Did Jesus exist?

Yes. Someone here linked to my site a few days ago and I saw the trackback on my site's traffic tool and wondered what article was being linked to. Then I saw some common bad theories being presented here, such as yours, and so did what my site, video channel and podcast all exist to do - debunked the bad history. So?

If my criticisms don't make you feel warm and fuzzy then that's not surprising. But I haven't "insulted" you. You made an assertion that a composite Jesus was most likely. Every single time I've seen that claim and I've challenged the claimant to back it up, they've failed. I challenged you to do so. You failed.


I often find that people whose weak ideas are challenged and who then fail to back them up then suddenly lose interest in the debate. And often whine about "insults". This is a very regular pattern.


We have "physical or archaeological evidence" for a tiny few in the ancient world, so that there is none for this peasant preacher tells us nothing. We have no "physical or archaeological evidence" for any of the other early first century Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants either. Big deal. That's what we'd expect. No historian on the planet uses this as the criterion for whether an ancient figure existed. If they did, abiout 99% of them would "not exist", which is clearly absurd.




Apart from the stuff that isn't. Like Tacitus Annals XV.44. Or Josephus AJ XX.200. The latter records the execution of Jesus' brother James - an event that happened in Josephus' own town while he was there. That's pretty direct testimony. So no, we're not wholly dependent on Christian material.


Which is normal for most ancient figures. Try this - find me an account of Hannibal that dates to within his lifetime. Good luck. You don't understand the nature of ancient source material.


No, that isn't the "only" conclusion. It isn't even a good conclusion. That's why almost no scholars draw that conclusion. And includes pretty much all NON-Christian scholars. So, wrong.


I'm not "ignoring" your bad arguments - I'm showing, in some detail, why they don't work. Your conclusion is based on false premises. And so it's not surprising it's wrong. And not shared by scholars (apart from a tiny few fringe nobodies, though any field has a few contrarians at the fringes).

I'm also not "hiding" any "faith", if that weak insinuation is aimed at me. I have an online history that goes back to 1992. Go search it if you like. You'll find that I've been an atheist my whole adult life and you'll also find posts and articles by me arguing against Christian claims about the supposed resurrection of Jesus (such as here), against the claim that Jesus was God (e.g. here), against the claim his coming was foretold by Old Testament prophecy (here) and arguing in detail that Jesus was simply a failed Jewish apocalyptic prophet (see here). So if you were trying the weak sneering argument that I'm somehow only pretending to be an unbeliever, that just crashed and burned as well.

You keep failing here. Completely. Perhaps you should stop.