Talk:Historicity of Jesus/Archive 39

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Merge with Christ myth theory?

Is this article any different from the one on Christ myth theory? Should they be merged?PiCo (talk) 01:51, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

That's impossible at this point - these are still two different theories: "mythicists" vs. "historicists". Problem emerges from the fact that "historicist" camp is hijacked, sort of speak, by theologians, or, if you prefer, the field is dominated by them, simply because regular history, like or scientific investigation, relies on evidence, and when confronted with lack of any, like in this case, historians are simply out of job. By the way, "mythicists" are quite resolute that debate ends at that point, we can't conflate these two together.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 12:46, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

There is, in fact, strong historical evidence to indicate that Jesus was a real person, but, since you do not seem to listen to anything I say and since this is not a discussion forum, I will not go into those reasons here. In any case, I do agree that I do not think that these two articles should be merged because I think it would be too much of an upset and I think it would result in a great deal of information being deleted, since both articles are rather lengthy and the process of merging them would inevitably result in many noteworthy passages being deleted altogether. Also, the two articles do seem to deal with slightly different issues. This article describes the subject in general, whereas the article Christ Myth theory only describes the Mythicist position in particular. --Katolophyromai (talk) 13:17, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

If this article is about evidence for existence of Jesus then perhaps it should be reconfigured. The evidence is (1) the written records, namely the Pauline epistles and the gospels. Of these the epistles take priority, being earlier and clearly not dependent on prior written sources; and (2) plausibility, manine the way the Jesus story, including the theology, fits into Jewish and Hellenistic culture of the time. I don't think the article currently covers this - for example, it doesn't go into the sources behind the gospels. PiCo (talk) 23:52, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

And there you go - by saying that you don't agree with merging and with your rational behind it in mind, now @PiCo:'s question is suddenly on point here - these two articles are both used for onesided refutation of the "Christ myth theory", or, in essence, it doesn't serve any purpose to have them both in this slanted environment, since they are nearly the same.

And since you are mentioning - listening others isn't your stronger side either. You are trying to convince me with myriad of explanations, without even noticing that I'm contesting slanted POV of the article and referenced sources, and above else nature of scholarship behind it. I'm not interested in contesting fact that "historicity" camp exist.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 01:03, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

౪ Santa ౪: You say, "these two articles are both used for onesided refutation of the Christ myth theory". Wikipedia isn't about refuting anything nor proving anything, it's about presenting expert views. I don't know how expert the sources in this article are, I haven't looked, but I just want us to keep that in mind. We also present views in accordance with their prominence or following, minority views getting minor coverage - that's the meaning of due weight. PiCo (talk) 03:17, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I did not say that these articles were intended to refute the Christ Myth theory; that was PiCo's assumption. I said that this article was supposed to cover the subject of Jesus's historicity, while Christ Myth theory is supposed to describe the Christ Myth theory, its origins, its claims, and why it has been rejected by mainstream scholars. The article is not POV-slanted because the Mythicist position is a fringe position with no serious following in mainstream scholarship. Giving the Mythicist position more coverage or trying to lend it more credence than it already receives here would be a clear violation of WP:FRINGE. This is what I have been arguing this whole time. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Apart from Christ myth theory is there any other version of the idea that Jesus was not a historical reality?PiCo (talk) 22:32, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

The Christ Myth theory is the position that Jesus was not a historical reality. Any position that argues for the historical non-existence of Jesus falls under the Christ Myth theory. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:01, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Still looks to me like we have an article fork. Can we put up a proposal for merging?PiCo (talk) 00:30, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

I still do not think they should be merged. My concern is that condensing these two articles into one would result in a less complete coverage of the topic. In particular, I am concerned that the reasons why scholars have almost unanimously rejected the Christ myth theory may inadvertently become obscured or sidelined. Nonetheless, if you really think they should be merged, I would not oppose you putting up a merge proposal. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:01, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

No, you've been active on this article and I haven't (nor on the christ myth article), so I'm happy to let you take the lead.PiCo (talk) 05:17, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

I say (heck!) no to a merge. The CMT is non-scholarly non-sense. Let's not treat it anything other than the fringe theory that it is. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 15:47, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Misleading Statement

"Since there are more textual variants in the New Testament (200–400 thousand) than it has letters (c. 140 thousand),[71]"

This is not a true statement or at least very deceptive. First that figure is an estimate, not a fact. Second I believe that it includes quotes and transliterations of the Greek MSs into other writings. If one limits the count to only the Greek writings meeting the basic critieria of a manuscript the number is much much smaller. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:19B:4201:36B:AC7F:EB39:7955:E786 (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Language

Why refuse to put in what the sources say?Music314812813478 (talk) 09:41, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

OK, you've started this discussion, now it's up to you to convince everyone that your change is appropriate, as per WP:BRD. - Nick Thorne ^talk 11:08, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

My view is that "certain" is a much more accurate description than "more probable than not," but we may want to modify it to say something along the lines of "effectively certain" or "virtually certain" since nothing in history can ever be entirely certain. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:35, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I think in history the most you can say about an event, if there are multiple reliable historical sources reporting on it, is that it is "verified by sources and probably true" As far as I am concerned, nothing in history can be called "certain." warshy ^(¥¥) 14:47, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

"Virtually certain" would probably best reflect the current consensus of scholarship. — JFG ^talk 15:12, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer "effectively certain," since this wording implies that, although we cannot go back in time and meet him in the flesh, for all practical purposes, we can treat his historical existence as certain. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:34, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I support "effectively certain", and I might add it now. Thanks for this consensus.Music314812813478 (talk) 01:44, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, looks like @Bill the Cat 7: already added it. Thanks. Music314812813478 (talk) 01:46, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Historical reliability of the gospels

One thing not mentioned in this section is that the gospels weren't written as history, but within the ancient genre of the "life", which was rather different to the modern biography - it was acceptable to make things up if you ran out of facts. Also, show the gospels were written - the end of a long process that began with the post-death appearances of Jesus to his followers (as "son of man" glorified in heaven), then the passion narratives (practically identical in all gospels but with significant differences of detail), then the teaching/preaching career, and finally the birth and infancy narratives. So they were written "backwards" in effect. As you go backward through the four the differences become more and more marked. It's mentioned in some books and is interesting enough to have in the article. I think so anyway. PiCo (talk) 00:36, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, there is an article Historical reliability of the Gospels which definitely could include such sourced material. This article is defined in the first sentence as being about "the degree to which sources show Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical figure." Editors often say there are too many articles on these issues, which I would tend to agree with, without having any strong feelings about it. If you want to add some referenced material along the lines you mention to this article, I think that would be OK.Smeat75 (talk) 04:20, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Any information you add must be strenuously sourced, meaning that every single statement should have multiple citations to sources whose reliability is beyond all question. Also, be careful not to oversimplify anything; your description of the gospels being "written backwards" is a bit of an oversimplification and, if you describe it that way in the article, it may give some readers false impressions. As I have discovered through personal experience, the historicity of Jesus is, quite possibly, the most controversial subject on all of Wikipedia (which, I might add, is unusual, considering that modern scholarship has regarded the issue as conclusively resolved for over a century). My point is that, if you think the information is pertinent, go ahead and add it, but be careful; make sure to cite your sources very effectively, do not water anything down, and leave no room for ambiguity. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:54, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

"The Tacitus reference is now widely accepted as an independent confirmation of Christ's crucifixion"

This comment in the article is backed up by one cite, this book: The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. I've not read the book and I'm not familiar with the authors so I'm happy to be put in my place on this, but it appears to be putting a partisan case forward rather than trying to offer an unbiased overview of the field. Which makes me wonder if that cite alone is sufficient to back up the claim that Tacitus is 'widely accepted as an independent confirmation'. Should more cites be required to back up that it's widely accepted? Especially when that sentence is followed by 'although some scholars question the historical value of the passage on various grounds.' with seven cites? Thanks. --Irrevenant [ talk ] 23:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I think the person who added all those cites to the "question the historical value" statement overdid it, is the real issue there.Smeat75 (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I have removed five of those citations, per WP:TOOMANYREFS. Two is enough.Smeat75 (talk) 14:50, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Tacitus could hardly be a confirmation of the crucifixion, since he wasn't there. At the very most he confirms that early Christians believed in the crucifixion.PiCo (talk) 01:07, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Section "Sources"

I think the section on sources has its balance all wrong - 4 paras (I think) on non-Christian sources and just one of the NT. It should be the other way round. And it needs to make clear that only the gospels deal with the life of Jesus - the rest, including the Pauline epistles, are about belief in the meaning of his death and resurrection (i.e., they're works of theology, not biography). Anyway, I'd suggest giving more space to the gospels, with a little about the very few things Paul says about the historical Jesus (not much more than that he was a Jew and was crucified).PiCo (talk) 01:28, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

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Should the Historicity of Jesus article imply that there are contemporaneous accounts of the life of Jesus?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There are no contemporaneous accounts of the life of Jesus. Should the article reflect this fact? I refer to the following edits: [1] [2] Dlabtot (talk) 19:23, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• No the article should explicitly state that there are no contemporaneous sources. Saying instead that "The main accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus are third party narratives written years after his death." clearly implies that other sources exist. The undeniable fact is that the only sources that exist are third party narratives written years after his alleged death and resurrection. Dlabtot (talk) 03:02, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
• I agree with Katolophyromai below. There are no contemporaneous sources for a lot of ancient history, and no reason to place undue emphasis on this mundane bit of information. Great scott (talk) 05:02, 11 September 2017 (UTC) CHECKUSER BLOCKED AS A SOCKPUPPET ACCOUNT.[3] Alsee (talk) 08:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• No need to place emphasis on this - as this is true of many figures of this era. We also have to be careful with only - while it is true there are no known contemporaneous sources - that does not mean they do not exist buried somewhere (so this we should be only known).Icewhiz (talk) 06:24, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
• No mention - it seems undue to make emphasis on this point and not fitting to the article where the topic focus is historicity, and then moves to what there is here. The 'main sources are' is simply a lead framing for scripture section. I'm not sure that's needed or good, but there's certainly no place there to justify jumping off into inserting insert some statement about 'and actually there is only third party narratives'. Markbassett (talk) 00:44, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
• no - I think this survey is poorly written, but the article should reflect what reliable sources say about the sources for the existence of Jesus. If reliable sources place an emphasis on the fact that there are no contemporaneous sources, then the article should reflect those sources. What other articles do/don't say is irrelevant. What matters is what reliable sources say. When in doubt, just quote the source directlyScoobydunk (talk) 06:11, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
• No You are getting a lot of no responses, but I do not think that everyone means the same thing when they are responding no. To be explicit: I am saying No there are no contemporary historical accounts of Jesus and the article should reflect this but not put extra emphasis on that fact. To do so would start to bend the article in a POV direction. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 23:31, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
• Only. The use of "only" in this context is appropriate and NPOV. Saying there are only 3rd party narratives is not "putting emphasis" on a "mundane bit of information". It's germane to an article on the historicity of Jesus and should be included. AlexEng^(TALK) 17:23, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
• No contemporary sources If it is the case that there are no contemporary sources, then this ought to be made crystal clear. The existing phrase about "main accounts" could mislead a reader into thinking that there might be earlier texts which have not been described here for whatever reason. The use of the word 'main' is also questionable; "first accounts" or "first known accounts" would be better. Great scott has suggested it is unnecessary to specify here that there are no contemporary sources, "as this is true of many figures of this era". This is not true. We have an embarrassment of contemporary historical and literary documents about countless persons of the Ancient world from Plato to Herod, which no single person could hope to read in a lifetime. It is rather striking, in fact, that a person as significant as Jesus should have no known contemporary documents. This makes him an exception, not the rule, among historically significant Ancient persons, and this fact should be made immediately obvious on this page. Cpaaoi (talk) 21:16, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Slight aside -- Cpaaoi, you're seriously overestimating how much written material has survived in Greek. Leaving out Christian writings (because we're talking about comparing the case of Jesus to non-Christian figures), the total amount of preserved writing we have up to 400 CE is large, but not that large. For someone who was very comfortable with Greek and read as a full time job (9 to 5, Monday to Friday), it would take about eight months to read everything (not just historical accounts, mind you, but everything) in this corpus within eight months. Now, out of that eight months worth of reading material, throw out the poetry and mythology, the books about animals and manuals of warfare. Now throw out everything written about people already dead. It is not striking at all that there are no contemporary records of Jesus. There are no contemporary records of Hannibal, for Pete's sake. Alephb (talk) 22:29, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Who's Pete? Can we be certain he existed? And how is his sake involved? Was he Japanese? Are there contemporary sauces?PiCo (talk) 01:18, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Single malt drinker here, thank you. --Pete (talk) 04:15, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough; this is an article about early Christianity and your point is well taken. I was thinking, however, from a global perspective - belied by my limited examples of Plato to Herod - considering Egypt, India, China and so forth. However, while it may be true that we have no contemporary sources on Hannibal (though we do have quotations taken from contemporary sources, I believe), is this absolutely the most modest comparison we might make in light of the specific and deliberate erasure of Carthage? I'm not entirely convinced that a lack of records on Hannibal in particular quite warrants a "for Pete's sake"! Whatever the case, I still consider that it is notable that we have no contemporary accounts of Jesus (who is of far, far greater historical importance than Hannibal), and I still question the value placed on the earliest sources as being the "main" ones. Cpaaoi (talk) 22:51, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

