Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman

Latest scholarship accepts 6 or 7 as attributable to whoever Paul was. Philomen has enough issues that an agnostic stand is probably best. That leaves 6 that are accepted as not written by Paul. Forgeries.

There is no evidence for Christianity prior to evidence of Paul's writings.

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The books of the new testament that are Paul's letters to various congregations, is there any debate of their authenticity?

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Oh there’s debate but most of those are accepted as genuine.Of those addressed to people, only Philemon is accepted as genuine. 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are almost certainly not genuine.

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Which is where Paul's writings can be found and which you just called unreliable.

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Well, there goes your hope of being thought sensible.The New Testament is not reliable on the subject of Jesus - and that certainly includes the Pauline Epistles. But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong on everything. Paul’s claim that he persecuted the early Christians before his conversion may well be exaggerated, but hardly makes sense if there were no Christians to be persecuted. Likewise his reported dealings with the Jerusalem Church are no sense unless the recipients knew of the people involved.So, no. The evidence that there was some sort of Christian church prior to Paul’s involvement seems pretty solid.

And yet we have the Gospels. Dodgy evidence they may be, but they are evidence. There are reasons to think that there is some truth in them, not least the fact that Jesus makes for such a terrible candidate for the Messiah. Jews of the 1st Century were not expecting their Messiah to kick up a bit of ineffectual fuss and then get ignominiously executed. They were expecting an ass kicker who was going to smite their enemies and win back their lands. The spiritual savior of the Gospels was kind of a hard sell. If an author were to invent a Messiah out of whole cloth it seems implausible that he would have invented this one. I think that might be over-egging it. Certainly Paul's influence is great. I think it likely though that the proto-Christian church existed before him and that James and Paul were both leaders of that church before Paul. I think Paul was probably sincere. I think he really had a vision, which he genuinely believed was of a divine Jesus and it changed his life, not necessarily for the better. I don't see a strong motivation for him to devote his life to this if he wasn't sincere. Also he mentions meeting James the brother of Jesus and Peter, so if he's making it all up, that's at least three people he made up out of whole cloth, two of them ostensibly still alive at time of writing. He's also necessarily making up the church in Jerusalem and the Christians he supposedly persecuted before his conversion. These seem like big lies, easily exposed even in the ancient world. No, I think he's telling the truth, as he sees it. Does any fact of history really matter? It depends what you mean by "matter" and what your priorities are I suppose.If by that you are alluding to whether it matters with regard to whether or not we should become Christians though, I agree; it doesn't matter. I don't reject Christianity simply because I don't trust its historical claims. I reject the supernatural altogether. Absolute proof of the existence of a historical Jesus would do nothing to win me over.Overall, I also think there's a disconnect here. You say there is no evidence. Even if that were true, that would surely seem to justify a position of neutrality, a mythicism-agnosticism if you will. But instead you seem to be coming down on the side of mythicism. I think that's an over-correction. You have to understand that scholars in the field, including non-Christian ones, tend to view Jesus Mythicism as a bit of a joke. Many if not most of its major proponents are a bit flaky. I think that concluding that Jesus was not real simply because there is little evidence is a bit odd, given that we all agree that a historically plausible Jesus would not have left much evidence.Mutate and Survive

Oh yes. CoPilotIn the realm of New Testament scholarship, the authenticity of Paul’s epistles has been a topic of considerable debate. Let’s delve into this intriguing matter:Authentic Epistles:
There is strong consensus among modern scholars regarding a core group of authentic Pauline epistles. These letters are rarely contested in terms of authorship:
Romans
1 and 2 Corinthians
Galatians
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
Philemon1.
These epistles are widely accepted as having been penned by Paul the Apostle himself.Disputed Epistles:
However, several other letters attributed to Paul are contested:
Ephesians
Colossians
2 Thessalonians
1 and 2 Timothy
Titus1.
Scholarly opinion varies significantly regarding whether these disputed epistles are genuinely Pauline.Some scholars propose that Paul might have used an amanuensis (a secretary) to write these letters, but this explanation doesn’t fully account for the fact that some of the disputed letters appear to have been written after Paul’s death.Pseudepigraphical Works:
Among the contested epistles, Ephesians and the three known as the Pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus) are often labeled as pseudepigraphical—that is, attributed to Paul but likely written by someone else.
Colossians and 2 Thessalonians remain sharply debated1.Other Letters:
Apart from the New Testament epistles, there are two examples of pseudonymous letters written in Paul’s name: the Epistle to the Laodiceans and 3 Corinthians.Interestingly, the Epistle to the Hebrews is traditionally attributed to Paul, but most modern scholars agree that it was not actually written by him1.

You say little evidence, but it seems to me like no physical evidence at all. There's no Jesus lived here signs, there no independent evidence that the character that was the model for Jesus was anything but fictional. Historians of the time documented other obscure preacher characters but never even mentioned Jesus in passing.You would think someone would have noticed a white man preaching to a dark skinned culture and contemporary scribes would have mentioned it. Yeah, we've seen numerous visionaries here at EvC, Phat, Dredge, ICANT, candle2. Humans are very good at imagining voices in their heads and it seldom seems to make their lives better.

