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Source that even peasants and fishers in Galilee were literate? In fact all scholars agree upon the fact that illiteracy was widely spread in the Roman Empire, and even more in its outskirts, like Galilee, and even more still in the rural areas. It is much more probable that a literate became a Christian, and decided to write things down, to avoid that they would be forgotten. Because the overall plot is the same, and the gospels are already mentioned in letters of very early Christian around 100 CE. No. In nearly every source Jesus is called 'Jesus of Nazareth'. Secondly Mark and Luke have birth stories that are irreconcilable. But they have one thing in common: Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but grew up in Nazareth (look up the differences between Mark and Luke about Jesus' birth: they have really nothing else in common). There is a very clear theological reason for this: in the old testament it was predicted that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. So the most logical explanation is that they had to sweep a painful fact under the carpet: that Jesus was in fact born in Nazareth. If the gospels were just fantasy, they could just have Jesus be born in Bethlehem, and he would have become 'Jesus of Bethlehem'. Not as impossible as you think. Ehrman was not criticised by any academic scholars in the field. Only by fundamentalist Christians and by mythicists, who are not connected to any scholarly academy: From here. See also here. Partially, yes. But also because Paul mentions it (before the gospels were written), and Josephus and Tacitus (and both put that event in the same time, under Pilate), and a few other, vaguer sources. I haven't. Not more than any respected scholar. There are too many discrepancies between them. No, see above. In fact you are saying that the historical-critical method is not easy. That is true. But it is not impossible. But therefore you have to see how it works. And then you can criticise these methods, or how they are applied wrongly in the case of Jesus. What the heck, it is the job of historians for nearly every document to be aware of the biases of the text, and distillate the real events described by the document.

You changed the object from 'concept of God' to 'God'. The concept in itself can explain the building of temples, churches, etc. Condition is that those who use the concept believe that something outside the 'God discourse' match with this concept. Certainly, 'God' exists is a concept (however, in different cultures, very different concepts), but that does not proof God's existence. As Phi for All already said, there is a concept of unicorns, but that doesn't mean they exist outside the discourse about them. And if you think that the this is not valid, because the 'God-concept' is very special, you are nearing the ontological proof of God's existence. Hmm. Interesting difference you make here between 'being real' and 'not existing'. May I propose some other distinction? Things exist physically, if they play a direct role in causal relationships, independent of how we we talk about them. Things exist conceptually, if they are useful to describe the world around us, which includes things that exists physically (example: laws of nature), but also human behaviour (examples: marriage, stories, free will). The point is that we can refer to observable entities, to show what we mean with these concepts. And I think 'unicorns' and 'God' do not belong even to the conceptually existing things, because we cannot refer to observable entities.

It would be nice if you mentioned the arguments why the sources of the New Testament are dated by the historians between 65-125 CE, and why they are wrong. You are right, there is some guesswork in it (for each gospel the historian always give a time range, not just a year). And the earliest original physical snippet is dated 125-175 CE, interesting a snippet of the gospel of John, the latest written. Still, historians try to make the best possible explanation for 'the fire'. Mythicists do too, in their way. It is the popping up of different sources in the same period, and the way they agree and disagree with each other, and with what we know of early Palestinian history from other sources, what we know about beliefs before Jesus and after him, that convince historians about the dates of the events described. This might be a good start how historian come to their estimates. A good well educated guess is still much better than 'just' a guess. The word 'just' is often misused as a rhetorical instrument. I personally have an 'alarm clock' on the word 'just'. Every historian agrees with you that we do not know who wrote the gospels. But that does not make (contextual) analysis impossible. Why do you think that? Some events are historical (e.g. existence of Herod and Pilate), others contradict known history (e.g. the census in Luke), and with a naturalist mind, every miracle story, including the resurrection, must be excluded. But that does not mean that one cannot distillate e.g. the authors' intentions, and e.g the question why they bent their stories in such interesting and different ways (e.g. birth story of Jesus in Matthew and Luke).

