What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Bad vibe]

I don't know how valid this idea is but I've read several references to it, that the early churches gained a deal of prestige and legitimacy by trying to prove which had the earliest tradition leading to claims that Paul's letters are a fabrication to facilitate this for the church concerned. Think Marcion was mentioned? Herman Detering seems to be one source. Not read his book yet though.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually, no.

Even for other real humans, documents which are THAT loaded with several miracles per page are generally not considered very good sources.

Also generally the fact that those people are taken for real, isn't just because one highly-biased cult document says so. Unless there is corroborating evidence, and/or historical necessity, etc, people from ancient texts are routinely taken as fictive. E.g., I already mentioned Timaeus.

And generally the weaker the evidence, the less certitude is postulated. We can be pretty sure Caesar existed, because we can show a ton of evidence, but if you want to have doubts about, say, Sakir-Har... you'd find that not only there is no inviolable consensus that you must adhere to, but arguing about exactly how he fits into history is what historians do.

 

[Piggy]

Can you give a link to the relevant post in that other thread where you cite the papers/books/whatever that show Paul believed Jesus was a real human in the same sense that we mean today (ie not just Paul "Euhemerising" his visualised figure of Jesus)?

I don't actually know what Paul really said about a real human Jesus, and strictly speaking none of us can know, because we don't have anything ever actually written by Paul. However, whilst I'm quite prepared to believe that the Pauline Letters do say that Jesus was a real person, as you may know, Alvar Ellegard's book (Jesus 100 years before Christ) also says that Paul's descriptions of Jesus are in fact always descriptions of a visionary nature and not ever descriptions of what can be clearly determined as a real living figure in the sense that we'd use that concept today.

You need to bear in mind here what Carrier explained in that YouTube clip about so-called "Euhemerisation", and what has since been discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls about proto-Christian groups in that region circa.200BC through to 70AD, being in the common practice of interpreting their religious dreams, visions, and dream-like imaginings, as identical with real events. To them, their dreams and visions of gods/angels/messiah's/etc were more real than reality itself ... more real, because the dreams were thought to be direct communications from God, and therefore more certain that any earthly reality.

First off, let's be clear, Carrier's a crank who expounds clearly debunked notions, so no, I don't need to pay any attention to him.

But yeah, let's look at what Paul says about Jesus.

How about we start with Galatians 4:4: "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law".

This means, unambiguously, that Jesus was a Jew, a human being, because only human beings are born of woman and born under the Law, which is a covenant between God and a group of humans.

That by itself should be sufficient to clarify how we interpret any ambiguous passages.

But there's also Romans 1:3-4: "the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead".

That's also utterly unambiguous.

Jesus was a man born of the line of David, who died, and was adopted by God as his Son by means of resurrection. (Not all early Christians agree with that timeline, btw, but that's irrelevant here.)

By now, I hope you're seeing that anybody who tries to tell you that Paul never said Jesus was human simply doesn't know the material they claim to be such an expert on, and should not be trusted to draw accurate conclusions.

In 1 Corinthians 9:5, he mentions that Jesus's brothers are married. At 15:3-8, he states that Jesus "died" (at 1:23 he specifies crucifixion) and "was buried" and "was raised" and later appeared to various people.

If you have brothers who are human beings with wives, and you died by crucifixion, then you were a human being. Again, there's nothing ambiguous here.

Paul CLEARLY AND UNAMBIGUOUSLY states that Jesus was a human being, a Jew, born of woman, descended from David, under the Law, who had brothers, who ate and drank, and who died by crucifixion.

Anybody who trots out that tired old lie that Paul didn't think Jesus was human, just doesn't know what they're talking about.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Do you go around talking about the moon landing which may or may not have happened?

Perhaps facing the issue of evidence would help you be less dismissive.
I do go about denying that the fact that people went to the moon is "proof" of the "will" of any 'god'...that evidence thing again.

Anybody can sit there and say that any historical event may not have occurred or any source may not be accurate. Can do it all day.

I am sorry for you that you are so confused that you are willing to imply that is what I am doing, in your opinion.
Sorry, but it's that evidence thing again.

Of course, that has already been done by scholars in many fields for well over a century now, and conclusions have been reached.

Scholars do not doubt that Paul lived, that the churches he mentions were real, that the people he refers to were real, and that the original letters date to the mid 1st century.

You can't just say "Nuh-uh!" and expect me to care.

