The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[robvalue]

You want my opinion on the matter? The "Jesus" character in the bible was probably based on several real people at the time. Some of the things may well have happened, at least in some form. But they've got vastly exaggerated over time as the story is passed on.

However, at some point the authors decided this character needs a huge boost, something that's going to make their religion seem legit. They have the OT already, so what did they do? They went through it, and wrote in details to make the Jesus character fit as closely as possible to all the prophecies and such. This leads to absurdities like him riding two beasts at once because Matthew misunderstood the part of the OT he was trying to fulfil.

So there may be kernels of truth in there, but I think the bulk of his story is mythical. It's the default position to start with the assumption he is just a character in a book, and work upwards from there. So we need to validate the things written about him, to see if they are real. The only things we can do this for are a very few events such as the crucifixion, and brief mentions of him in other texts. This may point to a real person/persons underneath the story, but it does not validate the whole story. The clues are there that they tried too hard to "make him fit".

This leaves the rest of his life story looking just like this; a story. If you are interested, I can provide you further information about this. Again, it's a false dichotomy to say either Jesus didn't exist, or he existed and did everything in the bible exactly as written.

I'm not claiming my account is definitely true, or that it can be proved beyond all doubt. It's simply the most likely explanation, in my opinion. The one that requires the least number of assumptions. But regardless of my conspiracy theories, the fact is that almost all of jesus' written life cannot be validated, so should not be taken too seriously.