Good book on Jesus’ historicity, analysing not just every argument on the historical Christ but also giving a holistic assessment on how Christianity likely came to be, with a vigorous reference section. If you don’t want to buy it on Amazon, it’s available at z-library (link not given to avoid piracy charges).
Inb4:
>Muh Adam Green>Muh Bart Ehrman>Muh consensus>Muh ChristophobiaYadda yadda, I know who Adam Green is, about the Ehrman talking point, and how this subject can be touchy to both Christcuck and e-crusader secularised midwits here, so I’ll be blunt here:
- Adam Green’s background doesn’t invalidate his broader points on Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus Christ’s existence
- The “consensus” doesn’t mean much since it’s mostly made up of Christians and Christian-sympathisers who engage in confirmation bias and gatekeeping to discourage any critical opinion on the historical Christ theory. Given that Ehrman himself relies on this very unreliable consensus for his book on Jesus’ historicity
- Not believing in Jesus’ existence as a historical figure isn’t anti-Christian as many non-mainstream Christian sects like the early Church-era marcionites and gnostics assert the notion of a mythical non-physical Christ. On the top of that, much of Judaism (and by extension Zionism) rests on the notion of the Old Testament as being 100% true and historically accurate text, whilst Islamic doctrine holds the existence of a historical Christ. So by negating the existence of a historical Christ, and by extension undermining the value of the Old Testament as a historical text, Christianity and Islam and Judaism are effectively undermined
With that out of the way, let me be clear that I’m not 100% confident in Christ’s non-existence, but nevertheless I’m not convinced on the existence of Christ as a historical figure for the following reasons:
- There’s no evidence for the existence of Christ dating back to when he was canonically alive. Every alleged proof for his existence as a historical figure date back to decades and even centuries after his death.
- There’s no mention of a Jesus Christ being crucified in any surviving Roman documents.
- There’s far and few in-between evidence attesting to Jesus’ existence beyond the gospels, which are themselves unreliable and of dubious historicity as pointed out by Russell Gmirkin and Robert M Price.
- Among the non-Christian sources, none of them are contemporary to the canonical Christ’s lifetime (i.e., the 1st century) despite Jewish concerns at the time being well-documented. And of the ones that exist, most either repeat earlier hearsays about Christ without actually investigating them (e.g., Tacitus and Pliny the younger), ambiguous and subject to heavy debates (e.g., Lucian and Suetonius) or outright forgeries whose veracity rests on Christian interpolation (e..g., Josephus’ passage). But the thing is, all of them either never tried to prove the hearsays in 1st century AD Judea, or were born after Christ’s canonical death (which for the record, was determined centuries after his death, with early Christians themselves disagreeing on when he was born and died), so they aren’t even contemporary sources at all, let alone independent ones, especially as by the time Tacitus and Josephus wrote about Christ he was already dead by then + the gospels were already spreading.
- There are no Roman records that mention Jesus. Not only all that, but, there are no Christian eye-witnesses of Jesus. All of the Gospels are anonymous and written by friends-of-friends, and none are written in the first person; also, Paul (who authored 13 of the 27 books of the NT) never met Jesus, except in a vision. They're also written in very competent Greek (the language of later converts), rather than in Hebrew (the language of the original converts, excepting Paul).
- Going back to the gospels, they are just fictional tales derived from the Old Testament authored by many people throughout history. The Dead Sea Scrolls and other manuscripts don’t necessarily prove the historicity of the gospels nor that there was just one author, at best it only proves that said tales were already in wide circulation, especially as there’s no evidence of a complete Bible contemporary to Christ’s lifetime. Unless you believe in the resurrection and the miracles and the existence of the biblical floods and the GIGANTIC kingdoms of Israel and that of King Solomon, then the gospels themselves become unreliable as proofs for Christ’s existence as a historical figure.
With that said, maybe there was a thought leader in some Jewish splinter group called “Jesus Christ” or something to that effect, but there’s no compelling evidence that the Jesus Christ that we are familiar with has ever existed at all.
Hopefully this thread won’t devolve into a flame war, I hope.