You equivocate.
There is a difference between making the claim that there was a man named Saul Tarsi who wrote letters under the name Paul, on the one hand, and makiing the claim that the letters attributed to Paul prove that Jesus was 'god' and appeared to that Paul in a vision.

The fact that you have missed a half-century or more of critical scholarship does not mean that your pretended unaniimity among scholars actually exists.

You make continued unsupported assertions, and are scornful of any disagreement--which only exposes the pervasiveness of your equivocation.

No matter how much you pretend that it is not you with your fingers in your ears and blinders on your eyes...

 

[tsig]

Do you go around talking about the moon landing which may or may not have happened?

Anybody can sit there and say that any historical event may not have occurred or any source may not be accurate. Can do it all day.

Of course, that has already been done by scholars in many fields for well over a century now, and conclusions have been reached.

Scholars do not doubt that Paul lived, that the churches he mentions were real, that the people he refers to were real, and that the original letters date to the mid 1st century.

You can't just say "Nuh-uh!" and expect me to care.

So far anyone who disagrees with you is uneducated, ignorant and now a Holocaust denier.

Argument by insult isn't a pretty sight.

 

[tsig]

First off, let's be clear, Carrier's a crank who expounds clearly debunked notions, so no, I don't need to pay any attention to him.
But yeah, let's look at what Paul says about Jesus.

How about we start with Galatians 4:4: "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law".

This means, unambiguously, that Jesus was a Jew, a human being, because only human beings are born of woman and born under the Law, which is a covenant between God and a group of humans.

That by itself should be sufficient to clarify how we interpret any ambiguous passages.

But there's also Romans 1:3-4: "the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead".

That's also utterly unambiguous.

Jesus was a man born of the line of David, who died, and was adopted by God as his Son by means of resurrection. (Not all early Christians agree with that timeline, btw, but that's irrelevant here.)

By now, I hope you're seeing that anybody who tries to tell you that Paul never said Jesus was human simply doesn't know the material they claim to be such an expert on, and should not be trusted to draw accurate conclusions.

In 1 Corinthians 9:5, he mentions that Jesus's brothers are married. At 15:3-8, he states that Jesus "died" (at 1:23 he specifies crucifixion) and "was buried" and "was raised" and later appeared to various people.

If you have brothers who are human beings with wives, and you died by crucifixion, then you were a human being. Again, there's nothing ambiguous here.

Paul CLEARLY AND UNAMBIGUOUSLY states that Jesus was a human being, a Jew, born of woman, descended from David, under the Law, who had brothers, who ate and drank, and who died by crucifixion.

Anybody who trots out that tired old lie that Paul didn't think Jesus was human, just doesn't know what they're talking about.

The hilited sums up your entire argument.

Cranks, fools, ignorant, uneducated, holocaust denialists, moon hoax believers are all names you have called your opponents. Sad.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I know why it's a fallacy.

I taught the subject for years.

Now you need to figure out why the consensus of legitimate scholars, based on decades of research, cannot be avoided merely by crying that citations of scholarship are an argument from authority.

If you "know" why appealing to authority is a fallacious argument, why do you, personally, keep doing it?

You pretend to a "consensus" that does not exists. You support your pretense with another fallacy. You seem to be taking the position that someone who agrees with your opinion is a "scholar", while someone who does not is a "crank"--which is a lot easier than actually reading and understanding the multiple positions held by scholars.

You cannot even admit that descriptions of an actual human being are unlikely to include post-death interactions, post-death commissions, and salvific cannibalisim...

But it is fun to watch you flounder.

 

[Belz...]

Sorry, but if you don't understand the field, and can't bring yourself to admit that, then we're going nowhere.

Piggy, seriously, answering with "I know what I'm talking about, you do not" is not very useful for lurkers or other readers of this thread.

The reason we can't talk to each other is simple: Hans is a true believer in crank ideas.

And he accuses you of exactly the same thing. Speaking of true believers, this is like watching a muslim and a christians argue exactly how more divinely-inspired their respective books are. You're not convincing anyone by taking that approach, which hurts your case.

The breaking point for me was when he kept saying that Paul never says Jesus was human, and I showed him the actual citations (this was on another thread) and he simply ignored the unequivocal evidence that yes Paul says unambiguously that Jesus was human, and went on with his crank claim.

Then try me, then. Could you link to the citations again ?

The problem is, Hans reads all this crank stuff and gets their wrong ideas stuck in his head

Ok, but can you understand that for people like me, determining what's crank and what's not in this field isn't easy, and your say-so doesn't really help ?

