The Evidence Shows Jesus Historically Existed

It seems to me that my opponent continues making very simple errors. Let us analyze his response. Something I want to pick on is when he says "I could have quoted any number of deniers of the historical Jesus", when in reality, 99% of all Historians fervently accept Jesus existence. Bart Ehrman says "this is not even a question among Historians", and it is true. First, he quotes a passage of Matthew referencing another James, that is not Jesus' brother but an Apostle. Well, this is clearly irrelevant, Paul never references James' the Apostle, there is simply no question it is the brother that he is referencing (it literally says brother), but let's accept for a second it's the one of the 12 Apostle's -- he has basically refuted himself, as by confirming this is an Apostle, he has conceded this man is a direct undeniable eyewitness of Jesus who travelled with Jesus for 3 years. Either way, it must be one of them and either way, it's an eyewitness. He also tries to say it does not literally mean "brother", however that is purely ridiculous, it is playing with words, this can be completely refuted with the following verse; Mark 6:3; "Isn"t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren"t His sisters here with us" as well? And they took offense at Him." There is no question among Historians that Paul knew James, the brother of Jesus, and the fact that it has been made certain to us by Paul himself, as well as Luke in Acts 15, validates all of this. If Paul knew the family of Jesus, which is exactly what the evidence indicates, there can be no question that Jesus lived. Paul gives us direct witness testimony from Jesus' own family. He then says we do not have the "copies of the copies of the copies" of the originals. That's true for every document of ancient antiquity, ever. Using such methodology and applying it to all ancient history would devastate our knowledge on the past -- no Historian uses such erroneous methods, and for the record, Bart Ehrman (who he quoted on this) concedes that the New Testament is almost exactly the same [1]. He also says "there are more variants in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament". The only reason for this is because we have so many ancient manuscripts. We have 2.6 million pages of New Testament from the ancient world [2], and with 400,000 variants, that's 1 variant every 6.5 pages. But it gets worse for my opponent, because textual critics (Bart Ehrman being one of them) have already solved more than 99% of all variants [3]. Thus, we know almost exactly, to the letter, what the originals said. My opponent reiterates that Josephus is a fraud, but as I've said, textual critics have already deduced what the original Josephus' passage said, and it still references Jesus. Allow me to expand, we have an Arabic manuscript of Josephus of Jewish Antiquities 18 that contains no interpolation and still references Jesus [4]. Then, he goes on to accuse Tacitus of being fraudulent again, however none of his references are from Roman Historians, all these references he gives have no academic training to accuse Tacitus' reference as being a fraud, none of them are peer-reviewed, and their arguments (such as saying a single one of all of Tacitus manuscripts have a single word possibly messed with) are rejected. If you actually take a look at what Roman Historians have to say, as I've cited in my previous comment, James Rives explains that there exists not even a question on whether this is an interpolation or not. Some of the people he quotes like Richard Carrier receive no respect whatsoever in the academic community, Richard Carrier does not even know basic things about Roman History such as the fact that prefects and procurators are the same thing. When it comes to Clement, Con completely ignores the argument I gave for this being dated to 95-96 AD, and the fact that the 2nd century dating given by his source is based on the most ambiguous reason possible, "Clement references the Church as ancient". This gives us no methodology, whatsoever, to put any date on Clement. Rather, we have a good source to date Clement, and that is the confirmed persecution under Domitian in the 90's AD that Clement speaks of, meaning Clement must be dated to that time. Con then says the following; "Clement, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius or Polycarp contain any references to any of the four gospels" This is ridiculous, Ignatius quotes verses from both Luke and Mark [5] from the 1st century, Polycarp quotes verses from Matthew, Luke, and Mark [6], and Clement of Rome quotes both Matthew and Mark [7]. These are all first century and very early