Debate with a Christian

[*Deidre*]

Please cite your sources. Or it's just hearsay. Do you know how to debate? I should have asked that several pages back before we started all this. lol

In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman wrote, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees". Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church's imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more". Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed, but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars. James D.G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus' non-existence "a thoroughly dead thesis". Michael Grant (a classicist) wrote in 1977, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary". Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.

(see bolded) And that is what you need to cite. I'd like to see this 'abundant' evidence for Jesus existing, that isn't linked to the Bible.