historical jesus

You must believe that Jesus existed!

Greetings all :) Remsberg made a list years ago, of early writers who could have mentioned Jesus Christ, yet did not - but the list was bare of details like dates and subjects. It's been frequently repeated and updated, (I even made a poor earlier attempt at it myself,) and recently Michael...

Defending a historical Jesus This is a continuation from another thread here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=313197&page=11 I've titled this "For Kapyong", but anyone can jump in at any time. This thread is for me to defend my claim that the evidence is strong to...

A couple of days ago, Mythicist Milwaukee released a trailer for "Batman & Jesus", a documentary that they assisted in creating on whether there was a historical Jesus. The movie is due to be released in 2017. The trailer can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnS8FjMQx0k More...

This thread comes from a derail in the "Bart Ehrman... Historical Jesus" thread. Talking about the origins of Christianity, I mentioned Robert Eisenman's idea that Paul was a member of the Herodian royal family. I promised to skip ahead in the book I'm reading (James The Brother Of Jesus...) to...

When it comes to the historicity of Jesus, evangelical Christian apologists usually trot out a number of well-worn canards. One of them is that Jesus is better attested to as historical than are the likes of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. This is sheer nonsense, but it often goes...

So, since everyone is doing their own Historical Jesus reconstructions, I thought I'd have another stab at my own. Be warned that lots of cherrypicking will be involved, along with copious handwaving, and some liberal application of the argument from personal incredulity (a.k.a., "I don't think...

Suppose that the true story of Jesus was that of a Jewish apocalyptic preacher in 1st century Palestine who angered the religious establishment and eventually became crucified under the supervision of Pontius Pilate. If it could be confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that this was in fact what...

One of the things that I have wondered about skeptics for the longest time is why such a large number believe that Jesus of Nazareth was not a historical person, in spite of the overwhelming consensus of New Testament scholars and historians that he was a real person. When I've argued with...

I'm just starting this thread so as not to further sub-hijack another thread where I called R.G. Price's article "Jesus Myth: The Case Against Historical Jesus" a piece of crank scholarship. I'm just going to go through his points, in order. It'll take me a while. If other people chime in, I...

I have recently run into a... hypothesis, basically that the Gospels, especially Mark as the earliest of them, really describe something else and rather unexpected: Julius Caesar. You can find the full text here: http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html (I've linked to the part...

I've been lurking here for ages. I signed up recently, in order to use the search function. I'm (slightly) surprised to find no mention of Evan Powell's book "The Unfinished Gospel". Has anyone here read this? The author puts forth a number of ideas I've not heard before, and he walks through...

"I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist, but I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus." - Bart D. Ehrman, December...

Marc suggested kindly I should perhaps give my reasons for believing in John's gospel being the earliest. I'll pass for now - it might bore people to death. However, I have noticed one thing in my wanderings through the Gospels which hardly ever gets mentioned, but seems apparent to any casual...