Wikipedia is your best friend. The article lists all the observations that hint at the existence of dark matter: Galaxy rotation curves Velocity dispersions Galaxy clusters Gravitational lensing Cosmic microwave background Structure formation Bullet Cluster Type Ia supernova distance measurements Sky surveys and baryon acoustic oscillations Redshift-space distortions Lyman-alpha forest It also explains why alternative theories are not very probable: But as you see, as Strange already said, science is not as dogmatic as you seem to imply. Other approaches are tried, and sometimes successful, but alas, just for one of the observations. Maybe, maybe, when after many years still no dark matter is found directly, someone will come up with an alternative theory that explains more or less all of the above phenomena. I think you should read Imre Lakatos, for some viable philosophy of science. In his terms, when the research programme for finding dark matter fails, other research programmes might pop up.

Yes. I made one 'or' bold. Document sources belong to observation. Do find a University teacher or researcher at a university on the topic of New Testament history, that embraces some form of mythicism. Yes, there are differences on some topics, but Jesus' existence is none. But you do not argue directly against his arguments. The best explanation of the sources would be the one to take, no? I know, that is not 'proof' in the same sense as with natural sciences, and surely also not as good as a lot of more recent historical events. Of course. In a court case I would not convict somebody based on 85/15. But taken together a few unreliable witnesses, the way they give their part of the stories might reveal more than either one on its own. First, it are gospels. Historians recognise at least 5 different sources behind the 4 gospels, then there are the authentic 7 letters of Paul (call that one source), Josephus, Tacitus, and a few others. Anyone on its own would not suffice. But the parallels and contradictions lead the historians in a clear direction. Nearly true. If all the gospels would tell exactly the same story, the situation would be much more difficult: then it could be the religious fantasy of one author. But they don't: they differ on many points, agree on others (which does not mean that where they agree it must be true! Historians are a bit better than that). Analysing these differences and agreements, and many more aspects of them, lead to the conclusion that Jesus' very probably existed.

Of course you noticed the quotes around 'Mark'. The first time I referenced the Gospel itself, so that did not need quotes, the second time I referenced the author, and because we do not know who the author was, I used the quotes. In a previous posting Itoero implied that an author should have been a the place of Jesus' birth in order to reliably report about it. (You see, you need context to understand a text...) I do not even remember when my mother died (but I still remember what we did with her ashes...) . And Jerusalem was destroyed at 70 CE. And surely nearly none of Jesus' followers were still alive. Further, for your argument to be valid you must assume psychological traits of Jesus' followers in turbulent times. You should let the documents together speak for themselves. I agree with you, there is not much reliable information in the sources of the new testament (contradictions between the sources, stories that fit too well in a theological agenda, events described that we know did not happen, authors we do not know, etc.) But a few events probably really happened (see my four points. It is really not much what is left after the historians' analysis). Which makes Jesus' existence very probable (no, don't bring that false argument again...). That is a wrong interpretation. I know Itoero a bit. He often posts links that I am pretty sure of he either does not really understand, or, as in this case, hasn't taken the time to really look into. He uses links mostly to give an argument of authority. Obviously you forgot my 85/15. I am not 100% sure either. But I stick to my starting question: what is the most rational explanation of the existent sources we have, their contents, their language and appearance, and their fitting in the rest we know about ancient Palestine. You see, that is exactly what the mythicists do: they know that if they really want to make a point they must come with an alternative to the generally accepted historians' view, but also based on sources we have.

Is this an example of your 'logic'? You never heard of oral history, I assume. You know, people telling what they have seen, and then what they have heard. Of course many of the stories get changed during this process, beautified, brought in sync with what people would like to believe, etc. Why would a son of a poor handcrafts man, born in a poor hamlet called Nazareth be famous at his birth. Usually only children of VVIP (very VIPs) are famous at birth. Yep. So his birth stories are just fantasy. All historians agree with that. Mark was written around 70 CE. That is 4 decades. From text analysis, historians determined 'Mark' used other written sources, which per definition must be older than the his Gospel. Paul reports of Jesus already about 20 years after Jesus' death, but he reports about events that happened only a few years after Jesus' crucifixion. That is only true if the Gospels are exact reports about what happened. But they are not: the Gospels contradict each other and contain historical errors. Really, it is not difficult to write detailed stories. But what of the details is true, and what isn't, has to be found out (of course the contradictions and historical errors fall through). On careful analysis, it turns out that a few details are probably true: which (logically!) means that very probably Jesus existed. (Corrected this: there were many people called 'Jesus' those days.) Logic? In the 19th century a lot of people are called 'Karl'. Does that mean Karl Marx did not exist? Of course you can present Carrier's most important arguments from these videos for us. Or do you really suppose we look at 2.5 hours of video? You probably did not even look at them yourself.

