New Testament. How could that be? Don’t these
books all have the authors’ names attached to them? Matthew, Mark,
Luke, John, the letters of Paul, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2 and 3 John?
How could the wrong names be attached to books of Scripture? Isn’t
this the Word of God? If someone wrote a book claiming to be Paul
while knowing full well that he wasn’t Paul—isn’t that lying? Can
Scripture contain lies?

When I arrived at seminary I was fully armed and ready for the
onslaught on my faith by liberal biblical scholars who were going
to insist on such crazy ideas. Having been trained in conservative
circles, I knew that these views were standard fare at places like
Princeton Theological Seminary. But what did they know? Bunch of
liberals.

What came as a shock to me over time was just how little actual
evidence there is for the traditional ascriptions of authorship that I
had always taken for granted, and how much real evidence there was
that many of these ascriptions are wrong. It turned out the liberals
actually had something to say and had evidence to back it up; they
weren’t simply involved in destructive wishful thinking. There were
some books, such as the Gospels, that had been written anonymously,
only later to be ascribed to certain authors who probably did not
write them (apostles and friends of the apostles). Other books were
written by authors who flat out claimed to be someone they weren’t.
In this chapter I’d like to explain what that evidence is.

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Jesus Interrupted...Bart Ehrman Page 101

Okay, what I don't understand from the historicity argument Ehrman outlines is how does Ehrman, or any other bible scholar convinced of Jesus' historicity, know that the stories of Jesus weren't made up?? It seems to me that they never address this issue, they simply treat it as a given that if two sources have similar stories than they must be true, or come from a tradition whose roots are grounded in some kind of reality.

Ehrman says several times that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, so they can't really be considered independent sources for information on Jesus, right? Except he says that for the stuff that, say, Matthew has that Mark doesn't have there was a mysterious M source where he got that information.

OR

He (the writer of Matthew) made it up!

For the stuff in Luke that isn't in Mark, it must have come from a source they call L.

OR

He (the writer of Luke) made it up!


It seems an awful lot to me that bible scholars who insist on Jesus' historicity are starting with the presupposition that Jesus was a real person and then making the evidence fit that conclusion.

What about evaluating the evidence without those presuppositions?

I'm not saying that doing so with guarantee that Jesus' historicity will be completely disproven if this approach is taken (like I said, I'm uncertain about his historicity and frankly don't care either way), but I am saying that what little I have seen of the arguments for a historical Jesus seem to be starting with the conclusion and working backwards from there. Perhaps Occam's Razor will enter and the explanation with the fewest assumptions (and I couldn't even weigh in on whether that conclusion results in a historical Jesus or not) will win out. But shouldn't scholars be evaluating the merit of the evidence without a conclusion in mind?

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And one actual historicity question for those who know more about the Roman world than I do:

Did the Romans keep records of who they crucified? (How many in a day/month/region/juridiction, their crime, their name, etc.) My gut says that they probably didn't, and that if they did someone would have brought it up as evidence, or as an argument from silence.

Just wondering.