quotations and thus references. Now, on "resurrections being common" in 1st century Palestine. Once again, all the references of my opponent quote Resurrections from the New Testament. As I've explained, this only means Resurrection's were common in Christianity, the fact is that only Christians were claiming any resurrections, no one else was. Anyways, my opponent hilariously attempts to quote the ridiculous idea that deities predating Jesus have the same story. Not a single Historian in the world takes this seriously, all of these "similarities" are fabrications, and you will never see my opponent quote primary sources to affirm this. Let me tell you the real story of Hercules, that is not copied and pasted from an anti-Christian website. First, Alcmene was not an "upright woman" like Mary was, she slept with Zeus when she was already married and had kids [8] (thus not a virgin, rather an adulterer, there is no existing correlation with Mary). Then, the rest of the story goes like this (http://www.gradesaver.com...), Hera does not try to kill Zeus' illicit son with Alcene, rather she drives Zeus into insanity making Zeus kill all of Hercules' kids. Zeus does not kill his own kids, he kills Hercules' three kids, and that's all (whereas Herod tried slaying all the children of the entire land, and it was for Jesus', not any kid of Jesus). After that, Zeus tries to kill himself (unlike Herod, of course). Hercules also never dies and rises to Mount Olympus, that's just a fabrication, Greek mythology has no reference to Hercules' death. Anyways, the mythology of Hercules literally has hundreds of differences with Jesus. Hercules is a mass-murderer, regularly put under spells, has a wife and kids, has a mother (Jesus certainly didn't have a mother). He was not sinless, did not get crucified or pay for anyones sins, did not have any disciples, etc, etc, etc. See the initial source I pasted on Hercules if you want to read up on these things. The fact is, all supposed parallels with Jesus of any mythological character (Horus, Osiris, Buddha, Mithras, Krishna) is all based on fabricated history [9]. He will never be able to provide us with primary sources to substantiate any of these, as they don't exist [10]. For the record, Hercules was actually a real person, he ruled a city, but was deified after his death, unlike Jesus who our earliest records (Clement, Ignatius, earliest manuscripts) all attribute divinity to from the start. He then tries to argue that Jesus didn't exist because Philo of Alexandria did not write about him, this is merely an Argument from Silence fallacy. The fact is, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius killed 16,000-60,000 people, and was witnessed by over 250,000, yet we have zero contemporary sources of it, none, nadda. The earliest record of it comes 30 years later by Pliny the Younger [11], and yet it had a much greater impact on the world than Jesus during His time. If Mount Vesuvius' eruption can go undocumented for three decades from the event, then the fact that Jesus can go undocumented for four years, with a much smaller direct impact, is not a problem whatsoever. As Bart Ehrman says, in respect to no contemporary sources whilst the person is alive, "that's true for billions of people we're sure lived" [12]. On Matthew, he provides not a single rebuttal to the overwhelming internal and external evidence for the historicity for Matthean authorship, rather he goes with a classical Argument from Authority, "your arguments are wrong because lots of historians say it is anonymous". I can quote just as many Historians who accept Matthew as the author as he can give against. Let me give you a few examples, Wayne Stiles, William Lane Craig (yes, he is a Historian, he has a Masters Degree in it), Daniel Wallace, N.T. Wright, Geza Vermes, Peter Williams, James White, Mike Licona, David Wood, Sam Shamoun, etc, etc, etc. This is certainly a major position taken by Historians, and discrediting the landslide evidence on the basis of "some Historians are not in agreement with you" is ludicrous. We have shown that the evidence, as well as the entirety early Church writers unanimously recognized the four Gospels as being authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. My opponent has offered no rebuttal to the evidence for Matthean authorship, and I have shown not only the evidence, but much of the Historians are stacked against him if he wishes to play the authority game. I'd like to thank my opponent for this debate. Vote Pro. 1. 2. http://www.christianpost.com... 3. 4. 5. http://www.ntcanon.org... 6. http://www.ntcanon.org... 7. http://www.biblequery.org... 8. http://www.greekmythology.com... 9. 10. 11. 12.