This House believes that Jesus Christ was a historical figure

SourcesIf Con's sources 1, 2, and 6 in his opening were papers, not books, he should've mention the publication, and he should've put their titles in quotes instead of italics. I didn't leave Con to guess about my sources. I cited titles correctly and gave page numbers.Presumption of historyI agree that forgeries, legends, and embellishments exist in our records. However, the existence of occasional bad information does not justify us in assuming that all of our sources are wrong until proven right. The presumption ought to be historicity until closer examination reveals otherwise because historicity is more frequent than legend. For example, The Twelve Ceasars by Suetonius was an over-the-top satire about the excesses of twelve Caesars. Some of it probably is exaggerated or made up, but the vast majority of it is true.My presumption argument is that our initial hypothesis ought to be that Jesus existed until we have good reason to think otherwise, and the reason is because all of our earliest sources put him in a recent historical context and take it for granted that he existed. Before a closer look, one might entertain the possibility of legend, but the presumption going into it ought to be that he existed.AuthorityCon misunderstands my point in comparing the concensus on Jesus with the concensus on evolution. I am not saying there is controversy on the subject of evolution. Quite the opposite. There is a very strong consensus in favor of Darwinian evolution among experts, and that is good reason for us to believe in Darwinian evolution even though most of us do not have advanced degrees in biology and have not done the research ourselves.What I am arguing is that since the concensus about Jesus' existence is stronger than the concensus about Dawinian evolution, if we're justified in believing in evolution on the authority of the experts, then we're also justified in believing in the existence of Jesus on the autohrity of experts.I argued that the concensus on the existence of Jesus is just a couple of people short of 100%. Con attempts to show more dissenters, but none of these people (except Robert Price[1]) are experts in New Testament history as I defined it in my opening.G.A. Wells is a professor of German, not Biblical studies. Besides that, he now believes Jesus existed.[2]Frank Zindler is a scientist and has no credentials in Biblical studies.Thomas Thompson is a Hebrew Bible scholars, but has no degrees in New Testament or early Christainity.Earl Doherty has no advanced degrees in Biblical studies or any related field. Just an undergraduate degree in classics.[3]D.S. Murdock (aka Acharya) is a well-known kook and conspiracy theorist who no scholar takes seriously. She has no expertise in Biblical studies and is unpublished in any academic journal. Even Robert Price, who actually agrees with her conclusion, said: "The Christ Conspiracy is a random bag of (mainly recycled) eccentricities, some few of them worth considering, most dangerously shaky, many outright looney."[4]When I say there is nearly a 100% consensus among experts on the existence of Jesus, I'm talking about actual experts with PhDs in fields relating to New Testament studies and early Christianity who are published in peer reviewed academic journals, and who hold teaching positions in those fields at universities or seminaries.As far as bias goes, there is a wide variety of backgrounds among New Testament scholars, including people who are hostile to Christianity. It includes many atheists and agnostics, like Bart Ehrman and Gerd Ludemann.The identity of historical figuresCon seems to be arguing that Jesus was not real because many of the things said about him in the gospels are not true. I agree that if two people named "Jesus" have nothing in common, then they're not the same person. Con would probably agree that two people can talk about the same Jesus even if they have disagreements about some things about him. So the question is where do we draw the line?I have maintained throughout this debate that Jesus is the one behind the Christian movement in the first century who was a Jew from Nazareth who had a brother named James, who claimed to be the messiah, who gathered followers, and who got crucified in Jerusalem. I don't think there is any ambiguity about who we're talking about even if there is disagreement on some of the details of his life.Explanatory powerCon gave four reasons why Jesus being a fiction has more explanatory power than Jesus being a real person, which I respond to presently:1. The simplest explanation for the origin of Christainity is that Jesus existed because that's the one that stares us in the face. Non-historicity is an ad hoc conspiracy theory that doesn't explain why the original apostles appeared to actually believe in Jesus. You'd need an additional ad hoc assumption that they were all in on the conspiracy or that some of them were duped.2. Inventing a messiah who didn't exist was not common at the time. If Jesus didn't exist, then he was the only such invention. A "crucified messiah" made no sense in the historical context of first century Judea. According to Marcus Borg, "The notion of a crucified Messiah was apparently unknown in the Jewish tradition, and was perhaps an impossible combination of terms."[5] The existence of Jesus is the most powerful explanation of why the earliest Christians would claim that "Christ" was crucified.3. This point carries no weight. As a moral reformer, we should expect Jesus to introduce counter-cultural ideas.4. Mark, Q, and John all agree on Jesus' teaching style--that he taught in parables.PaulCon seems to be arguing that Paul did not think of Jesus as an historical person just because Paul didn't give a detailed biography of Jesus. But there was no occasion for Paul to do so. He wrote his letters to churches that were already established, and the purpose of the letters was to deal with issues those churches were having.But if Con think Paul didn't provide any historical information about Jesus, he is mistaken. Paul knew that Jesus was a human being, born of a woman, under the law (Galatians 4:4), meaning he was a Jew, that he was a descendent of David (Romans 1:3), that he had living brothers (1 Corinthians 9:5), including James (Galatians 1:19), that he had a meal on the night he was handed over (1 Corinthians 1:23-25), and that he was crucified (Philippians 2:8).And Paul certainly thought Jesus existed in recent history because he had living brothers. Also, Paul claims that Jesus rose three days after his death and appeared to Cephas (1 Corinthians 15:4-5). So Jesus was no "once upon a time" character to Paul. He was a real Jewish man who died in the recent past.The GospelsI didn't claim the gospels were generally reliable. I claimed that they contain multiple independent attestation about Jesus since Mark, Q, and John are independent sources. Con takes my claim that Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q as sources, and distorts that into "cross plagarism" in which we have no independent sources.JamesCon claims that James was just a spiritual brother of Jesus, meaning that "James was a Christian." However, Paul distinguishes the apostles from "the brothers of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 9:5), and he distinguishes James from Cephas and the other apostles by calling him the Lord's brother (Galatians 1:19). Also, Mark 6:3 says Jesus had brothers and sisters, and it names four of his brothers, including James.Crucifixion and NazarethCon didn't say anything about these two arguments in his rebuttal.[1] I was wrong about Robert Price. He doesn't deny that Jesus existed, just that it's impossible to know. see youtube: watch?v=Qfk3Befydb4[2] http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] Bart Ehrman discusses all these people in Did Jesus Exist, p. 14-21.[4] http://web.archive.org...[5] Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, 116.