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Erroneous claim: Virtually all scholars... find that ...

Arbitrary subheader

The article leads with a claim: "Virtually all scholars who have investigated the history of the Christian movement find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain". But numerous scholars question not just the historicity of Jesus, but these scholars also find fault with the claimed unanimity of scholarly thought on the subject. See for example:

Tedweverka (talk) 14:42, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

The previous discussion sections have addressed this already. Please read through it. That claim is found in the sources that are cited. Your sources that you have mentioned do not make the claim that most scholars have serious doubts of Jesus existence. That there are exceptions is not the issue since the exceptions are small in number. But the first one is about Thomas Brodie as an exception, the second paper is not a published paper, and the last one is by fringe scholar Raphael Lataster complaining about the consensus (which supports the view that most scholars indeed are not not mythicists). If you find a paper saying the majority of scholars are doubting Jesus' existence then you may have something to post in the article. Keep in mind that literature engaging in criticism does not equate to straight up disbelief automatically. Ramos1990 (talk) 17:41, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
I'll add my voice to Ramos1990. First of all, virtually all is sourced and not WP's claim. Second, "virtually" allows for the rare exception, and Thomas Brodie is part of that small minority. Unpublished papers are not academic sources and, as discussed several times, Lataster definitely fall into WP:FRINGE. Jeppiz (talk) 19:39, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
The citations above explicitly state that the number of scholars questioning the historicity of Jesus are significant and growing. At minimum, the "virtually all" should be replaced with something weaker and the growth of the number of scholars questioning this should be noted. Tedweverka (talk) 20:28, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Lataster definitely fall into WP:FRINGE.
— User:Jeppiz

This claim is bizarre, firstly because the following scholars admit to to the plausibility of mythicism. And Davies additionally argues that the plausibility of mythicism should be the consensus.

• Per Robert W. Funk:

The crisis in what the church believes about Jesus will not go away. . . . The crisis arises, in large part, from what we can know about Jesus himself. For example, as a historian I do not know for certain that Jesus really existed, that he is anything more than the figment of some overactive imaginations.[2db.a 1]

• Per Philip R. Davies:

What I can see, but not understand, is the stake that Christians have in the unanswerable question of Jesus’ historicity and his true historical self.[2db.a 2]

• Per R. Joseph Hoffmann:

I no longer believe it is possible to answer the 'historicity question'. . . . Whether the New Testament runs from Christ to Jesus or Jesus to Christ is not a question we can answer.[2db.a 3]

• Per Steve Mason:

[T]here have always been scholars who either wondered whether or positively doubted that Jesus of Nazareth, the man toward whom Christ-following orients itself, actually existed. Such doubts and propositions are all welcome in historical research, along with every other hypothesis about the nature (thoughts, intentions, actions, teaching) of this Jesus, if he did exist.... History is not religion, and its practitioners cannot be preachers, advocates, or polemicists.[2db.a 4]

"Scholars that admit to the plausibility of mythicism"

  1. ^ Funk, Robert W. (1995). "The Resurrection of Jesus". The Fourth R. 8 (1): 9. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  2. ^ Davies, Philip R. (2012). "Did Jesus Exist?". The Bible and Interpretation. [NOW BOLDED].
  3. ^ Hoffmann, R. Joseph (2009). "Threnody: Rethinking the Thinking behind The Jesus Project". The Bible and Interpretation. [NOW BOLDED].
  4. ^ Mason, Steve (2017). "Sources that Mention Jesus from Outside the Circles of Christ-Followers". p. 1. Academia.edu.
  • Secondly, User:Jeppiz is misrepresenting WP:FRINGE, which is a WP policy about what content should be incorporated into an article/page and how said content should be presented. It is not an excuse to push Wikipedia:Truth. Lataster (2019), ISBN 978-9004397934 meets the WP requirements for the the highest RS. It is peer reviewed and published by an academic press.

--2db (talk) 03:54, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Academia.edu is basically self published works with no or little peer review, so would not be valid sources for Wikipedia. Hardyplants (talk) 04:08, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Academia.edu is basically self published works...
— User:Hardyplants

True enough—except in the cases where it is 100% wrong:

--2db (talk) 05:51, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Lataster is published in a journal about the arts and not history so that is clearly not peer reviewed for this topic, so at best you have proved the current wording of the article as it stands.Hardyplants (talk) 06:49, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Same discussion repetition of talking points again? The standard list of the handfull of authors who have cast doubt on the existence of Jesus. Now, where's the list with authors who acknowledge his historical existence? Too long, I guess; thousands. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:57, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
PS: somewhere we had this list with quotes Christ Myth theorists; does anyone recall where? Update: User:Joshua Jonathan/Quotes on the historicity of Jesus. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston.

Phlogiston existed, so went the consensus at one time, even though there was a wide range of explanations about its properties and how it was constituted.

Now, where's the list with authors who acknowledge his historical existence?
— User:Joshua Jonathan

I assume you mean: The list of contemporary secular scholars that typifies the consensus on the historicity of Jesus. And said list being derived from a current WP:RS that confirms its current validity.
After all, one could use nothing but 18th century scholarship to recast the consensus on Phlogiston. But why would that be acceptable on WP, unless for apologetical reasons ?
--2db (talk) 14:34, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
Any substantial argument to offer? Following your line of reasoning, doubt can be cast on any contemporary majority point of view. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, if you have a hankering to bite down on any other field of scholarship and whip it around like a limp doll, then by all means do so. But be cautious—you will break your teeth on it—unless it also suffers from the same fatal flaws as "Jesus historicity theory" scholarship, e. g.:

• Justin Meggitt:

New Testament scholars should concede that the kind of history that is deemed acceptable in their field is, at best, somewhat eccentric. Most biblical scholars would be a little unsettled if, for example, they read an article about Apollonius of Tyana in a journal of ancient history that began by arguing for the historicity of supernatural events before defending the veracity of the miracles ascribed to him yet would not be unsurprised to see an article making the same arguments in a journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus.[2db.b 1]

•••

[U]nlike ‘guilds’ in professions such as law or medicine, it is not apparent what members of the ‘guild’ of biblical scholars have in common, other than a shared object of study and competence in a few requisite languages, and therefore what value an alleged consensus among them really has, especially on what is a historical rather than a linguistic matter.[2db.b 2]

• Jens Schröter:

The idea of formulating certain “criteria” for an evaluation of historical sources is a peculiar phenomenon in historical-critical Jesus research. It was established in the course of the twentieth century . . . and it does not, to my knowledge, appear in other strands of historical research.[2db.b 3]

• Tom Dykstra:

The [current] consensus of biblical scholars is that Jesus existed as a historical person, and those who assign him to the category of fictional character are still few and far between. Their ranks are growing, but their views are met with disdain by the majority. That disdain may be just as unjustified today as it was when directed toward Thompson a few decades ago.[2db.b 4]

•••

Today Thompson is widely recognized as one of the foremost scholars of the Old Testament, and his conclusions about the patriarchal stories not being historical are as universally accepted as they once were reviled. In fact, today critical scholars view the entire stretch of core Old Testament stories from Genesis through Joshua and into Judges as largely ahistorical.[2db.b 5]

• Richard Carrier:

[N]o historian of Jesus has ever explained, logically, how or why any argument they make increases the probability of Jesus existing, much less enough to be confident he did. They haven’t. This is the whole point I make in Chapter 1 and the introduction to Chapter 5 of Proving History. Historians also, however, get tons of facts wrong, too. So it’s not just that historians forming the consensus today can’t explain why their conclusions should be deemed probable from the evidence they present, but the evidence they present often doesn’t in fact exist.
[...]
In Proving History I show many historians making many mistakes . . . in defense of the historicity of Jesus—and when you correct all these mistakes (both of fact and of logic), there is no case left over for a historical Jesus. This is how we know the modern consensus is malformed and thus no longer citable as reliable.[2db.b 6]

• Raphael Lataster:

Carrier published his academic book in 2014 and I have published mine in 2019. We are still waiting for a proper refutation of my case for agnosticism and his more ambitious case for outright mythicism. I suspect that this will never occur, because ‘at least agnosticism’ is very sensible.[2db.b 7]

• James Crossley:

[I]nstead of more polemical reactions on all sides of these debates about the historicity of Jesus, perhaps it would be more worthwhile to see what can be learned. In the case of Lataster’s book and the position it represents, scepticism about historicity is worth thinking about seriously—and, in light of demographic changes, it might even feed into a dominant position in the near future.[2db.b 8]

"Jesus historicity theory" scholarship

  1. ^ Meggitt 2019, p. 458.
  2. ^ Meggitt 2019, pp. 459–460.
  3. ^ Schröter 2012, pp. 51–52.
  4. ^ Dykstra 2015, p. 2.
  5. ^ Dykstra 2015, p. 2.
  6. ^ Carrier (31 July 2020), "Antonio Piñero: Raving Historicist". Richard Carrier Blogs.
  7. ^ Lataster, Raphael (2019), "When Critics Miss the Point About Questioning Jesus’ Historicity". The Bible and Interpretation.
  8. ^ Lataster 2019, p. xiii.