It may be worth noting that the only source we have about Socrates that was definitely written during his actual lifetime is Aristophanes's Clouds, a comedy written to belittle him. All of our other sources, including all of the dialogues of Plato and all of the writings of Xenophon - with the possible exception of Plato's Lysis (which some scholars argue may have been written during the last year or two of Socrates's life) - were written after his death. We should take into account the fact that Socrates was a widely recognized public figure in Athens, which was possibly the most literate city on earth at the time. Now, when we consider that Jesus's ministry was almost entirely confined to the region of Galilee, a poor, remote rural, backwater country where nearly the entire population was illiterate, it does not at all seem out of place that there are no sources written within his own lifetime that mention him. On the contrary, this is precisely what we would expect; even if Jesus was a well-known local celebrity, there are no grounds to believe that anyone in his community would have written about him until years later.

My main objection to this proposed change is that the descriptor "third party narratives written years after his death" does not adequately describe all of the surviving sources. As I have stated before, the epistles of Paul are certainly not "third party narratives." If we do change the word "main" to "only," we will also have to amend the description. Here is possible proposal for how the revised sentence might read: "All sources that mention Jesus were written after his death." I would be fine with changing the sentence to say this, as long as it does not sound like the article is trying to place undue emphasis on this fact. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:33, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I quite agree with Katolophyromai: the fact that no-one was writing in his lifetime about the work of a carpenter-turned-preacher in a corner of the Roman Empire is absolutely unsurprising. When I say it is *notable*, I don't mean that it is notable that no records were made. I mean that it is notable that we have no primary documents about a man from whose supposed birth date most of the world now takes its calendar, for example. It ought to be clarified that no contemporary accounts are known to have existed, because a reader coming to the subject fresh could easily imagine that there might possibly exist a scribe's document from the court of Pilate, for example; when, of course, we have nothing. Something along the lines of Katolophyromai's "All sources that mention Jesus were written after his death" would certainly be an improvement. Cpaaoi (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, the article should reflect the fact that no known contemporary sources refer to Jesus. I base my opinion on the well-stated argument in the threaded discussion, which says: "the notability is that we have no direct record of this person who has gone on to such great and overwhelming fame and influence." I further agree with the argument here in the Survey section that "The existing phrase about 'main accounts' could mislead a reader into thinking that there might be earlier texts which have not been described here." So I oppose use of the word "main." DonFB (talk) 06:04, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

I note that the title of this RfC section and wording of the request itself seem to call for a different answer, depending on which phrase to which an editor responds. To be clear, my response is to the wording in the text of the RfC, not to the title of the section. DonFB (talk) 06:09, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment The diffs linked at the head of the thread are to the line: "The main/sole accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus are third party narratives written years after his death." It's perfectly true that the sole, not main, accounts of the life and teachings are the gospels, and that these are from 70 AD and later. (The letters of Paul are earlier, but aren't about life or teachings, just Jesus' divine nature). So I'd be happy with "sole" - BUT, this sentence is unsourced. If it's worth having in the article at all, it needs to be sourced.PiCo (talk) 06:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
• Simply describe the earliest sources, giving dates as appropriate. Jesus! (sorry, couldn't resist; I agree with Katolophyromai) Clean Copy^talk 14:51, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

• Describe the sources that by-passes problems with 'only/main', though removal of 'main' from initial sentence would also remove the false implication claimed that SOME contemporaneous accounts exist. There is no need to emphasise this, in fact, to the extent possible, de-emphasis is apt (as someone else says below, hardly anyone from this period has surviving contemporaneous records, so why would anyone expect JC to be different). Pincrete (talk) 16:23, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

• No mention The article should not say that there are contemporary sources, nor should it make a point of the absence of such sources. Conspiracy theorists love to make a big deal of the claim "no contemporary sources", as if it carried any weight. As any scholar could point out (and lots of scholars have pointed out), that means absolutely nothing. There are almost no persons from antiquity, apart from a few very prominent Romans, for which we do have contemporary sources. In other words, no contemporary sources is the default for almost every person of the time, and we do not make a point of it elsewhere either. There is no reason to bring it up here either, as it's a non-issue for the topic. Jeppiz (talk) 13:12, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

First of all, the use of the word "main" does not in any way imply that there are contemporary sources. I am not sure what gave you the impression that such a thing would somehow be implied. In any case, the four canonical gospels are not the only sources of information about the historical Jesus; in the New Testament itself there are also the epistles of the apostle Paul, which predate the gospels, and the General Epistles, some of which predate the gospels and others of which are later. Paul never met Jesus personally, but he knew Jesus's brother James, who is thought by some to have been the author of the Epistle of James. In addition to these sources, there are also later sources, such as the apocryphal Gospels of Thomas and Peter, the writings of early church fathers such as Papias, and the mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus and Tacitus. None of these sources provide full accounts of Jesus's life and teachings, but they do reference specific incidents and sayings. You certainly cannot dismiss Paul (or James, for that matter) as being members of a "third party." --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:17, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everything Katolophyromai says above and also it would be quite wrong to give the impression in the article that there is something somehow strange or suspicious about the fact that "There are no contemporaneous accounts of the life of Jesus." That is irrelevant, there are many notable figures from antiquity that are only known from a few references to them years or many years after their deaths, as anyone who has any knowledge of ancient history is aware.Smeat75 (talk) 00:37, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

As opposed to the so-called 'main' sources, that apparently we all agree are not contemporaneous, what are the other sources that are not 'main' but contemporaneous? Dlabtot (talk) 02:54, 11 September 2017 (UTC) ps, 'contemporary' and 'contemporaneous' are two distinct words with distinct meanings. Dlabtot (talk) 02:56, 11 September 2017 (UTC) I look forward to the input of other editors who, like me, are fresh eyes, new to this article. Dlabtot (talk) 02:58, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Stated more succinctly, should the article say "the main sources" or "the only sources"? If contemporaneous sources exist, I think it should say 'main'. If not, I can't understand why we would not say 'only', as 'main' clearly implies that there are other sources. Dlabtot (talk) 03:03, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Dlabtot, the sentence in question does not say anything at all about "contemporary sources." It only talks about "third party narratives written years after his death." This phrase is, of course, is referring to the four canonical gospels, which are our main sources. This description, however, does not suit our other sources, such as the Pauline epistles, which are not "narratives" and were certainly not written by a "third party." For that matter, the earliest of the Pauline epistles is probably the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which was probably written in around 49 AD, only around sixteen years after the crucifixion, thus belying the implication of the phrase "years after his death," which seems to imply that the "narratives" in question were written long afterwards. The Pauline epistles are not strictly "contemporaneous sources," but they certainly do not match the description of "third party narratives written years after his death." --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

To make a claim as strong as "only," couldn't there be a source that would provide that? Otherwise, wouldn't it be wiser to leave as "main"?173.59.13.129 (talk) 06:22, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes there are many, many sources that can be brought forth to support the fact that there are no contemporaneous accounts of the life of Jesus, but rather than ask to prove a negative,perhaps a single source could be brought forth to assert a positive. Can you point to a single contemporaneous account of the life of Jesus? Dlabtot (talk) 06:32, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you are the one asking others to prove a negative (proving that none exist). Your examples have been provided above. Find a source to support your view, then no one would object to your edit, it would seem. Wikipedia isn't about original research anyway. 173.59.13.129 (talk) 07:29, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

I asked no such thing. I'm not asking anyone to prove anything. To restate, the question is whether the article should imply that contemporaneous sources exist, or whether it should simply state the facts as supported by sources. Can you point to a single contemporaneous account of the life of Jesus? It is a simple yes or no question that certainly does not require you to prove a negative. Dlabtot (talk) 05:54, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Dlabtot, there are no sources that mention Jesus from within his own lifetime; the earliest source (as I have already stated above) is most likely 1 Thessalonians, which was written in around 49 AD, roughly sixteen years after Jesus's death (although some believe that the Epistle to the Galatians may have been earlier.) Whether or not there are "contemporaneous sources" depends on what you mean by "contemporaneous." --Katolophyromai (talk) 11:01, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

If you don't know what it means, just look it up in any dictionary. Dlabtot (talk) 05:56, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Dlabtot: I know what the word "contemporaneous" means. What I was referring to in this comment was whether or not you are applying a loose definition or a strict one. By the strictest definition, "contemporaneous" only refers to sources written within the person's exact lifetime; we have no such sources from while Jesus was alive. Loosely speaking, however, "contemporaneous" can also be applied to sources written near the time when the person was alive, but not exactly during the person's lifetime. For instance, to give an unrelated example of this, several of Plato's early dialogues were written shortly after Socrates's death, but not during his actual lifetime. By the strictest definition, these dialogues are not contemporaneous, but, by a looser definition, some might consider them to be. --Katolophyromai (talk) 09:50, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Concerning the question of 'emphasis', which some have raised, another possibility, rather than changing the word 'most' to 'only', would be to omit the sentence altogether. This would both remove any possibility of undue 'emphasis' and the false implication. Dlabtot (talk) 06:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

