From Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ:
"What qualifies as good evidence?
In order of quality good evidence is:
1) Contemporary evidence: Evidence that dates to the time the person or event actually happened.
2) Derivative evidence: Evidence that is known to use contemporary record-evidence that has since been lost.
3) Comparative evidence: Evidence that gives details that can be checked against known factors of the time.
A good rule of thumb here is that history records the unusual, the special, and the important; and the amount history records is generally directly proportional to when these factors achieve a critical mass. If a person is said to be important and popular during their lifetime then it is reasonable to expect contemporary evidence, or at the least derivative evidence, documenting this."
Take a good look at the Jesus story:
NO Contemporary evidence, NO Derivative evidence, and what little Comparative evidence there is does a major fail (a slaughter no one else records, an anachronistic and logicality insane census, illogical trials that no one even remarks about)
More over there is NO reference to any Gospel (not so much as a quote) until the 130s. Supposedly Mark was written c70 CE and yet NO one even mentions it or any other Gospel until c130?How does that work? How do you not mention an account of the man whose words are the key to the salvation of your immortal soul for nearly 70 years?!
Finally, why was the first attempt as making a Christian Bible (Marcion c140 CE ) so anti Jewish but not contain John (which can be reasonably argued is so anti Jewish as to be practically antisemitic)?
If Marcion was holding that the god of the Jews (and of this world) was an evil incompetent demiurge (see 2 Corinthians 4:4 for just what this really means) then an altered version of John where Jesus' enemies are "the Jews" would have seemingly fit the bill...but he doesn't use it. Why?
As far as “good evidence” is concerned, the biblical writing is vastly worse than merely failing the tests you describe above.
The gospel writing for example is not only inadmissible on account of being entirely hearsay from writers who did not themselves know any such details. But it is also from anonymous writers describing stories from yet more anonymous people of the past. And never once naming a single traceable person who ever gave the author any credible story/details at all.
As I pointed out to the HJ crowd here many pages back - that sort of gospel testimony would be immediately ruled out as credible evidence in any democratic legal case, on the basis that neither the writer nor his unnamed and unknown sources could be produced to confirm first-hand a single thing that the writer said. That is most definitely NOT credible evidence of what the anonymous authors say about their earlier anonymous sources in a chain of even more anonymous witnesses; - none of whom can be traced or verified in any way at all.
The letters of Paul are barely in a better position, if at all.
In none of his letters does Paul ever claim to have met any living human called Jesus. On the contrary, Paul constantly stresses that his knowledge of Jesus is as a spirit form, about whom Paul has all his “knowledge”, ie in fact his religious beliefs, as he repeatedly tells us, through “scripture”, what he says “is written”, and by what he calls “revelation”.
That is again only a form of hearsay, where in Paul’s case he does not even try to say that anonymous sources had told him details of the life of Jesus. On the contrary, Paul’s source of his hearsay beliefs, ie his religious beliefs, is the OT scripture where he repeatedly stresses he obtains his beliefs according to what “was written”, according to “scripture”, and according to “revelation”.
And that’s apart from the fact that about half the letters bearing Paul’s name are now thought to be fakes, and apart from the fact that we have nothing ever written by “Paul” anyway, and instead (as with all the gospels), what we actually have are copies apparently only written by the Christian faithful themselves centuries later. So even the anonymous hearsay writing of the bible, is only known from yet more anonymous copying made several centuries after any such original writing.
So for reasons such as the above, and numerous other reasons, none of that biblical writing could ever be called genuine or credible “evidence” for anything it says about anyone called “Jesus”. The whole lot is multiply inadmissible on every count imaginable.
