Or it could all be true, and you could be wrong. It's not a good question to get on the wrong side of though.

@Mujus: You're right, it could be true, and its not a good question to be on the wrong side of.
The same can be said of Allah. Maybe the Koran is corect, and you suffer eternal damnation if you dont pray in a Mosque 5 times a day. So do you pray 5 times a day? If not, why do you take this big risk?

Manas, I guess it comes down to seek and you shall find, ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened unto you. He who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him with knowledge of the truth. But I find that most people either don't want to repent or are afraid because they know they are guilty and don't want to face a righteous God. But! That's why Jesus came--to pay the price, to ransom us back, to cover our sins, to see us adopted into the family of God.

I wrote that clumsily. In other words, the Bible says that if you seek God, he will reward you with the truth about him.

Jesus's existence is generally considered historical fact. No modern scholarship really questions whether or not Jesus lived and died. Now, whether his claims as the Son of God are correct, on the other hand, is a different matter.

As for why Jesus's claims are considered by Christians to be more believable than those of other religious figures, it's because after reviewing the evidence for the Biblical claims and the Koranic claims, the Bible has more evidence and no significant obstacles. The Koran, in the viewpoint of Christians, is a book that was clearly written by a very gifted individual, but is certainly not God's word. The Bible, however, contains only truth and has yet to lose out in any examination of its evidence.

Well, the old testament is slightly less reliable than the new testament...

What do you mean by that? Historically it's about as reliable as any other state-produced religious document from the time.

"The Bible, however, contains only truth and has yet to lose out in any examination of its evidence."

*Coughinsectswithfourfeetcough*

"What do you mean by that? Historically it's about as reliable as any other state-produced religious document from the time."

Yes, thats my point.

Well, when you are talking history, the Old Testament is a reliable enough collection of documents. As for the accuracy of the message the Testaments contain, there are no significant contradictions either internally or externally. That's something no other holy book can brag about.

there is pretty strong evidence jesus lived but basically no evidence whatsoever of exodus. or all these stories of the jews under i forget, david or something, conquering all these other people. i agree that if you ignore all the claims of miracles, the new testaments are more reliable. the koran's probably even more reliable than that. the newer the events described, the harder to bs.

The history of the Old Testament is... uh... well, we've found no reason whatsoever to believe that the ancient Jews came from Egypt, for example, or that there was ever a world-spanning flood that killed basically everyone and everything. So, that's a bit of a blow to the whole reliability thing there. Second half, you kinda have to define what you mean by the message of the testaments, but it's pretty unlikely you'll find one a message that doesn't contradict with anything outside the testaments. Maybe you have a different definition of an external contradiction, though...

"there is pretty strong evidence jesus lived"

Yes, the Gospels and other religious works written quite some time after he died. There are no documents of him written during his life; but this is true of other many historical figures too.

typo... true of *many other historical figures

The Gospels were not written quite some time after his death. In studying ancient or medieval history, reading accounts written from figures alive at the time of the events described are a treasure. For many historical periods, historians are forced to rely on histories written a generation or two after the events. I can understand questioning the divinity of Christ, I am a believer myself, but calling into question that he was a historical figure, it seems to me, would, if this standard was applied universally, call into question a great deal of the history that has been commonly accepted as fact today.

No, the Gospels were almost certainly written quite a while after his death, Barn3tt. Which doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't a historical figure. I'm not terribly familiar with how strong the evidence is there, honestly, though I'm given to mistrust the oft-quoted "no, he was totally, definitely historical, the question is just if he's divine". I really need to look into that sometime. But the Gospels as eyewitness accounts (generally what people say when they don't say it's written some time after his death/purported existence; you don't explicitly say it, but I'm inferring it because more than likely it's right and I can correct myself later if not) is definitely not the evidence you want for a historical Jesus, because it's simply almost completely unlikely that they actually are given what we know about them.

Well it depends what you mean by sometime... we don't know the dates for sure. Between 50 to 70 CE for Mark.