--2db (talk) 01:49, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

All of these are commentary on people in the fields of study by others in or around the fields of study. It is not substantial in content on the topic at hand. Richard Carrier had the best possible case for mysticism and yet no one seems to be convinced of it except perhaps Raphael Lataster who has an odd view of studying Jesus (like Carrier does) - and no one takes his writings seriously either since he is heavily agenda driven in most of his writings just like Carrier. Agnosticism of any historical person works when there is no evidence for them, not when you have actual sources and archeological convergences with those sources that are within a respectable time frame from the person. By the way some of these guys talk about it, it makes you wonder why we should trust their historical reconstructions that are written more than 2,000 years away from Jesus (e.g. Raphael Lataster, Richard Carrier) vs say the Gospels. None of the modern scholars know more than the sources, but the sources sure knew much more. What remains is just the few notes they left and fortunately survived 2,000 years. Most of the current historical research that focuses on the ancient world is pretty stagnant to the point that outlandish ideas are being published with no one really caring about it or taking it so seriously. They peaked a long time ago and now there is nothing new to write about on those subjects. I see that in the research on Socrates, Pythagoras, and many Greek philosophers. Actually the same thing is happening in the fields of literature.Ramos1990 (talk) 05:09, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a place for original research. This page reports on scholarly published work. The literature has some scholars saying they are almost unanimous and others questioning this. Wikipedia is not the place for advocates to resolve this.Tedweverka (talk) 17:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
It's even less a place for refactoring direct quotes from sources, as you did here - with a misplaced appeal to 'no consensus', when there is a strong and longstanding consensus for this particular statement. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:34, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
The claim of consensus among scholars is demonstrably wrong, but anyone who sees fit to include scholarly publications that question that consensus is shouted down, and subject to reversion bullying. There is indeed a long history of people arguing that there is no argument here. Tedweverka (talk) 22:24, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
Hmm.. the edit you reinserted was an alteration to the quote from the source. That is clearly manipulating the source itself. Should never do that as looks like vandalism. Aside from that, there are very few mythicist authors at all as even they admit and complain about the consensus against them in their writings. They acknowledge that fact.Ramos1990 (talk) 00:26, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Historicity is the consensus only by assumption

The leading historicity scholars are Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman, whose individual works on the question of the "historicity of Jesus"—as a sustained argument that Jesus lived—are not comparable to any other work by a contemporary scholar who also holds the historicity position. Casey and Ehrman are the only contemporary "secular" scholars to comprehensively address this issue,[2db.c 1] as Ehrman writes, "Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived."[2db.c 3] Ehrman also notes that his book Did Jesus Exist?[2db.c 4] was written for a popular audience and that in regards to the question of the historicity of Jesus, "I was not arguing the case for scholars, because scholars already know the answer to that question."[2db.c 5]

"The consensus is only by assumption"

  1. ^ a b Comment by Carrier—25 May 2020—per "Lataster v. McGrath: Jesus Must Be Real...Because, Reasons". Richard Carrier Blogs. 24 May 2020:
    "Van Voorst’s treatise is only a reference manual on sources “Outside the New Testament.” (Van Voorst, 2000.) It has only a few pages on the historicity question and then simply presumes historicity thereafter. It does not systematically defend the historicity of Jesus or systematically analyze arguments for or against. Moreover, as a reference book, it only surveys various positions on the external sources. But doesn’t address any of the actual evidence for or against mythicism. For instance, there is no chapter on the Epistles or any arguments or evidence regarding historicity from them."

    "That book is the one I recommend to anyone who wants the closest thing to a defense of historicity there yet is, but it doesn’t really fill that role, with no chapter on the Epistles, no chapter on the Method of Criteria in extracting evidence from the Gospels, no chapter on mythicist views to the contrary of either (a few pages doesn’t count). Contrast this with Case, who wrote his entire book (Case, 1928.) about the historicity question. No such thing has been done since. Not even by Van Voorst."

    "I use Van Voorst as a source quite a lot in OHJ. But like every other monograph on Jesus, it simply presumes historicity, with only the feeblest effort to justify that (not even five pages). Nevertheless, I survey those few pages in OHJ, pp. 4-6."
  2. ^ Carrier (25 May 2020). "Lataster v. McGrath: Jesus Must Be Real...Because, Reasons". Richard Carrier Blogs.
  3. ^ Ehrman (5 May 2012). "Did Jesus Exist as Part One". The Bart Ehrman Blog.
  4. ^ Ehrman 2012 harvnb error: multiple targets (4×): CITEREFEhrman2012 (help)
  5. ^ Ehrman (25 April 2012). "Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier". The Bart Ehrman Blog.
  • Case, Shirley Jackson (1928) [1912]. The Historicity of Jesus Christ: A Criticism of the Contention That Jesus Never Lived, a Statement of the Evidence for His Existence, an Estimate of His Relation to Christianity (2 ed.). University of Chicago Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Ehrman, Bart D (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. ISBN 9780062206442. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

--2db (talk) 02:06, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Richard Carrier is just the latest crank in this field and is not take seriously by most historians: "Despite the fact that most professional academics reject mythicism, interest into the theory has not subsided. Casey and Ehrman ascribe this to some atheist activists’ disdain for organized religion (especially the Christian tradition) and the increase of online and independent publishing platforms.9 Interest in mythicism has also been amplified by internet conspiracy culture, pseudoscience, and media sensationalism related to the historical Jesus and Christian origins.10 In short, the majority of mythicist literature is composed of wild theories, which are poorly researched, historically inaccurate, and written with a sensationalist bent for popular audiences...After examining numerous fundamental problems with Carrier’s overall thesis for Jesus’ non-historicity, Carrier’s final Bayesian conclusion that ‘the odds Jesus existed are less than 1 in 12,000’ is untenable and disingenuous.125 Paradoxically, Carrier’s main contribution may wind up being seen not as an advancement of mythicism, but as a criticism of current methodologies employed by scholars of the historical Jesus. Because of this, Carrier’s work is an ironic contribution to the quest for the historical Jesus.126 Put simply, Carrier’s methodological complaints represent a long and ongoing trend which other scholars have addressed.127...Scholarship necessarily remains open to the questions Carrier has raised, and yet, the answers he has given to these questions are unconvincing, if not tendentious. " - https://brill.com/view/journals/jshj/15/2-3/article-p310_310.xml Hardyplants (talk) 02:32, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah Carrier is not really a useful source on this since he tends to ignore and distort what other scholars say (he has a habit of thinking only he is right), most of his works on Christianity are self-published (look at his own web page [1] on his writings on that topic). Even what you quoted is from his blog. Where is the peer review of that blog post? Also Carrier's latest book on mythicism ("Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ") from last month is not even peer reviewed or by an academic publisher. Instead, the only publisher he could get for his NEW study of non-existence was a partisan atheist publisher. He cannot speak for the field when be barely contributes to it academically and professionally. He should be like other professionals and get his stuff published by peer-review in academic journals. He only has one right now and has not been able to get credible publishers for his NEW studies on mythicism.
Also, in reality numerous studies have already addressed mythicism for more than 100 years in academic publishing. They do not need to make books specializing only on the obvious existence of Jesus because there is already sources and archeological verifications with those sources that there is truth on that point. Just like there are not books trying to prove the existence of the English language. I cannot find a book whose sole purpose is to argue for the historicity of any one person, so I don't expect there to be many of those.Ramos1990 (talk) 03:00, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
Keep in mind that Carrier making an argument does not mean that it is valid.Ramos1990 (talk) 03:00, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
James Dunn and Larry Hurtado, to name a few big names, do assume Jesus existed. What they have deduced from the Biblical texts is, after all, much more interesting, informing, and coherent, than what the mythicists have argued for. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:12, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

But many also like PZ Myers, who cogently opines that the meaning of “historical Jesus” is problematic, writing:

[I] don’t know what the “historical Jesus” means. If I die, and a hundred years later the actual events of my life are forgotten and all that survives are legends of my astonishing sexual prowess and my ability to breathe underwater, what does the “historical PZ” refer to?[2db.d 1]

However James Dunn does also cogently assert that, "the 'historical Jesus' is properly speaking a nineteenth- and twentieth-century [re]construction using the data provided by the Synoptic tradition, not Jesus back then and not a figure in history whom we can realistically use to critique the portrayal of Jesus in the Synoptic tradition."[2db.d 2]

So it really is a tough choice just to pick one, especially with so many to choose from. Since numerous NT scholars have nominated their preferred reconstruction of "Jesus" as a candidate for "the" real historical Jesus. With no indication for which reconstruction (if any) is correct. As David M. Litwa writes:

The historical Jesus is always an imaginative creation that, to some degree, fits modern needs—otherwise, no one would make the effort to remember and (re)construct him as a believable figure.[2db.d 3]

But in the end, I choose..Philip Davies, who asks:

What does it mean to affirm that ‘Jesus existed’, anyway, when so many different Jesuses are displayed for us by the ancient sources and modern NT scholars? Logically, some of these Jesuses cannot have existed. So in asserting historicity, it is necessary to define which ones (rabbi, prophet, sage, shaman, revolutionary leader, etc.) are being affirmed—and thus which ones deemed unhistorical. In fact, as things stand, what is being affirmed as the Jesus of history is a cipher, not a rounded personality . . . Does this matter very much? After all, the rise and growth of Christianity can be examined and explained without the need to reconstruct a particular historical Jesus.[2db.d 4]

"History is hard" —(PZ Myers)

  1. ^ Myers, P. Z. (20 August 2018). "History is hard". FreeThoughtBlogs. Pharyngula.
  2. ^ Dunn 2003, p. 126.
  3. ^ Litwa, M. David (2019). How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths. Yale University Press. p. 218. ISBN 978-0-300-24263-8.
  4. ^ Davies, Philip R. (2012). "Did Jesus Exist?". The Bible and Interpretation.
  • Dunn, James D. G. (2003). Jesus remembered. Vol. Christianity in the Making: 1. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-3931-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

--2db (talk) 05:15, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

The point is no one disputes Jesus existed. When it comes to anyone's biography, historians make many different interpretations of that person based on the sources they have. This is normal since there are diverse views of Christopher Columbus as a conqueror or a liberator or a greedy Italian. Pick anyone you like. How about Apollonius of Tyana? Magician? Trickster? Prophet? None of this impacts their existence. The same goes for even living people today. Donald Trump and Barack Obama were bad leaders? Racist presidents? Take your pick. How about Joseph Stalin? Patriot? Mass murderer? How about Michael Jackson? Pedophile? Misunderstood? How about Socrates? Who is he? I have read many versions of him, but I can still rest on the sources and assume he was a complex individual. The very fact that numerous views exist even for a living person we see on tv in our lifetimes does not mean that these people did not exist or that it is impossible to deduce who they were. It is a non-sequitur.Ramos1990 (talk) 08:00, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
However, I agree with Carrier on Van Voorst's sourcebook being one of the most powerful collections of evidence for the existence of Jesus. Who knew so many sources existed within a reasonable time frame. The amount of data from outside the NT is enough but add the sources from inside the NT and you have even more powerful evidence of such a basic point.Ramos1990 (talk) 01:25, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Scholars holding the viewpoint of Mark allegorizing the teachings of Paul

Paul and Mark are two early sources that are certainly not literary dependent on each other. . . . For example, since both Paul and Mark attribute a ban on divorce to Jesus, this must be a very old memory.
— User:Keimpe1977

Some critical scholars hold the viewpoint of Mark allegorizing the teachings of Paul.