How do you determine that a Truther video is crank without watching it?

How do you determine that a Holocaust denier video is crank without watching it?

How do you determine that a video about ancient astronauts is crank without watching it?

How do you determine that a documentary about bigfoot is crank without watching it?

Indeed, how ?

 

[Slowvehicle]

<snip>

But there's also Romans 1:3-4: "the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead"
That's also utterly unambiguous.{/quote]

Anybody who trots out that tired old lie that Paul didn't think Jesus was human, just doesn't know what they're talking about.

...because, of course, clearly and unambiguously human persons have power from 'god' as attested to by being "resurrected" from the dead...

ETA:

(Not all early Christians agree with that timeline, btw, but that's irrelevant here.)

So much for that unanimous concord, eh?

 

[Belz...]

Do you have any idea how much work it takes to analyze the meaning of even a single passage of ancient text?

No, I don't, actually. But I figure, like explaining quantum mechanics to laypeople, it can be done. We don't accept QM because the experts say so, but because we can see that it works even if we don't understand the whole maths.

Within that world, the extremely high probability of the existence of a historical Jesus is well established.

I know. I just don't know why. Last time we had this conversation you told me that it was simply more likely that a historical Jesus existed because (I'm paraphrasing, of course. Forgive me if I'm misrepresenting) why would they write that if it weren't true ? Well, it's a bit of an argument from incredulity, but what I didn't catch back then is that there actually is an answer to that question. Please note that I still haven't made up my mind about this; I find it fascinating, that's all.

The Jesus Myth stuff never held together. It was never a serious theory, or even hypothesis. It's riddled with errors, most of them painfully obvious.

This is a marvelous opportunity to point them out, then, no ? Not for Hans' benefit, but for everyone else's.

Within scholarship of the Ancient Near East, nobody bothers with Jesus Myth stuff. No academics read Bart Ehrman's books on the subject, for example, for the same reason physicists don't read debunkings of crank physics.

And that's a very interesting fact, too.

That's how I know that any Jesus Myth video is crank.

Unless there's something in it you haven't heard before (speculating here, of course.)

 

[Belz...]

For historical purposes, his letters are amazingly close to the source.

I still see several possibilities:

1) Paul met with real disciples of Jesus.
2) Paul made up Jesus and his disciples.
3) Paul had an idea about a saviour, met the disciples of another and mashed them up into one.

And why did Paul meet with disciples at all ? I mean, we know he didn't have a real vision, so why seek out Jesus' disciples in the first place ? Did he hear about the Jesus cult and went to meet them and then made up the vision thing ? Or did he make up the whole thing ? That's the problem I have with this issue.

 

[Belz...]

No, people do not do this all the time.

I said people lie all the time.

People do not "all the time" believe that someone who never existed was their brother or teacher.

That's not what I meant. We have ZERO first-hand accounts of anybody who knew Jesus. All we have is gospels written decades after the fact by unknown people, and a few letters by Paul who claims to have met people who saw the risen Messiah. I don't think we can conclude from Paul's writings that he actually met these people any more than we can conclude from the gospels that Zombies rose from the grave or that the Earth was covered in darkness. Granted, these events are obviously false, but then we can't conclude that Jesus walked on water either.

What myths?

What do you mean, what myths ? Whatever was extant at the time for Paul to draw upon. You want a specific one ? I don't have it because I'm not a scholar of that period of that field. I'm a computer programmer trying to make sense of all this. Just humour me. You think it's impossible ?

Why do we find no trace of any such myths in any Jewish literature from any time?

Who says it was Jewish ? Maybe Paul picked it up in a random village along the way from oral traditions.

No, maybe you should read Paul's letters so that you understand what he actually did say, which is that Jesus was a Jew born of woman under the Law who ate and drank and died.

That's a human being.

Greek and Norse gods were born, ate and drank and died.

Hercules was supposed to be someone who lived in the mythic past.

So it's comparing apples and bicycles.

You're giving Paul way too much credibility, here. He's the only one to ever claim to have met, obliquely, these disciples.

It makes no damn sense.

Piggy, of course it does. You think it adds an unnecessary layer to the narrative; Hans think Jesus is the unnecessary layer. But both scenarios are plausible, from my view.

 

[HansMustermann]

And more to the point, how in the world did it come to pass that people came to think that a mythic figure was real, not in the ancient past, but in their time, to the point that Paul is writing about people in Jerusalem who say they knew the man personally. How COULD that happen? Has it ever happened? I don't think so.

