This is a debate on whether or not there is enough historical evidence to believe that a Jewish man called Jesus, who is regarded as the basis for the christian religion, ever existed in the flesh. That's all this debate is discussing. Its not a discussion about whether or not Jesus was god, it's not about your personal relationship with Jesus, it's not about whether or not the christian religion is of any value. I feel that it's important to start with this point...because a great many who read this will be christians, and the argument I'm about to make is about as popular as me coming to your house and using your dinner table as a toilet. Many of you reading this will take it personally....but you shouldn't. Although I'm arguing that there isn't enough historical evidence to believe Jesus existed...I'm not making a commentary about you or your personal beliefs. This is about facts...about evidence....about history. I'm debating this topic because I believe the truth is important. I'm making this argument because I know a great many of you never really looked into the historicity of Jesus.
Why should you look into the historicity of Jesus? It's basically considered a fact...right? Well, I was like you once...even though I was an atheist, I accepted that Jesus existed as a real man without any doubt at all. I even remember the argument I had with another atheist...calling him ridiculous for suggesting the possibility that Jesus never existed (the very same argument I am now about to make). The truth was, I hadn't seriously looked at the evidence...I hadn't seriously considered the possibility he never existed. Once I did though, I found myself in a group smaller than "atheists". I was, and still am, someone who doesn't believe Jesus existed. For you to understand how I reached this conclusion, you'll need to look at the same evidence I did....
So are you ready? Would you like to see all the evidence that points directly to the existence of a historical Jesus? I'm now going to list all of it, so pay close attention....
There isn't any.
What's that you say? There has to be something? Well, there definitely should be something....but there simply isn't. When we look for evidence of a real walking talking Jesus with an objective viewpoint, with intellectual honesty, there's nothing. He simply disappears from history. Allow me to explain...
History is a funny field of study. History isn't so much about proving facts or establishing certainties. It's about building a narrative. That narrative is a changing thing, based upon perspective, time, and evidence. Historians may find something tomorrow morning that dramatically changes the way we understand a particular event in history. That change may be hard to accept, but it's based upon evidence. So what exactly is "historical evidence"? Well...everything is. Anything is. It could be a pair of shoes that tells us about someone's job. It could be a picture that shows us someone's appearance. It could be documents, letters, books, shipping manifests. The question isn't "what is historical evidence?"...the question is "what does this piece of evidence show us?". So when I say "there isn't enough historical evidence to believe in a historical Jesus"...what I'm saying is that "no piece of evidence shows us that a historical Jesus existed."
When it comes to physical evidence, we have none. No pair of sandals that belonged to Jesus, no cups, no robes, no saddles...nothing. This is to be expected though...Jesus lived a long long time ago, and things decay. So what do we have? Documents. Now...anyone who ever looked up the "evidence for a historical Jesus" probably got inundated with any number of christian/biblical websites that all claim there's a ton of evidence for his existence. You'll find mention of Jesus from different historians like Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus and others. What do these men have to say about the real Jesus? Nothing. None of these figures ever met Jesus, nor did they meet anyone who met Jesus, nor did they live when Jesus was alive. The passages where they mention Jesus are of this sort...
"There's a group of people called christians who follow a man named Jesus."
What is this evidence of? Well, quite obviously, it's evidence that there were christians at the time those men wrote those things. That's all. In order to make the leap from these documents being evidence of christians to being evidence of Jesus...one has to decide that the only reason there would be christians is if there was a guy named Jesus who they followed. No real historian will make that leap though, for obvious reasons. Does the existence of the cult of Osiris mean there must've been a real walking talking Osiris at one point? Of course not. Does the existence of followers of Hercules mean there must've been a real Hercules at some time? No...that would be silly. Make no mistake...no one alive when Jesus "lived" thought him worth mentioning. Not his followers, not his enemies, not even a casual witness on the streets.
What about the gospels, you say? Well...even the earliest copies of those weren't written until decades after Jesus's "death"...and we don't really know who wrote them. The names ascribed to them are just guesses...their true authors are lost to time. More importantly though, they are religious documents. They aren't meant to stand apart from the bible, they aren't historical documents. They were written with a clear bias, a clear intent of convincing the reader that Jesus was the messiah and son of god. That bias must be considered whenever you read the gospels...and it makes them useless as historical documents.
So what else do we have? Most of those websites will stop after listing the few passages by historians who never met Jesus and the gospels. That isn't all we have though. In truth, we have a great many stories, letters, and other "documents" that most christian scholars will ignore or leave out of this discussion. Why? Because they're lies. These lies have several formal names..."pious falsehoods", "pious fiction", "non-canon stories"...but I prefer the informal term "lies". Early christians, early apologists, and early christian scholars all seem to have little ethical trouble creating outright lies about their savior. The motives behind these lies change depending on who is suspected of writing them and who their intended audience was...but make no mistake, even the Vatican acknowledges them as lies. I only mention them because I will likely need to reference them later should my opponent decide to try to turn the gospels into historical documents or try to validate the Josephus passage. We can tackle those things later though...
For now it is simply enough to realize that when we look for any credible historical evidence of Jesus Christ...we have nothing.
This concludes my first post.