  • Svartvik, Jesper (2006). "The Markan Interpretation of the Pentateuchal Food Laws". In Hatina, Thomas (ed.). The Gospel of Mark. Vol. BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION IN EARLY CHRISTIAN GOSPELS. Vol. 1. A&C Black. pp. 169–181 (177, n. 20). ISBN 978-0-567-08067-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

[Some] scholars have suggested that Mark may be described as a Pauline Gospel. [^20] In favour of this understanding are the facts (1) that both Paul and Mark emphasize the theological importance of Christ on the cross, rather than on the teachings of Jesus, (2) that both repudiate the actual followers of Jesus [i.e. the disciples], and (3) that the Gentiles play an important role both in the letters written by the ἐθνῶν ἀπόστολος [apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11.13) and in the Markan narrative. . . . What Paul states about the Gospel in Rom. 1.16, Mark depicts in his narrative about the Nazarene. Mark is perhaps best described as a narrative presentation of, and a parallel to, the Pauline Gospel.

[note:20] See, e.g., D.C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. 132ff. and especially p. 190 (‘Mark’s law-free attitude...clearly places him in the camp of the Pauline churches’.); J. Marcus, ‘Mark – Interpreter of Paul’, NTS 46 (2000), pp. 473–87. For further references, see Marcus, p. 474 n. 3.

  • Marcus, Joel (2000). "Mark – Interpreter of Paul". New Testament Studies. 46 (4): 473–487 (474 n.3). {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) doi:10.1017/S0028688500000278.

--2db (talk) 17:53, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

NPOV Dispute

The introduction makes a point that “all scholars agree” yet all of the scholars cited are Biblical scholars. This is misleading and shows bias. Nickmuscle1919 (talk) 18:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Incorrect. The term "Biblical" is not correct as scholars from all fields do not deny Jesus ever existed. Only a fringe minority of mostly non-scholars and amateurs think that Jesus never existed. Also the consensus is built from non-Christian and Christian scholars. By you adding "Biblical" into the article, you introduce POV, not NPOV.Ramos1990 (talk) 18:35, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Agree with Ramos1990 and Joshua Jonathan. All scholars in relevant fields agree. Whether a scholar of English philology or Oceanography agrees or not is of course irrelevant. Whenever we use the phrase 'all scholars', it can be expected that readers are intelligent enough to understand that the phrase refers to scholars on the topic in question, not every scholar on the planet regardless of field. Jeppiz (talk) 21:02, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Per "scholars on the topic in question", I certainly do hope that none of them have reached their conclusion reliant on “criteria of authenticity”, as Richard Carrier writes:

The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. [Carrier 2012. Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp. 11, 293f, n. 2-7).]

  • Which is noted by Daniel Gullotta, writing, "Carrier’s methodological complaints represent a long and ongoing trend which other scholars have addressed."

In support of this claim, Gullotta presents an extensive list of citations [Gullotta 2017. doi:10.1163/17455197-01502009. pp=344f, n.127] that replicates the list of citations that Carrier presented in his 2012 work. Gullotta additionally presents the following citations not found in Carrier 2012:

• Le Donne, Anthony (2009). The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David.
• Rodriguez, Rafael (2010). Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text.
• Charlesworth, James H.; Rhea, Brian, eds. (2014). Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions : the Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007.
• Crossley, James (2015). Jesus and the Chaos of History: Redirecting the Life of the Historical Jesus. Oxford University Press.
• Bernier, Jonathan (2016). The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies.
• Keith, Chris (2016). “The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research”. Journal for the Study of the New Testament. 38 (4): 426–455. doi:10.1177/0142064X16637777.

--2db (talk) 02:41, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Richard Carrier is not really an authority on the field in the first place. He has very little peer reviewed publications on historicity let alone first century Palestine let alone Jesus or Christianity. Most of his work is self published. From his own web page [2].
Daniel Gullotta's quote says have addressed. That does not look like there is incredible doubt in the field if they find issues and address them. Looks like there is no issue and Gullotta certainly is not talking about the actual reality of Jesus' existence. Methodological debates do not impact the reality of the facts.Ramos1990 (talk) 04:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

So who are the contemporary secular scholars that have made a peer reviewed defense of the historicity of Jesus? Please update Raphael Lataster, who could not find one.

--2db (talk) 05:23, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Can you name numerous mythcist scholars that have peer reviewed research on Jesus not existing? Virtually none exist after at least 200 years of research into the sources and archaeology of the middle east. Precisely because this is new and mostly done by non professionals. Raphael Latasrer is another non-expert on the issue. He not a historian, not an archaeologist, or anything relevant. He is a religious studies scholar who specializes in philosophical matters - from his website [3]. His terminology "secular scholars" is extremely stupid and not found in the literature - certainly scholars do not divide each other by their religious backgrounds. It is a term made up by mythicists in general - who tend to be atheists. And atheist publishing houses are the main publishers for mythicist material. Heck even Latasters book "Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists" shows as much. It is not Muslims or Buddhists, or Hindus or New Agers or Jews - all of whom have not much to gain from Jesus' existence, who even postulate that Jesus did not exist. Small club. Though it is humorous that Lataster missed a few simple scholars like Michael Grant (an atheist) and that he diminished Maurice Cassey and Bart Ehrman (despite their impressive credentials and them being secularists) based on no empirical criteria. How are you going to take Raphael Lataster seriously when does metaphysical gymnastics like this? There is simply way too much evidence that Jesus existed.
Perhaps you can direct us to experts that argue that Pythagoras did not exist? Or that Socrates did not exist? Its just to see if "nonexistence research" is even a thing in historical research. None of the Mythicists have provided any useful methodology for even determining non-existence of a person aside from sloppy scholarship that schoalrs never use. Reading Lataster's attempt and Carrier's attempt show how much they rely on 19th and early 20th century criteria and unusable methods to come up with pre-concevied conclusions.Ramos1990 (talk) 07:41, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
"It is not Muslims... all of whom have not much to gain from Jesus' existence" See Jesus in Islam. The Quran recognizes Jesus as a prophet and as the Messiah. "The significance of Jesus in Islam is reflected in his being mentioned in the Quran in 93 verses with various titles attached such as "Son of Mary" and other relational terms, mentioned directly and indirectly, over 187 times. He is thus one of the most mentioned people in the Quran by reference; 25 times by the name Isa, third-person 48 times, first-person 35 times, and the rest as titles and attributes." Can you think of many Muslims who want to invalidate the Quran? Dimadick (talk) 09:30, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that none of the following scholars: have produced a peer reviewed defense of the historicity of Jesus that was published by a respected academic press.

Can you name numerous mythcist scholars that have peer reviewed research on Jesus not existing?
— User:Ramos1990

There are none, that have done "research on Jesus not existing" because leading mythicism scholars do not not assert that the historicity of Jesus is a black or white scenario.
R. M. Price writes, “I don’t think you can ‘prove’ either that a historical Jesus existed or that he didn’t. What you can do . . . is to construe the same old evidence in a new way that makes more natural, less contrived, sense”.
Carrier gives a 1:3 (~33%) chance that Jesus existed, writing, "I am not engaging in “tactics.” . . . If I had found the odds of historicity to be 50/50, that’s what I would have reported my findings to be. I reported what I found." --2db (talk) 11:31, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
The Grant, Ehrman and Casey books were written for general readers, not academics, because scholars who know anything about ancient history consider "Did Jesus exist?"a ridiculous question and do not address it.Smeat75 (talk) 12:34, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

The introduction makes a point that “all scholars agree”...
— User:Nickmuscle1919

If a significant percentage of "scholars on the topic in question" form a consensus reliant on a historical methodology that is invalid or argued to be problematic by a significant number of scholars such as Gullotta and those critics he cites on the historical methodology: “criteria of authenticity”. Then it is a demonstrable bias for this article to claim that “all scholars agree”.