It makes no sense.

Yeah, it makes no sense because you just made half of that up, in a way that doesn't match. Paul doesn't say that.

Paul says that the risen Jesus had shown himself to James and Peter and 500+ other people, but he doesn't actually say anywhere that they knew him before. He also doesn't say that any of them say they met him personally.

In fact, Paul doesn't even write much about any of those guys, nor exactly what their claims or opinions on such matters were. In fact, even when Paul does have a conflict with Peter, he only says what he told Peter, not what Peter answered or how that related to Peter's idea of Jesus.

We can sorta infer from Galatians and 1 Corinthians that Peter and possibly James stuck to Jewish rules. We can also infer that Peter did see Jesus's death as having something to do with his salvation. ("if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" says Paul to Peter in Galatians 2:21, which indicates that at least Paul would believe that that's important for Peter.) Stuff like that, but again, not too much.

And that is IF Paul didn't make that up, or hallucinate it, or find it as some hidden message in something completely unrelated, etc. But even if he didn't, that's a far cry from the stuff you keep pulling right out of the butt about what Peter and James said or believed about Jesus.

Paul just doesn't have Peter say, "oh yeah, I knew him before they nailed him", nor does he do that for James.

So you can't just pull an argument based on what Peter or James have said, when actually Paul doesn't say what they said on the topic.

 

[Belz...]

I suspect, although this is pure speculation, that he was converted in the way he went on to convert others, by a charismatic baptism experience.

He takes great pains to insist that he didn't learn about Jesus from James or the Twelve, because if he had then he would be subordinate to them, and if there's one thing Paul wants you to know, it's that he's not subordinate to anyone else in the Jesus movement.

If he were converted by the method he used for conversions (which makes the most sense) then it also makes sense that he would choose not to explain the details of that event beyond his vision, because according to him it was Jesus who recruited him… if that happened during a baptism, well, it wasn't because of the power of the baptizer, but because Jesus chose him.

Well at least that answers that question. Thanks.

How about we start with Galatians 4:4: "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law".

This means, unambiguously, that Jesus was a Jew, a human being, because only human beings are born of woman and born under the Law, which is a covenant between God and a group of humans.

And that answers the other one. Thanks again.

Hans: How about that as a citation that Jesus was a man ?

 

[IanS]

Paul never claimed that. The author of Luke/Acts writes two fictional versions of Paul's conversion, which are contradictory.

Paul just says he saw a vision -- which may well be true -- but is shy about the details..

But Jesus was supposed to be dead by the time of Paul's vision. So that is a fictional experience of Jesus. On top of that, in Corinthians Paul tells us more of that vision, saying the risen Jesus was seen first by Cephas, then by "the twelve", then by more than 500 other people at once, and then seen by James and all the apostles, and then seen also by himself.

That is fictional belief, isn't it. That cannot be reliable historical fact (though no doubt, people believed it was in the 1st century AD).

First off, let's be clear, Carrier's a crank who expounds clearly debunked notions, so no, I don't need to pay any attention to him.

Carrier might be a "crank", or at any rate spotting a money making opportunity. I don't know if he is or not. But I'll see what I think of his forthcoming book. However, Ellegard certainly does not appear to be a crank. And nor was G.A. Wells. They, like quite a few other academics who have looked at the claimed history of Jesus, have come to the view that the traditional religiously based scholarship on this subject has far too easily been convinced by taking as fact what was written in extant copies of a selected cannon of gospels.

Paul CLEARLY AND UNAMBIGUOUSLY states that Jesus was a human being, a Jew, born of woman, descended from David, under the Law, who had brothers, who ate and drank, and who died by crucifixion.

Anybody who trots out that tired old lie that Paul didn't think Jesus was human, just doesn't know what they're talking about.

According to Ellegard (p15, see earlier ref), there are really only two places in Paul’s letters where Paul goes into any detail about what happened to Jesus while he was living on the Earth.

The first is in Corinthians and is the account of the last supper. And the second (also from Corinthians) is the account of all the witnesses to Jesus rising from the dead in front of 500 people etc. However, for both those descriptions Paul also says that he had that information, not from his own earthily experience, nor from any first hand account from any eye-witness, but as always in Paul’s accounts, as some form of received understanding from "scripture" and/or as revealed to him by God.

 

[HansMustermann]

We've been through that before, but ok, let's have at it again.

