Jesus Christ doesn't exist

This debate is over the existence of Jesus and not the divinity of Jesus, my opponent agrees to this point in the comments. However despite agreeing to this point he fails to argue anything even related to the existence of Jesus. Let's examine a few conclusions. "C1: Therefore, I need to disprove that the Bible is God's word." This isn't really true. The bible being God's word or not is completely irrelevant when examining whether the person now known as Jesus existed. Most people would agree that the Book of Mormon is not the word of God, but you'll find very few who deny the existence of Joseph Smith. "Con must show reason to believe in Christ, or the Christian God. With that, what is Con's argument?" Not true. I must merely show that the person referred to as Jesus Christ, actually existed. As the resolution makes clear and my opponent clarifies in the comments, the existence of Jesus, and not the divinity is what's in question. THE WITNESSES We have several pieces of evidence which act as a witness to a living breathing historical Jesus. There must be several parallel and independent series of witnesses testifying to the fact in question [1]. The bible meets this criteria as well. It has the 2 original sources for the gospels Q and Mark as well as the historian Josephus, the Apostle Paul, and the Gospel of the Hebrews. Josephus Josephus was a historian who documented the Jews at the time. He documented the existence of Jesus in "the antiquities of the Jews book 18 3:3. [2] "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross,[9] those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day;[10] as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" Now at the time, a group of Christians were the keepers of the works of Josephus and based on the fact that it wasn't uncommon for somebody to add a little to ancient documents like this and that Josephus died a traditional Jew and was never converted to Christianity we know that a lot of this verse is just forged. Most scholars do agree that there was an original authentic nucleus to this writing from Josephus. [3] The original nucleus is typically agreed to mention Jesus's name and the crucifixion and not much else.[4] This verse also helps the later verse I'm about to mention ("the aforementioned Christ") make sense where it probably wouldn't of without a reference to it. [5] "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James"[6] (antiquities book 20 9:1) Tacitus A roman historian also happens to mention the crucifixion of Jesus in his final work "The Annals". "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, [7] [Annals book 15 chapter 44) Historians consider this source to be completely reliable and excellent in the fact that it is an outside source as well. [8] The verse refers to Christians as "abominations" and speaks in a very negative tone about them. This is not really something a Christian scribe would write in the book. Q and Mark The gospel of Q and Mark which all the gospels are written from using that as source material are accounts trustworthy as indicators of the existence of Jesus Christ. You can tell they were being honest about him existing for a number of reasons. Most importantly is the embarrassment factor which is something historians look for in determining reliability of a text. [9] The church would have incentive to cover up the embarrassment factor and you can actually see this with the gospels written later then Mark where Jesus cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit when it wasn't in season was left out (Mark 11:12), Or Jesus's first failed attempt at healing a blind man which makes him have to attempt it again (Mark 8:28). In the gospel of Mark John the Baptist, baptizes Jesus but the later gospels eliminate John the Baptist from the picture or the Baptism or try to down play his role. If this document was a work of fiction, this god man wouldn't have these personal flaws. The gospel of Mark says Jesus is from Nazareth but the church was embarrassed for him to be from that city and later on changed it to Bethlehem. Paul's Epistles Paul's letters are written between 40 AD and 50 AD.[10] These are probably the earliest Christian writings you'll find. The Epistle Paul knew Jesus's family. He talks of Jesus's birth and resurrection offhand and mentions encounters with Jesus's brother James. It's pretty unlikely that Paul would lie about this because his audience would have known of James and knew he was lying and not to mention these encounters with Jesus's brother really didn't go too well. Here are some verses by Paul which refer to Jesus as a flesh and blood man. ""Jesus was born in human fashion, as a Jew, and had a ministry to the Jews. (Galatians 4:4) "Jesus was referred to as "Son of God". (1 Cor. 1:9) "Jesus was a direct descendent of King David. (Romans 1:3) "Jesus prayed to God using the term "abba". (Galatians 4:6) "Jesus expressly forbid divorce. (1 Cor. 7:10) "Jesus taught that "preachers" should be paid for their preaching. (1 Cor. 9:14) "Jesus taught about the end-time. (1 Thess. 4:15) http://www.debate.org...