Editors of the article repeatedly reverse any edit of the “all scholars agree” claim on this page, inspite of numerous cited scholars who say differently. It is a demonstrable bias for this article to claim that “all scholars agree”. Tedweverka (talk) 14:26, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

--2db (talk) 13:44, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Those sources Gullotta references are not questioning the bare fact of Jesus' existence but matters such as"what did he say, what did he teach, what did he do?" Yes, all of that is very unclear. There is no debate about was there ever such a person and that does not need any "historical methodology" to decide because it is based, as noted in the article, on "clear and certain evidence", quote from Ehrman.Smeat75 (talk) 14:03, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

There is no debate about was there ever such a person...
— User:Smeat75

If you do not count the following:
  • The 2014 debate Jesus of Nazareth: Man or Myth?, Carrier v. Zeba A. Crook
  • The 2014 debate Did Jesus Exist?, Carrier v. Trent Horn
  • The 2015 response by Kenneth L. Waters given after Carrier's OHJ book presentation at the SBL Pacific Coast regional meeting.
  • The 2016 debate Did Jesus Exist?, Carrier v. Craig A. Evans
  • The 2016 debate Did Jesus Exist?, Robert M. Price v. Bart Ehrman
--2db (talk) 15:02, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Carrier and Price and their positions are fully discussed in Christ myth theory, which is where they belong.Smeat75 (talk) 16:01, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
LOL, thanks for the update. And here is some some content that belongs in this article,

Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman, whose individual works on the question of the "historicity of Jesus"—as a sustained argument that Jesus lived—are not comparable to any other work by a contemporary scholar who also holds the historicity position. Casey and Ehrman are the only contemporary "secular" scholars to comprehensively address this issue, as Ehrman writes, "Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived." Ehrman also notes that his book Did Jesus Exist? was written for a popular audience and that in regards to the question of the historicity of Jesus, "I was not arguing the case for scholars, because scholars already know the answer to that question."

--2db (talk) 16:40, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
@Dimadick: On the Muslim point, sure though Jesus is found in the Quran, he is not a central pillar to Islam like he is in Christianity. Certainly not emphasized within Muslim circles or at Mosques. However he is discussed when interacting with Christians for obvious reasons. Muhammad is the one defended and discussed in Muslim writings and Muslim discourses, not any of the other Biblical characters as there is no real reason to defend the obvious. Considering that Quran denies Jesus was crucified, they are not the most concerned about historical accuracy in the details of his life. The Quran itself merely mentions Jesus, along with other Biblical characters without much concern for historical accuracy since not much information about Jesus can even extracted from the Quran. No New Testament scholar or archaeologists of the middle east ever uses it or even cites it for that same reason.
@2db:By the way, the Gullotta quote is actually "Put simply, Carrier’s methodological complaints represent a long and ongoing trend which other scholars have addressed." He mentions that it has already been addressed. He is not talking about Jesus historicity there, but about criteria for authenticity - two different things. I could question criteria to interpret a document, but that does not mean I deny the objects in the document. Mythicists on the other hand have little criteria or methods in their toolbox.
Jesus mythicicism has been addressed in academic research usually as a foot note or sections of a book (showing how insignificant it is in academia) because there have not been any prominent mythicists in the first place mainly because they have poor argumentation. They are not really providing new or valid methodologies or empirical evidence for their case. Usually mythicist arguments boil down are altering interpretations and making conspiracy theories. Carrier's odd use and relaince of Rank-Ragalan is an easy example. No one even uses it in real research and Bayes Theorem is misapplied in history since it has been used to prove that God exists (Thomas Bayes argued for it himself) and it has been used by Richard Swinburne to prove Jesus resurrected. It is not a good method for unknowables like history.
From the mythicist camp, you have very few that have ever contributed to it. Certainly very little who have ever even peer reviewed a discussion on it and those have ended up in failure. Even Carrier's follow up books on mythicism have been self published or from atheist/free thought publisher, (EX: "Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ", "Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists") not academic or peer reviewed publishers. Heck even his prequel to the "On the Historicity of Jesus" book called "Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus" was also published by a non peer reviewed freethought publisher (and that book had the core argument about Bayes Theorem)! Why is he still struggling to get another one from a respectable publisher? Most mythicists are non academics and amateurs who self publish for the most part like Carrier and Latatser. The fact that Ehrman and Casdey are way more experts on the topics (they have way more peer reviewed publications under their belt than than Carrier or Lataster) it really only matters that they publish stuff on the topic as they are bona fide experts already and this is them sharing form that pool of expertise. Also many other scholars who have extensively addressed mythicism like Robert Van Voorst in peer reviewed literature. Its not like it has not bee discussed in peer reviewed literature or by professionals.Ramos1990 (talk) 17:51, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

If all the citations are from religious scholars and the statement is made “only a fringe minority” - which is a statement that requires a citation as well - then only religious scholars are cited. Then it is not NPOV to imply that the views of those opposed to this theory are represented. If they aren’t represented in the citations, that must be made clear in the text.

The problem with this article (and the entire article should probably be deleted because of NPOV violation) is that the assumption is that Jesus existed and the citations are simply post-hoc rationalization. The majority of scholars who have studied the existence of the character Jesus, have been religious scholars. In my read through of the introduction to the article, there were no non-religious scholars cited. Let’s avoid appeals to authority and appeals to majority. The default position is that someone didn’t exist until proven to have existed. This article does not actually cite any proof that substantiates the existence of this supposed person. Simply quoting an “authority” saying “there is no doubt he existed” is not a sufficient source. That is not proof. Nickmuscle1919 (talk) 16:25, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Being cited in the Quaran is irrelevant as well. The Quaran is not a historical document. It is a religious text and therefore inherently biased. Nickmuscle1919 (talk) 16:27, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

If I create a Wikipedia page on “The Historicity of Spider-Man” and cite a bunch of comic book scholars, is it then only a “fringe minority” of people who disagree because no one else bothered to research it? If this were about the historicity of any other person this article would not even be allowed on Wikipedia. Nickmuscle1919 (talk) 16:30, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:CHEESE
The authors of Spiderman comics never wrote as though they believed Spiderman were a real being (whether human or some kind of spirit), to an audience they assumed Spiderman was real (again, whether human or some kind of spirit). The furthest that even Carrier can argue is that the authors of the oldest parts of the New Testament (particularly Paul) believed Jesus to be a spirit being who existed beside earth instead of a human being in our world. That's an apples and oranges comparison that suggests some kind of problem on your end. I have no intention of trying to fix whatever that problem is, but those problems occur in all editors and that's why we stick to mainstream sources.
To suggest that the article should be deleted as an NPOV violation shows you don't understand how Wikipedia works.
To suggest that Robin Lane Fox and Bart D. Ehrman are religious indicates that you simply accusing any source you don't like of being biased (unless you want to call Atheism a religion, then Fox might qualify).
Nobody here has argued for using the Quran as a historical document, nor cited a source suggesting so. That you are countering an argument that hasn't been made would indicate that either you're not reading posts, not understanding them, or find it easier to attack strawmen than properly process other people's points. The anyone has begun to approach that was Ramos1990's pointing out that it's not simply "Christians vs Atheists" (that other religions, which have nothing to lose from denying a historical Jesus, do not see any compelling argument to do so), which Dimadick corrected regarding Muslims. Indeed, they would have more to lose than Christians, as Christianity could just turn to Docetism if it was conclusively proven that at no point in the Second Temple Period were any Messiah claimants (a somewhat common phenomenon at the time) with one of the most popular Jewish names at the time. However, Muslims could also look at the crucifixion being disproven and saying "we told you!" Honestly, the idea that about half the world's population (Christianity and Islam) could not possibly ever adjust their theology to accommodate historical findings requires ignoring the history of knowledge itself. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:53, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 Comment: I haven't read the entire discussion here, but I've come across some comments for Dimadick and others regarding the Muslims' view of Jesus. Since I am a Muslim, and these comments falsely represent my faith, I felt I need to step in and say that they are false. First of all, Jesus is not mentioned 187 times in the Quran! This is blatantly a piece of misinformation. Dimadick cited an English wikipedia article as a source for this claim, but En-wikipedia articles are not reliable sources on Islam-related topics due to the profound systemic bias here. Also the sources used for this claim in that article are all Wikipedia:Fictitious references. I was going to edit-out this misinformation from that article, but because all En-wikipedia admins and most active users here are either Christians or irreligious, they won't allow this misinformation be removed. They may only add to it. Secondly, Jesus is an important prophet in Islam, but he is not the most important. Muhammad is considered by Muslims to be the greatest prophet and the greatest man ever walked the earth. Thirdly, Jesus is considered "a messiah" in Islam but not "the Messiah". There is a big difference between "a messiah" and "the Messiah". Muhammad is considered in Islam to be the Messiah. Jesus was only a messiah who brought Good News (i.e Gospel) that the Messiah was coming.


  1. ^ Khimjee, Husein (2018). Second Edition: the Attributes of God in the Monotheistic Faiths of Judeo-Christian and Islamic Traditions. iUniverse. ISBN 1532050127. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
--69.202.137.27 (talk) 18:41, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

This really should not be up for debate. Regardless of sources and citations this is just bad word choice, period. Clearly meant to influence the readers perception of the topic. If it's only historians within the religious field this should be explicitly stated. I got through the introduction and first section of this page and read something similar to EVERYONE AGREES HE EXISTED several times. The fact that we seriously have to debate this is disheartening and disappointing. (69.131.138.241 (talk) 18:10, 13 March 2021 (UTC))

Biased sources

This article is very biased. Using a professor of divinity like Dun to make statements that include words like “ nearly all modern scholars consider the baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion to be historically certain” is outrageous. Nearly all? That’s ridiculous. First of all, most of the people doing research on Jesus or Christians, trying to prove a point. Secondly, science is not a popularity contest. It doesn’t matter whether a majority of people think one thing or another. What matters is the evidence they can provide. SheldonHelms (talk) 18:19, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Please read the FAQ located at the top of this page. --Equivamp - talk 18:22, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