Before I start though, I must add as a disclaimer that I personally am inclined to believe that Paul indeed thought of Jesus as a man. I don't think Paul is a reliable source of that man's existence, since, you know, he's proud of only relating the stuff he's hallucinated about that man. But he may well have thought that his hallucination was about a real man.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

The problem with Paul is also that he's using highly metaphoric language all over the place. Or at least it's generally taken as metaphoric, because the alternative is crazy. E.g., since we're talking Galatians, in the same epistle to the Galatians he actually says that he, Paul, had been crucified, and is dead, and pretty much is now just animated by the spirit of Jesus. Needless to say, almost nobody insists that that one must be _literally_ what Paul believed, like they do for Gal 4:4.

So from the start I'm unconvinced by an argument boiling down to just stating certainty that exactly this is not a metaphor.

Furthermore the words he uses in places are actually more usually used in figurative senses when you look at the Greek usage instead of the English translation.

And in other cases, like Gal 4:4, it's more like a linguistic WTH. (If you're bored enough, you can check the original and word references here: http://biblehub.com/text/galatians/4-4.htm )

The word Paul uses is "γενόμενον" (genomenon), a form of "ginomai", which isn't a straight up "born", but more accurately "happened" or "took place" or "appeared". It's a word for a state transition, rather than the usual word for birth, which was "gennaō" even for Paul in other places.

And it's interesting because Paul himself always uses "ginomai" in such senses everywhere else, but never for birth.

It's also used as meaning "to appear", e.g., a public appearance of someone. E.g., in Mark 1:4 or John 1:6.

Etc.

So the "under the law" part, we can pretty much ignore here, since Jesus appearing or revealing himself under the law makes just as much sense.

Which leaves us with the woman, and worse yet with an "ek" preposition, which pretty much means "out of". (Though this one too can be used in other ways and meanings than strictly "out of".) But still the slightly wrong verb. Curious.

The most usual argument against that one is basically that it may be an interpolation. Or at least that seems to be Doherty's favourite explanation.

Basically according even to Ehrman, that paragraph was a favourite place to interpolate a little more in various copies. The early Christians that favoured what would later become Catholicism had a problem with the Gnostics, who often made Jesus fully divine. Adding just a little more to make him more like the human Jesus they favoured, was apparently rather common practice.

And again, there is the issue that Paul never uses that verb for birth anywhere else. Paul has a rather consistent use of the two verbs, except in Gal 4:4 which stands out like a sore thumb. (And this is actually a very used criterion for spotting interpolations. E.g., it's the same reason we can be sure that the "doer" in the Testimonium Flavianum is bogus, because Josephus never uses that particular word to mean "doer". For Josephus it always means "poet", which would screw up the meaning.)

So it's possible that the "born of a woman" part was just interpolated in the first place, and the original only said that he appeared under the law.

 

[Craig B]

... You do know, don't you, that miracle stories were told about all sorts of historical figures whom no one doubts were real flesh and blood humans?

The fact that Jesus's followers told miracle stories about him IN NO WAY indicates that he wasn't a real person.

All kinds of false stories circulate about everyone from Thomas Jefferson to George Carlin. So you think those folks weren't real?

I agree with you entirely. The question is whether Paul thought Jesus had been a man living recently on earth, and it is evident that he did. Romans 1

3 ... his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

A recent person? Yes that too, because he lists as witnesses to the risen Lord, people who were his contemporaries. 1 Corr 15.

4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Here the appearances have obviously occurred recently - "most of whom are still living" - and are associated with the burial and raising. The words naturally mean that there was a real person who died recently and to whom these events occurred. Any other interpretation strains to breaking point the expressions used by Paul, and seems quite untenable. Of course the belief that a real Jesus appeared in this way is false, and thus "fictional", but the physical human being existing recently prior to the appearances may well be real. We know that many (at least) of the stories told about Arthur are false, and that he was therefore a "fictional" character. But was there really such a warrior resisting the Saxons in the sixth century? The false stories do not exclude that as a real possibility. One can be fictional and real at the same time, as was Alexander the Great, and other semi-mythical heroes.

... There is a difference between making the claim that there was a man named Saul Tarsi who wrote letters under the name Paul, on the one hand, and makiing the claim that the letters attributed to Paul prove that Jesus was 'god' and appeared to that Paul in a vision ...

