bastanchury said:
My opinion is that Jesus never existed. He is a legend, like Hercules, or Achilles, or Superman. For an easy introduction to the scholarship I base my opinion on, I recommend the documentary
The God Who Wasn't There.
Thanks for raising this fascinating point, Bastanchury, which is well beyond merely "interesting." The question of whether the central hero of Christianity, Jesus Christ, did or did not exist, and if he did exist, whether he was in reality as presented by Christianity in the New Testament, is definitely an important problem. I wouldn't assert bluntly that Jesus Christ never existed, but in my opinion this is an unsolved problem.
Some source material on the possibility that Jesus Christ may or probably did not exist can be found in these sources.
DVD: “The God Who Wasn’t There”
The God Who Wasn't There
“The Jesus Puzzle,” by Earl Doherty (1999?):
JESUS PUZZLE: Preamble - Part One
Short Synthesis of “The Jesus Puzzle,” by Earl Doherty:
Jesus Puzzle - Quick Assembly
The Christ Myth Theory (Wikipedia):
Christ myth theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Christ Did Exist Theory (Wikipedia):
Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Causes for skepticism include:
—Jesus Christ left no writings of any kind. [Editorial comment by “C. Laststand:” This suggests that if Jesus Christ existed he was illiterate, which would not be surprising since most people of that time were. But, would God (whoever that is) have sent a representative to earth who couldn’t write to create a permanent record informing the unruly citizenry what he expects of them?]
—No descriptions of Jesus Christ and his activities appear in the writings of the (literate) historians who left written histories of the period that included J.C.’s lifetime.
—Authorship of the first-written book of the New Testament, now considered to be Mark (not Matthew), was either shortly before or shortly after 70 CE. (Note: CE => Common Era. 0 CE is close to but has replaced 0 AD as a time datum to eliminate ambiguity.)
—Matthew, now considered to be the second-written book of the New Testament, is thought to have been authored between 70 and 85 CE.
—It is now generally agreed that Luke, now considered to be the third-written book of the New Testament, also dates from the decades 70 to 85 CE.
—The book of John is now considered to have been authored late in the first century or by 110 CE.
—For these dates see pages 339 to 342 of “Don’t Know Much About The Bible,” by Kenneth C. Davis (1999 / 2001, 533 pp. [paperback]). Davis, BTW, is an historian not a man of religion.
—In other words, none of the earliest books of the New Testament were written by Jesus Christ’s supposed disciples nor by anyone else who lived contemporaneously with J.C. and knew him personally. A long time period elapsed before the first New Testament books were written that ostensibly give a detailed account of his life, or rather, of the short time period during which J.C. ostensibly preached then met an unfortunate death.
—As pointed out in “The God Who Wasn’t There” DVD and as noted by Bastanchury (above), Jesus Christ appears to be a composite hero presented in the New Testament with characteristics almost, if not exactly, the same as a number of earlier god-like heroes... i.e., walking on water, performing miracles, etc. The earlier heroes vanished in the sands of time after the shift to belief in one god instead of many gods. Most people today who consider themselves religious know nothing about these earlier gods and their supposed attributes long known to have been mythical, and the close similarity of these mythical attributes to Jesus Christ's supposed attributes.
To the extent I've looked into it (I have not looked into it extensively, admittedly), it appears to me that those — including the most widely-respected biblical and archeological scholars — who have set out to prove that the central hero of Christianity actually existed have found it somewhere between exceedingly difficult and impossible to do so "beyond a reasonable doubt." ("Proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is, of course, the standard [well, ideally the standard, anyway] formally expected for jury determinations of "truth" in U.S. courts of law.)
I have verified that all of the above links are "live." If you're interested but find you can't connect to these links from within this cuckolds.com software system, I suggest copying and pasting them directly into your browser.