This article and talk page focus entirely on scholarly debate. As an academic myself I entirely support that focus. However, it is clear that, academics aside, many many people do not believe that Jesus ever existed. A recent poll put this at 43% of the British population, which is vast. (See https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34686993) Somewhere, this article really needs to acknowledge the real-world situation outside academia. --Doric Loon (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Personally, I think this article has little to gain by including one or several polls/surveys like the one you presented above. The main reason for that would be that this article concerns the historicity of Jesus, rather than the belief in Jesus actually existing; or by extension belief in Christianity. The article already includes the Christ myth theory, which in effect acknowledges that some have come to the historical conclusion that a historical Jesus never existed. It's an apples and pears-situation. Which percentage of the British population believes in Jesus, is better suited for Religion in the United Kingdom or Irreligion in the United Kingdom. Vlaemink (talk) 12:00, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
Well, let's not be disingenuous here: we wouldn't have an article on the historicity of Jesus if the question whether Jesus existed were just a historical curiousity like the historicity of Robin Hood. This article meets the notability criteria because it's a question that a lot of people care about because it shapes their worldview, and that sociological phenomenon is very much part of what Wikipedia should be reporting on. As it is, by focussing strictly on what Biblical scholars say, this article gives the entirely misleading impression that next to nobody today doubts the historicity of Jesus. I absolutely agree that expert debate and popular views shouldn't be mixed up indiscriminately, but a separate short section reporting without value judgment on how this fits into the idological landscape of the 21st century would give a truer picture, and protect those of you who are working here from charges of POV, which I notice have been made in the past.
Incidentally, please don't confuse ahistoricity of Jesus with Christ Myth Theory. The former is simply the view that Jesus never existed, or at least not as a person recognizable from the Gospel stories, while the latter is a theological hypothesis to explain why, if he didn't exist, the church would invent him. You can doubt the historicity of Jesus without being attracted by the Christ Myth Theory, and I am quite sure the majority of that 45% that I mentioned are not making the claims that Carrier & co are making. --Doric Loon (talk) 17:45, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
Such as addition would require citations to reliable sources (WP:RS) per WP:VERIFY, WP:NOR and WP:SCHOLARSHIP - cheers - Epinoia (talk) 18:45, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. But the report cited in that BBC article would be a reliable source. Before I do the work of chasing that down, I would like to hear any other thoughts from those who have written here before. --Doric Loon (talk) 20:58, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
This article is really about historicity, not public opinions. For articles on religious figures, only traditional and scholarly views belong here. Public perceptions generally do not belong here for numerous reasons. For one, that there are almost no studies that even focus on any systematic fashion on these kinds of questions or compare such findings with other cultures - how do you interpret these studies? I have been reviewing demographics on religion and irreligion and most of the time news articles misinterpret the data or exaggerate the findings out of context as do Wikipedia editors. Furthermore, it is well known that mythicists tend to be atheist or agnostic since usually atheist organizations are the only ones that even push, publish, or advocate Christ myth theory. Usually these types of results only reflect the biases of the population, not that the population has reached such a conclusion based on evidence or rational analysis - which from the looks of it, a decent chunk of the British ignore academic consensus on the matter. If you were to ask the same question in America, you would have a minority exhibiting mythicist views and that would also not be useful on the historicity of Jesus either.
On top of that, the original study does not look reliable [4]. And the results show that only 22% believe Jesus to be mythical, not 43%. This is an easy example of how news organizations push agendas, not honesty when they present demographical or sociological research on controversial topics like religion or politics. The original study nullifies the BBC report.
The article should stay focused on traditional and scholarly discourses on the matter, not deviate for that.Ramos1990 (talk) 23:03, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
@Doric Loon: I think you're right that we wouldn't have an article on the historicity of Jesus if the question whether Jesus existed were just a historical curiousity like the historicity of Robin Hood. Yet, the historicity of Jesus is questioned not because popular opinion beliefs, but because theologians and historians have doubted his historicity, and in recent decade popular opinion has adapted this view. The real scope of this article is the CMT, that is, "Historicity of Jesus" is a subsudiary article of CMT. Therefor, the CMT-section should be the first section. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:34, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
OK this is why I asked for other opinions before I put any work in - I'm clearly not going to get a consensus on the scope of the article. Shame, though: I think you are missing out on what is possibly the most interesting aspect of all this.
Can I strongly suggest you think again about CMT, though. I had that impression, and @Joshua Jonathan: has just confirmed it, that a lot of you are seeing a simple binary between historicity and CMT. CMT is only one way of understanding ahistoricity. Caesar's Messiah is another, which is quite incompatible with CMT (and in scholarly terms makes CMT look positively respectable). I think many non-religous people just think Christianity originated as a hoax, or link it with some conspiracy theory. Obviously I'm not suggesting you put any of that into the article. My point is just that Carrier's CMT, as a very specific, complex and controversial theological hypothesis about the origins of Christianity from mystery religions, is something that can be built onto ahistoricism, but you certainly don't have to buy into it to doubt that a meaningful historical Jesus can be demonstrated. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:48, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@Doric Loon:Leaving aside the rather odd suggestion of disingenuity, I don't think your comparison between Robin Hood and Jesus makes for a very convincing argument. For one, the article on Robin Hood has a rather encompassing section on his historicity, secondly it's a variant of the Argumentum ad populum-fallacy. In end, the determination whether Robin Hood, King Arthur, Socrates, William Tell or Homer are mere (as you put it) "historical curiosities" whereas Jesus supposedly is not and hence should include some (rather vague) aggregate of public opinion, is a personal one. Apart from this, as has been remarked upon by Ramos1990, you've misinterpreted your source and its overall usefulness, even when interpreted correctly, is debatable. Vlaemink (talk) 11:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@Vlaemink: No, no! I absolutely was not suggesting an Argumentum ad populum: the number of people who believe something has nothing to do with whether it is true. I was suggesting that the sociological question of the impact of a belief in the population is in itself a phenomenon one should report on. (Please forget I used the word "disingenuous" - it was only intended to flag a mistake we souldn't make, but I think you've understood it as an accusation, which was not my intention.) --Doric Loon (talk) 12:01, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
Is there any relevant discourse, apart from CMT, that questions the historicity of Jesus? If fringe mysthicist authors consider Ceasar's Messiah to be fringe, then I think that CMT is indeed the only relevant way to understand 'ahistoricism'. CMT resulted from theological and historical interest in the historicity of Jesus; the suggestion of the ahistoricity of Jesus has to be understood in this context. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 17:00, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
@Joshua Jonathan:For me that is a question of precision. Ahistoricism is an answer to the question "Did Jesus exist?" Christ-Myth is an answer to the question "Where else, apart from a historical Jesus, could the Christ tradition have come from?" As I said above, I can think of five possible answers to this second question, and even if four of them are fringier-than-fringe in the academies, conspiracy theories are big in the internet. In my mind, that's reason enough to be precise. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:40, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
Do bear in mind also that CMT does not actually require that there was no historical Jesus. I know that's not what Carrier &co think, but it would be perfectly possible to posit that there was a historical Jesus, but still use Carrier's Myth explanations (influence of mystery religions etc.) to get from Jesus to Christ. This is something I quite often hear in conversations when secular people are exploring these ideas; I haven't seen it in writing, so that too is not for the article text, but it is another big reason not to lump these two issues together and present them as a single binary. --Doric Loon (talk) 12:02, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Do bear in mind also that CMT does not actually require that there was no historical Jesus.
— User:Doric Loon

Bart D. Ehrman notes: "Other writers who are often placed in the mythicist camp present a slightly different view, namely, that there was indeed a historical Jesus but that he was not the founder of Christianity, a religion rooted in the mythical Christ-figure invented by its original adherents." [Ehrman 2012, pp. 19, 348, n. 10.] --2db (talk) 12:23, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

  • Can I remind everyone that Wikipedia is not a forum. This is not the place to discuss what people in general believe or not believe. Doric Loon is perfectly right to say that "the sociological question of the impact of a belief in the population is in itself a phenomenon one should report on" and there are several articles in which that is relevant. This is not one of those articles, though. For virtually all academic subjects, what lay people in general know or believe about them has little relevance. The discussion above has been going on for nine days now, and while much of it is interesting, it is also dangerously close to being purely a forum to discuss about CMT and historicity. Unless there are clear suggestions for how to improve this article, this discussion seems to have run its course. Again, that is not to say it's not interesting, but WP:NOTAFORUM is very clear. Jeppiz (talk) 15:33, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the timely reminder of Not-a-forum. So strictly on what goes in the article, I would suggest you look at our article on Evolution. Here is a parallel case where there is a scholarly consensus but a significant proportion of the population actively rejects that consensus, and lo and behold, our article has a short section on that phenomenon, linking on to fuller articles. Anyone who wants to know how widespread it is to doubt the historicity of Jesus will come here first, and they are not well served. So what speaks against a two-sentence section at the bottom with a link to fuller discussions? --Doric Loon (talk) 08:43, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
OK then, please propose a two-sentence section to be considered for inclusion. What wording would you like to see us add? (With WP:RS references, please).Wdford (talk) 10:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
The following will be WP:RS illustrating the popular controversy.
--2db (talk) 12:49, 24 June 2021 (UTC) & updated 01:40, 25 June 2021 (UTC) & updated 11:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
OK, so now please propose a two-sentence section to be considered for inclusion. What actual wording would you like us to add? Wdford (talk) 15:59, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

• Social and cultural responses

After the publication of On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Sheffield Phoenix Press (ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5) the idea that Christianity had evolved from an ahistorical Jesus was an active source of academic debate centered on the philosophical, social and religious implications of ahistoricity. Today ahistoricity remains a contentious concept for some theists.

