Regarding Jesus

[DeistPaladin]

I think a more interesting question to ask is why should anybody care?

Sums up my new position: The Jesus Moot Theory.

The position of the Jesus "Historists" is that The Historical Jesus ™ certainly existed without a rational doubt and all the scholars say so. Well, all the serious scholars say so. And anyone who doesn't say so isn't a serious scholar, so there you go. In any event, he was some guy named Yeshua who was some kind of religious leader or something and, ya know, he preached some stuff or something and some of his real story might or might not have inspired some of the stuff in the Gospels but it's hard to say. But that's not important. What's important is this guy CERTAINLY existed. And we're pretty sure his name was Yeshua. STOOOOPID MYTHERZZZZ!!!

If there's anything else to the Historist position, aside from 30 minute screeds of ad hominems, appeals to ridicule and appeals to authority, please let me know. But I'm done with fighting their run-around; they've worn me down. All I want to know is this:

What, if anything, can we know about The Historical Jesus, aside from he certainly existed.

If all they've got is "some guy", then as skeptics we shouldn't waste any time on this and focus on the miracle working godman alleged to exist in the Gospel stories.

---

One or more of his supporters could have thought they'd seen him after his death (a very common hallucination) and the story grew with the telling. Then it somehow spread to the Gentiles who added their own mythological details.

Any Christian who argues that such a belief couldn't have arisen unless it was true (the "would they die for a lie" argument) should be directed to read about the many "Elvis sightings" that were circulated after his death. And we live in a much less superstitious time. True, Elvis fans would be unlikely to go to their deaths for their beliefs that he still lives, but then Elvis wasn't promising his followers a glorious afterlife. Any Christian who argues that religious fanatics wouldn't die for the promise of an afterlife need only be reminded of 9/11.