None of those listed. See below

They would support a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

A non existence of Jesus would certainly suit your agenda

Although it is generally accepted that it was a time of religious turmoil when there were a lot of Jewish leaders/prophets/messiahs who were seen as a threat to the Roman establishment we have the names of none of them.

So does that mean that none of them existed ~ they were obviously well known enough to have been perceived as a threat to Rome.

It well might but in fact my view is that there probably was such an historical person as Jesus. I try not to allow my 'agenda' as you call it to prejudice my judgement.

Edit I am even a supporter of some of his teachings.

i did not say that.

please read what i actually said again.

but you are assuming that these letters are 100% accurate, that they are totally true. you assume the same of the bible, yet these letters do not physically exist, and theres nothing at all to suggest the bible is an actual accurate historic account, thats 100% accurate.

i dont give a damn about what these nebulous historians think, because i bet they are believers, people dedicated to interpreting and 'proving' the bible is correct.

the point is.... this cannot be done. and IF theres any embellishment at all, or anything thats not 100% true, then that sinks the whole religion. the point being that if it was a construct or corruption of something its based on... then it would self validate wouldnt it!

the 'evidence' i use is found in the silence that screams.

It is interesting that although Judaism does not recognise Jesus as the son of God or as being the one who has been foretold it does acknowledge his existence.

Good grief, the abject ignorance demonstrated in this post is cringworthy.

so you dont actually answer my question. you claim we all worship the same god, but every religion claims to be 'the truth', . if it was all one big happy family as you suggest, then why dont these religions get on? and if jesus came to save us as the messiah and he is the onle and only way back to god as christianity proclaims, how come islam offers another way?

there is some seriously deluded people here.... and i do include atheists, who could be as wrong as anyone with a religious belief.


no he doesnt. prove it.

i have no evidence, but its generally accepted that there was a lot of religious teachers/preachers at the time and the biblical jesus could be a construct of more then one person. note COULD not IS.


you will never get an answer...its just a wishy washy soundbite 'historians' this 'scholars' that, but i suspect these 'experts' believers keep referring to in their nebulous way, are actually believers who have dedicated their lives to trying to explain the huge flaws in the doctrine.

i dont see how any serious historian or scholar could assume jesus existed when theres such a huge lack of evidence, and the large leaps of faith needed to explain this whilst unbiasedly theres no logical, reasonable, explanation to validate his existence.


im a historian.... i study history...

but as ever, which version of jesus?.... many people might well believe that there was a character, but not the miracle working son of god version.

see..... you never answer this.... you keep saying that 'most historians believe there was a jesus' ... but WHICH version is absolutely vital. because only the biblical son of god would validate the religion. if they think he was an embelished character , a ordinary preacher (but not the miracle man) then that is very damaging to your assertion /most historians believe he existed'..


nope.... it means they might not have existed...

ignorance?, to suggest the bible cannot be regarded as the truth? nothing in it can be verified, proven, so cannot be regarded as hard evidence. its all storytelling.

There are truths to be gleaned even from non fiction.

We had no archaeological evidence of the existence of Pilate until 1961. The bible proved his existence so why reject a historical Jesus!

true.... (fiction and pilate)

ive said why theres a possibility that jesus never existed, or that he was an embelished character based on a real person, and why i dont accept the biblical miracle worker.

I'm sure if you're an historian you would recognize that as the minimal accepted view of most historians. Even agnostic ones.

What information do you have that changes the accepted view?

This is not how archaeology works. Archeologists don't excavate a settlement and conclude that because no wooden doors were found none of the buildings had wooden doors, because only half of a shoe was discovered the village had half a shoe that everyone must have passed around and shared or because all the pots are broken the people who lived there must have been very clumsy....they have to take into account that what they discover is incomplete.

Therefore, just because no contemporary accounts of Jesus have been discovered doesn't mean that none were written.