So, if a WWII vet wrote a book in the 70's it would not be an eyewitness account? Even by todays standards, I believe that the merit of these accounts would not be drawn into question due to the date of their writtting. Again, my point was more in looking at the standards that ancient and medieval historians are forced to rely on. Primary texts written by authors alive at the time of the events are treasures. I have yet to encounter a historian who discredits a primary text author for writing a decade or two or even 3 after the events he describes. That's my sense anyway. Putin, fire away! :)

Barnett I agree with you. I did say "... this is true of many other historical figures".

Barn3tt, depends, most historical figures are national leaders, It's harder to deny their existence, I'd rather compare Jesus with people like Achilles (not sure that's his name but I'm talking about a Greek hero...), there are enough tales but no proof, and my question is why do we consider Achilles a bed-time story and Jesus just existed because people say he did...

Barn3tt, depends, most historical figures are national leaders, It's harder to deny their existence.

Why is it harder than a cutlural or religous figure?

It seems the weight of the primary accounts needs to be considered. Their function in society doesn't strike me as relevant.

i'm not basing it solely on the religious works, some non-religious sources definitely referred to him. anyway dawkins says he probably lived. what more proof do you need?

Well, writing about events a few decades afterwards will necessarily muddy the waters quite a bit, and it makes it easier for, for example stories to be fused together in one's head or other weird memory crap. It's not enough to discredit the sources as eyewitnesses completely, but combined with evidence indicating, for example, that the gospels pull from other documents, the ground for an eyewitness account gets more shaky. Also, note that Mark is the earliest of the canonical gospels, and it's more likely to be in the 60-70 range than the 50-70; I think the others are generally placed within the last two decades of the 1st century, so 50+ years after Jesus's death.

If I'm not mistaken, 0 AD, or CE as you put it, marks Christ's birth. His death would be around 33 AD. So 17-27 years afterwards (I have done nothing to verify your dates of for Mark's writings).

but combined with evidence indicating, for example, that the gospels pull from other documents,

oh yeah? Like?

Again, by the standards you are applying KoF, much of history would now be in question.

Alledgedly Christ was born around 6 BCE.

Well, in addition to the Gospels there are Paul's letters, while he is not an eyewitness to the life of Christ, he was in contact with some of the disciples.

Anyway as Achilles was mentioned, the Iliad wad traded orally for centuries before it was written down. That didn't stop a amateur archaeologists to take it at face value and to discover Troy as a result.

That would be 27-37 years, actually.

My understanding is that there's a good deal of evidence that Matthew and Luke both draw upon the gospel of Mark in their writing. There's also a hypothetical document or set of quotations or oral tradition or something called the Q Document that would explain some observations about similarities between Matthew and Luke or somesuch. I don't remember too much about the Q Document stuff, though; it was mentioned briefly when we discussed Luke in relation to Acts in a class I was taking. I do, however, remember that Luke is /explicitly/ a secondary source by self-admission... see, well, the first four verses. It does claim to be based on eyewitness accounts passed through oral tradition, and oral traditions would be another... well, okay, not "document", but source to pull from. Part of said traditions could be the Q document, I think, actually... I think I'm rambling a bit. Anyway, look up the history of Matthew and Luke, I guess, and see if you find something like what I said. I know basically nothing on John, so I won't touch on it.

A lot of history /is/ questionable. Because, well... reconstructing the past is /really freakin' hard/. I don't think that, in the specific case of saying that the Gospels themselves support the existence of a historical Jesus, there's enough evidence to consider them a solid grounding for the hypothesis by themselves. Also note that I'm just arguing the Gospels, because it's the only part that I have much familiarity with at all, though; it is possible that there's a confluence of other evidence I don't know about that could support a historical Jesus.

KoF, Josephus -- a non-Christian Jewish historian -- also mentions Jesus (in the AD 90s), as of course does Paul, most of whose letters date (by consensus) to the 50s (the earliest, I Thes, by 52), just under twenty years later. One of the biggest lines of evidence I think for the existence of Jesus as a historical person is just this decently strong evidence that there was a large movement originating around him out of Israel by the fourth decade, and it would be most surprising if such were to happen around a figure who had not even existed at all. (For example, a good deal of the early letters deals with responses to Jewish arguments against Christ; but there seems to be no sense that anybody was arguing that He hadn't existed). This is of course in line with his mention as historical by Josephus.

I'll have to look into Josephus. Can you think of any other good evidence for me to look at for the existence of the movement?