Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[Secular Elf]

Yes, we know about him from Philo and Josephus and his own inscriptions and coins.

The French Revolution happened.  But a Tale of Two Cities is still fiction.

Atlanta burned during the Civil War.   Gone With The Wind is still fiction.

See a pattern?

That's because they really are fictional stories.

Is Jesus being a magical God fiction? Sure.

Is Jesus being a poor preacher who thought he was the son of God but ended up getting executed fiction? Probably not; there were quite a few people who attempted to claim themselves as the Messiah.

In fact, the death of Jesus (which is very well attested) is perhaps why Judaism changed - because Jesus in reality, was just a man and he died an embarassing death.

From the link.

Clearly the gospel writers were going to some effort to find some kind of scriptural basis for this rather awkward death for their group's leader, one that let them maintain their belief that he was the Messiah.  Again, this makes most sense if there was a historical Jesus and he was crucified, leaving his followers with this awkward problem.  If there was no historical Jesus at all, it becomes very difficult to explain where this bizarre, unprecedented and awkwardly inconvenient element in the story comes from.  It's hard to see why anyone would invent the idea of a crucified Messiah and create these problems.  And given that there was no precedent for a crucified Messiah, it's almost impossible to see this idea evolving out of earlier Jewish traditions.  The most logical explanation is that it's in the story, despite its vast awkwardness, because it happened.

Jesus most likely did really die via Crucifixion (and thus, his followers at the time were left in a very weird position) - because if Jesus was purely fictional, then it becomes very, very hard to imagine why they would write him to have died via crucixation.

Having studied Early Christian history myself a bit, What I know about the start of Christianity is that modern Christians themselves are unaware of the complexities of how their religion started.  They think and claim that Jesus was the son of a god who preached in Galilee and was killed by the Roman authorities, rose from the dead, charged his apostles to spread the word about him, then went up into heaven, his apostles spread the word, a new religion is born, and Paul the Apostle spread the word of Jesus around the Mediterranean, and all of this they know from the New Testament, and were largely monolithic in their beliefs, and that is all they need to know.

Well I know for a fact from my readings on the subject it ain't all that simple and that view is a myopic one at best.

Point number one: The followers of a rabbi named Yeshua ben-Yusef, mostly his family and friends at its very beginnings, were Jews, raised in the Second Temple Judaic tradition.

Point number two: The first Christians were Jews.  Or as modern scholarship calls them, Jewish Christians.  They fell into three main groups: Ebionites, Nazarenes, and Elkasites.

Point number three: the Early Christians were MORE diverse in their theology and beliefs than modern Christians, therefore they were most certainly NOT monolithic in dogma and beliefs (their views on Jesus's divinity, or Christology, varied and there were scores of different groups, many were gnostic).

Point number four: Because of continuing influx of gentiles into the religion and of conflicts with Roman authority (three Roman-Jewish Wars from 60 to 115 CE) and the Romanization of Jerusalem and the province of Palestine in 135 CE, Christianity had split off from Judaism by 140 CE.

Point number five: Jesus lived and died from ca. 4 BCE to 30 CE.  Nothing was written down about him until about 60 CE, and various versions of his life and teachings were circulating among the different groups of Early Christians that reflected their various beliefs concerning him (either gnostic, adoptionist, or docetic).  And the Canon of the New Testament was not developed until AFTER Marcion of Sinope, a Roman cleric who founded a different variety of Christianity called Marcionism.  He rejected the Jewish Torah (Old Testament) and organized a collection of Christian literature into the Gospel of Marcion, which included Luke, some writings of Paul, and his own writings called the Antithesis.  He did that by 140 CE and the Roman Bishop excommunicated him for that.

Point number six: A group of Christians, whom Bart Erdman named Proto-orthodox, were the only group of Early Christians who held to a Pauline Christology (Jesus as god in both flesh and spirit, as opposed to adoptionist--Jesus was divine because God adopted him at his baptism, or docetic--Jesus was divine because he was spirit only and his appearance as a flesh-and-blood man was an illusion, or gnostic--Jesus was sent by the real God and not the creator of the material world, to save mankind from the material world through secret knowledge) and viewed themselves as the only true holders of correct belief and doctrine.  It was they who eventually became the power and controllers of the Christianized Roman State and called the rest of Christianity that was not orthodox heretics.  It was they who summarily went about eliminating those who were not orthodox in their Christianity.

Those are the facts as they are known about Early Christianity itself.  As far as the actual history of Jesus himself I have some doubts, but I am holding final judgment on that for later.   For it seems to me that Acharya S., who is an archaeologist, trained in Classical Antiquities, should know what she is talking about.  I have read some of her articles, though I have not read any of her books yet.  She steadfastly defends the Mythicist Position she holds, and without ad hominem attacks, as some of her opponents seem to do against her.

To quote from my own writing on the subject of Early Christian History, I took a neutral position in explaining how people view Jesus:

Modern people regard Jesus in varying ways as well. To many conservative, orthodox or liberal Christians, Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world, no question and end of story. Yet on the other hand, other Christians not so orthodox may place more emphasis on his doctrines of kindness and living a proper life than on his godhood. Those who are not so religious may say that Jesus is a great philosopher and do not consider him divine at all. Yet, still others , such as archaeologist and mythicist D.M. Murdock (pen-name Acharya S.), Dominican priest Thomas L. Brodie, and New Atheist activist Richard Carrier , hold to a mythicist position, that Jesus was not a real historical figure and is merely a construct that is a borrowing from previous and contemporary 1st Century CE Pagan religions. And still others, such as atheists, hold that no matter if he was historical or not, he certainly could not have been a son of any god.

-- A Summary History of Christianity Part Three: The Early Church--The Ante-Nicene Period (115 – 325 CE)

[This work is largely non-published, other than what I have shared with friends on Facebook and the Atlanta Freethought Society]