Wow Theo. I'm just gobsmacked by how far you've missed the point I was making here. I was not comparing the strength of the evidence for the historical existence of Julius Caesar to the strength of the evidence for a historical Jesus. I'm not doing that because that would be completely stupid.I was using Caesar as an illustrative example only. The point I was trying to make is that just because a story about a particular person isn't true doesn't mean that the story isn't about that person. It's just a story about that person that happens not to be true.Let's try another example, just to be as clear as possible.Taylor Swift is a real person. Crazy little online right wing weirdos have concocted a bizarre story about how the Superbowl has been fixed so that Taylor Swift can help Joe Biden win the election... or something. It's honestly quite hard to parse what they think is happening. Whatever it is though, it's 100% horseshit. The story isn't true. That doesn't mean that it's not a story about Taylor Swift though. It is a story about Taylor Swift, just a stupid false one.Again, to be clear, this is not an attempt to examine the strength of the evidence for the existence of Taylor Swift. It's just an illustrative example.If Jesus was a real person then even the most fanciful stories about him are stories about the real Jesus at some level. They're just bullshit stories. Just because a story isn't real doesn't mean the person in the story isn't real. I have literally zero idea how you think that comment follows from what I said in any way.What I'm saying here is that in discussing a historical Jesus we should be discussing the version that is plausible, or at least possible, a non-magical Jesus. I'm saying that we should discount the magic Jesus; that blatantly isn't real.The bar is set here because that is where the bar would be set for any and all sane historical analysis of this or any claim. I essentially describing a form of methodological naturalism. I don't see what possible problem you could have with that. I think you've perhaps got the wrong end of the stick. Or a mythic story was built around a real man with influence from other mythic stories, poetry, philosophy, etc. Seems pretty reasonable to me. If that were the case, why not make up a Jesus who actually fulfilled the prophecies? Why piss around trying to trace Jesus' lineage to David, even though it plainly isn't the case, when you could just make someone up who actually fitted that prophecy? Jesus is a poor fit for the Messiah. Given the luxury, why not create a Messiah who more closely resembled expectations?Mutate and Survive

Hi Tanypteryx, No, none whatsoever. Why would there be? What physical evidence would a man who was famously unkeen on material possessions leave? I'm suggesting that he would leave no physical evidence at all. Indeed if someone were to announce an archaeological discovery of physical evidence for Jesus' existence, I would assume that it was just another pious fraud. There's no what! WTF! Please tell me that this entire post was just a wind up, please.I saw someone protest that we don't have Jesus' DNA once. No foolin'. Citation needed.You can't seriously think that our records of 1st Century Judea are so perfect that they mention everyone can you? Jesus is only supposed to have preached for about three years or less. I don't know how much impact you think a person like that would have had on the historical record. I'm really hoping that Jesus is real right now so that he can have mercy on my poor goddamned soul. Yeah, that's exactly my point. I'm not saying that Paul's vision was a bona fide supernatural vision from God. I'm saying it was a psychologically induced event that the superstitious Paul took to be a divine revelation. That provides him with a compelling motivation to preach the message of Christ, as he saw it.Mutate and Survive

Yep, my only point was really that there is less than a little evidence. I shouldn't have said anymore than that.

We had this discussion here almost twenty years ago. Here is a post that addresses the lack of evidence. I highly recommend the whole thread. https://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=page&t=8000&mlist...

Why should we be discussing a Jesus that is not Jesus. If he isn't named Jesus di nothing the fictional character did and no one remembers him. Then he isn't the basis for Jesus. Anyone in the Levant said anything mystical or rebelled a little bit against the Jewish hierarchy or Rome could be a model. A composite of thousands of people.
I am gobsmacked how you can conceive that there could be a person that had nothing in common with Jesus could have been the "real" Jesus.
Was he an itinerant preacher or not? Was he a freedom fighter or not? Did he have a group of followers or not? Did he make a procession into Jerusalem or not? Was he executed or not?
If there can be no consensus on what a "historical jesus" was like how do we search for him?

There had to have been an early church or Saul would have had no one to persecute. If the secular historians accept Paul’s authorship, even in part, then by his own (accepted) words there was a church in existence. I find it difficult to believe that such a church would have developed from, say, a quantum fluctuation. Since the early followers were inspired by something, and Saul says it was this christ conception, then I have no problem personifying that conception as ‘Jesus’.A speculation:I imagine the early church as small cells of devout rebels hidden in back rooms where they discuss and pray with all the doors and windows covered. And I can accept that this new message of salvation and revolutionary hope was attractive to the radical religious fantasy believers of the time. Then Paul shows up. Things start to change. Paul travels around visiting these small hidden groups and gets himself in trouble with leaders of the early church and goes on a rampage of letters, admonishing the old views and demanding adherence to the new word. Everything from the divinity of Christ and the gift of the cross to his personal distaste for circumcision and women, make major marks on the philosophy of the movement. So much so that Paul’s writings still form the backbone of all Christianity.I have no idea what the initial Christic church was, flower child and/or rebel. But what they ended up with is the promise of forever life through divine salvation and a charge to convert the world. What they ended up with was the Pauline church.

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Why should we be discussing a Jesus that is not Jesus. If he isn't named Jesus di nothing the fictional character did and no one remembers him. Then he isn't the basis for Jesus.

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Because he likely is “named Jesus” in the sense that matters and is the basis for the Jesus of the Gospels. Why is it necessary to dismiss such a possibility out of hand?

Yeah, I kinda suspected I was actually the topic when you first replied.--Percy