Blather. Anyone who has ever studied the subject knows full well that the scholarly, academic consensus has been that Jesus was a real man. Would take anyone about 30 seconds to confirm this.
Keep in mind we are talking about scholars of history, professionals who devote their lives to answering such questions. You and your friends on reddit might have some arguing you're still interested in doing, that's not part of the claim being made.
Hitchens simply makes the argument really well about how the story seems put together to fit a real person, not invented whole cloth, if you had an ounce of intellectual honesty you wouldn't be babbling about how I'm using Hitchens as a scholarly, historical source.
It's quite obvious to me that many people simply emotionally want the entire thing to be made up so they can justify their full-blown dismay and outrage at the fraud, it's all made up! When really, history didn't happen for you to have something to be outraged and skeptical about.
Any person with any skepticism would realize that this
rationalized meaningless nothing of a nobody called Jesus is an empty pointless affair and is nothing but the last throes of trying to alleviate a most acute mass chronic cognitive dissonance?
Most of these biblical "scholars" (not historians) you like to appeal to, as well as some atheists even, have a deep rooted problem...
they have a vested interest.
Although they are not convinced that all the magic and fairy tales surrounding Jesus were really historic events they nevertheless are unable psychologically and mentally to finally consign the Buybull to the
same genre as all the other fairy tales from other cultures and religions that they DO fully believe are false without having ever giving it a second thought.
What most of these biblical "scholars" are doing is nothing but
special pleading and wishful thinking among numerous other illogical fallacies on top of vitriolic invectives attempting to somehow still maintain some
face saving from having to finally admit that their entire culture and society and history has and still is being duped en mass by a
fairy tale fabricated by huckstering poltroons and enforced by the swords of pillaging brigands upon their defeated conquered and vanquished ancestors long ago replacing their traditional cultural and ancestral myths and fables. Nothing but an ancient
Pyramid Scheme or Multi-Level Marketing Scam.
So they rationalize that ok, we can throw away the fairy tale aspect, but then there is still REAL stuff left in there and we have not been UTTERLY AND TOTALLY DUPED for all those centuries by a MYTHICAL FABLE.
They are desperate to prove that it is not all a big hoax like all the other woo they are increasingly beginning to realize is claptrap.
Much like children who are driven to tears and dismay after discovering the level of adult complicity of their society and parents in deceiving them for so long and in so many ways with the Santa fable.
So they carry on ferociously debating against the fictiveness of the Jesus fables postulating tenuous modicums of possible likelihood of perhaps maybe something approaching a near similarity to some kind of similitude of a real person or an amalgam persona who they begrudgingly and with extreme consternation concede might maybe possibly not have had anything magical about him, but could have been a xenophobic zealously benighted fanatically religious Rabbi or terrorist or freedom fighter or old-new-age hippie or cult leader according to one's own wishful thinking for what one needs this Jesus to be.
Consider this situation
Someone is trying to sell you something say like a plot of land... don't you consider the fact that this salesman only has what looks like a badly made copy of a title deed to the land is significant?
Now you get additional information that the salesman above — who only has what looks like a badly made copy of a title deed to the land he is trying to sell you — has been suspected on numerous occasions of being a fraudulent huckster.
Do you wait for him to actually get convicted for the above suspicions of fraud before you are convinced he is a fraud?
Do you also tell yourself the fact that he only has a badly made copy of a title deed could be because he lost the original?
Do you then go ahead and still buy the land from him anyway and accept the badly made copy of a title deed?
Any skeptic is able to reason that anyone who still goes ahead and buys the above land is a simpleton.
Yet many are unaware or simply choose to ignore that the mountebanks who fabricated the Christian fraudulent fairy tales were never any different from the list of the heinous flimflammers below.
Imagine if anyone of the con artists in the list below
had managed to get enough IMPERIAL might and power behind him and armies so as to wipe out any opposition or critique or analysis of his fakery?
Now imagine being able to
wipe out all literature and history proving his fakery.
Now imagine being able to
fabricate literature and forge history saying his fakery is truths.
Now imagine doing all the above
for centuries upon centuries with total impunity and with any raised objections burnt right out of existence.
What would be the state of those places and regions
under the influence of such long established fakery being thought to be God sent truths? Can you imagine such places or cultures? Can you?
It is an old and long cherished Christian Tradition to lie for Jesus' sake
Paul dissimulated and huckstered for Jesus's sake
- 1 Corinthians 9:20-23 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings."
Eusebius, Emperor Constantine's bishop, legalized deception for Jesus' sake
- How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived.
And Martin Luther the founder of Protestantism sanctified lying for Jesus' sake
- What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.
- Muhammad
- Joseph Smith
- Brigham Young
- Charles Taze Russell
- Harold Camping
- Margaret Rowen
- L. Ron Hubbard
- Bahá'u'lláh
- Baba Buta Singh
- Swami Vivekananda
- David Koresh
- Joseph Hibbert
- Jim Jones
- Charles Manson
- Sathya Sai Baba
- Gerald Gardner
- Claude Vorilhon
- Pat Robertson
- Kenneth Copeland
- Joel Osteen
- Paula White
- Robert Tilton
- Benny Hinn
- William M. Branham
- Louis Farrakhan
- David Berg
- Chen Tao
- Jerry Falwell
- David Horowitz
- etc.
- etc.
- etc.
Too bad no one cites the overwhelming evidence.