Jesus Existed

It's pretty hard make an argument against the existence of Jesus based on the fact there is a scholarly consensus on the fact that he existed. [1][2]It's going to take some serious arguing to defeat the scholarly consensus. although an appeal to authority is typically a logical fallacy, when referring to scholarly consensus, it in fact is not.[3]This fact is something that should be heavily weighed and considered. Let's keep this fact in mind for the remainder of the debate.THE APOSTLE PAULThe apostle Paul was in competition with the brother of jesus (James), for the leadership of this new religious movement. With James having such a close relationship with Jesus, being his brother and all. Paul had to focus on some post mortem revelations. Competition can bring out the worst in people sometimes and that's no different than what happened with some of Jesus's early disciples. Ofcourse it's possible Paul wasn't lying and in fact believed he was recieving messages from Jesus after his death but that's beyond the scope of this debate. What's important is that Paul in fact knew both Jesus and his family in the flesh and blood, and says so himself. I actually provide some quotes from the bible in round 2 where Paul refers to a flesh and blood Jesus. let's say that Paul actually did only know Jesus by revelation, it still dismisses the fact that Paul knew the brother of Jesus very well as well as other family members. I'll show you what I mean."But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother." Galatians 1:19.We can confirm that James was in fact the blood relative of Jesus from other writings."some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome."[4] "When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body."[5] "Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons."[6]Just for refernce here is some referances to a physical Jesus I mentioned in round 1. I can't post them all because Paul literally refers to Jesus 200 plus times. Jesus was born in human fashion, as a Jew, and had a ministry to the Jews. (Galatians 4:4) "Jesus was referred to as "Son of God". (1 Cor. 1:9) "Jesus was a direct descendent of King David. (Romans 1:3) "Jesus prayed to God using the term "abba". (Galatians 4:6) "Jesus expressly forbid divorce. (1 Cor. 7:10) "Jesus taught that "preachers" should be paid for their preaching. (1 Cor. 9:14) "Jesus taught about the end-time. (1 Thess. 4:15) "Paul refers to Peter by the name Cephas (rock), which was the name Jesus gave to him. (1 Cor. 3:22) "Jesus had a brother named James. (Galatians 1:19) "Jesus initiated the Lord's supper and referred to the bread and the cup. (1 Cor. 11:23-25) "Jesus was betrayed on the night of the Lord's Supper. (1 Cor. 11:23-25) "Jesus' death was related to the Passover Celebration. (1 Cor. 5:7) "The death of Jesus was at the hands of earthly rulers. (1 Cor. 2:8) "Jesus underwent abuse and humiliation. (Romans 15:3) "Jewish authorities were involved with Jesus' death. (1 Thess. 2:14-16) "Jesus died by crucifixion. (2 Cor. 13:4 et al) "Jesus was physically buried. (1 Cor. 15:4)"THE JEWISH ORAL TRADITION AND MOREThe Jewish oral tradition and ability to pass on their history throough transcription is simply amazing. Not all oral traditions are created equal and the Jewish oral tradition probably trumps them all.Here is one example where we can demonstrate how accurate the Jews were at preserving their texts.The Masoretic Text is what the old Testament is derived from and dates back to about AD 935.[7] Before the dead sea scrolls were discovered this was basically the oldest text we had.The Old Testament was often criticized for probably being inaccurately passed down based on the game of telephone theory my opponent mentions. In 1947 thes criticisms were put to rest with the discovery of the dead sea scrolls.The dead sea scrolls were dated back as far as the 3rd century BC and no significant differences existed in that 1,000 years.[8] “Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The five percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.”[8]This is clearly a culture that takes transmitting their stories very seriously and is resistent to making any mistake.CONTAMINATIONI don't really buy Stephen Law's arguments. I think there is good reason to have a bias against the supernatural when evaluating ancient texts but that the mundane should be given more credibility, especially when you consider things such as the embarrasment factor which I brought up earlier. There are are a ton of stories involving Alexander the great and Julias Caeser with supernatural elements. There is a tendency to mythicize these great men a bit and honestly we'd have to toss out a ton of stories about them and lose much of the Earths history if we had to throw out every text that mentioned the supernatural without 2nd hand accounts. CONCLUSIONI've provided plenty of different evidence to confirm the historical Jesus in fact existed and my opponent has set a huge burden on himself arguing against scholarly consensus. I look forward to reading his rebuttals and offering my counte rebuttals and closing statements in the next round.sources[1] Jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003 page 339 states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent"[2] Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven (Apr 6, 2010) page 39[3] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com...[4] Mark 15:40[5] Mark 16:1[6] Matthew 27:56.[7] Price, 280[8] illar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking Press, 1955), 304, quoted in Norman Geisler and William Nix, General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 367