--2db (talk) 17:52, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Neither one are reliable sources. One is a blog and the other is a weird group that has no academic recognition or standing. And there is no consensus supporting to add such a section in either. The evolution example is not really a good one because CMT is not a prominently believed theory by either the public or scholars. It is a minority and fringe view on both camps.Ramos1990 (talk) 23:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

The real-world situation

Content hidden per objection of User:Jeppiz

Somewhere, this article really needs to acknowledge the real-world situation outside academia.
— User:Doric Loon

The real-world situation outside academia is that informed secular individuals maintain skepticism over the gospel figure of Jesus. This skepticism spans the spectrum from:

In summary, it is clear that there are many contradictions between one gospel and another, many dubious statements of history, many suspicious resemblances to the legends told of pagan gods, many incidents apparently designed to prove the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, many passages possibly aiming to establish a historical basis for some later doctrine or ritual of the Church. The evangelists shared with Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus the conception of history as a vehicle for moral ideas. And presumably the conversations and speeches reported in the Gospels were subject to the frailties of illiterate memories, and the errors or emendations of copyists.

Was Jesus of Nazareth a historic person? We do not know, and unless documents turn up of which we have no knowledge we cannot hope ever to know. … says Schmiedel: "the view that Jesus never really lived has gained in ever-growing number of supporters. It is no use to ignore it, or to frame resolutions against it." [says] Weigell: "Many of the most erudite critics are convinced that no such person ever lived." Among those so convinced [that no such person ever lived], some of them internationally known scholars, are Bauer, B(ö)htlingk, Bolland, Bossi, E. Carpenter, Couchoud, D(u)puis, Drews, Dujardin, Fran(c)k(e), Hannay, Heulhard, Jensen, Kalthoff, Kulischer, Loman, Lublinski, Matthas, Mead, Naber, Pierson, Robertson, Rylands, G. Smith, W. B. Smith, Stahl, Van Eysinga, Virolleaud, Volney and Whittaker.

IMO, when a poll shows a substantial disbelief, it is probably a disbelief in the fidelity of the gospel narrative. A better poll would specifially query the viewpoint on agnosticism, and ahistoricity. --2db (talk) 23:41, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Fringe theory

@Pipsally: Thomas L. Thompson's theories about Jesus are a fringe theory which finds virtually no position in modern scholarship and has been subject to a devastating critique by Bart D. Ehrman in his book Did Jesus Exist?.Since Wikipedia doesn't accept fringe theories, it should be removed.--Karma1998 (talk) 08:44, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

That is OR unless you can show a source that says Ehrman destroyed Thompson's theories. It is not enough simply to cite Ehrman's book.Pipsally (talk) 09:57, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
@Pipsally: Thompson's theories have been ignored or rejected by virtually all scholars of the Historical Jesus. They are usually not even quoted by New Testament scholars. They are fringe theories and should be dealt as such. All scholars agree that Jesus existed and reject the Christ myth theory as a fringe theory.-Karma1998 (talk) 10:03, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

@Pipsally: "Thompson’s work is wrong from beginning to end. This is partly because he has not become competent in New Testament Studies, and partly because he has ideological convictions which he inserts at all points where he should have offered serious intellectual analysis." (Maurice Casey)

"The Messiah Myth was criticized by New Testament scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman, who in 2012 published a criticism of Jesus ahistoricity theory proponents, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazarethz in which he stated that "A different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson," and critiqued Thompson's arguments and criticized Thompson, as an Old Testament scholar, for lacking the sufficient background in New Testament studies to provide a useful analysis of the text. (Bart Ehrman).-Karma1998 (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Listen @Pipsally:, the subject has already been discussed and decided. The Christ myth theory is a fringe theory which has no support whatsoever in scholarship. Therefore, it has no place on Wikipedia. I will revert your edits: please, do not interfere.-Karma1998 (talk) 10:25, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

@MPants at work: please, I need your help here.--Karma1998 (talk) 10:46, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

This is cast iron WP:SYNTH. You are throwing around quotes but no RS to back your position up. You need to respect WP:BRD and not simply bully your preferred version through, especially when it involves the removal of sourced material.Pipsally (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
The removal is acceptable. Thompson gives a variation of the CMT; mentioning it here is not necessary. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:42, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Thank you @Joshua Jonathan:, I really do appreciate.--Karma1998 (talk) 12:33, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Here are a few examples to prove my point:

  • (Gullotta 2017, p. 312): "[Per Jesus mythicism] Given the fringe status of these theories, the vast majority have remained unnoticed and unaddressed within scholarly circles."
  • Patrick Gray (2016), Varieties of Religious Invention, chapter 5, Jesus, Paul, and the birth of Christianity, Oxford University Press, p.114: "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty. [Note 4:] Although it remains a fringe phenomenon, familiarity with the Christ myth theory has become much more widespread among the general public with the advent of the Internet."
  • Larry Hurtado (December 2, 2017), Why the "Mythical Jesus" Claim Has No Traction with Scholars: "The "mythical Jesus" view doesn’t have any traction among the overwhelming number of scholars working in these fields, whether they be declared Christians, Jewish, atheists, or undeclared as to their personal stance. Advocates of the "mythical Jesus" may dismiss this statement, but it ought to count for something if, after some 250 years of critical investigation of the historical figure of Jesus and of Christian Origins, and the due consideration of "mythical Jesus" claims over the last century or more, this spectrum of scholars have judged them unpersuasive (to put it mildly)."
  • Michael Grant (2004), Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, p.200: "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."
  • Bart Ehrman (2012), Did Jesus Exist?, p.20: "It is fair to say that mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by the vast majority of scholars in the fields of New Testament, early Christianity, ancient history, and theology. This is widely recognized, to their chagrin, by mythicists themselves."
  • Maurice Casey (2014) "The whole idea that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist as a historical figure is verifiably false. Moreover, it has not been produced by anyone or anything with any reasonable relationship to critical scholarship. It belongs to the fantasy lives of people who used to be fundamentalist Christians. They did not believe in critical scholarship then, and they do not do so now. I cannot find any evidence that any of them have adequate professional qualifications."[31]

I think this settles the point pretty easily.-Karma1998 (talk) 13:22, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Not exactly, because the section is about the CMT. But it'd not necessary to mention Thompson separately. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 14:25, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
The point I'm trying to make is that Thompson is supporting a variant of the CMT. Since it's a fringe theory, there's no reason to specifically mention him.-Karma1998 (talk) 14:48, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Well, the whole section is about a fringe-theory. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:00, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
Just a side note on the edits by Karma1998, I do not see any WP:SYN or WP:OR violations since sources and quotes seem to be provided. On the Thompson removal, I am 50/50 on it, but perhaps it can be removed since the main article on CMT essentially fleshes out the variants of CMT. I am not aware of many who hold an agnostic position either way, most CMT adherents just doubt complete existence altogether.Ramos1990 (talk) 16:21, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
@Ramos1990: the so-called "agnostic position" Thompson is referring to is simply another variant of the CMT and should be treated as such. This is why Thompson has been called a "mythicist" by Bart D. Ehrman, Maurice Casey and William G. Dever. Also, despite what the previous text claimed, Thompson's views have not been endorsed by "several scholars".-Karma1998 (talk) 16:54, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE is a policy of WP. Only by the grossest misrepresentation of this WP policy can one argue that the Jesus ahistoricity theory as formulated in peer reviewed monograph and published by a respected academic press falls under the policy of WP:FRINGE. --2db (talk) 21:44, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

@2db: The CMT is a fringe theory rejected by virtually all scholars. The fact that some scholars support it is irrelevant. It is still a fringe theory. Please read the page Christ myth theory-Karma1998 (talk) 23:40, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

  • (Gullotta 2017, p. 312): "[Per Jesus mythicism] Given the fringe status of these theories, the vast majority have remained unnoticed and unaddressed within scholarly circles."
  • Patrick Gray (2016), Varieties of Religious Invention, chapter 5, Jesus, Paul, and the birth of Christianity, Oxford University Press, p.114: "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty. [Note 4:] Although it remains a fringe phenomenon, familiarity with the Christ myth theory has become much more widespread among the general public with the advent of the Internet."
  • Larry Hurtado (December 2, 2017), Why the "Mythical Jesus" Claim Has No Traction with Scholars: "The "mythical Jesus" view doesn’t have any traction among the overwhelming number of scholars working in these fields, whether they be declared Christians, Jewish, atheists, or undeclared as to their personal stance. Advocates of the "mythical Jesus" may dismiss this statement, but it ought to count for something if, after some 250 years of critical investigation of the historical figure of Jesus and of Christian Origins, and the due consideration of "mythical Jesus" claims over the last century or more, this spectrum of scholars have judged them unpersuasive (to put it mildly)."
  • Michael Grant (2004), Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, p.200: "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."
  • Bart Ehrman (2012), Did Jesus Exist?, p.20: "It is fair to say that mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by the vast majority of scholars in the fields of New Testament, early Christianity, ancient history, and theology. This is widely recognized, to their chagrin, by mythicists themselves."
  • Maurice Casey (2014) "The whole idea that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist as a historical figure is verifiably false. Moreover, it has not been produced by anyone or anything with any reasonable relationship to critical scholarship. It belongs to the fantasy lives of people who used to be fundamentalist Christians. They did not believe in critical scholarship then, and they do not do so now. I cannot find any evidence that any of them have adequate professional qualifications."[31]

I think this settles the point pretty easily.-Karma1998 (talk) 23:48, 11 July 2021 (UTC) {od}

...familiarity with the Christ myth theory has become much more widespread among the general public with the advent of the Internet.
— User:quote given by Karma1998

This quote supports the fact that the Jesus ahistoricity theory is not WP:FRINGE. Once again academic fringe is not the same as WP policy about what should be included or not included in an article. --2db (talk) 00:35, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@2db:

  • 1 - the quote was "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty. [Note 4:] Although it remains a fringe phenomenon, familiarity with the Christ myth theory has become much more widespread among the general public with the advent of the Internet." Don't quote just what you want to quote.
  • 2 - The fact that some people in the general public believes this theory does not make it less fringe. Wikipedia isn't a place where we write whatever people believes. We follow the academic consensus. Otherwise we'd have to say that Young Earth Creationism is also historically supported (since 35% of Americans support it) or that Hillary Clinton is a Satanist, since many seem to believe it. We obviously don't. The scholarly consensus is that Jesus existed. That's it. -Karma1998 (talk) 00:45, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Per WP policy, Fringe is determined by what the mainstream scholarship says, not how popular it is or not with people. If everyone believed the earth was flat, but nearly all scientists deemed fringe, flat earth belief would still be fringe, per the policy. Acupuncture is very popular with the public, but the mainstream medical community clearly identifies it as fringe and pseudoscience.Ramos1990 (talk) 00:51, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Thank you @Ramos1990:: apparently someone is confusing Wikipedia with Facebook or Twitter.--Karma1998 (talk) 00:54, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
2db, please knock it off. You keep repeating yourself again and again, to no avail. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:37, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Pipsally and 2db You should maybe familiarize yourself with the sourcing at Christ myth theory, and also with the guidelines at WP:FRINGE. The only serious modern scholar to advocate for the theory is Robert M. Price (though I believe there's a PhD student who gained some exposure for defending it). He is joined by a sizable (in terms of a percentage of new atheists) group of inexpert supporters whose only qualification is their atheism, which you might recognize as no qualification at all. Their support has absolutely no bearing on the theory's merits. There is a similarly large group of people advocating for a flat earth, after all.
This is a non-issue. The complaints you have raised are meritless, and the only reason Karma1998 managed to get to 3rr was because I was not editing at the time, else I'd have made some of those reverts for them. The CMT is a fringe theory, full stop. If you wish to contest this, you need sources which demonstrate broad acceptance of the theory among qualified scholars, and you need to make that case at Christ myth theory, not here. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:32, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

"Quotes on the historicity of Jesus" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Quotes on the historicity of Jesus. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 August 19#Quotes on the historicity of Jesus until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Stefan2 (talk) 20:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Caiaphas

The consensus of historians is that Jesus existed. If it is true that they discovered Caiaphas' remains, such discovery neither add to nor subtracts from such consensus. Since, regardless of whether Jesus was real of imaginary, naming a really existing person known to many bolsters neither of these two scenarios. Like I would be claiming that Pete J. Einstein existed, since, you see, JFK existed. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:23, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Enperor Domitian

In the book "Universal History" by Agepius of Hierapolis we can find the following pagan fragments dating from the year 9 of Domitian's reign (90AD): At that time Apollonius, master of talismans, became celebrated. He opposed the disciples of Christ by his works, which thwarted those of Christ, and he said, "What a misfortune for me, that I was preceded by the son of Mary!" At the same time, the philosopher Patrophilus said to his master Ursinus, "I have intended to speak, master, of this man in whom all the peoples and the nations of different languages believe. According to what is said of him, he was crucified, died; then he came back to life and went up to heaven, according to the testimony of his companions, who believe in him. And we see that Theodore, chief of the sages of Athens, with Africanus of Alexandria, Martianus (Martinus) of drourousah (?) and Mark (?) gave up their gods in order to worship Him and call upon Him. They were freed from the business of this vile world, they have neither riches nor goods, and they are powerful in word and work." Ursinus responded to his disciple, "All the people have become his disciples and worship the Galilean of Nazareth. We quote the names of eminent scholars who after seeing him renounced their gods and worshipped Him. As for me, I think that all the peoples and their posterity will become his disciples. You say that his disciples live a good life; what is also good, is that they do not abandon themselves to the evil hidden in the flesh."

Eusebius of Caesarea in his most famed work (Book 3, Chapter 20) contains the following story related by the christian historian Hegesippus of Jerusalem, which cannot be classified as pretentious or fanciful involving the Domitian emperor: Concerning the Relatives of Our Saviour.

There still survived of the kindred of the Lord the grandsons of Judas, who according to the flesh was called his brother. These were informed against, as belonging to the family of David, and Evocatus brought them before Domitian Cæsar: for that emperor dreaded the advent of Christ, as Herod had done.

So he asked them whether they were of the family of David; and they confessed they were. Next he asked them what property they had, or how much money they possessed. They both replied that they had only 9000 denaria between them, each of them owning half that sum; but even this they said they did not possess in cash, but as the estimated value of some land, consisting of thirty-nine plethra only, out of which they had to pay the dues, and that they supported themselves by their own labour. And then they began to hold out their hands, exhibiting, as proof of their manual labour, the roughness of their skin, and the corns raised on their hands by constant work.

Being then asked concerning Christ and His kingdom, what was its nature, and when and where it was to appear, they returned answer that it was not of this world, nor of the earth, but belonging to the sphere of heaven and angels, and would make its appearance at the end of time, when He shall come in glory, and judge living and dead, and render to every one according to the course of his life.

Thereupon Domitian passed no condemnation upon them, but treated them with contempt, as too mean for notice, and let them go free. At the same time he issued a command, and put a stop to the persecution against the Church.

When they were released they became leaders of the churches, as was natural in the case of those who were at once martyrs and of the kindred of the Lord. And, after the establishment of peace to the Church, their lives were prolonged to the reign of Trajan. Tuxzos22 (talk) 12:17, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Agapius of Hierapolis* the question is whether this information is valid to be added to the article? Tuxzos22 (talk) 12:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

We already include this tale on the article about Jude, brother of Jesus. We also mention that Jude was reportedly the great-grandfather of Judah Kyriakos. Why are tales about Jesus' nephews relevant to the debate about his historicity? Dimadick (talk) 00:59, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

because the Dominican emperor does not question the historical existence of Jesus but assumes that he existed, that is why it is important. Tuxzos22 (talk) 12:17, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

but I mean within this article not an external one Tuxzos22 (talk) 12:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Cite overhaul

This needs to be reworked to avoid grouping notes within notes. I'm just posting this here ahead of a bold edit per WP:CITEVAR, which requires consensus. Thanks, UpdateNerd (talk) 01:26, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

A Chart of Contemporary Historians?

Would it be worthwhile to include a chart on this page of first and second century historians who mention/fail to mention Jesus?

It could include columns like Name | Timeline | Biographical Details | Mentions Jesus | Additional Notes

candidates would be:

  • Seneca the Younger
  • Gallio
  • Justus of Tiberias
  • Nicolaus of Damascus
  • Philo of Alexandria
  • Thallus
  • Lucian
  • Josephus
  • Clement of Rome
  • Ignatius
  • Pliny the Younger
  • Suetonius
  • Tactius
  • Polycarp
  • Justin Martyr


I am making the chart now unless there is strong objection. I'll need help with citations I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.44.216.58 (talk) 19:35, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi. I think it is an interesting idea, but a chart would be tricky and not really necessary. There already is an article dedicated to the sources on Jesus. See Sources for the historicity of Jesus. That is more extensive than your chart and it allows for discussion on the matter among scholars. Ramos1990 (talk) 04:06, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Just to clarify--is the issue that it's unnecessary, or is the issue original research? I can finish adding in all the citations given enough time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.44.216.58 (talk) 23:04, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi again. Its both. There already is an article on the sources on Jesus and there is a link to it in under the "Sources" [5] section of this article. It seems the Sources section can be expanded a bit further. But the main article for the sources on Jesus is again Sources for the historicity of Jesus. Ramos1990 (talk) 18:38, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

But the article for the sources on jesus does not contain (or cannot be trusted to contain) a list of conteporary historians that does NOT mention jesus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.234.115.207 (talk) 10:20, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

IP edits

The IP mixes scholars with non-scholars, and many of their references are WP:CIRCULAR footnotes to Wikipedia articles instead of WP:RS. N.B.: Wikipedia does not state that Jesus did not exist! It only says that its evidence is a complicated matter, and noobs often exaggerate it greatly. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:49, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:27, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Chronology and non-existant sources

There is no debate on the existance of contemporaneous sources on the historicity of this religious character. None are claimed to exist. Furthermore, the non-Christian sources being written after the first version of the gospels is also not questioned. Removing the non-existance of these sources due to lack of sources is an incoherent justification. The chronology of the sources are listed in the article. 193.213.63.39 (talk) 13:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

