Christians - What would you do if it were discovered Jesus never existed?

[robvalue]

That's a very good summary I think Carrier makes an excellent case that Jesus the man is at best a rewrite pinned on some random guy, and at worst totally fictional. I don't see it getting much stronger than this. It's great how this beat up your Christian beliefs, obviously you had the scepticism to actually care about your beliefs being true. Sadly most Christians could watch this video and then just pretend they never heard any of it.

Unless his assessment of what is and isn't a forgery are off, his arguments are very tight in my opinion. It seems the church "lost" plenty of other material in order to go with the human version of the story, to pretend it was always that way. But due to the lack of any editing skills, the proof is still in there.

When they did decide to humanise him, they may have tried to pin it on some vague stories about a guy who actually existed. But the gospel authors, even if they did do this, wouldn't have been sure it was actually a real person. The stories would have been cocked up by then really badly, and doesn't alter the fact that it wasn't the original story (according to Carrier). It's very interesting how he claims the gospels are intended to be metaphorical in the first place, not meant to be taken literally. You have to wonder at the power of the church that they managed to convince everyone of the exact opposite.