"Well, I dont think Jesus even existed!"

I am always surprised to hear this objection in person.  Usually I picture it as an Internet based issue that rational people don't really hold to.  But recently I encountered it again, so I thought I would write a quick blog about it.

  The claim that Jesus didn't even exist simply flies in the face of history and textual criticism.  In fact someone who would make this claim would be a history denier.  But I am amazed how strongly many people hold to this claim when in scholarship the view is considered to be quite silly.  In my conversation recently I was saying that I have never found a scholar to support this view can you suggest any?  The person then referenced the book "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy and added that they were scholars.  Well a quick google search turned out that these authors are not scholars, they do not have one peer reviewed paper between them also their education is a B.A and a M.A which I appreciate but their degrees are not relevant to the field and they are not scholars.  This book is mainly about the idea that Jesus was a myth.  I almost feel bad when I see how much the scholarly world is against Jesus mythicists.  In a article I read recently Bart Ehrman was saying of mythicists

"there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology."

Another objection along these lines that I often hear is that since the historical documents concerning Jesus are biased and contain supernatural claims they cannot be trusted.  This is simply not true at all.  All historical documents are biased and many contain supernatural claims.  This is simply the art and science of the historian and textual critic.


Also I hear people say "well of course there was a guy walking around first century Palestine named Yeshua but not who we now call Jesus Christ.  Since I am a layman Ill pass this one over to Bart Ehrman again:

"With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) -- sources that originated in Jesus' native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus' life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus' closest disciple Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it."

So we have numerous independent accounts, we have sources that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (I'm pretty sure he is talking about the creed in 1Corinthians 15 there), we have the writings of Paul and testimony from Peter and Jesus' own brother.  Seems like pretty good evidence to me. 

   When I do go through this with friends they will usually change their opinion to that Jesus did exist BUT there is no reason to accept the supernatural claims.  At this point that is fine for the moment, because I believe in trying to stay on one topic at a time.  At least if you review the evidence with someone they may stop publicly preaching about how Jesus didn't even exist.  Which is great because the case for Christianity is a cumulative case, so when we take down a roadblock like "Jesus never existed" that's just one part of the cumulative case.