Madhairday and I have been plotting behind the scenes to have this debate as we think it will be interesting, both for us and for others.
Mad is a Christian & I am an atheist. I will leave it entirely up to her to present her case.
Mine is:
It's impossible to conclude that Jesus actually existed at all given that there's simply no evidence to work with. I am aware that the majority (although not all) of scholars, both secular & religious, have concluded that he did exist, but this is for inferential reasons not evidential ones, so the issue is nowhere near as cut and dried as many people suppose.
While I am generally happy to accept that there was some man, probably called Yeshua/Joshua/Jesus, who lived in the Galilean region at the beginning of the 1st century & who may have died by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans - I don't feel that this is particularly significant or justifies anyone in believing that he was divine.
I also believe that nearly all of the "Jesus story" - the nativity, the miracles, the resurrection etc is complete myth and never happened at all.
I have continually pointed out on many threads that "There's no evidence that Jesus existed" and been called ignorant and so forth. So, this is my opportunity to make my case and demonstrate that this is, in fact, a correct statement.
So, I'm kicking of this (hopefully) interesting discussion with:
There is no evidence that Jesus the man existed. Discuss 
(By the way, this is an open discussion for anyone to join in, ask questions, make points etc, it's not just for Mad and I).
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Philosophy/religion
The Great Jesus debate. Did he exist at all - and if he did, what reasons do we have to believe he was divine?
EllieArroway · 05/03/2013 13:51
Cloaked in obscurity in that it happened in a small region in a time things were not generally recorded. They didn't have the Daily Fail in those days 
What happened was that as the movement of early Christianity gained momentum, very quickly, the documentation of it passed down via oral tradition (we're not talking vague memories of stories your nan told you here) was solidified in the gospels, the writings of Paul even before these, and later on in mentions of Jesus and the movement in Roman, Jewish and then early Christian literature.
I do not think you can apply a modern lens to the situation - you cannot say, for example, that surely the feeding of the 5,000 must necessarily have been recorded somewhere at the time - because this was just not done. It was not an overtly political or economic movement. Jewish leaders were far more rattled in terms of Jesus' implicit and explicit claims to be more than a man than Romans were threatened. Jesus showed himself to be not particularly politically motivated - for instance, he told them to give to Caesar what is Caesar's, he didn't stand against the regime in any explicit and threatening manner.
I have to go back to the NT accounts as historical sources which hold up under scrutiny. Paul's writings go back to a time extremely soon after the death and resurrection of Jesus. His inclusion of early forms of credal statements point to the fact that early Christianity was formed and organised very soon after the events took place and that there was consistency of belief. Not only that, but the accounts in Luke and Acts, for example, were written by a respected physician and historian who hung out with Paul who was likely to have been converted around 2 years after the resurrection. Hardly accounts that would be based on vague memories lost in the mists of time and made up by a few deluded individuals. They were contemporary enough to be fully refuted by more hostile witnesses living at the time, but they were not.
Hostile witnesses such as Tacitus the Roman historian only back up the existence of Jesus, despite him naming him as a sorcerer - again, an implicit accounting for Jesus being a miracle worker.
And, really, could he not offer me something rather better than this to give me a reason to believe? Some fragmentary, inconsistent accounts of people who were at least 4 times removed from the events they talk about? Gospels that have not survived in their original form, so we can't be completely sure what they actually said? Accounts that have been faffed about so much in the past 2000 years that it's a major puzzle to remove all the fraudulent interpolations and honest mistranslations? Accounts that are so vague it's possible to come up with dozens and dozens of different interpretations depending on your own particular bias?
OK. The gospel accounts are not fragmentary, not inconsistent, and they are most certainly not 4 times removed from the events that they talk about.
The accounts, especially the synoptic accounts (John is a different matter ) are remarkably consistent for such ancient literature describing events, and yet not so consistent that they are suspect - ie they do not match each other word for word, which would imply a conspiracy and a conference at the very least. Their inconsistencies can be accounted for in their own bias, their literary devices and in the natural differences which usually occurred in oral tradition at the time. The inconsistencies are all secondary points - the accounts have a remarkable consistency with each other when it comes to the most important history and theology.
They are not 4 times removed. Luke, as I said in my last post, was a contemporary of Paul, who was converted very early on and began his missionary work long before the gospels were written down. Luke observed the early church in the making from day one, not from decades after Jesus' death, and observed the consistency of early creeds and ways of living life in line with what Jesus taught. Mark was a contemporary of Peter the disciple, and wrote his gospel the earliest, using Peter as a source - Peter the eyewitness. Matthew is more uncertain, but many scholars make a very good case for the author Matthew being the apostle Matthew - certainly the book was attributed to him from very early on, as documented in some early writings. Many scholars also believe John to have been written far, far earlier than some think and there is archaeological evidence for this. The idea that the gospels were written decades after the events and by authors far outside the eyewitnesses' experience is one that is mistaken, or at least much challenged by many prominent scholars. James Dunn is always a good one to read on this.
Your last point is that accounts have been faffed around with so much in the past 2000 years that they are unreliable. Again, this is a myth. Scholars argue that the accounts we read today are remarkably close to what was written down originally. We have a multiplicity of early material, fragments of papyrus dating right back as early as the first century AD.
Got to go - be back later to expand on this - parent's consulation beckons!!!
Completely aware of Tacitus, Poly - and I shall be back to annihilate that argument in due course
I have a broken boiler & a plumber demanding attention, so must go for now.
Ellie, hope your boiler gets sorted soon!
I think this is a great idea for a thread as some of the 'Is there a God?' threads touch on the historicity of the Bible and of Jesus, but I can't remember seeing a thread just dealing with this one question.
Ellie (and others), can I ask, which is your favourite Gospel, and why? I'm all about Luke at the moment, but every time I read John I'm swooning 
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