There exists historically accurate evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed

"You say that I am not allowed to use Paul's books, because he wasn't an eyewitness. Well, technically, he was, even though it was Jesus' spirit. Jesus, The Holy Spirit, and God are all God. So if you see Jesus, you see the same thing as The Holy Spirit or God; if you see God, you see the same thing as Jesus or The Holy Spirit; and if you see The Holy Spirit, you see the same thing as Jesus or God. Therefore, I am allowed to use those seven books for evidence." No, you are not, unless you can PROVE that the supernatural event of Paul meeting the spirit of Jesus happened. You must also prove that Jesus was a historical figure since Paul never says that he was, for all we know (looking at the Epistles) Jesus was not a historical figure but a spiritual one. "As for the other "forged" books, I think I can still use those, because you say "modern scholars agree this book is forged", but you aren't a one of them. If you can try and prove to me why they're forged and I can't prove why they aren't, that evidence doesn't count." To argue against the majority of modern scholarship"s opinions on these documents is to be counter-productive in this debate. If you wish to make a rebuttal to my argument you need to provide evidence to support your own argument. ""You can't use the three of four gospels because they're written in third-person view. Only 9 of 27 left!" Foolish! The four writers of the gospels were either a disciple of Christ, or a close associate of a disciple. So Jesus probably told them the story (because his parents told him)." There is NOTHING to say they were written by apostles, I addresses that as well. None of the Gospels were written by Jesus" apostles. "If there are any other books you find fault in, you find the fault in them and show it to me." You must also provide EVIDENCE to refute my claims. "Where Pilate lived, recently people found "The Pilate Stone".[1] On it it says (translated to English) "To the Divine Augusti [this] Tiberieum ...Pontius Pilate ...prefect of Judea ...has dedicated [this] So...if Pontius Pilate was real, Jesus was--there"s no denying it! Now, the Pilate Stone is in a biblical museum (I forgot where)." Pilate does almost certainly exist as a historical figure, but this says NOTHING about if Jesus existed or not. Just because one figure mentioned in the New Testament did exist does not mean that all characters mentioned exist. _________________________________________________________________________ Now, for my next round of arguments: I left off with Tacitus, so Pliny the Younger is up now. He wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking for advice on how to deal with the rapid growth of the Christian community in his area. Among other things, he describes the Christian custom of holding weekly meetings to sing praises "to Christ as to a god." Pliny was only describing an element of Christian worship. His comments say nothing about the historicity of Jesus. It is just confirming that the religion exists. The three questions regarding the mentioning of Jesus by Pliny: Was he in a position to offer reliable, primary-source testimony? We do not know Did he, in fact, offer a historically-reliable account of Jesus? No, he did not give any testimony to the existence of Jesus, only to the worship of Christians. Did their testimonies survive to the present substantially unaltered and intact? We do not know Pliny never accounted for the existence of Jesus, he simply confirmed that Christianity was growing. Pliny cannot be used as evidence of Jesus" existence. Thallus" mention of a biblical event is now ready for a simple debunk. Historian Richard Carrier states the following "It is commonly claimed that a chronologer named Thallus, writing shortly after 52CE, mentioned the crucifixion of Jesus and the noontime darkness surrounding it (which reportedly eclipsed the whole world for three hours), and attempted to explain it as an ordinary solar eclipse. But this is not a credible interpretation of the evidence. A stronger case can be made that we actually have a direct quotation of what Thallus said, and it does not mention Jesus" We do not need to put it through the 3 question system as Richard Carrier already stated it is not a credible source by stating that Thallus never mentions Jesus. If it does not mention Jesus then it does not give evidence of Jesus" existence. Thallus cannot be used for evidence. Mara Bar Serapion now has to be addressed. "... What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King?" All this document talks about that is supposedly a reference of Jesus is the mention of the Wise King of the Jews. It does not refer to Jesus directly, it doesn"t even mention Christ. How is this a mention of Jesus? It is not. During the time that Jesus supposedly lived there were many people pretending to be the Messiah of the Jews. There is also no way of knowing where the information from this letter was obtained. When we put it through the 3 questions, this is what we get. Was he in a position to offer reliable, primary-source testimony? We do not know Did he, in fact, offer a historically-reliable account of Jesus? No, he did not give any testimony to the existence of Jesus, only to the "Wise King," which does not necessarily mean Jesus. Did their testimonies survive to the present substantially unaltered and intact? We do not know It fails the second question, so it cannot be used for evidence that Jesus existed either. Finally, we must address the Babylonian Talmud. Starting in the 13th century, manuscripts of the Talmud were sometimes altered in response to the criticisms made during the disputations. Johann Maier, a talmudic scholar, discounts accounts with no mention of the name Jesus, and further discounts those that do mention Jesus by name, such as Sanh. 43a and 107b, as later medieval changes. As well as that, most mentions of "Jesus" are vague and/or mention Jesus as a different person (for example, Jesus son of Pantera). Let"s put this through the three questions now. Was he in a position to offer reliable, primary-source testimony? We do not know Did he, in fact, offer a historically-reliable account of Jesus? No Did their testimonies survive to the present substantially unaltered and intact? No It fails the test, it is not historically reliable. This means it cannot be used as evidence for the existence of Jesus. Now, we need to look for other evidence that could confirm the existence of Jesus and put it through Higher Criticism after evaluating the evidence itself. We can also look at documents that should include Jesus, but do not. The best thing we can bring up for that is that there exist no official Roman documents about Jesus and there exists no contemporary evidence about Jesus. One other thing we can do is point out that there existed people whose job was to record cult movements around the area but never mentioned Jesus. We can also look at where Jesus is supposedly from, Nazareth. When we look at records, even from Josephus, we see no mention of Nazareth anywhere but in the New Testament. Josephus even recorded a military campaign where the Romans moved into the very vicinity of Nazareth, but he makes no mention of it. Other evidence people bring up is the caves, yet that goes completely against Jewish traditions and customs. They buried people in caves and did not live near cemeteries or graves, and they would not live near dead bodies. It is always pointed out that a popular website of an excavation of Nazareth calls it a "single family farm." A single family farm is not a city or a town. It seems that there is no evidence that Nazareth even existed, and by the Null Hypothesis it is most logical to think that Nazareth did not actually exist. We are lacking historically reliable evidence and we have no contemporary evidence of the existence of Jesus, we don't even have evidence that Nazareth existed. It appears that there is nothing to show Jesus actually lived. Furthermore, the earlier copies of many documents that we have say Chrestos, Christos, Christians, etc., but the problem is that that does not automatically make it Jesus. Chrestos could be a person"s name, worshipers of the Pagan God Serapis (sometimes called Chrestos) were called Christians. Further, the word Christ does not even mean Jesus. The word Christ was a title that was given to any "anointed one of God." This included pretty much every priest and king, and occasionally prophets. Sources: http://www.doxa.ws... http://ourrabbijesus.com... http://www.mountainman.com.au...... http://www.jgrchj.net...