I do not believe that being tired of a discussion is against the rules. Bringing false arguments (1), do not accept reactions from persons who obviously know more (2), or do not follow the chain of an argument (3) is neither, but it is tiresome, and sometimes rude. Examples of (1): Example of (2): Example of (3): DirtyChai did not imply that Jesus said that. Nobody implied this. Again, this is totally irrelevant. What I said is about the historical background, nothing else. It is a historical fact that in a time that Jesus lived (supposed to live) and before such ideas existed. We have originals of those days. Again, the relevance of that is zero: The point I made was only that such ideas existed in those days, and we have proof of that. Of course, I am also convinced that these are fairy tales. But the point is that Jesus spread a very similar message, therefore this fits in the historical context. And that is not proof that Jesus existed, but it is a point in the discussions with mythicists: it practically rules out some of their competing explanations.

Not appears. He does. As you do (but you at least you argue also with your own voice). You both do not seem to recognise that the scientific method for different sciences simply cannot be the same. E.g. functional explanations have nothing to do in physics ('what is the purpose of the weak interaction?'). However in biology functional descriptions are normal ('what is the purpose of the stripes of a tiger?' 'What is the purpose of the kidneys?'). A pure causal explanation (which we only have partially and very general at the same time (e.g. mutations)) does not suffice. To understand history, old sources (documents and artifacts) are the only thing we have. The task of the historian is to cut through all the biases (of ancient sources), recognise the gaps and contradictions, and come up with the most probable reconstruction of what really happened. Still, history is an empirical science: the explanations must fit to the historical sources. Same way as evolution is an empirical science: evolutionary explanations must be consistent with the 'sources', i.e. fossile founds. But in both cases we of course have no repeatable experiments. So if your critique on the historicity is only based on the methodological hammer that historical science cannot be modeled after physics, then we have to discuss other things. So if you do not accept that science is a discipline in itself, with its own methods, then we are ready here. If you do accept that history, especially ancient history, must use its own methods, then we can discuss: we can discuss the methods themselves, or if they are applied correctly. But for the latter, you must have some knowledge of the sources, of the arguments of the historians, etc. Again, against a Relativity skeptic who shows he has no knowledge of Relativity at all, it is impossible to discuss. I feel the same way with you too. Definitely no. Because we find gaps and contradictions in historical sources, there is (a limited) freedom of interpretation. But that does not make history philosophy. In history we must find the most probable explanation of our sources. (And I also protest against the idea that philosophical viewpoints are just opinions. They are not empirical science, that's right. But they must be well argued, and consistent with what we find in science and daily life. 'Time dilatation does not exist' is an opinion: it is a meaningful sentence, and there are (many?) people that believe it. But we know based on experiments and theories that this opinion is wrong.)

I have no interest in reacting on one-liners, that partially show that you do not even follow the track of the discussion, and show that you are not interested in the matter at all. And no, I will not elaborate. Read some serious authors about the matter.