The main accounts of unicorns are mythological or fictional. Can anyone really dispute that this statement implies that accounts of unicorns exist that are neither mythological nor fictional? Dlabtot (talk) 06:44, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Cpaaoi, it just occurred to me that maybe I was commenting in the wrong place, so I'll continue in this place. How striking is it that Jesus is not mentioned in any contemporary sources? Well, that would depend in part on just how many contemporary sources exist who might have been in a position to mention him. If there were 1,000 historians in Roman Palestine during Jesus' lifetime, we might expect one or more of them to mention him. But there are zero contemporaneous authors from Roman Palestine whose works survive today. The fact that zero of these zero writers mention Jesus is, well, not that striking. In fact, for the entire century there is only one author from first-century Roman Palestine (Judea, Samaria, Galilee) whose works have survived to the present. That was Josephus, who was born after Jesus died, and who does mention Jesus. So one possible reason that no contemporary sources mention Jesus was that there were no nearby contemporary sources that could have mentioned him. Alephb (talk) 00:19, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I've just added to the thread above; but I'll clarify briefly here. The notability is not, of course, that no records were made. Rather, the notability is that we have no direct record of this person who has gone on to such great and overwhelming fame and influence. I think it is only fair to the reader to make this plain, since an intelligent but ignorant person could assume that, living in the empire of the Romans, who are known to have been great record-keepers, and having been involved with the courts there is that possibility (however minutely slim) that Jesus' historical trace survives somewhere, mentioned as a 'Nazarene carpenter' thanks to some industrious scribe - when of course it does not. There are comparatively few examples of people who left absolutely no known historical trace during their lifetime, yet who have shaped the world to such a vast extent, and have continued to do so for so very long. This is where the notability lies - that most of the world's calendars and newspapers, for example, bear a date deriving from his supposed birth date, yet we have no primary documents which demonstrate his birthday - and why I think it is worth briefly mentioning in the article. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Cpaaoi (talk) 02:04, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. Sounds like perhaps we were talking past one another. Fair enough. I'll let you all carry on then on the exact wording then. Alephb (talk) 02:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

"the Romans, who are known to have been great record-keepers" - and how many of these records, I mean the actual documents, actually survive, do you think? Zero. Not one single one. Smeat75 (talk) 14:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

It's easy to overestimate how much documentation is "normal" or "expected" for pre-modern figures. Take Muhammad, for instance. How much written material, written down during his lifetime, mentions him by name? None. The first biographical material appears a century after his death. Contemporary sources on Hannibal? None. Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt for thirty years? No narrative of her life; a few passing mentions in stories about Romans. Buddha? Confucius? Nothing. How many written works written during the life of Alexander the Great have survived? Nothing but fragments surviving not in their own works but via summary and quotation in the works of later writers. While it is true that Jesus isn't referenced in any contemporary sources, and maybe the article will mention this in some way, it certainly shouldn't imply that it's strange for Jesus to not have produced a greater quantity of contemporary surviving records than Muhammad or Hannibal. Alephb (talk) 14:45, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

It is true that virtually all trace has disappeared of the mountains of tax, court, travel, legal, military, real-estate and survey documents which the Empire produced for centuries, Smeat75. (Though not quite "Zero. Not one single one.", I think.) Therefore it is worth noting in this article that no contemporary trace remains of Jesus, if ever such existed. This Wikipedia article does not exist for the enlightenment of the enlightened. It is here primarily for people who don't know about the subject to come to learn. The Gospel of Luke, for example, tells us that the reason Jesus was born in Bethlehem was that his parents were obliged to travel there due to an ongoing imperial census. We also know from the Gospel of Mark, for example, that the grown Jesus appeared in the court of Pilate. Assuming that not everyone who comes to this Wikipedia page is a theological philologist, we may infer that some of those innocent souls may imagine that there exists a (nameless) record of the pre-natal Jesus under his mother's name. Or, in that safe knowledge that the Romans were indeed record-keepers to a fault, they might in their blissfulness picture an adolescent Jesus mentioned in a later census. Or, having absorbed the Easter lessons of the Passion in their infancy, the reader might just as easily nurture a quaint notion that Jesus' name or occupation survives on a court document somewhere. Naturally, none of this is the case, but then not all of us are in possession of all the facts, and it is only fair to such a reader to be clear on the matter! And I would welcome brief notes on other relevant pages that no contemporary sources exist there, too. Cpaaoi (talk) 01:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Manuscripts, actual documents survive by chance from the Roman empire in a few instances such as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri but of actual manuscripts from Rome itself in antiquity there are none. You do indeed see "mythicists" saying things like "why isn't there a transcript of Jesus' trial" and that is why the article must not give readers the idea that there is anything strange or suspicious about the fact there are no documents from his own lifetime that mention him.Smeat75 (talk) 13:59, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I think the recent edit by ‎Katolophyromai needs "contemporary" or "contemporaneous" inserted between "All" and "sources." Or, perhaps a phrase, like "All historical sources of the period that mention...." DonFB (talk) 03:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I added the term "extant"; does that meet your concern? Clean Copy^talk 14:51, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I'll withdraw my suggestion. I was seeing a distinction that's not present, so text as written is ok. DonFB (talk) 06:10, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

We don’t have exact dates on the writing of the gospels - for example Matthew, as a tax collector - was literate. Given the amount of detail recorded it is quite probable some material was recorded during Jesus lifetime. Even if nothing was recorded until after his death and resurrection that would not be surprising since the disciples did not fully understand his mission until afterward. Legacypac (talk) 05:17, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

No historical references outside of the gospels.

No historical references outside of the gospels is a frequently used claim that has no merit. The gnostic gospels for one, some of which are older than the synoptic gospels, have many references to Jesus and many others in the gospels. I am not sure who started the hoax that there were no references outside the Bible, but it is incorrect. We must also consider the various documents from India stating that both Jesus and Thomas were in India. I guess it is just selective reading that allows one to conclude that there are not references. We can also include Jospehus who states that both John the Baptist and James were killed in Jerusalem. Some claim that Jospehus was interpolated, but it seems very unlikely when you read the entire period that Jospephus reports on in context. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.47.249.246 (talk) 18:45, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

You are mostly correct, but I think most of what you are saying is already addressed in the article. I would like to make a few corrections:

1. Not all apocryphal gospels are "Gnostic"; many of them were used by other early Christian sects, including Proto-orthodox Christianity.
2. All the known apocryphal gospels were, in fact, all written long after the three Synoptic Gospels, and are not usually considered sources of historical information. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest surviving gospel, was probably written in around 70 AD and those of Matthew and Luke were written within the next decade or so thereafter. The earliest surviving apocryphal gospel, on the other hand, is probably the Gospel of Thomas, which may have been written in the 90s AD, around the same time as the Gospel of John, but several decades after the Synoptic Gospels. In terms of historical reliability, the Synoptics are generally agreed to be the earliest and therefore the most trustworthy. The Synoptics also definitely relied on earlier written and oral sources; Matthew and Luke, for instance, are known to have relied on the Q source, which was probably written in around 50 AD or thereabouts, twenty years before Mark.
3. The legends about Thomas or Jesus travelling to India are extremely late and are dismissed by most scholars as historically unreliable.
4. The most important sources for the historicity of Jesus are actually the eight undisputedly authentic epistles of the apostle Paul, the earliest of which (either 1 Thessalonians or Galatians) was probably written in around 49 AD, only around sixteen years after Jesus's death. These eight epistles contain many clear references to Jesus as a recent historical figure. In Galatians 1:18–20, Paul even describes himself having met Jesus's brother, James in Jerusalem. Even without the mountains of other evidence in support of Jesus's historicity, this brief mention by itself pretty much undeniably proves that Jesus was a real person, since, obviously, Paul could not have met Jesus's brother if Jesus had not existed. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:34, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Use of the word 'MOST' to describe the number of scholars.

Using the worst 'most' signifies that 51% or more of scholars of antiquities agree. I see no poll taken or statistics given that signifies the use of the word 'most' to describe the number of scholars who agree or disagree on the historicity of Jesus. It would be proper to describe the number of scholars who agree with this subject as "Many" or even the word "Numerous". Use of the word 'most' is unfounded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Digitalbeachbum (talk • contribs) 12:26, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

If you check the citations at the end of the line beginning "Virtually all...", there's eight citations there. One of them, from Robert M. Price, admits "that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars." A work by Richard Carrier, another mythicist, is also cited.

Frankly, if one doesn't get that the CMT is an extreme minority position, one hasn't studied the mainstream academic perspective on the matter. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:01, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Historians

I noticed the page claimed that virtually all historians accept the existence of jesus as fact. But the last time I visited the page (about a year ago) it rightly did not say that. In the meantime I had a discussion with someone about the historicity of jesus and I pointed out that while there might be consensus among biblical scholars I'd rather listen to historians for having a more unbiased opinion on the matter. This person or someone who read the discussion must've changed the page since then without providing proper sources. The people involed with this page did not raise a flag however, for reasons unknown, that's why I want to revert that change now. Fact is that the life of jesus is mostly not even discussed while studying middle eastern history because the lack of historical evidence. There is a consensus among biblical scholars however, but that doesn't really mean anything because most of them are religious anyways and I worry about their objectivity on the matter. It might not be shocking that most of the sources on the wikipedia page are quotes of people saying jesus existed because other people said he existed. I trust everyone on this page is familiar with the historical documents that are being used to confirm his existence. Biblical scholars see more in these documents than they actually prove, and historians just mostly dismiss them to avoid inaccuracies. So please leave the to saying that there's a consensus among biblical scholars. Anyone like to comment on this before I make a change to the page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuririn45 (talk • contribs) 18:42, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

We have discussed this here many, many times before. The consensus that Jesus was a historical figure is not just confined to biblical scholars; virtually all historians of ancient history agree that he existed and the citations here bear that fact out. One of the citations is to Michael Grant, who is a classicist, not a Bible scholar. Grant is quoted as saying, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus, or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." If that does not support the statement that there are no serious, reputable historians who say Jesus did not exist, I do not know what does. Besides, there are plenty of other sources that can be provided to support this statement aside from just the tiny handful that are presented here in the article. We cannot possibly hope to cite every single scholar who says the Christ Myth theory is nonsense, so we can only cite representative examples.

One irony that I would like to comment on is that the Biblical scholars whose objectivity you challenge are the same ones who have been derided by Christian apologists for centuries as emissaries of Satan because they examine the Bible critically. Indeed, these are the same scholars who say that most of the stories in the Old Testament are basically fiction, that many of the stories in the gospels about Jesus's life are merely legends or fictions constructed to serve a theological purpose, and that the Bible as a whole is rife with obvious contradictions. Yet, in spite of all this, all of them very much agree that Jesus did exist as a human being in the first century AD. It may also be worth noting that the two scholars who have argued most strongly against the atheist activists and internet conspiracy theorists who claim that Jesus did not exist are, in fact, non-believers themselves: Bart D. Ehrman and Maurice Casey. It seems biblical scholarship is the only field in which people imagine that a person's credibility in it is somehow greater if he or she has not studied it, because apparently anyone who studies the Bible must be a fundamentalist apologist. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:34, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

What proportion of "serious, reputable historians" would even bother wasting their time on deciding whether Jesus existed? It's actually a very strange claim. Most would not be obsessed with such a matter. Their fields of specialisation are elsewhere. There's a lot more to history than this small matter. In addition, the term "serious, reputable historians" seems to evoke the No true Scotsman fallacy in my mind. There can never be a list of "serious, reputable historians". It's a silly claim to make. HiLo48 (talk) 03:19, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

I am rather baffled by your assertion that historians would not care if Jesus existed. Of course they would care; that is like saying that they would not care if Alexander the Great existed, or if Hammurabi existed, or if Socrates existed. Obviously, historians have plenty of other things to write about and most of them have not written about Jesus, but that does not in any way translate to mean that they simply would not care whether or not he existed. If Jesus did not exist, that would force us to completely and drastically revise our entire understanding of the origins of early Christianity, which, for historians, would be enormously significant, especially considering how important Christianity was in the history of late antiquity. All the available evidence, however, supports the current scholarly understanding of Christian origins, which is based on centuries of meticulous research and scholarship. The consensus holds that Jesus was a real Galileean preacher who lived in the first century AD and was crucified under the orders of the Roman governor of Judaea Pontius Pilate. After his death, his followers, rightly or wrongly, believed that he rose from the dead and continued to tell stories about him. These stories, some of which are accurate, some of which are legends, and some of which are a mixture of the two, were eventually written down in the Synoptic Gospels. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:50, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

TWood October 24, 2016

I have no doubt that it is. So is it true that you know of zero mythicists who have a teaching job at a major university (in a relevant department like a religious or history dept.)?