But who is making that assertion? It is only being stated that Paul believed Jesus to have been a recently living physical person. That does not prove that Paul's belief in Jesus' postmortem perambulations is true! Who is saying that it does? All that is being said is that the falsity of these beliefs doesn't disprove that the person holding them also believed in the prior existence of a man, or that such a man may indeed have existed.

... You cannot even admit that descriptions of an actual human being are unlikely to include post-death interactions, post-death commissions, and salvific cannibalisim...

Speaking for myself, I don't admit it. There is a separation between alleged post-death activities and prior physical existence. If I hear that in a certain castle the ghost of the deceased Mary, Queen of Scots, appears from time to time with her head tucked under her arm, that doesn't disprove that she physically existed as a living person prior to the removal of that head. And, contrariwise, belief in that physical Mary doesn't require me to give credence to ghost stories about her.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually, Romans 1:3 is another thing where it's more complicated than reading whichever English translation you wish. Piggy was right about one thing: this is hard stuff

The word for word translation including links to the Greek words you can find for example here: http://interlinearbible.org/romans/1-3.htm

The Greek text doesn't say that Jesus was an earthly descendant of David, or not literally. What it literally says is that Jesus was made or come to be (there's that "ginomai" again) out of the seed of David.

And then comes the issue of "kata sarka", which itself isn't all that clear. "Kata" primarily means a downwards motion, but can also mean "against", or "like" (as in comparison) or a few other things. So it can just as well mean for example that Jesus was made "like flesh" or "in the appearance of flesh".

So while the English translations aren't wrong per se -- after all, you have to make things sound right in the destination language, and you can't possibly capture all the alternative meanings -- they may somewhat mislead when discussing what Paul wrote in Greek. What seems like a slam dunk affirmation of X in the translation, just because the phrasing was chosen as to make X clear, often you may find that in the original it can also mean Y or Z.

In this case it can literally mean that God somehow took David's sperm and made a flesh-looking guy out of it. Of course, it sounds rather weird, but then we're talking about religion, and weird was hardly a problem in most of them

 

[IanS]

How do you determine that a Truther video is crank without watching it?

How do you determine that a Holocaust denier video is crank without watching it?

How do you determine that a video about ancient astronauts is crank without watching it?

How do you determine that a documentary about bigfoot is crank without watching it?

This stuff has been studied for well over a century now.

I’m surprised you would post those sort of comparisons. They are clearly not remotely similar.

The WW2 Holocaust, the moon landings (or whatever similar thing you are referring to there), and claimed sightings of things like the Loch Ness Monster (I know nothing about US versions such as Bigfoot), are all things where the claimed evidence, whether written or filmed or physical objects etc (Roswell alien autopsy, anyone ), and where the claimed evidence has been debunked by objective scientific evidence and scientific investigation, many times.

The religious claims of scientifically ignorant people living 2000 years ago in the middle east, about belief in a supernatural god who visits earth as Jesus and who performs constant miracles as the basis of all those accounts, is not remotely in the same category as your examples of the holocaust etc.

Although for most of the past 2000 years the Christian church has presented the life of Jesus as a matter of undisputed fact which nobody need ever question, and although even today most people who do not read forums like this or read books such as those of Wells, Ellegard, Doherty, Price, Carrier, or even Bart Ehrman, usually are still completely unaware that there is any doubt about the existence of Jesus, the fact is that no matter how much you want to deny it, there is now very considerable doubt about the existence of Jesus.

That much is obvious and it seems to me a matter of indisputable fact. Because what has been shown, increasingly in recent years, is that at the very least, the gospels, which have historically been presented as firm evidence for the life of Jesus, are quite clearly not reliable or verifiable first hand accounts. On the contrary, they are completely unreliable anonymously written copies made by Christian writers themselves long after Jesus was thought to have died.

Paul’s Letters are little better in that respect. Ie, they are again only known to us as anonymously written copies made by Christian believers themselves at least 150-200 years or more after Paul, Jesus and any other eye-witnesses were thought to have lived and died.

 

[Belz...]

So from the start I'm unconvinced by an argument boiling down to just stating certainty that exactly this is not a metaphor.

Well it's the story of bible scholarship, really: everyone has their own idea of what's literal and what's not.

Basically according even to Ehrman, that paragraph was a favourite place to interpolate a little more in various copies. The early Christians that favoured what would later become Catholicism had a problem with the Gnostics, who often made Jesus fully divine.

And now that you mention it, that also fits with a fully-divine origin. It's odd, however, that John almost puts him right back into the divine category.