No, of course not. But you must see it in the context of the discussions between academic historians and mythicists. The difference between Ten oz, Mistermack, and you on one side, and mythicists on the other side, is that the mythicists try to give a another theory to explain the origins of Christianity. They see at least one should have a better theory than the standard historical view on Jesus' existence. They at least study the sources and the relevant (according to them) historical contexts. And in this context, one of the arguments of many mythicists is that the idea of a dying and resurrecting messiah is a recurring theme in the classical world, and fits in the ideas existing under Jews sects in those days. However, there is no single source that supports this idea. The texts found in the Dead Sea scrolls talk about a messiah as a man of power, freeing the Jews of their suppressors, and reinstating Israel as the people of God. And interesting enough, this is exactly what Jesus taught according to the early Gospels. So the appearance of Jesus with his message nicely fits into the historical context. The only problem was that the messiah was not supposed to be crucified, certainly not by the Romans, who were the oppressors! So Paul reinterpreted the 'messianic message': Jesus was resurrected by God! (Of course we do not know if Jesus corpse somehow did disappear from its grave. We do not even know if he was buried, because the Romans mostly let hang their victims, as odious example.) For Paul, the resurrection was the first sign that God's reign on earth had started. So Paul had to bend the idea of what the messiah was, which means that he (and his fellow Jewish Christians), had to explain away an unwelcome fact: that who they expected to be the messiah (the powerful saviour of the Jews, sent by God), was in fact executed by oppressors. But such an idea is simply not found under the Jews of that time. So there is no continuity from the ideas before Jesus' existence and the interpretation of the first followers of Jesus. Therefore nobody would have come up with such an idea: a crucified messiah. So this very probably really happened. No. It were just ideas in which certain Jewish sects believed. What has the fact that this did not happen to do with the idea that Jesus really existed? I am afraid I have to agree with DirtyChai. Your oneliners ('Citation please'), and your absence of reactions on DirtyChai's answers show this pretty clearly. You already showed that you use other arguments that are plainly, factually, wrong: If you are not interested (same for beecee), then just let it be. If you are not prepared to dive into the arguments of the historians, why then argue with them? You both behave as some of the Catholics did with Galilei: refuse to look through the telescope. Do not consider the historians' arguments. They must be wrong anyway, so it is not worth to know these arguments.

Nobody is saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain stories about Jesus. They simply don't. Nobody here did suggest that they do. But what they show is that some Jewish sects believed that soon a Messiah would come, to reinstall the rule of God, and end the suffering of the people of Israel. And interesting enough, this is exactly what John the Baptist and Jesus were preaching. So for the history of early Christianity this is a valuable background. We have new evidence that such ideas already existed in Jesus' days. (The Dead Sea scrolls are dated from 385 BCE to 82 CE).

Nah. You cannot compare gambling with historical science. I do not pretend that it is my superior knowledge. But it is very easy to see that historians' knowledge is by far superior to yours. Well, yes it is. You ignore everything historians know about the history of their document sources. If every historian would use your criteria they should say we know nearly nothing about history. Nearly every document is biased, many documents contradict each other, and history cannot be based on artifacts alone. Also, your position would make science about evolution impossible. We cannot to do experiments to see how from dinosaurs became birds. What we can do is follow the traces left behind in fossils. But we can never be sure that our rational reconstruction is exactly right. (Maybe here is a reason that the 'militant atheist' Richard Dawkins also thinks Jesus existed: he recognises that historians must solve similar problems as evolutionists: fit our findings in the most probably theory.) Documents (and artifacts of course) are the fossils of the historians. On specific points, yes. But 'Jesus existed' is not very specific. Every hint into the direction that he existed adds up to the idea that he really existed. Was he betrayed by Judas? Did he really taught 'Our Father'? That are specifics, and we must be honest: we do not know.

The difference is that I read Acharya S' The Christ Conspiracy, and read a few texts of Richard Carrier. So I can look at the quality of their arguments, and read between the lines. It is already a few years ago, so do not ask to repeat their arguments. Why 'even'? He knows just as good as anyone. Look again at the publication list I provided a few days ago! Don't you remember the citation where somebody said 'Ehrman is the boogeyman of Christian fundamentalists'? Because he leaves nearly nothing of the modern creeds of Christianity. Nearly nothing withstands historian scrutiny. Nearly. Hmmm. That is just about what you get when tossing a coin. One must study the history of the documents in order to say something useful about them. You only look at the contents (well, maybe not even that...), and decide that the books in the New Testament are highly biased, and think that it is impossible to look at least a little through the biases, to see what might very well be factual. as I said in the other Jesus thread: Really, without any knowledge of this history, how the documents developed during the years (centuries...) you cannot say anything. It is really interesting to see the methods of the historians, and how they apply them. The problem is that you do not have a competing theory, based on this in-depth knowledge about the sources we have. You say 'I can imagine...'. Well, I think it is very difficult to make a reconstruction of the history of the documents (appearance, contents, relation to other historical events etc) based on the idea that it is all just some invention. So I do not get at 50/50. 85/15 represents my position. Yes. And historians are too stupid to see through this? It seems you think that they do not know this. Historians must always cut through the bias of their sources!