Follow up. Do you ever worry that your agreeing to debate a mythicist validates their views too much?

Bart Bart October 24, 2016

1. I don’t know of any in the fields of NT/Early Christianity/Classics/Ancient History/Early Judaism. 2. Yup.

Quoted from [4]. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:59, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Robert M. Price and the label of atheist or Christian atheist.

Robert M Price labels himself as a 'Christian atheist' not as an atheist. Denoting him specifically as an 'atheist' is a completely different label. There is a page devoted to 'Christian atheist' within Wikipedia explaining the difference between the two beliefs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Digitalbeachbum (talk • contribs) 12:29, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

That makes no sense. Why are we citing such a confused person again? Legacypac (talk) 16:26, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Your comment are not in line with the guidelines of Wikipedia. If you have nothing constructive to add please refrain from making such comments. Labeling Richard M Price as only an atheist is limiting and inaccurate. He is a religious skeptic and there are YouTube videos of him talking about being a Christian atheist.digitalbeachbum 17:49, 12 May 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Digitalbeachbum (talk • contribs)

To that I might add that Ehrman describes himself as a Christian agnostic/Christian atheist, meaning he does not believe in God, but thinks that the teachings of Jesus are worthy of application. Cultural Christian seems to be the term for it. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:42, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Sources request

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

To sort of follow on from the discussion between Kurinin and Katolophyromai: I, too, was puzzled by the fact that most of the cited sources for the apparent wide consensus on the historicity of Jesus are theologians and Biblican scholars, as opposed to historians. I note that Michael Grant, a classicist, is also cited, and I accept that the claim is probably correct, but having attempted to prove this to someone else using this page as a jumping off point, I was understandably constrained by the fact that all but one of the cited sources here could reasonably be questioned. I take the point that it's probably somewhat unfair to doubt the objectivity of Biblical scholars, particularly those that are not even believers themselves like Ehrman, but the fact remains that people will and do have this scepticism.

I note you say that "there are plenty of other sources that can be provided to support this statement aside from just the tiny handful that are presented here in the article". So I guess my request is- can we add some of these? If there's such near-unanimous consensus then surely we can rustle up a couple more classicists and historians, and this would make the article and by extension Wikipedia more convincing to the uninformed (such as myself), which is presumably a desirable end. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.104.3.156 (talk) 23:16, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

It is true that most genuine experts on Jesus are one kind or another of religious themselves. But where you find an atheist or agnostic (they are rare) with experience in the field, they agree that Jesus' existence is a consensus view (Bart Ehrman). Note that the lead even cites Richard Carrier (an agnostic athiest), who thinks Jesus likely never lived, but who nevertheless realizes that there's a scholarly consensus in favor of Jesus' historicity. The lead is chock-full of citations of various scholars who all say that virtually all scholars agree on this. I see no reason to rustle up more. Alephb (talk) 16:05, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

As always, the believers wheel out one tame atheist "scholar" to prove, well, nothing in particular. If any other topic in Wikipedia had so many of its sources based on the beliefs of believers, with no concrete facts, most of the content would be removed. But that's religion for you. HiLo48 (talk) 00:08, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

You shouldn't make implications about what I do or do not believe religiously. Who is the "one tame atheist" scholar? The only one I mentioned above who calls himself an atheist is Richard Carrier. He's a Jesus mythicist himself, but he admits that he's almost alone in the scholarly world. Alephb (talk) 21:01, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

I made no implications about you personally. My comments were general. And that's anther problem here. Stop thinking of this as a personal thing. Try to remove your ego from the discussion. Compare the sourcing here with that for a non-religious topic. Almost everything here would fail any rational measure of independence. HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

If you pick any major university not affiliated with any particular religion, and then you find the people at that university who publish peer-reviewed stuff on Jesus, they think he existed. Wikipedia takes that consensus, and reports it. It certainly would be an interesting exercise to run a religious test, remove all scholars who have any religious affiliation, and then write an article on whether Jesus did or didn't exist. Anyone is welcome to create such an article, and to post it somewhere other than on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a truth-finding machine. Wikipedia is a machine that runs through the peer-reviewed literature and summarizes it. If someone could create a website that is a truth-finding machine, and actually have it be functional, that would be a wonderful thing. But it ain't Wikipedia. Wikipedia is and will continue be to wrong wherever the major universities are wrong. Alephb (talk) 01:33, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The key policy ignored by the religious articles, and that comment, is WP:INDEPENDENT. It says "An independent source is a source that has no vested interest in a given Wikipedia topic and therefore is commonly expected to cover the topic from a disinterested perspective." HiLo48 (talk) 02:31, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The Wikipedia regulars (the dreaded cabal) won't interpret "vested interest" so as to exclude all Christian persons from being sources about religiously relevant topics, on the grounds that Christians have a vested interest in their religion. Nor all atheists from being sources about the historicity of Jesus, for their interest in Christianity's falsehood. Nor religious (or non-religious) persons as sources on evolution. Nor Democrats or Republicans on US politics. Nor Australians on Australian history. Whoever controls the relevant departments in the universities controls Wikipedia on the relevant subjects, for better or worse. Ideological litmus tests for individuals are a non-starter here. Alephb (talk) 00:01, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

So you disagree with that policy? Or simply accept that we can't avoid having people convinced that Jesus existed, with no concrete evidence at all, being sources for the claim that Jesus existed? OK, so long as that position is clear. HiLo48 (talk) 00:23, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Much of this is talked about on the FAQ for this page. Pointing this out as a summary on how consensus has worked out in the past, and that this thread has been had before. Check Talk:Historicity of Jesus/Archive index for more examples and further discussions. --Equivamp - talk 01:15, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

The talk page had so many things in those brown boxes that I hadn't looked through them all. Had I realized the FAQ has already said the things I wanted to say, I would have simply pointed to it and avoided spending the time. Thank you for pointing it out. Alephb (talk) 01:27, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

"Nor all atheists from being sources about the historicity of Jesus, for their interest in Christianity's falsehood." From an atheist POV, I don't get it. I personally disagree with the teachings of Christianity, and I don't put much thought on an itinerant preacher from the 1st century who was violently attacking innocent merchants.

In any case, the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy prevents us from expressing our own doubts about what specific sources claim. "Wikipedia does not publish original research. Its content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors. Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it." Dimadick (talk) 15:13, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not saying that atheists are inherently biased on the topic. Certainly I wouldn't want to imply that atheists are fixated on Christianity. I'm just saying that if we're going to try to judge sources' independence by things like how they identify religiously, we're opening up a can of worms. And it's not a can of worms that I think the Wikipedia community intends to open. Which of the following groups are inherently unable to do genuine scholarship on certain topics? Christians on Jesus, Buddhists, Jews, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians? Not that all those groups are equivalent, of course -- but once Wikipedia decides that people affiliated with certain identities are automatically disqualified from being sources on certain topics, the possibilities for argument are endless. Which identities? Which topics? Alephb (talk) 22:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

"Republicans" You mean supporters of republicanism and anti-monarchism? Well their scholarship may be quite biased against past and present monarchs. There is the precedent of Whig history. Because these historians believed in constitutional government and personal freedom, they depicted historical figures who supposedly hindered or attempted to hinder "political progress" as villains. Their version of history was:

• "fiercely partisan and righteously judgemental, dividing the personnel of the past into the good and the bad. And it did so on the basis of the marked preference for liberal and progressive causes, rather than conservative and reactionary ones. [...] Whig history was, in short, an extremely biased view of the past: eager to hand out moral judgements, and distorted by teleology, anachronism and present-mindedness." Dimadick (talk) 23:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dimadick: Judging from the capital letter "R" and the fact that he mentions "Republicans" immediately after "Democrats," I think Alephb was pretty clearly referring to members of the United States Republican Party. There are only two political parties in the United States: Republicans and Democrats, which, for the most part, generally viciously hate each other. Your example of Whig history is not relevant here for two reasons: 1) One specific instance of some members of one particular ideology writing bad history on account of their ideological biases does not in any way prove that all people belonging to all ideologies (or even all Whigs for that matter) are incapable of writing objectively about a subject relating to their ideology. If we wanted to, we could dig up millions of instances of people writing bad history as a result of ideological biases and it still would not prove anything. 2) Both English and American Whigs ceased to exist over a century ago and neither of them have any close relevance whatsoever to the views of contemporary scholars on the historical Jesus.

@HiLo48: The point Alephb was trying to make is that we do not use ideological litmus tests here on Wikipedia. Just because a person belongs to a certain ideology does not mean that person is inherently incapable of writing objectively about subjects relating to that ideology. Everyone belongs to at least some kind of ideology, so, if we defined the word "independent" to mean "not having any kind of possible personal or ideological beliefs on the subject whatsoever," then no one would be considered an acceptable source about anything. Alternatively, we could do what you seem to actually be advocating, which is that we establish a specific set of ideologies that are acceptable and exclude all others. That would, of course, be in direct violation of WP:NPOV and at least half a dozen other policies. WP:INDEPENDENT is not about making sure that all sources conform to a specific ideology, but rather making sure that our sources have gone through secondary publishing and are not written by people who are so intimately and directly connected to the subject that they are incapable of writing about it neutrally. Here is a purely hypothetical example: Let us say that I am writing an article about the Pope (I do not know why I would be, but, for the sake of the example, let us pretend that I am) and I find a source written by the Pope's brother who grew up with him, knows him personally, and is in regular contact with him. Obviously, I should not cite that source on its own without secondary interpretation. It is fine as a primary source, but the Pope's brother is too closely related to him for him to qualify as an independent secondary source. If, on the other hand, I find an academic biography of the Pope written from an objective perspective by a respected scholar who also happens to be a devout Catholic, there is no reason why I would not be allowed to cite that source.

One matter that ought to be mentioned here is that the exact same Biblical scholars who are repeatedly lambasted here by Mythicists for supporting the historicity of Jesus are also routinely bashed by conservative evangelicals, a large number of whom seriously regard them as emissaries of Satan sent to discredit the Bible. Now, it is well-established and has been established here for a long time that respected scholars nearly unanimously agree that Jesus was a historical figure. That is not just because many scholars are Christians; there are actually quite a significant number of scholars in the field who are not Christians and all of them agree that Jesus was a real person. In fact, the two most prominent defenders of Jesus's historical existence in recent years are Bart D. Ehrman and Maurice Casey, both of whom are avowed nonbelievers. Casey, who takes pride in what he regards as his total scholarly independence, points out in the introduction to his book that he is a tenured professor at an English university where he is permitted to write literally anything he wants without having to fear for his job, so, if he thought the Christ Myth theory had any validity, he could write in favor of it without having to worry about being fired. Instead, he concludes, "...the whole idea that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist as a historical figure is verifiably false. Moreover, it has not been produced by anyone or anything with any reasonable relationship to critical scholarship. It belongs to the fantasy lives of people who used to be fundamentalist Christians. They did not believe in critical scholarship then, and they do not do so now. I cannot find any evidence that any of them have adequate professional qualifications." This is coming from the same man whose work has been characterized as "frequently anti-Christian."

