I think I know what bothers me about this. The case against the existence of a guy name Jesus that is the basis of the mythical Jesus is essentially attempting to prove a negative. Anything beyond, "probably" is just not a reasonable claim. There is quite literally no evidence that he did not exist, no such evidence can really exist(aside from a an actual confession from the creator of the stories.) Those that claim that the explanation that best fits the evidence is that no Jesus existed, should explain why those that study the history and region almost all agree, Jesus probably was a real person. Not just christian and muslims, atheists do to. Its not dissimilar from denying AGW. The vast majority of relevant experts agree, but it snowed last month so I don't believe them.
Those that insist the burden of proof is on those that think he existed, ok, I guess but the burden isn't that high if the claim is just, "there was probably a wandering preacher named Jesus around 2000 years ago." There clearly were guys named Jesus, there were clearly a number of similar preachers, so what's so hard to believe that there was a wandering preacher named Jesus who said stuff similar to what Jesus is alleged to have said? The Jefferson Bible was a thing. Basically the Gospels stripped of the supper natural and most everything but the things Jesus supposedly said.
The basic narrative just isn't that extraordinary. A guy started preaching a message that pissed of the powers that be and they had him killed. His followers were all a bit surprised that it all ended so ignominiously and made up a very convoluted story to justify their continued belief. It was a time when real mortal people were occasionally deified, so that's not all that out of the ordinary. It was a time when almost nobody could read and write, lack of records isn't all that out of the ordinary. Its not all that different from the 7 day adventists. Its a church that remains after a preacher's end time prediction failed.
This version isn't pulled out of nowhere, its the version that exists in the Gospels once the supernatural is removed.
Meh. If I say I was mugged 10 years ago, that's not so hard to believe. I f I say I was mugged 10 years ago by that guy over there. Well, nobody would convict that guy over there, but not many folks would say that was evidence that I was never mugged, even if I said that guy was a wizard who mugged me using magic, especially if I live in a culture where lots of folks believe in wizards.
All of the points that you raise have already been addressed here on just the last few pages alone. If you look at my last 4 or 5 posts then you will see it responds in detail to all that you said above.
One of the points you make above (it's been made literally 1000 times before in threads here) is that it would not be extraordinary for a non-miraculous preacher named Jesus to be executed by the local rulers. And perhaps it would not be extraordinary for people to have later written fictional stories about him.
Yep, that would not be extraordinary at all. It's entirely possible. But the big problem is that there is no evidence to support that. The evidence that you actually have from the biblical writers says the complete opposite of that scenario. And it's those biblical accounts that are the entire and total reason for anyone ever hearing any mention of Jesus in the first place.
What you are talking about doing, is simply crossing out all of the things there were actually originally claimed as the description of Jesus. And doing that (crossing it all out) purely and entirely on the basis than unless you do cross it all out, then it becomes inescapably obvious that the biblical writers were creating mythical accounts of an unknown messiah who had been promised and believed from many centuries before in the OT ... so what is the justification for completely changing the story told by those who were said to be there at the time?
As I said before, if you cross out enough bits about superman or winne-the-pooh, then its' easy to claim that it would also leave a figure that was in no way extraordinary.
As for believing biblical scholars, we could cut to the chase and just ask to see what actual evidence they claim to have discovered? And that's also a question that sceptics here have asked well over 1000 times in these threads. And so far the best evidence by far that any of them have offered is that one half-sentence in one of Paul's letters where it said "other apostles saw I none, save James the Lords brother" (that part-sentence was never mentioned again by Paul, or by James, or by anyone else) ... Bart Ehrman claimed in his 2013 book that the sentence was evidence so strong that it proved Jesus to be a certainty ... he told the audience at his book launch "you'd think his own brother would know if Jesus was real !!" ... but as we have discussed in detail here over 1000 times, there are multiple things wrong with assuming that sentence must mean that the person "James" indeed had a blood brother who was actually Jesus.
The bottom line through all of this is - for nearly 2000 years the Church claimed that the evidence for Jesus was overwhelming. Biblical scholars still make that claim today. But the truth is that there is actually no reliable or credible evidence of a real Jesus ever being known to anyone at all. And anyone with any shred of honesty or self-respect will admit that.
We do have a lot of other evidence though. And as explained several times over the last few pages, that evidence all shows far beyond any credible argument, that the biblical writers were inventing mythical stories of a messiah that none of them had ever known (though it was a messiah that they knew a great deal about, because it had been essential prophecy taught in "scripture" from many hundreds of years BC).
If you want to believe Jesus was probably a real person, and to believe that upon zero actual evidence of a known living Jesus, and to believe it against all the unarguable evidence showing that story of Jesus was invented myth, then that's a matter for you to decide.
Personally I take the position that the evidence is so poor, in fact it's really zero, that we should not even try to guess whether it's more likely or less likely that he existed. He might have existed, but there's no real evidence of it. And that's about all we can honestly say about it.
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