The critique of mythicists has even more assumptions, e.g. what the Apostles should have done (stand with notebooks and write everything down Jesus said and did?). Or that the Romans made extensive records of all births, deaths. Or that in Palestine in those days Jews believed in a 'resurrecting sun god'. Or: And I like the word 'feel': Or: You know of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Romans? I was not referring just to your viewpoint, but to the fact that you 'played the man' instead of the ball. Your posting was an ad hominum attack on Ehrman. This is what I wrote: Sorry if that was not clear. Well, the tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is promising. But the historians are careful in their conclusions.

Of course there are these kind of errors. But except the beginning of Genesis, the Bible is not meant to be a book that describes how the natural world works. It is stories about the Jewish people. Of course. But based on carbon dating, text analysis, language (and language errors), text comparisons (not unlike creating a genealogy of DNA by means of its mutations; AFAIK genetic algorithms were used to analyse old manuscripts), writing style, historical events reported that we have independent knowledge of, history of ideas, artifacts found on the same premises as documents etc, it is possible to extract the history of those documents. As this picture becomes clearer and clearer, it becomes possible to draw conclusions of what described in the documents might be factual. I predict you find none. It is a myth, set into the world by mythicists... You originally said that the copies we have of the New Testament were written about thousand year later. As you already accepted, we have comlete manuscripts from the 4th century. But there are older fragments. I assume DirtyChai is e.g. referring to the Rylands Library Papyrus P52 fragment, which contains a tiny part of the Gospel of John, dated between 125-175 CE. That is pretty short after historians estimate the Gospel of John was written (around 90 CE). Interesting enough this is the latest Gospel. That is true, but DirtyChai also did not mean that Jesus said that. It was a later theological development. See e.g. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.

But must a person have a human body? Once you crossed the border of believing in God, you can just additional believe in anything. X-posted with Strange...

No. No direct witness has written anything. No. The earliest gospels are dated about 60-70 CE, Jesus was crucified around 30-33 CE. And the gospels were written in Greek. Why would Romans write Greek? No. The Gospels were written by unknown Greek speaking authors, years after Jesus' death.(and probably also the death of the apostles). The apostles were Aramaic speaking peasants, so it seems extremely unlikely that they could write. Scholars see this Gospel as a Gnostic forgery. It was written in Coptic, a language that was spoken in Egypt, around carbon dated around 280 CE. This is said again and again, but just isn't true. E.g. we also have nearly no information about Herod and Pilate from outside the bible, even that they were important persons. So why should there be records of a Jewish rebel who was crucified? The Gospels that made it into the New Testament were written between 60-110 CE. That is not 'centuries'. The oldest copies we have are from around the 4th century (Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus). See above. I would suggest you show us some links to examples of records written by the Romans in Palestine.

A few remarks. Even contemporary sources can be lying. (Fake news! ). We talked about proof already a lot. (Ancient) history can never prove anything beyond doubt. Therefore my viewpoint is (and please discuss this, not a viewpoint I do not hold): the existence of a real person Jesus can better explain what happened in early Christianity than a fictional person. And how do you think that would happen? Except dating the tomb around the time of Jesus' death (but do not forget, C-14 only works when organic material is found, and it is also not very precise (±50 years or so?)), the only way is to show that its physical appearance is as it is described in ... written sources. And, btw some people of course claim the place is known already for ages: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: (Now that is something I take with a lot of grains of salt...) If Ehrman would not represent the majority of scholars of antiquity, I would find much more discussions from them. But Ehrman is only really attacked by fundamentalists, both Christian fundamentalists, as mythicists. For the rest, Itoero, your posting is just an ad hominum attack. Without knowing the arguments, you already made your conclusion. Same holds for your latest posting, Ten oz. I'd love to discuss all the arguments Ehrman presents. But I am afraid both of you are not even interested. Again, you behave like Relativity skeptics: without knowing the empirical proofs and role that Relativity plays in modern physics, they argue based on their intuitions: without knowing what Specialists have to say, you already made your conclusions. Please read Ehrman's Did Jesus exist?, then we can have a real discussion.

