Did Jesus Actually Exist?

BTW: there is no such thing as an indisputable source.

You miss a lot of them by your dismissal of the sources.

You cannot give evidence that Jesus existed but still you keep believing he existed.

In absence of any credible source (or formal proof), I'm entitled to doubt his very historical existence..

Not so fast. WHO did I miss, pray tell? Is there any live dud in that list? Do your homework.

You ARE entitled to doubt the historicity of Jesus, and Calamity Jane too, because there is no such thing as an indisputable evidence. Such a thing just does not exist, for anything or anyone. Nobody can ever be forced to trust a source....

What you are NOT entitled to do is to spread lies about what the majority scholarship position is on the issue today (not in the 19th century). That I won't allow you to do unchallenged, sorry.

You have been, and you are, lying through your teeth.

Nowhere have I asserted or even talked about the majority scholarship.

In addition, your conflating topics is despicable.

Jesus and Martha Cannary are not comparable.

A huge amount of evidence exists for the latter..

Calling you a weasel is an insult to weasels.

Fair enough.

A huge amount of evidence exists for Jesus too, but you chose to believe none of it. I can chose to believe none of the evidence for Calamity Jane if I want too...

Your statement is false, you are a liar.

It has been amply demonstrated to you that there's no evidence for the existence of Jesus.

One can see the birth certificate and the pictures, along with witnesses reports, of Martha Cannary.

One cannot say as much of Jesus.

Pelle-mêle, the sum total of the evidence I know of is: one passage in Tacitus, 2 in Josephus, 1 in Suetonius, a letter by Pliny the younger, the Gospels, Paul, a few passages in the Talmud.

Maybe it's not that huge but put together, it's enough for scholars and it's enough for me.

I think the word you need is pêle-mêle

It has been explained to you that none of those sources are verifiable.

Thanks again for the spell check.

Verifiable? Like what? They do not contradict one another that much... And who said these sources were in doubt? An expert, or some lame amateur never checking his sources? Tacitus is seen as a very good historian. Josephus' mention of Jesus is supported by Louis Feldman, the best living scholar on Josephus. And so on. Just like the GW hyper-critique ends up de-legitimizing climatologists, the Jesus hyper-critique undermines the credibility of perfectly sound sources, to the great chagrin of true historians who rely on those sources to do their work.

Are you suggesting that the evidence for the historicity of Jesus is equally sound as the evidence for global warming and the holocaust?

If you do, I strongly disagree. The historicity of Jesus is something for which we have no eyewitness accounts, no archaeological or other physical indicators, nothing of that kind. By contrast, the facts of global warming and the holocaust are proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a overwhelming evidence from direct eyewitnesses testimony, and in the case of global warming, physical sensors. Lumping Jesus skeptics together with holocaust deniers isn't an argument, it's slander. Setanta and others are quite right to call you out for it.

Beside, the Talmudic passages have never to my knowledge been seriously considered or even acknowledged by my opponents. And I haven't yet evoke the letter, so your statement is once again misleading: these sources have not been addressed here so far by you or any other doubter.

What's wrong with saying: "that's not evidence, it's hearsay"? No court of law would accept hearsay as evidence, with narrow exceptions that wouldn't apply here. I see nothing wrong with rejecting hearsay as evidence in this case.

For global warming, yes. The cases are clearly comparable: a strong scientific consensus attacked at the margin by amateurs on the internet. The debating techniques used are the same too. For the holocaust, izzy pointed out the moral difference: holocaust deniers are bad people, Jesus deniers are not. While I agree with this difference and agreed to not compare the two anymore, I did pointed out that a very negative bias is at work in the case of Jesus too. The Jesus Myth Theory is a polemic argument, not a scientific one anymore.

As to what is the exact degree of certainty one can safely attribute to the three theories (human induced GW, holocaust, historical Jesus), I would still think that the holocaust is more certain than the other two, because we have many live witnesses. I'd say the holocaust is 99.9999999% certain (if these figures mean something at least illustratively), while a historical Jesus is easily around 95%. The link between human activities and GW would be what, 98% sure or something? I'm making these figures up, to give an idea.

You are arguing from authority and clique politics. Neither of these changes the fact fact that the existence of Jesus is backed up by no eyewitness accounts and no direct archeological evidence, unlike the holocaust and global warming.

This is not a tribunal, it's a historical argument. Nobody's gonna fry on a chair in the end... Other criteria apply, because what in history is not hear-say? The 20% or so of direct historic witnesses? The rest, all of Tacitus for instance, can be called hear-say...

If you know better than me, Tom, go ahead. The thread is wide open. If you know of one modern qualified scientist who thinks that there remain a reasonable doubt about a historical Jesus, post his name, credentials and stance on the issue, go ahead, search for ONE LIVE SCIENTIST doubting a historical Jesus.

The following basics are agreed by and large: he preached, healed dudes, had followers, had brothers, was baptized by John the Baptist, went to Jerusalem, stirred some **** at the temple, and ended up on a cross for it.

That's all we know with a fair degree of plausibility. Plus the parables, a good deal of which look perfectly genuine.

The point that amateurs miss, is that I dead history has its own criteria. This is not a trial. In history, you have to come up with a credible rival hypothesis, which is far more difficult than most people think. One has to explain the brutal irruption of Christianity in the antique world, its rapid expansion, etc. in a tribunal, you don't need a rival hypothesis, in history you do.

But if you want certainty

More hyperbola. Hearsay isn't even admissible in civil lawsuits, which are decided by preponderance of the evidence. "Preponderance of the evidence" means that the charge is more likely than not to be true, which does make it a standard of evidence comparable to the one for establishing historical facts.


The part where facts are backed up by direct evidence. For example, the historicity of emperor Augustus is backed up by numerous administrative records, gold coins with his face on it from the time period that he lived in, decrees that he authored, and so on and so on.

Or take the facts Julius Caesar recounts in his book, The Gallic Wars. While they are no doubt colored by Caesar's politics, cultural biases, and limited competence as an ethnologist of primitive peoples such as Germans, at least he observed them himself. The Gallic Wars merit skepticism from the reader, but they are an important work of antique history, and they are not hearsay.


Much of Tacitus is based on eyewitness accounts and events Tacitus witnessed himself --- starting with his first book, The Life of Agricola, his father in law. Nothing of the kind can be said of Josephus and other first-century historians writing about Jesus. But I don't mean to evade your broader point: Sure, we could dismiss much of the historical literature as hearsay. And I would have no problem with that.

By these criteria, Augustus existed but not 99% of his subjects...

The total number of Augustus's subjects is something for which we have direct evidence from archaeology, Roman census data, government records about the sizes of various armies, and similar sources. But yes, if someone claimed that a particular farmer by the name of Antonius Marius, or a particular carpenter by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, existed in the first century and performed acts X, Y, and Z, it would be hard to back this up with evidence. And in the absence of evidence, skepticism about the claim would be appropriate. In both cases.

By contrast, the evidence for global warming and the holocaust is way beyond the point where such considerations matter.