MrMan wrote:She gets some of the details of Paul's life wrong, or at least mentions ideas that don't show up in the Bible that Christians don't insist happen (appeared before Caesar) when trying to debunk it.
I had a religion professor who studied at Harvard back when I was getting my undergrad degree. He said that if some scholar finds some papyrus in Egypt somewhere, lots of other scholars will treat it as an important historical document, but then they will reject very valuable evidence from the Bible. He believed I Samuel contained court records from Israel, which were unique when compared to other nations because they told of the king's failures and not just his triumphs. Scholars were biased against the Bible, which is important for historians to consider.
If we reject the existence of Jesus Christ, isn't the evidence for His existence stronger than the evidence for Julius Caesar or many other historical figures existing?
Yes historians are biased against Christianity. But then again, authors like CS Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel and William Lane Craig are biased in favor of Christianity and assume the Bible is all true as a given, like 2+2=4, which is illogical. It cuts both ways. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Not on either extreme.
Some facts have been verified from the Bible, such as the existence of Sodom and Gomorrah or the existence of Jericho. But that doesn't make everything in it true, especially since it is not one book, but 66 books.
No why do you say the evidence for Jesus is stronger than for Julius Caesar? On what basis? I don't understand why Christians like to claim this. Caesar was well documented and written about by historians at the time he lived. And many people met him and knew him too, including Cleopatra, Marc Anthony, Augustus Caesar (when he was a boy), his whole army, etc. In fact, Julius Caesar even wrote his own memoirs of his military campaigns in Gaul and Britannia. You can read them online or get them from Amazon.com. I downloaded a copy of his memoirs.
On the other hand, Jesus wrote nothing himself, which is very suspicious. Was he illiterate? Even if he was, he could have had some of his followers write down his teachings. Every founder of a religion or cult usually writes down their teachings and message to the world. So this undermines his historicity. Plus none of the Roman historians at the time of Jesus ever mentioned him. Jesus was only mentioned by historians well after the time he lived, such as by Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger. But none of them ever met Jesus.
Most neutral historians who are unbiased, believe that Jesus probably existed since every cult and movement has to have a founder and originator - even if Paul created modern Christianity. But that the Gospel stories are mostly legends, not historical facts as Christians want to believe. That's the consensus of unbiased historians who are neither for or against Christianity.
