Jesus Christ Existed as a Historical Person and was Not a Myth

My opponent must argue that Jesus didn't exist at all and his whole story as recoded in the Bible was borrowed from pagan myths. He must present his arguments in his opening round, showing why he doesn't think Jesus existed. He must also give sources for his claims. Here I present my opening argument which shows that Jesus was a real person who started the Christian movement. "But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind." Tacitus Annals 15:44 (writing soon after 100 C.E.) Here the Roman historian Tacitus confirms that Christus (Latin for Christ) was a historical person who founded the Christian movement, that it began in Judea, and he was put to death under the reign of Pontius Pilate, all of which are the same facts recorded for Jesus Christ in the New Testament. First century Jewish historian Josephus also mentions James, the half brother of Jesus, who, the Bible tells us, did not initially follow Jesus but later became a prominent elder in Jerusalem. (John 7:3-5; Galatians 1:18-19) He documents James' arrest in these words: "[The high priest Ananus] convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others." ( Jewish Antiquities, Book XX. 200, pp. 495, 497). In writing these words, Josephus additionally confirms that "Jesus, who was called the Christ" was a real, historical person. Writing before 100 C.E. Josephus also records: "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day." (Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3) The Gospels include eyewitness testimony, and contemporary testimony of those who knew the eyewitness. Luke 1:1-5; John 20:21; 1 John 1:1-5; 1 Corinthians 15:6. In this connection, Professor F. F. Bruce makes a keen observation: "It can have been by no means so easy as some writers seem to think to invent words and deeds of Jesus in those early years, when so many of His disciples were about, who could remember what had and had not happened. The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of willful manipulation of the facts), which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so. On the contrary, one of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, "We are witnesses of these things,' but also, "As you yourselves also know' (Acts 2:22)." (Where Is History Going? by John Warwick Montgomery, 1969, p. 51.) Why couldn't the disciples have made up the whole story? "(1) Blaise Pascal gives a simple, psychologically sound proof for why this is unthinkable: "The apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Either supposition is difficult, for it is not possible to imagine that a man has risen from the dead. While Jesus was with them, he could sustain them; but afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act? The hypothesis that the Apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end, and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus' death and conspiring to say that he has risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment, tortures and death, and they would all have been lost. Follow that out." (Pascal, Pensees 322, 310) The "cruncher" in this argument is the historical fact that no one, weak or strong, saint or sinner, Christian or heretic, ever confessed, freely or under pressure, bribe or even torture, that the whole story of the resurrection was a fake a lie, a deliberate deception. Even when people broke under torture, denied Christ and worshiped Caesar, they never let that cat out of the bag, never revealed that the resurrection was their conspiracy. For that cat was never in that bag. No Christians believed the resurrection was a conspiracy; if they had, they wouldn't have become Christians. (2) If they made up the story, they were the most creative, clever, intelligent fantasists in history, far surpassing Shakespeare, or Dante or Tolkien. Fisherman's "fish stories" are never that elaborate, that convincing, that life-changing, and that enduring. (3) The disciples' character argues strongly against such a conspiracy on the part of all of them, with no dissenters. They were simple, honest, common peasants, not cunning, conniving liars. They weren't even lawyers! Their sincerity is proved by their words and deeds. They preached a resurrected Christ and they lived a resurrected Christ. They willingly died for their "conspiracy." Nothing proves sincerity like martyrdom. They change in their lives from fear to faith, despair to confidence, confusion to certitude, runaway cowardice to steadfast boldness under threat and persecution, not only proves their sincerity but testifies to some powerful cause of it. Can a lie cause such a transformation? Are truth and goodness such enemies that the greatest good in history -- sanctity -- has come from the greatest lie?... (4) There could be no possible motive for such a lie. Lies are always told for some selfish advantage. What advantage did the "conspirators" derive from their "lie" ? They were hated, scorned, persecuted, excommunicated, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, crucified, boiled alive, roasted, beheaded, disemboweled and fed to lions -- hardly a catalog of perks! (5) If the resurrection was a lie, the Jews would have produced the corpse and nipped this feared superstition in the bud. All they had to do was go to the tomb and get it... (6) The disciples could not have gotten away with proclaiming the resurrection in Jerusalem -- same time, same place, full of eyewitnesses -- if it had been a lie. William Lane Craig says, "The Gospels were written in such a temporal and geographical proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost impossible to fabricate events....The fact that the disciples were able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the resurrection (and been believed) under such circumstances had it not occurred." (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, chapter 6) (7) If there had been a conspiracy, it would certainly have been unearthed by the disciples' adversaries, who had both the interest and the power to expose any fraud. Common experience shows that such intrigues are inevitably exposed (Craig, ibid)." http://www.google.com... Critics claim no one knows who wrote the Gospels, but, the extra-biblical testimony unanimously attributes the Gospels to their traditional authors: the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermes, Theophilus, Hippolytus, Origen, Puadratus, Irenaeus, Melito, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Dionysius, Tertullian, Cyprian, Tatian, Caius, Athanasius, Cyril, up to Eusebius in A.D. 315, even Christianity's opponents conceded this: Celsus, Porphyry, Emperor Julian. Anonymous works often get caught up by competing authorship; one needs to explain how come there is such unanimous agreement in the first few centuries on who wrote the Gospels if the authors are unknown. Further, there are no manuscripts extant which omit the names of the authors of those Gospels which contain author names today. Were there to be found a copy of John's gospel with a full copy of the first page which omits the author's name, and this was dated earlier than those which contain the author's name, this would prove it was originally an anonymous work; but since no such Gospel has been found, we must attribute the works to their traditional authors. One question I want to ask my opponent. What is the minimum proof you would require for the existence of a person? And does Jesus pass this test? If not, why not? I look forward to my opponent's arguments.