A popular claim from current atheists is that Jesus didn't actually exist at all, but was entirely a fiction.
One of the primary rhetorical uses for this is to be a method of stalling almost any opposing argument. It can sidetrack things into minutae pretty quickly. The alarming thing about this claim, is that modern historians don't agree with it. In fact, they believe Jesus was, in fact, a historical figure.
If you're going to take on an entire discipline of study and disagree with it, you should bring some evidence with you.
An example of this popped up in the About.com atheism blog recently:
http://atheism.about.com/b/2011/08/17/forum-discussion-reconsidering-jesus.htm
This is a fairly stunning example of a completely inconsistent use of historical criteria for measuring, or exploring the basic historicity of an account, fact, place or individual. If they were consistent, such skeptics would doubt the existence of Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Socrates and to be blunt, almost anyone in history outside of the modern era.
Even in the article above, Paul is talked about as if he were a real person, and his background and writing are not questioned at all, despite the lack of any extra-biblical account of him.
The reality is that the consensus of the best of modern historians is that Jesus was an actual historical figure and no serious historical data has arisen to question the basic historicity of Jesus' existence.
To discount the entire discipline of history when it doesn't suit your argument, is simply not rational.
A few examples citing actual scholarship in this regard:
http://www.y-jesus.com/bornid_1.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
http://www.sikhspectrum.com/112006/bh.htm
Even those not friendly to Christianity accept that Jesus was an actual historical figure.
I find it interesting in the posts Austin refers to that there are obvious errors, both historical and logical which he doesn't bother to acknowledge, address or correct. Just from an initial reading:
- Jesus wasn't buried in Nicodemus' tomb (the second forum post corrects this mistake)
- The second poster says the Gospels were among the last things written, but the book of Mark is generally considered one of the earliest NT books
- The second poster assumes the basic historicity of Paul - how can he do that and be consistent? There's a lot less evidence for Paul than there is for Jesus
- The second poster says, "There is no known eyewitness account of Jesus at all. Not a single contemporary account even so much as makes the slightest mention of him."
So in our forum posts, the basic rigor of, getting the names right isn't very important. Our skepticism here is really selective and only applies when it suits the argument in their favor.
Pardon me, while I dismiss this categorically as bad thinking, bad scholarship and deplorable history.
If you take the rest of history as a judge, the entire New Testament is a contemporary account. There are thousands and thousands of fragments from copies of manuscripts of the books of the New Testament. Just think through this for a moment. If you accept the 70AD date for the writing of the book of Mark (and some scholars put it in the 50's)... and Jesus died near 33AD - that is a difference of 37 years.
If you did this today, 2011... 37 years ago would be the year that Nixon resigned from office. If someone wrote a biography about Nixon that was cut out of complete fictional cloth, they could not get away with it. Why? Because people are still alive who remember 1974. Many of the people involved in Watergate directly are still alive. You can talk to eye witnesses for those events!
Many of the authors of New Testament books, Peter, John, Jude, James... were eye witness contemporaries and lived and worked with Jesus directly for years. There are multiple eyewitness acounts of Jesus and contemporary accounts that give his history, as related direclty by people who were there... in multiple books of history! What other prominent figure in the ancient world, has four unique accounts of his life and work? There is more and better evidence for Jesus than any ancient historical figure.
It would be like saying, well, except for the writings of Plato, there are no accounts of Socrates at all - so I don't believe he existed. As if the writing of Plato, which was written, and copied and survived thousands of years - simply doesn't count.
That's a ridiculous historical stance and our early evidence and manuscripts for Plato number in the dozens, not in the thousands.
What our poster means to say is, "outside of the historical books that are in included in the Bible" there aren't any direct eye witness accounts. But sad to say, even if you disbelieve all of the things in the New Testament, even if you throw out any reference to the miraculous or the divine, you're still left with a lot of historical detail that stands up to scrutiny. Those things don't get omitted because you don't like them - ancient accounts of history count, even if they disagree with your view of the world. And when there are thousands of early text and text fragments, they gain weight and credibility accordingly.
To say otherwise is bad scholarship, it's a horrible way to look at history, it should not be taken seriously.
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