Jesus probably did not exist

It's funny my opponent says I'm the one trying to convince you with flash and elaborate stories, because I think the Bible is a much better candidate for that description.Evidence AgainstMy opponent says that all the mythical people I talked about were real. Let us first consider this from the perspective of a gospel writer. They have every intention in the world to portray the other Gods as fake, false idols. If we assume Jesus was real, it makes no sense to go to great lengths to write about Jesus and his life in a similar style to all of the other histories of what they considered false idols. If I was to tell you a story about a guy who was hit by a meteor and gained super-powers, you would immediately associate that with the narrative archtype of the comic book superhero. This plot element is evidence that I am borrowing those narrative conventions. Now it may still be true that somebody really was hit by a meteorite and gained super-powers, but the fact that this is a common narrative convention for a particular type of character makes it more probable that my character fits that type. The same is true of Jesus. I should also note that my opponent's Zoroaster source makes no claims as to whether Zoroaster was fictional or not.Now let us examine my evidence that accounts of Jesus are inconsistant, while reality is not.First the Matthew passages. Whether a generation is added or skipped, the number is still wrong. If David is only added once the same must be done to the generation from Babylon, and that makes the numbers wrong again. While I'm at it, with the other Matthew passage, if you can point me to a out-of-copyright edition of the Josephus text then I can point you to the exact passage. However, just because a source is not a web link, too new to be legally put on the internet, does not make it invalid or conceeded.Secondly with Timothy and Corinthians, the Lord cannot both be saying all scripture and not saying that part of the scripture. Explaining the one passage does not refute the contradiction with the other.With the Acts passage, the author clearly did not mean to indicate sense because he wrote it as a direct quote. Therefore, he is quoting something Jesus did not say.Fourth, the Luke passages. There is no mountain in Nazareth, end of story. There are mountains AROUND Nazareth, but not within the bounds of the city - not now, and not in ancient times. Any map should provide sufficient evidence of this, or even a photo of Nazareth. The other question was how we know Quirinus was not governor twice. This is not possible because the post of governor was already taken by Saturninus and Varus. Furthermore, prior to AD7, Judea was not part of the Roman province of Syria and under the King's administration, rather than a Roman official. This is why Herod had any power at all. (http://www.positiveatheism.org...)The Judas text has not been conceeded by me but my opponent. He simply does not believe the original text because he has never read it, which is not my problem. The Judas gospel is too new a discovery to have lapsed copyright on the translation, but that doesn't mean the evidence is useless.Finally the Thomas text has been conceeded by my opponent. Regardless of the reason for the contradiction (that one author is mistaken) that doesn't affect my argument at all. My opponent has no response to my argument that if one author can be mistaken, so too can both authors be mistaken.Evidence ForFirst let us examine the gospel passages, focusing on Mark because he's likely to be the most reliable. The idea of Mark being a travelling companion of Peter I have already dealt with as necessarily false - and even if there was a Mark that was a travelling companion, it cannot have possibly been that same Mark who wrote the gospel, because the gospel originated in Syria. I also provided a well-respected book, probably the most widely published book about the historiography of the gospels in modern times, where you can read close to 200 pages of proof on the matter, but for my purposes it suffices to say that there is zero evidence backing up the claim. If we agree 70 as a composition date for Mark, then that makes Mark 40 years after Jesus' death, or more than one average lifetime. It's like us writing today, for the first time, that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Those who remember it in any detail, even today are considered old. Back then, they would have been near-impossible to find.I agree completely with my opponent's evidence that the New Testament and Old Testament has been reasonably well preserved. This does not provide evidence that the stories contained therein are true.Moving on to Suetonius. My opponent has by now conceeded most of my objections, except to claim that while I'm right about Christ meaning anointed, none of the other Christs had a Jewish heritage or a Biblical recording. On the Jewish heritage, this is false - Simon of Peraea lived at the same time and in the same place as Jesus, rose again after three days, and was also called the Christ (http://en.wikipedia.org...). On a Biblical recording, how many people do you think early Christians would have wanted to be called "anointed" in their holy book? It seems entirely unsurprising that a Christian book would be exclusively on Christian subjects, with others only having an incidental role. This is in fact what the Bible does.For Josephus, my opponent says Jews did not allow Christians to touch their works. Considering that they were ruled by Christians for many centuries, and that most of the world's important libraries (such as Alexandria) were under the control of Christians, it isn't very improbable. If he believes the text has never been under the purview of Christians, perhaps he could explain how the earliest copy of the Antiquities we have dates to an 11th-century Christian monastery? This is no tarnishing of Josephus - if anyone has tarnished it on my account, it was Christians willing to use the authority of the brilliant scholar to back up their own fiction.He has changed his mind and said the non-canonical works are true. However in the same round he said the non-canonical gospels made mistakes. A text cannot be both mistaken and accurate.Note that my opponent has dropped a variety of sources in this round, notably Tacitus and the letter writers. Remember that extra arguments he uses in the last round are not fair as I cannot respond to them, and for the same reason so is bringing up these sources again.ConclusionSources is about more than just providing more links than your opponent. I have given evidence from scholarly papers and research you can't even access on the internet, having gone to extraordinary lengths to find accurate information about everything I have written, but for this extra research my opponent says my sources are no good. I have taken my opponent's arguments respectfully and, excepting right now and in round one, never addressed him personally, so I don't see his claim of poor conduct on my part, and wish that he clarifies this that I may apologise.In this debate I do not need to refute every single pro-Jesus historian ever. I simply need to show that on the balance of the evidence I and my opponent present to you (as opposed to all the evidence that exists) there is more good reason to conclude Jesus is not real than that Jesus is real. This is not a popularity contest of ideas, nor a chance to voice scholars opinions - this is a formal debate. I began this debate with two contentions - that there was no evidence for, and that there was evidence against. My opponent has tried to show you several sources mentioning Jesus, but all of them have failed a simple reliability test. My evidence against has been the main point of contention. If even one of my contradictions, or one of my parrells stands, that is some evidence for me against none for my opponent. The motion stands.