The question that shatters faith, forever.

[Tiberius]

I never said Jesus was an average Joe. He quite clearly wasn't. I also think that perhaps the oppressive nature of the Roman government shares some of the blame for the lack of documents.

[Phil]

I never said Jesus was an average Joe. He quite clearly wasn't. I also think that perhaps the oppressive nature of the Roman government shares some of the blame for the lack of documents.

Isn't it convenient that enough documents were preserved to convince you?

[FallentoReason]

I never said Jesus was an average Joe. He quite clearly wasn't. I also think that perhaps the oppressive nature of the Roman government shares some of the blame for the lack of documents.

If he wasn't that average then all the more reason to expect at least one mention by a credible source.

I've often wondered too if the Romans destroyed documents to do with Christianity. Surely there would be historians that documented that if it were the case. I don't actually know.

[Tiberius]

Isn't it convenient that enough documents were preserved to convince you?

Not really, no. I like to follow where the evidence points me, and as far as I am aware, the general consensus among scholars is that Jesus existed in some form. The whole "jesus myth" is more of a conspiracy than anything, relying on dodgy facts and outright lies in order to get their point across. I tend not to support or give credibility to people who use such tactics.

If he wasn't that average then all the more reason to expect at least one mention by a credible source.

I've often wondered too if the Romans destroyed documents to do with Christianity. Surely there would be historians that documented that if it were the case. I don't actually know.

I think a lot of history was lost back then. That doesn't change the fact that Christianity very quickly expanded after Jesus' death, and has lasted until this day.

[Phil]

I never said Jesus was an average Joe. He quite clearly wasn't. I also think that perhaps the oppressive nature of the Roman government shares some of the blame for the lack of documents.

If he wasn't that average then all the more reason to expect at least one mention by a credible source.

I've often wondered too if the Romans destroyed documents to do with Christianity. Surely there would be historians that documented that if it were the case. I don't actually know.

There certainly were some documents destroyed by Christians in 391 at the library of Alexandria.

[Minimalist]

Here's an excerpt from divo Tiberio's Wiki page.

The evidence for the existence of Jesus all comes from after his lifetime.[10] The material which refers to Jesus includes the books of the New Testament, statements from the early Church Fathers, hypothetical or reconstructed sources which many biblical scholars argue lie behind the Synoptic Gospels (the so-called Q source), brief references in histories produced decades or centuries later by pagan and Jewish sources[11] such as Josephus, gnostic and other apocryphal documents, and early Christian creeds.[12]

The books of the New Testament are self-serving documents written by believers, extensively edited ( as shown by Ehrman and others) and date, at the earliest from 40-50 years after the events they claim to report.

The "early church fathers" are, again, not contemporary witnesses and it would seem in certain cases suffer from the same lack of contemporary reference as "jesus" himself. ( Paul, for example.)

The Q document is to religion what the tachyon is to science. It is speculated to exist but no one has ever seen it.

The Jewish/Pagan sources are either blatant forgeries like Josephus or references to xtians not jesus from Suetonius and Pliny. Even Tacitus, which I suspect is also a forgery does not mention any "jesus." The Greco-Roman and Jewish writers who lived at the time, (Seneca, Pliny the Elder, and Philo) never heard of him.

The gnostics were xtians themselves which puts their writings into the same "self-serving" category as noted above.

[Phil]

The Q document is to religion what the tachyon is to science.

But Tachyons travel faster than light

[Welsh cake]

It doesn't shatter faith. Faith is blind hope.

There's no shortage of gullible people who seek comfort and delusion over reason and hard evidence in this stupid violent world. They're mass-producing themselves as we speak.

We have science, its not perfect, it doesn't have all the answers, its sometimes a necessary but not sufficient method of convincing them otherwise, nevertheless it is the one-eyed man in this here kingdom of the blind.

[FallentoReason]

Not really, no. I like to follow where the evidence points me, and as far as I am aware, the general consensus among scholars is that Jesus existed in some form. The whole "jesus myth" is more of a conspiracy than anything, relying on dodgy facts and outright lies in order to get their point across. I tend not to support or give credibility to people who use such tactics.

I don't know how they manage to come to that conclusion, but jeez this guy is well hidden. If I want to read about Caesar, I simply pick up a history book. With Jesus it takes an army of archaeologists and scholars to try and come up with ways of explaining His existence.

I think a lot of history was lost back then. That doesn't change the fact that Christianity very quickly expanded after Jesus' death, and has lasted until this day.

After the events, it's easy to expand it when you're making the NT come across as witness accounts. This is the very reason why I went from a confused Catholic to born again Follower of Christ.

If Christians actually did research on the historical documents they're reading, they will be in for a very rude shock.

[Anomalocaris]

Which references are these? Josephus the JEW that confessed He was the Messiah?

For someone that did a great deal of miracles, or even 'party tricks' that got amped up, I find it suspicious that no one of his time had the slightest thing to say about him.

These references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

I too find it suspicious that nobody else mentioned his miracles, but that doesn't automatically mean he never existed. Far more likely is that that stuff was made up or exaggerated after he died.

Actually if you want to look at likely, Occam's razor would say it is more likely the entire thing is a myth. You know, the whole idea of not multiplying entities unnecessarily.

Nothing stretches credulity even a little bit to postulate tha there should once have lived malcontended little fries in Roman Palastine, some without a strong inclination to earn a living the honest way but imagining themselves destined by magic for greater unworldly things, and whose personality disorder and social maladjustment dovetailed fatally with the incendiary atmosphere then present amongst a people with a hallowed tradition of indulging in fantasies of unique divine favor as escape from worldly evidence of severe secular inadaquacy.

There also seem to be little that requires leaps of imagination in the scenario that some such persons would be of such little note that he would be crucified by Romans as a matter of course without so much as a scratch in any official record just as a buzzing fly might be swatted en passant without mention in the dairies.

The fact that one such person might enetually through happenstance become focus for a religion neither adds to nor such tracts from the plausibility. It would be odd if no new religion grew out of the atmosphere then existent in Roman Empire. Like all religions, it has to focus on some bullshit, and malcontented carpenter with a big ego and a bigger lie happen to be it. That this one person happened to have been name Jesus is also neither here nor there.