Not so amazing: historians take the context into account, e.g. that some Jewish sects were awaiting for the Messiah, that would install God's domain on earth, and free the Jews from the Roman oppression. And the prophesy that this Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. On the other side, a few postings ago, you drew your conclusions from your guesses about the psychology of Paul... So you checked against other sources. Just what historians do. The difference is that your possibilities to check are practical endless, and for historians it is limited by the sources that survived. And Dennett. And ... But nothing is better than reading a book of these authors. I like Dawkins on youtube, but Dennett is mostly poor: he is a much better writer than a public speaker (even if I find him sympathetic). I have looked into a few videos of Ehrman, just enough to see how he does. Not too good either. But one should read books! (Or articles.) Still waiting for Ten oz to read Ehrman's Did Jesus exist?...

Descartes thought that. But I would say, nobody else really does. I like that, at least as a good start... I think however I would reduce even more: 'Awareness of something, so something'. A few other viewpoints: Buddhism: the independent existence of 'I' is an illusion Hume: 'I' is just shorthand of the bundle of observations, thoughts, feelings (yes it is called 'bundle theory' of the ego) running in my head Dennett: The 'I' is a center of 'narrative gravity'. (He compares with the center of mass: on the surface of the earth it seems as if gravity comes from the center of the earth. But in fact it comes from the complete earth, not just from the center. So it seems there is an 'I' in here; but there is none really.) I even think there is not a real foundation of all knowledge. Depending on the area of knowledge, i.e. the kind of object of research, the foundations are different. Descartes' 'cogito ergo sum' is a philosopher's wet dream.

First, my viewpoint is that the existence of a real person Jesus can better explain what happened in early Christianity than a fictional person. As an example, already mentioned, the fact that Matthew and Luke have different birth stories (Matthew: Maria and Joseph lived in Bethlehem, then they fled to Egypt, and when they came back they settled in Nazareth; Luke: Maria and Joseph lived in Nazareth, but had to go to Bethlehem because of the census), but they have one thing in common: Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but grew up in Nazareth. Obviously both had to cope with the fact that Jesus was from Nazareth, but that the prophecies had said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. It would have been much easier for a fictional story to let Jesus be born just in Bethlehem. Conclusion: Jesus was born in Nazareth. If you prefer tangible proof in history, then there would not be much of history left. It has a reason that the pre-historic period is called that: we have no written records, which makes interpretation of artifacts very difficult, and is prone to change when new artifacts are found that do not fit the existing historical reconstruction. For written records, the difficulty is of course to see through the biases of the (often unknown) authors of the texts. In this respect history is not different than natural science: try to cut through prejudices and biases. That is difficult with religious texts, but not totally impossible. Just think about all the gospels we have (not just those that made it into the New Testament). So many stories about Jesus! (One fundamentalist once said me that we know more about Jesus' life than of Napoleon's...) Compare that with the facts historians agree on (my four points in the second posting). That is not much. There might be more truths in the gospels, but historians cannot filter out anymore based on their criteria. It seems you leave no room for written sources, that can be used in historical research. No, I never said natural science has no place: I said history as a science needs other methods additional to exact science. Just count on it, most new found documents (and there are many) are carbon dated to find out when they were written (e.g. Dead Sea scrolls, dated around 0 CE, the Nag Hammadi library, dated around 350 CE; that fits to when Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books). Of course the contents may be much older.

Exactly. Therefore one cannot use the same criteria as in natural science. But this is the measure you take. Relevance? But he is trained in historical methods. And as far as I can see, you haven't even started to understand historical method. True. Weighing all hints we have, knowing the history of the sources we have, he comes to this viewpoint. But Ehrman is not a theologian. He is a historian, specialised in the early history of Christianity. And theology is not the study of the 'nature of a religion'. For that you must go to the philosophy of religion, which also should be aware of what all kind of other sciences have to say about this topic: sociology, psychology, history, cultural anthropology. This would be what Daniel Dennett calls 'the study of religion as a natural phenomenon'. Theology is the study of the divine (which in my opinion just means it is a study without object...). But Ehrman takes inputs from archaeology. E.g. he describes what archaeologists have found out about Nazareth, how small and minor it was in the beginnings of the 1st century. He is well known and respected in academic circles. He has written several text books used at universities, and, as said before, if he really would stand for a minority viewpoint this would not happen, and the critique of colleagues would be much louder. I like this critic, being a theologian himself:

Full ack. On this we completely agree. Exactly. It is even slightly better. We can ask ourselves what the best explanation is for the course of events before, during and after Jesus life and death (like the development of the literature about Jesus). To explain everything we have by stating Jesus never existed, but was faked, is more of a stretch than assuming he existed, and a lot of legend was built up around his life. Repeating this stupid argument doesn't make it work better. You think the same person should have been there at Napoleon's birth and death to have a complete overview of his life? In Jesus' case however the situation is easier: nobody knows the circumstances of his birth. The only thing that is pretty sure is that he was born in Nazareth, for the simple reason that he was known like that ('Jesus of Nazareth'), and that Matthew and Luke must bend his birth story to explain that he was born in Bethlehem, but grew up in Nazareth. This bending would not be necessary if his life story was faked. He could have been just 'Jesus of Bethlehem'. You mean it does not fit to your 'logic'. Because he is not contradicted by the majority of New Testament scholars. None of his popularising and critical books (see the list in my previous posting) has produced any outcry under theologians and New Testament scholars. If any faith, it is my faith that historians are doing their jobs honest and critically. Seeing how Ehrman develops his argument why historians think that Jesus existed, confirm this 'faith'. You should know me by now, but once again for you: I am an atheist, and do not believe in anything supernatural. @Ten oz: To assume that all references to Jesus are fake is also a a strong assumption, that would need proof in itself. Again, you both behave like relativity skeptics: without really knowing the scientific arguments, and because the scientific viewpoint goes against your intuitions, you deny what the science states. And, Itoero, taking your (lack of) imagination as argument is really very weak. And, also once again, Ehrman, as all New Testament scholars, are fully aware of the forgeries, deceits, errors, theological biases of our sources. Look at the book list I provided in my previous posting. Be assured, no Christian fundamentalist likes Ehrman.

It seems that you forget that history is also a kind of empirical science: without any artifacts found, without any written documents or even time witnesses (yes, events of 30 years ago also belong to history). So no, logic definitely doesn't suffice. For Dawkins it is rather easy: he is not a historian, so he accepts what the majority of scientists says: that it is very probably Jesus existed. It seems that some of you (Itoero, Ten oz, mistermack) think you are historians and can give arguments against historians, even without knowing how these historians come to the conclusion that Jesus existed. Nonsense. Jesus' followers were illiterate, so how could they write down anything? One assumes that Jesus could read (no, there are only weak hints for that, so it is not very sure), but not write. We had to wait until literate people decided to collect write down the oral stories about Jesus. Is this an example of your logic? Stating something without any knowledge about the field in question? Why would he? His epistles are motivated by letters he got from churches he grounded, and who asked advice on organisational and theological questions. Besides the fact he sometimes mentions things Jesus said, as DirtyChai already noted. He mentions meeting Jesus' disciple Peter and his brother James. Now James is also mentioned in one of the none-christian sources, as brother of 'Chrestos', who was crucified under Pilate. So we can safely assume this is one fact that Paul did not make up. (I also think he did not make up that there were problems in the churches he grounded, so except his statement that he met Jesus in a vision, I do not know what was all made up.) Where did you get this? The Dead Sea scrolls are in the Israel museum in Jerusalem. We slowly know what is in there: the documents are not Christian. But they give a valuable background about ideas that existed in Jesus' days. And some of these ideas fit remarkable well to the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus. So he was not even original. See above: because his devotees could not write: they were peasants and fishers. Why 'even'? Ehrman is an honest historian. Just look at some book titles of him, to show that he is fully aware that we should mistrust Christian sources: Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World The difference with your way of argumentation is that he can trace many of the forgeries. No sweeping statements like "we cannot trust the sources of Jesus' life". Scholars try to reconstruct the history of the texts. Some prophecies were reinterpreted after Jesus, and some aspects of Jesus' life story were adapted to the prophesies, e.g. that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They were not written by eyewitnesses, but by literates in Greek, that wrote the stories told about Jesus. Everything? Why do you suppose that? Why do you think that the 4 Gospels in the New Testament are different? And as you might remember, Jesus had at least 12 disciples, but there were other followers. I do not see that this (logically?) implies anything. What is the problem with that? A few devoted followers would suffice. We know these are fictional characters, because we know the history of the sources where they appear. This is the way to start investigation in the antiquities. Find out as much as possible about the history of the sources of Jesus. Only then you can start to dig out what is probably true, and what is just fantasy.