Jesus of Nazareth is a historical figure

"First off, while Paul was not an eye witness to the life of Jesus. Paul did however have access to the to members of the 12 disciples..." I would like to see evidence that he had access to disciples, if any existed. The Gospels were written after the Pauline Epistles by non-eye-witnesses, so there is no evidence that there really were any disciples. "The apostles did not speak Arabic but Aramaic and it was not uncommon to know some Greek as well under Roman rule" Thank you for correcting Arabic to Aramaic, but that does not change the point that they were illiterate and not Greek speaking. I see no source provided to show that they would have also spoken Greek. "Another thing as we know, the New Testament was written by a vast array of authours"" I broke down all the authors separately in order to preserve character space, but the end conclusion is still reached accurately after the breakdown. "Josephus You say that"" Not exactly, and I am even agreeing with Scholars on this point. Josephus" writing about Jesus is as if Jesus is the messiah, a great figure, however Josephus was not a believer in Jesus as the messiah. It isn"t what he wrote that brings it to question, it is how he wrote it that does. "For example: Josephus' works on John is proven to be authentic" This is not a debate about John or the authenticity of all of Josephus" works, it is about the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. "James Dunn states that the accounts of Josephus and the New Testament regarding John the Baptist are closer than they may appea"" Just because the New Testament is not historically reliable does not mean that it cannot have some historical information in it. Harry Potter includes cities that are real, does not make the story or everything in it true. This is not a debate about John, it is about Jesus of Nazareth. "Setzer has even commented on the possibility of a forgery to the Testimonium:" To say that it has a kernel of authenticity is the have misplaced faith. There is no evidence to support what it might have said beforehand. I would also like sources with links so that I can at least see what evidence you are using to support your claims. _____ "Paul's Letters" I would like to see sources for this claim. I also would like to point out that the life expectancy of the time makes it unlikely for Paul to have met James. "Biblical Contradictions"" Already pointed out that the Gospels are not historically accurate documents, so this is useless information to bring up. "Baptism" This is making assumptions on the origin of Jesus. If Jesus did not exist there are many sources that could have started this story, and that also means that this point is limited to a smaller group of possible origins of the story. It is in no way evidence for the existence of Jesus. "The Crucifixion" Again, this is making a lot of assumptions. "Let"s look at some of the more famous and universally accepted historical documents and see how they match up with the Bible:" This is complete Red Herring. This is a debate about Jesus, not Caesar, Homer, etc. ____ 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://www.jgrchj.net...... http://www.mountainman.com.au...... http://ourrabbijesus.com......