this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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One of the big problems with "Historical Jesus" isn't that "historians don't think he's real" but that "historicans can't prove he is".
The period covered by the Bible had a surplus of Messiah-esque figures who all kinda had some of the characteristics attributed to Big J. And Roman historians of the period who had made a point of writing histories of the region failed to mention any of the key events recorded in the early Christian scriptures.
The prevailing view among most serious historians is simply "Not Enough Information".
That said, a bunch of the more miraculous events attributed to the figure are common to prior religious icons - virgin birth, walking on water, loaves and fishes, raising the dead, exorcising demons - while the parables predate the "Historical Jesus" by centuries, as well.
So the task of "disproving" Jesus is as sticky as "disproving" Paul Bunyon. Which is to say its trivial to announce a 60' tall man who formed the Grand Canyon with his axe isn't real. But nearly impossible to prove "famous tall lumberjack" never existed.
The thing that made Jesus stand out above the parables and the miracles was his famous walk into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his Last Supper, and his crucifixion. These are events that we find incredibly difficult to prove.
In fact, the entire historical record around Christianity as a faith is incredibly thin for its first 150 years.
To wrap your brain around this, consider if the modern American state had approaching zero preserved historical evidence of its existence until halfway Calvin Coolidge's second term, in 1926. Then tag in claims that George Washington could fly and shoot lasers out his eyes. Or that Abraham Lincoln used a magic staff to part the Potomac and lead Confederate slaves out of bondage. Then try to have a conversation about "historical Presidents". Imagine if the Constitution was revealed to James Madison on gold tablets that he found in a magic hat. How do you then take the Battle of Saratoga or the Gettsyburg Address or the Louisiana Purchase at face value?
This is the fundamental problem with "historical Jesus". What records do exist are comically unreliable.
According to Paul he learned about the last supper in a dream and we know there was a popular fictional book in the empire that describes a last supper in a very similar manner.
Our historical evidence of the man is a dream based on a novel he had read. Not exactly a good argument
It gets worse than that, as the attribution to Paul is itself fuzzy. You're talking about a possibly-historical figure recounting a dream based on a story that wasn't properly codified until after Hadrian's Wall had been in the ground for several decades
You think Paul was made up? That I find a bit surprising. What do you got?
I think you're going to struggle to find any primary sources to support his existence. Even the Gospel of Mark is dated at around 70 AD, a solid 30+ years after the events it proposes to document. The Epistles all date to 175-400 AD.
Again, imagine if the only surviving copy of the US Constitution we had was composed under the Kennedy Administration.
The common assumption around the New Testament is that it was an oral tradition for at least a generation, and probably far longer. That's plenty of time for a story to shift and spread. Was Paul an original Apostle of Jesus or was he an Evangelical living a 50 years later who had just appropriated the original Gospel messages? Was this a real person or a pen-name? One guy or a cult-branch of the new faith? A church leader who had people working on his behalf? A legacy heir writing on behalf of an elderly/deceased apostle father? A Roman convert using the name of an Apostle to engage in theological debate without exposing his identity to hostile state government?
Its all purely up for speculation.