Jesus Probably existed

His CaseLet us start by questioning how we know a piece of literary evidence is reliable. We can examine the temporal proximity of the work to the time of the incident. We can examine the motive a writer probably had for saying something. We can examine the closeness of the source to the event (think of the game of "Chinese Whispers" to get this idea). These are all very commonly accepted metrics for determining historical reliability.My opponent brings up five sources. Let us first look at Tacitus. My opponent correctly notes that Tacitus was generally hostile to Christians. Why then call him Christ and not Jesus? The word Christ means anointed in Greek, and was generally applied to messiahs of the day. Christ was the phrase used by the Christian community. It indicates that Tacitus was probably just repeating the Christian view, through the lens of the Roman prejudice against it. If that is true, then Tacitus could not have concluded this was the case from evidence, but rather just put it in because he had no reason to doubt the evidence. And why would he? Without carefully checking the records for many hours it would have been impossible. Two other things make that unlikely. First, if so, he would have realised that Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator, because his rank is given incorrectly in the passage. If he did make the mistake with Pilate, why assume he knew all about Jesus? Second, at a time when Christianity was illegal, it would have looked awefully suspiscious if Tacitus had decided to just head on down to Judea to find out more about Jesus. What about our three general criteria? Tacitus wrote in AD 116, which is almost a century after Jesus' alleged death. He had no motive for fact-checking the actual existence of Jesus, and textual evidence indicates he did not. Tacitus does not reveal his source, but given the temporal difference and the relatively lower life expectancy, it seems unlikely that it was anybody connected closely to Jesus.http://en.wikipedia.org...The Talmud references, according to the latest research from Peter Schäfer, a brilliant professor of religion, probably was written in the 3rd or 4th century. By this time Christianity was already well entrenched, and Jews were merely parodying the Christian account. There is no evidence of earlier inclusion of the passage, and the passages (there's more than just that one) do read like a Jewish version of the Christian story. In terms of temporal proximity, we're now talking several centuries. In terms of closeness of sources, the Talmud was written by rabbis, but unfortunately the records of the Sanhedrin were destroyed when the Romans sacked Jerusalem under Titus. It seems unlikely that Jews in the 3rd or 4th century were allowed access to Roman records specifically so they could write their religious books, especially considering how the Talmud was largely written to preserve Judaism against the growing influence of Christianity. It seems likely they wanted to push the message that Jesus was a heretical Jew, even in the Christian scripture, because it avoids the condemnation that the Bible gives to those who do not believe in Jesus' coming in the flesh. This is assuming the passage even refers to Jesus, of course. Yeshu was a very common name, the Talmud gives a different date for the execution (by a day and a century), the Talmud says the same Yeshu "was close to the government", and this Yeshu was executed by a Jewish court, which seems improbable for the period of Roman occupation. Given how short the passage is and how many details are different, the evidence is quite strong that Yeshu is not the same as Jesus, called the Christ.http://www.angelfire.com...http://en.wikipedia.org...Josephus writes about Jesus twice, once being an obvious forgery by Christians. The other occassion, which my opponent uses, is only very short and has a number of flaws. First, I know several people who call themselves "brothers of Christ". Your quote from Lucian proves this was true even in ancient times. Second, we have no reliable early copies of it. If we know one part of it is a fraud, why not the other part? Third, the character of Ananus is inconsistant with that Josephus gives in other writings, making it more likely that this is an interpolation. Fourth, Christian writers fail to use it in debates until about AD 1000 (ie Photius I of Constantinople is silent about it, even though it would have been a really good argument to use in his book about Josephus). Fifth, conveniently, the earliest partial manuscript we have of this is from the 11th century. Temporally this is really bad. But let us assume it is authentic. Why did Josephus write it? Probably to indicate that James was a Christian. It does not seem likely that he had researched the family relationships of James in sufficient depth, given both the context of the passage and the huge volumne of research he was doing, to make this conclusion absolutely. It seems quite probable he was just believing what James said, like Tacitus believed what the Christians said, because he could not falsify it. Josephus wrote around 60 years after the death of Jesus so isn't a very close source either.http://en.wikipedia.org...Pliny wrote a long time after Jesus died, and states that hymns were sung to Christ. Hymns are still sung to him today, but that does not prove he existed. Given the lack of temporal proximity it is impossible he was writing about the friends of Jesus, but rather his followers. There is nothing controversial about that, but it does not provide any evidence Jesus actually existed.Lucian wrote even further back in history. This is not a close source. I wonder how my opponent imagines Lucian could possibly have known for a certainty that Jesus existed? He is merely repeating what the Christians believe, and the context of the passage makes that quite clear.My CaseI'm going to point to two bodies of evidence to support my alternative view that Jesus was a story. I am basing this on the conception of Jesus my opponent defined Biblically. Character counts limit the detail I can give to these points, but they will be expanded on in later rounds.The first body of evidence is the apparent similarity of the Jesus story to that of pre-existing saviour narratives. Given that everything we know about historical Jesus is literally by Chinese Whispers, it seems more than plausible that it developed out of other traditions. Narrative similarity is itself strong evidence that the later narrative was written to be as the earlier one.Examples would include:Orphism (Dionysus)Similar or same birth, death, trial, afterlife, epithets and symbolsZoroastrianism (Zoroaster)Similar or same birth, baptism, temptation, miracles and second comingEgyptian religion (Horus)Similar or same birth, baptism, miracles and deathThis is not to say that Jesus was the same as these characters, but that the fitting of the Jesus narrative to these narrative archtypes indicates the the Jesus narrative is a traditional saviour narrative rather than a historical record.The second body of evidence is that writings detailing Jesus' life are notoriously contradictory and counterfactual. The real world is completely consistant and factual, so these stories cannot possibly be both non-fiction and accurate. We have very early copies of the stories available to us in the latest Bibles, and they're pretty accurate (not entirely, but probably better than most historical texts). This shows that the stories are almost certainly not factual narratives. Some examples of contradictions:Matthew 1:17 and Matthew 1:2 - is it 41 or 42 generations?2 Timothy 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 7:12 - one says all scripture is of God, the other that some was written by the author (apparently Paul) and is not of God.Acts 20:35 - references a passage that does not existLuke 4:29 - Nazareth is not on a mountain