HiLo48 stated that there is "no concrete evidence at all" for the historical existence of Jesus as a human being in first-century Galilee, but, as I have repeatedly explained before, there is a great deal of evidence, overwhelming evidence, in fact; Mythicists simply ignore it, dismiss it without evidence, or attempt to explain it away with ad hoc suppositions based on bizarrely contorted reinterpretations. Here it is again (very, very briefly summarized): The eight epistles of the apostle Paul that are universally agreed to be authentic, even by the most radical of scholars repeatedly reference Jesus as a recent historical figure. The earliest of these, the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, was probably written in around 49 AD, only around sixteen years after Jesus's death, and the others were written within the decade or so thereafter. Paul even states in Galatians 1:18–20 that he has personally met Jesus's closest disciple Peter and Jesus's brother James, both of whom he also mentions in other passages. The Synoptic Gospels contain information, most notably that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, that he came from Nazareth, and that he was crucified, that no one in the ancient world would ever have said about their alleged Savior unless they were already widely-known facts that would be impossible for them to deny. There are also indications that the Synoptic Gospels rely on earlier written and oral sources, including ones written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and his earliest disciples. They also demonstrate knowledge of Jewish culture and customs at the time of Jesus that would be impossible unless the gospel-writers had conducted research. This does not mean the gospels are perfect sources; no serious scholar would ever argue that, but they do definitely contain at least some genuine historical information.

The most fundamental requirement in order for Mythicism to even be tenable is that there would have to be evidence that the earliest Christians believed Jesus was something other than an actual human being, but we have absolutely no evidence of this. In fact, we have no evidence that any Christians in antiquity ever thought of Jesus as not having a historical existence. Even the Docetists in the second and third centuries still believed that he had really walked the earth; they just tried to argue that had done so in the form of a spirit that only appeared to be human. Then, finally, there are the mentions of Jesus by Josephus and Tacitus, which someone could conceivably explain by saying that the idea of the mythical Christ as a historical figure had already developed by then, but that still would not explain why neither Josephus or Tacitus express any awareness of an alternative Christianity in which he was not. The alleged parallels between Jesus and pre-Christian deities are extremely vague, often highly subjective, and almost always wildly exaggerated. In any case, none of them are in any way indicative of the notion that Jesus as a person did not exist.

None of this should in any way even remotely be confused with evidence that Jesus was divine or that he really performed miracles; neither of those things can be proven and very few secular scholars would even entertain such ideas. This is, however, collectively speaking, virtually irrefutable evidence that Jesus was indeed a real person. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:37, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I apologize for the lengthiness of my response above; I did not realize how long it was. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:40, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

And it's just another statement from a believer. No value at all to a rational discussion. HiLo48 (talk) 03:09, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@HiLo48: Did you even read any of what I just wrote? I am summarizing arguments from critical scholars. Dismissing an argument without reasoning simply on the basis of the person who happens to be making it is not a rational response at all; it is an emotional one of the exact same variety that fundamentalists and creationists give to scientists when they attempt to talk sense into them. Surely, since you purport to believe in free and rational thought, you of all people, would not want to use such fundamentalistic reasoning when rejecting the consensus of critical scholars. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:24, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Of course I read it. You based it on faith in ancient writings from people not important outside the religion, and who may not have existed themselves. HiLo48 (talk) 03:36, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@HiLo48: There are no scholars (or non-scholars that I am aware of for that matter) that doubt the existence of Paul, Josephus, or Tacitus. There is an immense amount of scholarship and textual criticism that has gone into establishing which Pauline epistles are definitely authentic and it has firmly concluded that 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Philemon were all definitely written by Paul (probably in roughly that order chronologically). Meanwhile, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians, and 2 Thessalonians are all definitely forgeries. The authorship of Colossians is disputed. The writings of Josephus are our most important source of information on the history of Judaea from the first century BC through the end of the first century AD and the writings of Tacitus are among our most important sources on the early history of the Roman Empire. The writings of both historians have been thoroughly analyzed by scholars for millennia and no one has ever found any evidence to indicate that either historian did not exist or that the histories attributed to them were written by anyone else. Relying on historical documents is not a religious thing; it is the basis of the entire historical method. If you reject the validity of historical documents as sources of information about the past, that is not being anti-religion; that is just being anti-history. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:55, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

And again, how many of those scholars are non-Christian? How many non-Christians bother to study this stuff? HiLo48 (talk) 04:06, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@HiLo48: There are a lot more non-Christians involved in the field of Biblical studies than one might automatically assume. There are actually quite a few agnostics and atheists, such Ehrman, Casey, and others; these mostly ended up in the field because they started out as Christians, but abandoned Christianity early in their careers. A surprisingly large number of scholars on the subject are Jewish, such as Amy-Jill Levine, Geza Vermes, and Paula Fredriksen. We actually have an entry about this in the FAQ. Even most of the ones who are Christian are very liberal; if you asked an evangelical how many critical Bible scholars are Christian, he or she would probably tell you that the overwhelming majority are godless heathens. Ironically, when I find myself defending Biblical scholars here on Wikipedia, it is almost always against evangelical Christians, so it is an unusual change that this time I am defending them against atheists. In any case, it ultimately does not matter for Wikipedia's purposes whether those scholars are Christians or not; Wikipedia reports what mainstream academic scholars describe. We do not engage in our own original research to prove them wrong. If you want to do that, get your work published in a peer-reviewed journal and get scholars to listen to you, then come back here and maybe your ideas will be worth including in the encyclopedia. Until then, however, we have to listen to what scholars tell us. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:38, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

It's not as straightforward as that. Well, it's not for the more objective fields. We Make judgements all the time as to the quality, reliability and independence of sources. You have your views on that for your "mainstream academic scholars. I have mine. HiLo48 (talk) 06:30, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Forget your own opinions. When editing Wikipedia you should leave your own opinions at the door. Only follow WP:RULES and WP:SOURCES, your own opinions (or mine) do not matter. "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." Tgeorgescu (talk) 07:39, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

That's a ridiculous comment. I'm wondering if there is serious thinking going on here, or just a shallow defence of the subject. I repeat, we make judgements all the time as to the quality, reliability and independence of sources. HiLo48 (talk) 08:02, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

We (Wikipedia Community) make judgments about sources according to WP:RULES and other WP:SOURCES. We don't pass such judgment according to our whims.

I completely agree. I hope you weren't accusing me of doing so. HiLo48 (talk) 08:27, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Your view that we have to discard Christian sources does not seem to have much traction. Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:43, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

That would be for the obvious reason that most commenters here are Christians. And I will just add that many times in my life I have been in a minority, and right. HiLo48 (talk) 09:15, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Our house, our rules is a blunt way of saying that the Wikipedia community has a set of norms that govern how the encyclopedia is built: norms about what kind of sources we use, about how we handle conflict, and so on. Those norms include not using self-published internet sources, not making blanket statements about ethnic groups (Jews, in this case) without support, not editing against the consensus of editors, and so on. You may consider discussion of those norms as "off-topic," but the Wikipedia community tends to think they are important. Wikipedia articles aren't "owned" by individuals, but they are "owned," in a sense, by the Wikimedia community and the consensus of editors. When an editor, like yourself, decides they want an article to go in a direction other than what the majority of editors want to do, the majority of editors typically preserve their preferred version. Adding material to an article, and then having other editors take that material out, is part of the normal editing process. It's not "force" and it's not "vandalism." It happens to all of us. I'm pretty sure that none of us have our edits here accepted by the community 100% of the time. Learning to abide by Wikipedia's communal decisions is an important part of getting along here as an editor. And if you don't want your editing to be limited by the Wikipedia community's particular goals and methods and decisions, the good news is that there's plenty of other outlets for your work, like perhaps Conservapedia, or getting a personal blog. At the end of the day, Wikipedia really is the private project of the Wikimedia Foundation. It is, roughly, a service that provides summaries of the contents of mainstream scholarship, in the specific sense that "mainstream scholarship" has here at Wikipedia. It's really not an experiment in treating all views equally, and if you think it is, you're likely to wind up frustrated. Alephb (talk) 12:16, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Quoted from Talk:Adam. On the English Wikipedia I was accused of writing ads for born-again Christians, while on the Romanian Wikipedia I was accused of being outright Anti-Christian. How can that be? Well, I follow WP:SOURCES, I do not push my own opinions, I can "write for the adversary" (WP:ENEMY). Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:31, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Katolophyromai, you are preaching to the choir here. I don't support the Mythicist position. I doubt, however, that we have enough concrete information on Jesus for a clear portrait to emerge. I have seen far too many contradictory attempts to interpret what the historical Jesus was all about.

"Then, finally, there are the mentions of Jesus by Josephus and Tacitus" Tacitus is not particularly useful here. Tacitus on Christ contains his translated text. He seems to know a great deal about Christians, but very little on "Christus" (or "Chrestus").: "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

Also Tacitus' text contains a mistake. Pontius Pilatus was not a Procurator, he was a prefect. Dimadick (talk) 09:08, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Bart Ehrman has granted the point that Pagan historians are almost worthless in respect to establishing the historicity of Jesus, his point is that behind the New Testament there are many independent sources which all confirm that Jesus has existed. If a conspiracy would have produced the story of Jesus, they would have done a much better job than the writers of the New Testament. The New Testament is replete with puerile misinterpretations and discrepancies. Also Ehrman stated in a debate something like this: "What do you mean by doubt? E.g. you could doubt that we two are having a conversation right now...". Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:44, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dimadick: I completely agree that the importance of Tacitus as a source for establishing the historicity of Jesus has often been overstated, especially by Mythicists and the Christian apologists arguing against them; the main problems with Tacitus are that he wrote his Annals nearly eighty years after Jesus's death and we do not know who his sources were. On his own, without the earlier sources, Tacitus does not prove anything. Nonetheless, he is still important for two main reasons: First, he provides independent attestation of Jesus's existence and of his crucifixion by Pilate. Second, while he shows awareness of a tradition that Jesus existed as a man in the first century sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, he shows no awareness at all of any alternate tradition in which Jesus is purely a fiction. If there were Christians in the early second century who thought that Jesus was just an allegory or a heavenly figure with no existence on earth, one could be certain Tacitus would have mentioned them. Notice that Tacitus and Josephus were not pivotal to the explanation I provided above; I only mentioned the two of them as supporting sources. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:12, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

"If there were Christians in the early second century who thought that Jesus was just an allegory or a heavenly figure with no existence on earth, one could be certain Tacitus would have mentioned them." Probably not, as it would not fit in his wider narrative. The Christians are mentioned in the context of persecutions supposedly ordered by Nero, Tacitus' favorite target for criticism. "Tacitus portrays both Tiberius and Nero as tyrants who caused fear in their subjects." Tacitus' Annals cover events up to year AD 66, and might have included lost chapters up to Nero's death in AD 68. The Flavian dynasty (59-96) are not covered at all in the Annals, and (probably for good reason), Tacitus avoided mentions or criticisms of the then-reigning Nerva–Antonine dynasty (96-192). He himself disappears from the historical record towards the end of the reign of Trajan, and he may have died prior to 120. Dimadick (talk) 12:45, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dimadick: I am well aware of the context in which Tacitus mentions Christians. My point was that Tacitus hated Christians (as the passage in question obviously shows) and he spends a lengthy digression describing their "abominations," including that their religion was founded by a crucified criminal; if he was aware of a tradition that indicated that this founder did not even exist and that Christians were backwards and perverse enough to invent a crucified Savior, it is hard to imagine he would omit that. In any case, we are arguing over pointless minutiae. We both agree that Tacitus is only noteworthy as a supporting source and, on his own, does not prove anything. --Katolophyromai (talk) 13:04, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Opening with a William Hamblin quote

I'm not exactly sure how to rewrite the second sentence of this article, but I think we can do better than to start with two little quotes from two blog posts not directly related to the topic, written by a crank historian. Alephb (talk) 23:33, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and yanked the sentence. If someone else wants to put something in based on a reliable source, they're welcome to go right ahead. Alephb (talk) 23:36, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

