Jesus Probably existed

1AD is actually almost certainly wrong for the date of Jesus' birth, but that is an issue for another debate because it almost certainly didn't even happen. The calender was made up in medieval europe when the Catholic church was seeking to expand their hegemony into time, having already reached great distances into space (at that time the whole world was centered on Jerusalem in maps). The significance of a day does not prove something happened then, by the way. That's why we have things like Friday the 13th superstitions.Evidence ForAt this point in the debate, we are discussing four candidate historical sources for Jesus' existance.Tacitus - my opponent's entire case was that the Christians could not fabricate a rumor about a prophet who did not exist. Suppose that I was to tell you that the messiah has come and died a week ago in New Zealand, but then rose again to a heavenly plane. How would you know if I was lying? You might check the net, or newspapers. Those did not exist in ancient Judea. You might ask people who knew the guy - but of course if he's fictional, then everyone who "knew him" would back up my story that he has come. You might find his tomb - but Jesus didn't have a tomb, he borrowed the tomb of Joseph of Aramathea (according to Luke) which was sealed with Joseph in it by the time the gospels were published. So the people literally had no way of knowing, and Tacitus clearly had no reason for caring strongly enough to presume the account was true.Talmud - my opponent's entire case is premised on the Talmud being written in the first century AD. Not only has he not provided any evidence to back up this claim, but he's wrong - the Talmud was written in the 3rd or 4th century (http://en.wikipedia.org...). This is, of course, supposing that the Jesus in the Torah is in fact the same Jesus, which I provided evidence last round it is not.Josephus - here my opponent's whole argument is that we have surviving original copies of Josephus. This is wrong - the earliest copy dates from a Christian monastery in the 11th century (http://en.wikipedia.org...). Note that the Antiquities is a different book from the Histories, which curiously enough do not mention Jesus at all.New Testament - my opponent believes these are the most historically proximate documents, and therefore most accurate, ever written. Historical proximity is but one measure of likely accuracy, but let us entertain that notion for a moment. Christ was born around 1BC-1AD, according to convention. The gospels record he lived 33 years, and therefore must have died around AD 33. There are four gospels, of which the earliest is Mark. According to the Christian view (I'm grabbing these dates from the introduction to Mark in my Zondervan NIV study bible) Mark was composed between the mid 50s to just before AD 70. From a sceptical perspective I think anything far before the destruction of the temple in AD 70 is quite ridiculous, both for textual and historical reasons, but let us grant that the gospel was written in AD 55, the earliest possible date, 22 years after Jesus' death. Now note the average Judean life expectancy was around 29. In real terms it's equivalent to making the first mention of the Kuwait war today, adjusting for the life expectancy, it's like first mentioning the moon landing today. And if we take the better estimate of AD 70, these dates become more ridiculous. So you see that even this is not proximate enough. Note that other historical figures are far more proximate. For the emporer Augustus, the Roman emporer when Jesus was born, we have records of him dating to before his death, for instance his own Res Gestae. Surviving copies is a poor indicator because the number of copies is determined not by what happened at the time but what happpened after (in this case, the New Testament was extremely well preserved because Christianity flourished). It's also not an indicator of truth. Many do believe that Homer's Illiad is mostly mythic, for example, and that's reasonable given the lack of historical evidence.That's not the only criteria for reliability though. According to Randall Helm's lengthy, landmark investigation in "Who Wrote The Gospels?", none of the gospels were in fact authored by the people who they are today named after, and Mark, the most proximate, must have been writing at the third, or more probably the fourth remove from Jesus himself if Jesus was real. The problem with just accepting the kind of hearsay that the gospel authors did and writing it all down is that you don't know if the other person is lying, or has been genuinely misled. All that would be true even if the gospel writers were truthful, which my literary evidence shows they are probably not.Evidence AgainstDionysus was not just a Greek god but also an Orphic god. The traditions are not the same. Anyway, my opponent notes that the other Gods may have been real once too. However, once again, this is an assertion without evidence. My opponent says it is all based on faith, and that's exactly the problem. But consider why you would write a story in a style conforming to beliefs you think are mythic. The gospel writers would probably not have written the story as they did (ie their use of midrash) if they wanted the story to be interpreted as a factual and historical account.That's the only thing he could say against this point, which brings me on to my second argument, about contradictions.On Matthew's geneology list, my opponent is the one who clearly cannot count, because not both of the lists add up to 42 (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com...)Timothy and Corinthians cannot both be true, because Paul is not God. All scripture being by God means that none is by Paul. Brushing this aside and saying there is no contradiction without evidence for that is not a good counter-argument.Acts quotes Jesus on something he clearly never said. Remember that Acts was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke, who is usually very careful to put Jesus' sayings into his own gospel. At the start of Luke the author even makes a point of writing a complete and orderly account.Luke still has his geography wrong because there are not multiple mountains or cliff faces in Nazareth. It lies, as it did in ancient times, at the bottom of a smooth valley.