Jesus was a Historical Figure

1. I do not know why Pro insists on putting quotation marks around the term first-hand source. First-hand sources are usually much more accurate than second-hand or even further removed sources, and thus incredibly valuable to historians. I am very justified in asking for first hand sources, as it seems pretty incredible that a miracle worker like Jesus never inspired anyone to write anything about him during his life. Now Paul is generally accepted as a real historical figure by historians. The authorship of the majority of the Pauline letters are believed to be genuine, and the ones that are forgeries or psuedoforgeries are to be expected after so many centuries of revision by the church. However, Paul never met Jesus by his own admission. Paul met with early Christians who allegedly told him about Jesus. If this is the best evidence Pro can produce, it is not a good sign for his argument. If I told you that I met a guy who told me that he knew a guy who could turn Skittles into M&Ms, would you be rationally justified in believing me? Of course not. I could very easily be lying, and so could my friend. Or one of us could be mistaken, or exaggerating, or insane. However Paul has much more incentive to be lying; by doing so he positions himself as the head of the fledgling church, and his writings become it's central dogma. Remember, Paul is writing decades before any of the gospels, so he did not have the gospels as a resource to draw inspiration from, rather the gospels were inspired by Paul's writing. Paul's moral code now influences billions of people across the globe, a power greater than he could possibly have dreamed of. So is Paul a liar? Have his writings been altered over the years to fit the church's changing position? Are his sources lying, or crazy? Or, is the fourth possibility, that Paul met a man who gave him true accounts about a magic man healing people in the boondocks of the Roman Empire on some bizarre quest to save humanity from his own misplaced anger, entirely true? Any rational person will recognize that the fourth possibility is the least likely of the above to be true. 2. The burden of proof does not rest on me. I am not arguing in favour of the Jesus myth theory, I am merely refuting Pro's arguments, in an attempt to show that there are no arguments compelling enough to convince any rational, unbiased person. I would like Pro to explain how the Greek, Roman, Hindu, Druid, Aztec, Egyptian, Native American, Muslim, Mormon, Scientological, and various other religions started. In addition, I would like Pro to demonstrate how multiple sources have written about the existence of King Arthur, the same man from Briton whose brave deeds inspired millions. This request is rhetorical, of course. I merely want to illustrate that A. religions have been popping up all over the world, from as soon as humans could communicate to the present day, and Christianity has about the same odds as any other of actually being factually correct, as well as B. multiple stories about a central, mythical figure crop up all over the world all across history. People love to tell stories; they inspire our imaginations, and make a hard life bearable. Sometimes the line between fact and fiction gets blurred, and oral tradition is one of the easiest ways for blurring to take place, whether they be about King Arthur, or Achilles, or Jesus of Nazareth. 3. Pro throws out a wall of text containing scholarly quotes arguing in favour of a historical Jesus. I think that this is overkill, as all of his quotes essentially say the same thing without offering any new evidence. While many historians do support the Historical Jesus theory currently, there are plenty who support the Jesus Myth theory. This is why we debate, to go over evidence, examine it critically, and challenge the status quo. I won't offer a wall of text to illustrate this point, but I will include links in my sources as verification. So here is the TL;DR of round 3. Pro argues that because Paul says he heard from a guy that Jesus was real we should accept this. Pro says that because we do not know the exact details of the origin of Christianity we should accept that Jesus is real. Pro does not think that multiple tales of the same person could possibly be fictional. Finally, Pro argues that because a lot of historians currently think one way, we should accept this and not continue to ask hard questions. I feel I have successfully refuted all of these arguments. Paul is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and as all of the gospels stem from his writings, the entire New Testament hinges on the very thin possibility Paul is an honest historian. Not knowing the origins of Christianity does not mean we should accept a bad explanation instead of saying "I don't know" and continuing to research. People have created mythical heroes for centuries; multiple people writing about the supposed existence of one hundreds of years after the fact does not qualify as proof. Finally, just because a lot of experts agree with Pro does not automatically make him correct. He is still responsible for providing solid arguments, and I think I have proven that he has not. Thank you. http://quod.lib.umich.edu... https://archive.org... http://journals.cambridge.org... https://archive.org... https://www.gutenberg.org... https://archive.org... http://www.hermetics.org... http://books.google.ca... https://archive.org... http://www.users.drew.edu... http://www.prometheusbooks.com... https://nano.lainchan.org... http://www.tomharpur.com...