An article of many cites

I know it's possible to "collapse" a string of cites like [2][3][4][5][nb 1][nb 2][nb 3][nb 4][nb 5]. If someone knows that WP-fu, the article could use some of it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and did it for the "ref" bits in the string you mentioned. That should give you the idea if you want to do more. Alephb (talk) 02:30, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I was told by wikipedia to edit this article and Ian.thompson is trying to stop me

wikipedia sent me a message saying good job on my edits, we know some christianss might be upset but thank you, so now you are tyring to stop my perfectly good edits explain yourself moron you are not being logical — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:E1C0:22F0:D9A6:3C3A:97E8:2AC4 (talk) 03:20, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I'm convinced you're User:Obeyel. Range blocked. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:23, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Biased and untrustworthy sources

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a reliable source and an unreliable source. However, you can typically tell the difference if you can detect biases. A reliable source will have no bias. If the source you choose to back up a claim is clearly an editorialized article with an inflammatory title, especially one that aims to demonize another group in favor of its own group, is not an unbiased source. It’s as unreliable as one gets. The sources that call the Christ Myth Theory a “fringe theory” and say that it is not supported by any mainstream scholars are arguably all biased, unreliable articles. Quotes in an informational article (which every Wikipedia article is) should never express an opinion unless the fact expressed in the article that you are defending is to say “this person has this opinion.” A quote by itself is not evidence of a fact in any shape or form unless it’s a quote of a reliable, unbiased source. I’m not expressing my opinion here. This is how defending points works. If you make a claim, you back it up with facts. Where do you find facts? From unbiased sources. If your source is just someone saying “I agree with this point,” then it’s just a mirror argument. This is true because this person says so. Use real sources. They don’t have to be from scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. They just can’t have the title along the lines of “anti-god crowd proven wrong once again by the truth of the Holy Bible” or something like that. Be responsible. Wikipedia articles are where the majority of people get their information. The buck stops here. What we’re doing is important. An article judging the historicity of the central figure of the world’s largest religion should have better sources. Dabblequeen (talk) 01:54, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I highly doubt you'll get anywhere with this. The article has all kinds of sources that establish that the Christ Myth position is fringe, and although people show up at the article all the time trying to move it in a direction more friendly to the Christ-mythers, they don't get anywhere. Alephb (talk) 06:16, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I have evidently not made myself clear. I’m not trying to be “friendly towards the Christ-mythers.” I’m not taking issue with the claim that Jesus existed. I’m saying we gave bad sources defending this claim, and we need to find better ones.

--Dabblequeen (talk) 18:16, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

All right. It would probably help if you'd specifically list which sources are "bad" and specifically why. Are you just talking about the John Dickson editorial at the ABC website, or more broadly about the sources in the article in general? Because if it's the first, maybe you've got some chance of prevailing on people, but if it's the second, I think you're probably not going to see any results you'd be happy with. Alephb (talk) 20:47, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I tried to post the information and fact based claims of the documentary/book caesar's messiah, which are totally logical and mainstream, but someone keeps deleting it right away! the christians are being bias liars! bias liars! they should get revoked on wikipedia for this — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:E1C0:22F0:1DBA:8B0A:C4DF:5193 (talk) 21:34, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dabblequeen:, Let me help. See below to clear up your confusion.