It depends on what you mean by 'prove'. All we can do is look at what people living closer to the events claimed happened and then scrutinise their accounts with a healthy dose of scepticism. That's how history works.


Historians don't just give up at the first hurdle - they have to work with less than ideal evidence most of the time.


Does that matter? If a Muslim wants to argue that Islam was started by a guy named Muhammad somewhere near Mecca then I can't see how that would undermine anything I've said.

Of course, most of Muhammad's miracles are recorded in the Hadith which was written later than the Koran, so even if you did want to move onto miracles I'm not sure there would be as strong comparison as you imagine.


I guess they didn't go onto the Jeremy Kyle show and do a DNA test

Paul refers to the fact James was Jesus' brother in passing, as if his audience already knew this and he was simply clarifying which James he was referring to. Therefore, we have to ask where this tradition came from if Jesus didn't have a brother called James.


What about the evidence I've given you? Something doesn't have to be watertight or conclusive to count as evidence - for example in a court trial all witnesses are heard even if there's a chance some of them might be lying. Therefore, to say that Paul's letters aren't evidence implies that you've spotted something so fundamentally wrong with them that historians shouldn't even be allowed to look at them.


Of course you can! Imagine if archeologists discovered a document that suggested that Christianity was started by somebody else? Or suppose one of Paul's letters denounced those who denied Jesus' existence in the same way he knocks down other teachings he disagrees with? There are lots of things we might expect to see if Jesus didn't exist.


That's a cop-out as you can deny anybody's existence on those grounds. For example, nobody goes around suggesting that Theresa May might not exist because the left-wing version of her is very different to the right-wing one.


That's clearly not true - we know that there were writings that the early church managed to lose (there's strong evidence for Q Source and that Paul would have written more in his life time than the few letters found in the new testament) Therefore they clearly didn't preserve every text.

The early church, prior to Constantine, was very different to the medieval church with it's resources, power to take any document they want and large trade in religious relics. Considering that no other first century group did a better job of collecting and preserving important documents why do you think the first Christians would have been different?


That's irrelevant to the question of his historical existence.

It is also a bad argument against Christianity. Do you really think that if it was announced on the news tomorrow that archeologists had discovered a contemporary written account of the feeding of the five thousand or a letter by some Roman who's granddad claims to have been there, suddenly atheists everywhere would see the light and rush down to their local church?

Not everyone. I can only speak for the 3 main religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

We do "get on" as it were. I'm no theologian so I can't give you a theological view as to why there are so many different world faiths but I can tell you at Christianity is unique in the message that it offers. Christianity is I believe, the only religion that accepts the need for a Messiah and offers one.

So you accept you could be wrong when you deny Jesus as the "biblical miracle worker" as you put it? Christians could be wrong about Christ. My hunch is we're not but it is after all, a faith.

There are possibilities to everything we don't know directly. That isn't evidence. What are you basing this on? A handful of discredited mythicists?

Then you've done no more than hedge your bets.

What do you think is most probable, existence or non existence.

Even if jesus existed, and their no reason not to assume that. Theres a huge leap between a historical jesus, and a supernatural Agent.

Jesus probably existed. He was probably a great man too. But son of god...... I dont think so.

Jesus himself didn't insist he was the Son of God. So that's beside the point.

Matthew 16:15-17English Standard Version (ESV)

15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And yet he says this in Mark 10:17-18. When a man called Jesus “good,” Jesus replied “no one is good but God alone."

Well as you like bolly it is only of academic interest to me who he thought he was. Your disagreement would appear to be with Christians who do think he was the Son of God & think that he did.

The Gospels also record he professed to be the Son of God to Pilate at his trial.

Yup. I'm not sure why bollywood is arguing against Jesus proclaiming himself as the son of God (something Muslims also do incidentally)

Odd because I don't have any disagreement with other Christians as to what they think or don't think.

If they want to believe in the Trinity, fine, if not fine, there is room for different beliefs.

Only of concern to atheists who wish to drive a wedge between believers.