Citations

[T]he view that there was no historical Jesus, that his earthly existence is a fiction of earliest Christianity—a fiction only later made concrete by setting his life in the first century—is today almost totally rejected. G. A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1988) p. 218 It is customary today to dismiss with amused contempt the suggestion that Jesus never existed. G. A. Wells, "The Historicity of Jesus," in Jesus and History and Myth, ed. R. Joseph Hoffman (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986) p. 27 "New Testament criticism treated the Christ Myth Theory with universal disdain" Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formative Texts (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006) p. 1179 "Van Voorst is quite right in saying that 'mainstream scholarship today finds it unimportant' [to engage the Christ myth theory seriously]. Most of their comment (such as those quoted by Michael Grant) are limited to expressions of contempt." Earl Doherty, "Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case: Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus Mythicism, Part Three", The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus? Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher. Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (2nd ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. xxiii In the last analysis, the whole Christ-myth theorizing is a glaring example of obscurantism, if the sin of obscurantism consists in the acceptance of bare possibilities in place of actual probabilities, and of pure surmise in defiance of existing evidence. Those who have not entered far into the laborious inquiry may pretend that the historicity of Jesus is an open question. For me to adopt such a pretence would be sheer intellectual dishonesty. I know I must, as an honest man, reckon with Jesus as a factor in history... This dialectic process whereby the Christ-myth theory discredits itself rests on the simple fact that you cannot attempt to prove the theory without mishandling the evidence. Herbert George Wood, Christianity and the Nature of History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) pp. xxxiii & 54 The defectiveness of [the Christ myth theory's] treatment of the traditional evidence is perhaps not so patent in the case of the gospels as it is in the case of the Pauline epistles. Yet fundamentally it is the same. There is the same easy dismissal of all external testimony, the same disdain for the saner conclusions of modern criticism, the same inclination to attach most value to extremes of criticism, the same neglect of all the personal and natural features of the narrative, the same disposition to put skepticism forward in the garb of valid demonstration, and the same ever present predisposition against recognizing any evidence for Jesus' actual existence... The New Testament data are perfectly clear in their testimony to the reality of Jesus' earthly career and they come from a time when the possibility that the early framers of tradition should have been deceived upon this point is out of the question. Shirley Jackson Case, The Historicity Of Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912) pp. 76-77 & 269 If one were able to survey the members of the major learned societies dealing with antiquity, it would be difficult to find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not walk the dusty roads of Palestine in the first three decades of the Common Era. Evidence for Jesus as a historical personage is incontrovertible. W. Ward Gasque, "The Leading Religion Writer in Canada... Does He Know What He's Talking About?", George Mason University's History News Network, 2004 [The non-Christian references to Jesus from the first two centuries] render highly implausible any farfetched theories that even Jesus' very existence was a Christian invention. The fact that Jesus existed, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (for whatever reason) and that he had a band of followers who continued to support his cause, seems to be the part of the bedrock of historical tradition. If nothing else, the non-Christian evidence can provide us with certainty on that score. Christopher M. Tuckett, "Sources and Methods" in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 124 [A]n attempt to show that Jesus never existed has been made in recent years by G. A. Wells, a Professor of German who has ventured into New Testament study and presents a case that the origins of Christianity can be explained without assuming that Jesus really lived. Earlier presentations of similar views at the turn of the century failed to make any impression on scholarly opinion, and it is certain that this latest presentation of the case will not fare any better. For of course the evidence is not confined to Tacitus; there are the New Testament documents themselves, nearly all of which must be dated in the first century, and behind which there lies a period of transmission of the story of Jesus which can be traced backwards to a date not far from that when Jesus is supposed to have lived. To explain the rise of this tradition without the hypothesis of Jesus is impossible. I. Howard Marshall, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (rev. ed.) (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004) pp. 15–16 A phone call from the BBC’s flagship Today programme: would I go on air on Good Friday morning to debate with the aurthors of a new book, The Jesus Mysteries? The book claims (or so they told me) that everything in the Gospels reflects, because it was in fact borrowed from, much older pagan myths; that Jesus never existed; that the early church knew it was propagating a new version of an old myth, and that the developed church covered this up in the interests of its own power and control. The producer was friendly, and took my point when I said that this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese. N. T. Wright, "Jesus' Self Understanding", in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 48 A school of thought popular with cranks on the Internet holds that Jesus didn’t actually exist. Tom Breen, The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus: Dispatches from the Intersection of Christianity and Pop Culture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008) p. 138 I feel that I ought almost to apologize to my readers for investigating at such length the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus, son of a mythical Mary, and for exhibiting over so many pages its fantastic, baseless, and absurd character... We must [, according to Christ myth advocates,] perforce suppose that the Gospels were a covert tribute to the worth and value of Pagan mythology and religious dramas, to pagan art and statuary. If we adopt the mythico-symbolical method, they can have been nothing else. Its sponsors might surely condescend to explain the alchemy by which the ascertained rites and beliefs of early Christians were distilled from these antecedents. The effect and the cause are so entirely disparate, so devoid of any organic connection, that we would fain see the evolution worked out a little more clearly. At one end of it we have a hurly-burly of pagan myths, at the other an army of Christian apologists inveighing against everything pagan and martyred for doing so, all within a space of sixty or seventy years. I only hope the orthodox will be gratified to learn that their Scriptures are a thousandfold more wonderful and unique than they appeared to be when they were merely inspired by the Holy Spirit. For verbal inspiration is not, as regards its miraculous quality, in the same field with mythico-symbolism. Verily we have discovered a new literary genus, unexampled in the history of mankind, you rake together a thousand irrelevant thrums of mythology, picked up at random from every age, race, and clime; you get a "Christist" to throw them into a sack and shake them up; you open it, and out come the Gospels. In all the annals of the Bacon-Shakespeareans we have seen nothing like it. Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare,The Historical Christ, or an Investigation of the Views of J. M. Robertson, A. Drews and W. B. Smith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009/1914) pp. 42 & 95 Today only an eccentric would claim that Jesus never existed. Leander Keck, Who Is Jesus?: History in Perfect Tense (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000) p. 13 While The Christ Myth alarmed many who were innocent of learning, it evoked only Olympian scorn from the historical establishment, who were confident that Jesus had existed... The Christ-myth theory, then, won little support from the historical specialists. In their judgement, it sought to demonstrate a perverse thesis, and it preceded by drawing the most far-fetched, even bizarre connection between mythologies of very diverse origin. The importance of the theory lay, not in its persuasiveness to the historians (since it had none), but in the fact that it invited theologians to renewed reflection on the questions of faith and history. Brian A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) pp. 231 & 233 It is certain, however, that Jesus was arrested while in Jerusalem for the Passover, probably in the year 30, and that he was executed...it cannot be doubted that Peter was a personal disciple of Jesus... Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 (2nd ed.) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000) pp. 80 & 166 We do not need to take seriously those writers who occasionally claim that Jesus never existed at all, for we have clear evidence to the contrary from a number of Jewish, Latin, and Islamic sources. John Drane, "Introduction", in John Drane, The Great Sayings of Jesus: Proverbs, Parables and Prayers (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 1999) p. 23 By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived. Rudolf Bultmann, "The Study of the Synoptic Gospels", Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, Rudolf Bultmann & Karl Kundsin; translated by Frederick C. Grant (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962) p. 62 Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner, 1958) p. introduction It is the nature of historical work that we are always involved in probability judgments. Granted, some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed and really was crucified, just as Julius Caeser really existed and was assassinated. Marcus Borg, "A Vision of the Christian Life", The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007) p. 236 To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribner, 1995) p. 200 I think that there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus... So I think that question can be put to rest. N. T. Wright, "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright", in Antony Flew & Roy Abraham Vargese, There is a God (New York: HarperOne, 2007) p. 188 Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate, and continued to have followers after his death. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) p. 121 The historical reality both of Buddha and of Christ has sometimes been doubted or denied. It would be just as reasonable to question the historical existence of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on account of the legends which have gathered round them... The attempt to explain history without the influence of great men may flatter the vanity of the vulgar, but it will find no favour with the philosophic historian. James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 7 (3rd ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1919) p. 311 We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE. Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 1999) p. 38 [T]here is substantial evidence that a person by the name of Jesus once existed. Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millenium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) p. 33 Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. Will Durant, Christ and Caesar, The Story of Civilization, 3 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972) p. 557 There are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993) p. 10 There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more. Richard A. Burridge, Jesus Now and Then (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p. 34 Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of the nonhistoricity theory, he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it. The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question... The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds... Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) pp. 14 & 16 No reputable scholar today questions that a Jew named Jesus son of Joseph lived; most readily admit that we now know a considerable amount about his actions and his basic teachings. James H. Charlesworth, "Preface", in James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and Archaeology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) pp. xxi–xxv [Robert] Price thinks the evidence is so weak for the historical Jesus that we cannot know anything certain or meaningful about him. He is even willing to entertain the possibility that there never was a historical Jesus. Is the evidence of Jesus really that thin? Virtually no scholar trained in history will agree with Price's negative conclusions... In my view Price's work in the gospels is overpowered by a philosophical mindset that is at odds with historical research—of any kind... What we see in Price is what we have seen before: a flight from fundamentalism. Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008) p. 25 The scholarly mainstream, in contrast to Bauer and company, never doubted the existence of Jesus or his relevance for the founding of the Church. Craig A. Evans, "Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology", Theological Studies 54, 1993, p. 8 There's no serious question for historians that Jesus actually lived. There’s real issues about whether he is really the way the Bible described him. There’s real issues about particular incidents in his life. But no serious ancient historian doubts that Jesus was a real person, really living in Galilee in the first century. Chris Forbes, interview with John Dickson, "Zeitgeist: Time to Discard the Christian Story?", Center for Public Christianity, 2009 I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist. But I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus. Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008 What about those writers like Acharya S (The Christ Conspiracy) and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), who say that Jesus never existed, and that Christianity was an invented religion, the Jewish equivalent of the Greek mystery religions? This is an old argument, even though it shows up every 10 years or so. This current craze that Christianity was a mystery religion like these other mystery religions-the people who are saying this are almost always people who know nothing about the mystery religions; they've read a few popular books, but they're not scholars of mystery religions. The reality is, we know very little about mystery religions-the whole point of mystery religions is that they're secret! So I think it's crazy to build on ignorance in order to make a claim like this. I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this. Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, "The Gospel According to Bart", Fortean Times (221), 2007 Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn’t even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship. William Lane Craig, "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?", debate with Richard Carrier, 2009 The alternative thesis... that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985) p. 29 This is always the fatal flaw of the 'Jesus myth' thesis: the improbability of the total invention of a figure who had purportedly lived within the generation of the inventors, or the imposition of such an elaborate myth on some minor figure from Galilee. [Robert] Price is content with the explanation that it all began 'with a more or less vague savior myth.' Sad, really. James D. G. Dunn, "Response to Robert M. Price", in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) p. 98 Since the Enlightenment, the Gospel stories about the life of Jesus have been in doubt. Intellectuals then as now asked: 'What makes the stories of the New Testament any more historically probable than Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales?' The critics can be answered satisfactorily...For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion [of embarrassment] demonstrates that Jesus existed. Alan F. Segal, "Believe Only the Embarrassing", Slate, 2005 Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (6th ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) p. 123 Jesus is in no danger of suffering Catherine [of Alexandria]'s fate as an unhistorical myth... Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) p. 37 An examination of the claims for and against the historicity of Jesus thus reveals that the difficulties faced by those undertaking to prove that he is not historical, in the fields both of the history of religion and the history of doctrine, and not least in the interpretation of the earliest tradition are far more numerous and profound than those which face their opponents. Seen in their totality, they must be considered as having no possible solution. Added to this, all hypotheses which have so far been put forward to the effect that Jesus never lived are in the strangest opposition to each other, both in their method of working and their interpretation of the Gospel reports, and thus merely cancel each other out. Hence we must conclude that the supposition that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely. This does not mean that the latter will not be proposed again from time to time, just as the romantic view of the life of Jesus is also destined for immortality. It is even able to dress itself up with certain scholarly technique, and with a little skillful manipulation can have much influence on the mass of people. But as soon as it does more than engage in noisy polemics with 'theology' and hazards an attempt to produce real evidence, it immediately reveals itself to be an implausible hypothesis. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by John Bowden et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) pp. 435–436 In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth certainly lived than for most famous figures of the ancient past. This evidence is of two kinds: internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular. In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by 'the village atheist,' bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Paul L. Maier, "Did Jesus Really Exist?", 4Truth.net, 2007 The very logic that tells us there was no Jesus is the same logic that pleads that there was no Holocaust. On such logic, history is no longer possible. It is no surprise then that there is no New Testament scholar drawing pay from a post who doubts the existence of Jesus. I know not one. His birth, life, and death in first-century Palestine have never been subject to serious question and, in all likelihood, never will be among those who are experts in the field. The existence of Jesus is a given. Nicholas Perrin, Lost in Transmission?: What We Can Know About the Words of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) p. 32 While we do not have the fullness of biographical detail and the wealth of firsthand accounts that are available for recent public figures, such as Winston Churchill or Mother Teresa, we nonetheless have much more data on Jesus than we do for such ancient figures as Alexander the Great... Along with the scholarly and popular works, there is a good deal of pseudoscholarship on Jesus that finds its way into print. During the last two centuries more than a hundred books and articles have denied the historical existence of Jesus. Today innumerable websites carry the same message... Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus' non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio. Michael James McClymond, Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) pp. 8 & 23–24 You know that you can try to minimize your biases, but you can't eliminate them. That's why you have to put certain checks and balances in place… Under this approach, we only consider facts that meet two criteria. First, there must be very strong historical evidence supporting them. And secondly, the evidence must be so strong that the vast majority of today's scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept these as historical facts. You're never going to get everyone to agree. There are always people who deny the Holocaust or question whether Jesus ever existed, but they're on the fringe. Michael R. Licona, in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) p. 112 If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption. I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying. John Dominic Crossan, "Historical Jesus: Materials and Methodology", XTalk, 2000 A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical person Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today—in the academic world at least—gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat. Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) p. 168 When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, 'Do you really believe that?' Act as though you've just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. William Lane Craig, "Question 90: Jesus and Pagan Mythology", Reasonable Faith, 2009 Finley: There are some people in the chat room disagreeing, of course, but they’re saying that there really isn’t any hardcore evidence, though, that… I mean… but there isn’t any… any evidence, really, that Jesus did exist except what people were saying about him. But… Ehrman: I think… I disagree with that. Finley: Really? Ehrman: I mean, what hardcore evidence is there that Julius Caesar existed? Finley: Well, this is… this is the same kind of argument that apologists use, by the way, for the existence of Jesus, by the way. They like to say the same thing you said just then about, well, what kind of evidence do you have for Jul… Ehrman: Well, I mean, it’s… but it’s just a typical… it’s just… It’s a historical point; I mean, how do you establish the historical existence of an individual from the past? Finley: I guess… I guess it depends on the claims… Right, it depends on the claims that people have made during that particular time about a particular person and their influence on society... Ehrman: It’s not just the claims. There are… One has to look at historical evidence. And if you… If you say that historical evidence doesn’t count, then I think you get into huge trouble. Because then, how do… I mean… then why not just deny the Holocaust? Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008 The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. For some it's simply too horrific to affirm. For others it's an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy. But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld. John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006) pp. 14-15 I just finished reading, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. The first view was given by Robert Price, a leading Jesus myth proponent… The title of Price’s chapter is 'Jesus at the Vanishing Point.' I am convinced that if Price's total skepticism were applied fairly and consistently to other figures in ancient history (Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Nero, etc.), they would all be reduced to 'the vanishing point.' Price's chapter is a perfect example of how someone can always, always find excuses to not believe something they don't want to believe, whether that be the existence of Jesus or the existence of the holocaust. Dennis Ingolfsland, "Five views of the historical Jesus", The Recliner Commentaries, 2009 The Jesus mythers will continue to advance their thesis and complain of being kept outside of the arena of serious academic discussion. They carry their signs, 'Jesus Never Existed!' 'They won’t listen to me!' and label those inside the arena as 'Anti-Intellectuals,' 'Fundamentalists,' 'Misguided Liberals,' and 'Flat-Earthers.' Doherty & Associates are baffled that all but a few naïve onlookers pass them by quickly, wagging their heads and rolling their eyes. They never see that they have a fellow picketer less than a hundred yards away, a distinguished looking man from Iran. He too is frustrated and carries a sign that says 'The Holocaust Never Happened!' Michael R. Licona, "Licona Replies to Doherty's Rebuttal", Answering Infidels, 2005 Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ - the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming. Graeme Clarke, quoted by John Dickson in "Facts and friction of Easter", The Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 2008 An extreme instance of pseudo-history of this kind is the “explanation” of the whole story of Jesus as a myth. Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002) p. 164 An extreme view along these lines is one which denies even the historical existence of Jesus Christ—a view which, one must admit, has not managed to establish itself among the educated, outside a little circle of amateurs and cranks, or to rise above the dignity of the Baconian theory of Shakespeare. Edwyn Robert Bevan, Hellenism And Christianity (2nd ed.) (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1930) p. 256 When all the evidence brought against Jesus' historicity is surveyed it is not found to contain any elements of strength. Shirley Jackson Case, "The Historicity of Jesus: An Estimate of the Negative Argument", The American Journal of Theology, 1911, 15 (1) It would be easy to show how much there enters of the conjectural, of superficial resemblances, of debatable interpretation into the systems of the Drews, the Robertsons, the W. B. Smiths, the Couchouds, or the Stahls... The historical reality of the personality of Jesus alone enables us to understand the birth and development of Christianity, which otherwise would remain an enigma, and in the proper sense of the word, a miracle. Maurice Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926) pp. 30 & 244 Anyone who talks about "reasonable faith" must say what he thinks about Jesus. And that would still be so even if, with one or two cranks, he believed that He never existed. John W. C. Wand, The Old Faith and the New Age‎ (London: Skeffington & Son, 1933) p. 31 That both in the case of the Christians, and in the case of those who worshipped Zagreus or Osiris or Attis, the Divine Being was believed to have died and returned to life, would be a depreciation of Christianity only if it could be shown that the Christian belief was derived from the pagan one. But that can be supposed only by cranks for whom historical evidence is nothing. Edwyn R. Bevan, in Thomas Samuel Kepler, Contemporary Thinking about Paul: An Anthology (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950) p. 44 The pseudoscholarship of the early twentieth century calling in question the historical reality of Jesus was an ingenuous attempt to argue a preconceived position. Gerard Stephen Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) p. 9 Whatever else Jesus may or may not have done, he unquestionably* started the process that became Christianity… UNQUESTIONABLY: The proposition has been questioned, but the alternative explanations proposed—the theories of the “Christ myth school,” etc.—have been thoroughly discredited. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 5 & 166 One category of mythicists, like young-earth creationists, have no hesitation about offering their own explanation of who made up Christianity... Other mythicists, perhaps because they are aware that such a scenario makes little historical sense and yet have nothing better to offer in its place, resemble proponents of Intelligent Design who will say "the evidence points to this organism having been designed by an intelligence" and then insist that it would be inappropriate to discuss further who the designer might be or anything else other than the mere "fact" of design itself. They claim that the story of Jesus was invented, but do not ask the obvious historical questions of "when, where, and by whom" even though the stories are set in the authors' recent past and not in time immemorial, in which cases such questions obviously become meaningless... Thus far, I've only encountered two sorts of mythicism." James F. McGrath, "Intelligently-Designed Narratives: Mythicism as History-Stopper", Exploring Our Matrix, 2010 In the academic mind, there can be no more doubt whatsoever that Jesus existed than did Augustus and Tiberius, the emperors of his lifetime. Even if we assume for a moment that the accounts of non-biblical authors who mention him - Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger and others - had not survived, the outstanding quality of the Gospels, Paul's letters and other New Testament writings is more than good enough for the historian. Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus, Man or Myth? (Oxford: Lion, 2005) p. 23 To describe Jesus' non-existence as "not widely supported" is an understatement. It would be akin to me saying, "It is possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, scientific case that the 1969 lunar landing never happened." There are fringe conspiracy theorists who believe such things - but no expert does. Likewise with the Jesus question: his non-existence is not regarded even as a possibility in historical scholarship. Dismissing him from the ancient record would amount to a wholesale abandonment of the historical method. John Dickson, Jesus: A Short Life (Oxford: Lion, 2008) 22-23. When Professor Wells advances such an explanation of the gospel stories [i.e. the Christ myth theory] he presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the gospels. Morton Smith, in R. Joseph Hoffman, Jesus in History and Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1986) p. 48 Of course, there can be no toleration whatever of the idea that Jesus never existed and is only a concoction from these pagan stories about a god who was slain and rose again. Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Menorah, 1943) p. 107 Virtually all biblical scholars acknowledge that there is enough information from ancient non-Christian sources to give the lie to the myth (still, however, widely believed in popular circles and by some scholars in other fields--see esp. G. A. Wells) which claims that Jesus never existed. Craig L. Blomberg, "Gospels (Historical Reliability)", in Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight & I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992) p. 292 In the 1910's a few scholars did argue that Jesus never existed and was simply the figment of speculative imagination. This denial of the historicity of Jesus does not commend itself to scholars, moderates or extremists, any more. ... The "Christ-myth" theories are not accepted or even discussed by scholars today. Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament‎ (New York: Ktav, 1974) p. 196 Dr. Wells was there [I.e. a symposium at the University of Michigan] and he presened his radical thesis that maybe Jesus never existed. Virtually nobody holds this position today. It was reported that Dr. Morton Smith of Columbia University, even though he is a skeptic himself, responded that Dr. Wells's view was "absurd". Gary Habermas, in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1989) p. 45 I.e. if we leave out of account the Christ-myth theories, which are hardly to be reckoned as within the range of serious criticism. Alexander Roper Vidler, The Modernist Movement in the Roman Church (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) p. 253 Such Christ-myth theories are not now advanced by serious opponents of Christianity—they have long been exploded ..." Gilbert Cope, Symbolism in the Bible and the Church (London: SCM, 1959) p. 14 In the early years of this century, various theses were propounded which all assert that Jesus never lived, and that the story of Jesus is a myth or legend. These claims have long since been exposed as historical nonsense. There can be no reasonable doubt that Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine in the first three decades of our era, probably from 6-7 BC to 30 AD. That is a fact. Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1976) p. 65 There is, lastly, a group of writers who endeavor to prove that Jesus never lived--that the story of his life is made up by mingling myths of heathen gods, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, etc. No real scholar regards the work of these men seriously. They lack the most elementary knowledge of historical research. Some of them are eminent scholars in other subjects, such as Assyriology and mathematics, but their writings about the life of Jesus have no more claim to be regarded as historical than Alice in Wonderland or the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. George Aaron Barton, Jesus of Nazareth: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1922) p. x The data we have are certainly adequate to confute the view that Jesus never lived, a view that no one holds in any case Charles E. Carlston, in Bruce Chilton & Craig A. Evans (eds.) Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (Leiden: Brill, 1998) p. 3 Although it is held by Marxist propaganda writers that Jesus never lived and that the Gospels are pure creations of the imagination, this is not the view of even the most radical Gospel critics. Bernard L. Ramm, An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and Historic (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1999) p. 159

Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 00:10, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@Billthecat7 I’m actually more confused. Are those all the sources that are attached to that one fact? Why did you post all this?

@Alephb

I suppose it will have to be the first option. I’ll compile a list later with proper explanations as to why these specific sources aren’t trustworthy. I’ll try to replace them with what I consider “reliable” sources and explain why. I’ll revise the stuff that’s wrong and there are no trustworthy sources to back it up (with an explanation). As for it not resolving the way I’d like it to, all I have to say that it’s not Ikipedia, it’s Wikipedia. Please forgive that awful pun. If we all go to the talk page and review all my proposed changes we can settle on a way that’s right. I may not like all of it, but it’s not just my decision. Anyway, I’ll get back in a few days. Dabblequeen (talk) 02:20, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Dabblequeen please familiarize yourself with WP:RS Identifying reliable sources if you have not done so. What you or I consider reliable sources does not matter here on WP,we have to go by WP's policies and guidelines. WP:RS says When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources....Try to cite current scholarly consensus when available. The current scholarly consensus with regard to the question "Was there ever such a person as Jesus" is typified by, for instance "Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, who has said: "Anyone who uses the argument that Jesus never existed is simply flaunting his ignorance." Yes, scholars of ancient history are biased against the Christ myth theory in the same way that Egyptologists are biased against the theory that space aliens built the pyramids, the ideas have the same academic theory, to wit, zero.Smeat75 (talk) 02:53, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

So I’m going to lay it out again so it’s clear as mud, because I feel I’m getting a little animosity from a few of you here: I’m not debating the fact that Christ existed. I’m debating the reliability of the sources that say “peer consensus is that Christ existed.” The historicity of Christ is the point of this article. We’re not judging the existence of Christ on these quotes. I see a lot of quotes here that say “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t believe Christ existed.” That’s all well and good, but what’s evidence of critical consensus would also need to be polls and studies on that thing. They evidence shouldn’t be evidence about Christ or opinions of people in the field. The evidence should be about the historians themselves. If we want a reliable source of the number of scholars who believe Christ existed, we can’t keep going to the well of, “This person says not believing in Christ is for dummies.” We need stats. Articles. Actual hard evidence. Not this he said, she said crap.

Additionally, can we get some blasted paragraphs on their reasoning? We have a great many paragraphs saying how the Christ myth theory isn’t supported, but why is it not supported? And also we have the article saying Christ isn’t talked about anywhere but the gospels, when that’s not at all true. I may be wrong, but I don’t think any part of the article sites Jesus’ being mention in Antiquities of the Jews. Do y’all not know about that? Seriously, what’s the point of this talk page if anybody trying to touch the sources is treated with the immediate suspicion that they have some sort of agenda? Think critically y’all. Dabblequeen (talk) 04:26, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

What you're calling "this he said, she said crap" is, believe it or not, the way that Wikipedians establish what the consensus position in a field is. If polls of experts existed, that would be fantastic, but on almost every question they don't, and so we trust the experts when they say "virtually everyone in the field thinks X". Wikipedia does not simply ignore that kind of thing and wait for polls, or else we wouldn't be able to write articles on most topics. The relevant historians here are simply agreed that Jesus existed. If they're wrong, Wikipedia will be wrong with them. That's what Wikipedia does.

As for the Antiquities of the Jews, try reading the article again. It's in there.

There's loads and loads of reliable sources for the obvious fact that virtually all scholars buy into Jesus' existence. Even the few unusual characters who don't believe it acknowledge that practically all the experts are against them. If anyone suspects you of "an agenda" it's because you're looking at literally dozens of credentialed people all saying the same thing about the scholarly consensus and you're demanding that we toss those statements out as "crap". That's not what unbiased editing behavior usually looks like. It's a really strange standard of proof you're holding this article to. Alephb (talk) 05:08, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Dabblequeen please see WP:PROFRINGE Ideas supported only by a tiny minority may be explained in articles devoted to those ideas if they are notable. The Christ myth theory article discusses that idea extensively, according to that guideline it really shouldn't be mentioned in this article at all as it has no academic standing. You are incorrect when you state that "I don’t think any part of the article sites Jesus’ being mention in Antiquities of the Jews as this article contains the information "In Books 18 and 20 of Antiquities of the Jews, written around AD 93 to 94, Jewish historian Josephus twice refers to the biblical Jesus. The general scholarly view holds that the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, most likely consists of an authentic nucleus that was subjected to later Christian interpolation or forgery. On the other hand, Louis H. Feldman states that "few have doubted the genuineness" of the reference found in Antiquities 20, 9, 1 to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James".Smeat75 (talk) 05:12, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

"However, you can typically tell the difference if you can detect biases. A reliable source will have no bias. " And next we will go searching for dragons and unicorns. If you automatically dismiss any source because of its biases, you effectively leave yourself with no sources. Anyway, this is against Wikipedia policy on Biased or opinionated sources:

• "Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject."
• "Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs. Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context. When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering. Bias may make in-text attribution appropriate, as in "Feminist Betty Friedan wrote that..."; "According to the Marxist economist Harry Magdoff..."; or "Conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater believed that...". Dimadick (talk) 15:49, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@Dabblequeen:, This has become a surrealistic nightmare. If the sources don't convince a person, then nothing will. Go edit another article. In the meantime, I need a shower. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 21:55, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, I hope your shower goes well.

It occurs to me that I lost the trees for the forest, so to speak. That one ABC article that I mentioned is definitely biased and I should have just focused on that. Instead I focused on the problem as a whole of what constitutes a reliable and unreliable source, which I realize now is obviously not cut-and-dry or easy to do like I naively expected it to. This is a common habit for me, I’ve noticed. Anytime I notice a problem, I immediately trace it back to a pattern of problems. Now, instead of identifying that one problem, I’m hysterically trying to focus on this massive problem that will take years to fix.

Point is, all I really want is that ABC article gone. I’ve found a much better source that I can replace it with, anyway. Try this puppy on for size. And again, sorry for all the trouble. I get passionate about that sort of thing, which quickly turns to anger. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dabblequeen (talk • contribs) 09:38, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

This seems to be a pretty decent source on the reliability of our primary sources. One slights observation: "Christus, used by Tacitus to refer to Jesus, was one distinctive way by which some referred to him, even though Tacitus mistakenly took it for a personal name rather than an epithet or title"

I have come across the idea that Tacitus confused the title Christ (literally "the anointed one") with the personal name Chrestus/Chrestos/Christos (Greek: Χρήστος) which variously means "the useful one", "the good one", "the righteous one". See this dictionary entry on the Greek term: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=xrhsto/s Dimadick (talk) 08:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

That is discussed at Tacitus_on_Christ#Christians_and_Chrestians, I don't think it belongs in this article.Smeat75 (talk) 16:34, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Smeat75:I agree with Smeat. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 23:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Add Section on Theory from "Caesar's Messiah" Book

Hello someone who actually cares about the facts and wants to do what wikipedia is meant for, which is unbiased and cited sources, please add a section to this wikipedia page about the completely fact based and popular theory of the book and documentary "caesar's messiah" which simply shows that the Flavian Dynasty was probably the ones who created christianity, for many proven and fact based reasons and arguements are given in the documentary. For one thing Joseph of Arimethea was Josephus Bar Mathea and they claim in the bible that he was at the crucifiction, and he describes seeing a crucifiction, but however it was not of Jesus, as Joseph was born 4 years after the year 33 so it would have been impossible for Josephus to have been reffering to Jesus christ's on that cross, and this simply proves that Jesus was not historically real. Josephus Bar Mathea wasn't even born yet at the time of crucifiction and its proven that he is Joseph of Arimethea in that he talked about a mother mary sacrificing her son a passover lamb, Jesus, and other reasons. That is just one of the many completely fact based arguements for why jesus did not exist and this is very relevant and should definitely be on this article. Those who try to prevent these facts from coming out should be punished utterly and removed from wikipedia, because they are trying to stop the truth from being on Wikipedia and there is simply no way to disprove any of Joseph Atwill's theories in the book and documentary "caesar's messiah" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:E1C0:22F0:1DBA:8B0A:C4DF:5193 (talk) 21:43, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi. I care about facts. Most of us do. That's why we add lots of sources from recognised scholars in relevant. That's also why we don't add conspiracy theorises from amateurs with no relevant education, such as the author of Caesar's Messiah. So no, we are not adding. Precisely because we do care about facts. Jeppiz (talk) 21:59, 13 February 2019 (UTC)