That claim is not supported by the source or page number you cited (Bart Ehrman "Did Jesus Exist?" p.30). He actually argues the opposite of what you claimed throughout "Did Jesus Exist?" and extends to oral traditions and pre-gospel written sources of which even Luke admits were many by his time and Ehrman agrees with existed but did not survive (p.74-83). Ehrman also states that even more prominent figures like Pontius Pilate and Josephus have no eyewitness or contemporary sources for them at all (p.49). So what is your point? This situation is common in the ancient world (e.g. Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras, etc). No one in the ancient world argued FOR the existence of a person in the same way that no one in the modern world argues FOR themselves today in their own writings - as if to anticipate a mythicist audience 1800 years in the future. Ramos1990 (talk) 01:32, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
The sources referenced includes the two claims: 1) no contemporaneous, and 2) no eye witnesses. He uses those facts to argue that despite the lack of these types of evidence there was a historical Jesus. You seem to labour under the misunderstanding that I am arguing for mythicism. The point of the inclusion of these facts is to inform the readers of the state of the sources for the historicity of Jesus, not to argue for or against his historicity. This is particularly important as there is a tradition in the Christian church to claim stronger sources than what exists, such as attributing the gospels to people contemporaneous to Jesus like Matthew. 193.213.63.39 (talk) 12:50, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
No the source does not. Here is an example of what he does say on Paul as a source for instance "In about the year 36, Paul went to Jerusalem to confer with Peter (Galatians 1:18–20). Paul spent fifteen days there. He may not have gone only or even principally to get a rundown on what Jesus said and did during his public ministry. It is plausible, in fact, that Paul wanted to strategize with Peter, as the leader (or one of the leaders) among the Jerusalem Christians, about Paul’s own missionary activities, not among the Jews (Peter’s concern) but among the Gentiles (Paul’s). This was the reason stated for Paul’s second visit to see Peter and the others fourteen years later, according to Galatians 2:1–10. But it defies belief that Paul would have spent over two weeks with Jesus’s closest companion and not learned something about him—for example, that he lived. Even more telling is the much-noted fact that Paul claims that he met with, and therefore personally knew, Jesus’s own brother James. It is true that Paul calls him the “brother of the Lord,” not “the brother of Jesus.” But that means very little since Paul typically calls Jesus the Lord and rarely uses the name Jesus (without adding “Christ” or other titles). And so in the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus’s brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus’s closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into the mythicist view that Jesus never lived." (p.145-146) Paul knew eyewitnesses like the disciples and Jesus' own family members. He mentions the encounters in some of his letters going back to about 3 years after Christ was crucified.
He also states "The reality appears to be that there were stories being told about Jesus for a very long time not just before our surviving Gospels but even before their sources had been produced. If scholars are right that Q and the core of the Gospel of Thomas, to pick just two examples, do date from the 50s, and that they were based on oral traditions that had already been in circulation for a long time, how far back do these traditions go? Anyone who thinks that Jesus existed has no problem answering the question: they ultimately go back to things Jesus said and did while he was engaged in his public ministry, say, around the year 29 or 30. But even anyone who just wonders if Jesus existed has to assume that there were stories being told about him in the 30s and 40s. For one thing, as we will see in the next chapter, how else would someone like Paul have known to persecute the Christians, if Christians didn’t exist? And how could they exist if they didn’t know anything about Jesus?"(p. 85)Ramos1990 (talk) 02:44, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Yes he does (chapter 1, page 28 in the pdf version). "..I need to stress that we do not have a single reference to Jesus by anyone—pagan, Jew, or Christian—who was a contemporary eyewitness, who recorded things he said and did". If you disagree with the source, then please provide an alternative source with contemporary eyewitness accounts.
You seem to agree above by saying we "cannot get closer to an eyewitness". Well, maybe we cannot - but that does not change the fact that we have no contemporary eyewitnesses. You ask some interesting questions above, but they do not pertain to the question at hand: are there or are there not contemporary eyewitness accounts? There is no reason to argue back and forth unless you can provide one. 193.213.63.39 (talk) 08:51, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
"we have no contemporary eyewitnesses". Well there goes most of the ancient world. If that is your mantra and you don't wish to discuss the work of actual scholars such as Ehrman, then kindly find somewhere else to play. We use reliable sourcing here and the many books and research papers published on this topic over the past century and more come to a reliable consensus: Jesus the man as the central figure of Christianity existed in Galilee in the early First Century CE and was executed by the Roman governor in Jerusalem. His followers then formed a cult based around the man and his supposedly divine role. It is unlikely that during his lifetime Jesus was anything like the mythical character later venerated by billions. The post-Nicaea claim that he was actually the Creator-God of the Universe doesn't seem to fit well with the words of Paul or the Gospels. You'd think the word would have gotten out during his lifetime and it wouldn't have been the Romans crucifying him for sedition, it would have been the Jews stoning him for blasphemy. Attack the mythical god-figure all you wish, but you really have no grounds for dismissing Jesus the non-divine teacher unless you want to dismiss everyone else alive at the time bar the scant handful who had eyewitnesses write about them. --Pete (talk) 10:27, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Kindly read the argument before replying. The argument here is not "was there a jesus", the argument is: Are there contemporary witnesses as has been claimed historically by the Church? The answer by virtually all scholars is that there are none.
Whether this undermines your belief in Jesus or most other ancient historical figures is another debate entirely. 193.213.63.39 (talk) 10:45, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
I suggest you take your own advice and read the arguments presented. Start with the FAQ linked above. I understand what you are saying and responded to it. I am sorry you do not understand how Wikipedia works. Please stay away from the article until you gain consensus here for any changes you wish to make or you are going to find life here very difficult. --Pete (talk) 19:46, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
IP 193.213.63.39, Please read the FAQ and familiarize yourself with wikipedia policy since you are essentially violating it by doing WP:SYN. The source does not support your conclusion. Also this is WP:NOTFORUM. Ehrman addresses your nonexistent-sources argument this way: "This fact too, however, should not be overblown when considering the question of whether or not Jesus lived. The absence of eyewitness accounts would be relevant if, and only if, we had reason to suspect that we should have eyewitness reports if Jesus really lived. That, however, is far from the case. Think again of our earlier point of comparison, Pontius Pilate. Here is a figure who was immensely significant in every way to the life and history of Palestine during the adult life of Jesus (assuming Jesus lived), politically, economically, culturally, socially. As I have indicated, there was arguably no one more important. And how many eyewitness reports of Pilate do we have from his day? None. Not a single one. The same is true of Josephus. And these are figures who were of the highest prominence in their own day. In no small measure this relates, again, to the problem of literacy in that time and place. Hardly anyone could write, and most of the people who could write did not produce writings that have survived from antiquity. As it turns out—this is as astounding as it is true—from Roman Palestine of the entire first century we have precisely one, only one, author of literary texts whose works have survived (by literary texts I mean literary books of any kind: fictional, historical, philosophical, scientific, poetic, political, you name it). That one author is Josephus. We have no others. What is equally striking, in all of our historical records we know the name of only one other author of such writings, a man named Justin of Tiberius; his books, obviously, have not survived." (p.49-50)
Ehrman acknowledges much earlier sources than those that have survived:"All of these written sources I have mentioned are earlier than the surviving Gospels; they all corroborate many of the key things said of Jesus in the Gospels; and most important they are all independent of one another. Let me stress the latter point. We cannot think of the early Christian Gospels as going back to a solitary source that “invented” the idea that there was a man Jesus. The view that Jesus existed is found in multiple independent sources that must have been circulating throughout various regions of the Roman Empire in the decades before the Gospels that survive were produced. Where would the solitary source that “invented” Jesus be? Within a couple of decades of the traditional date of his death, we have numerous accounts of his life found in a broad geographical span. In addition to Mark, we have Q, M (which is possibly made of multiple sources), L (also possibly multiple sources), two or more passion narratives, a signs source, two discourse sources, the kernel (or original) Gospel behind the Gospel of Thomas, and possibly others. And these are just the ones we know about, that we can reasonably infer from the scant literary remains that survive from the early years of the Christian church. No one knows how many there actually were. Luke says there were “many” of them, and he may well have been right. And once again, this is not the end of the story." (p. 83)
So what he is saying is that the sources on Jesus that have survived are not written by contemporaries or eyewitnesses. But from the quotes I extracted, Ehrman clearly admits that there is eyewitness and contemporary data in these collections of sources that did survive extending to Jesus himself and his earliest followers including Paul who know Jesus brother and his disciples and documented some historical details.
Context matters.Ramos1990 (talk) 00:57, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
We seem to continue to speak past eachother. You, and Ehrman, are saying that sources might have been inspired by people who might have been contemporary eyewitnesses. Sure, this might be true. However, we still do not have contemporary eyewitness accounts. This is not surprising, as you are repeating, but simply because this fact is not surprising does not take away from it being a fact. As the Christian church historically has falsified and misattributed texts to remedy the lack of this type of evidence, it is not redundant.
Referencing this fact from Ehrman's book is not me reaching a different argument or conclusion. An argument would require me presenting premises and a conclusion, but the suggested sentence simply presents this fact: There are no contemporary eyewitness accounts. I am yet to read that you disagree with this fact. However, I can sympathize with wanting to obscure the evidence for a historical character with personal significance to so many. However, I suggest you familiarize yourself with wikipedia policy on such bias. 193.213.63.39 (talk) 10:23, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

IP, this seems to be a case of CIR. If you are taking "contemporaneous eyewitness accounts existed, but we do not have them" as an argument in favor of including in the article "there are no contemporaneous accounts", you do not have the skills required to edit this article. --Equivamp - talk 12:19, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Now that the dust has settled on this debate, perhaps we should acknowledge that the IP had a point. Bart Ehrman does indeed stress that there is not a single reference to Jesus from a contemporary witness (Chapter 1, p26, Section: The Sources for Jesus: What We Do Not Have). This is fudged in the sentence saying the same thing about Pontius Pilate and Josephus in the Sources section of the article. I suggest that this sentence should be adjusted as follows:

Ehrman acknowledges that there are no contemporary eyewitness reports of Jesus,[1] but counters this by arguing that the historical record for the time period was so lacking that no contemporary eyewitness testimony even confirms the existence of individuals such as Pontius Pilate or Josephus.Brymor (talk) 16:56, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Ehrman actually elaborates more context later on "And so in the letter to the Galatians Paul states as clearly as possible that he knew Jesus’s brother. Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this? The fact that Paul knew Jesus’s closest disciple and his own brother throws a real monkey wrench into the mythicist view that Jesus never lived." (p.145-146). So obviously the situation is quite complex. There is eyewitness testimony collected in these sources even if the authors of the surviving sources were not themselves eyewitnesses (e.g. Paul). He also emphasizes independent sources that go back to the time of Jesus and how they were used in later sources like the Gospels. The status of a historical record does not bear anything on historicity - that is his point. Ramos1990 (talk) 00:42, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, Ehrman does indeed ask in Chapter 5 (referring to Paul), "Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this?" The answer, which he has already told us in Chapter 1, is "No, there aren't any eyewitness reports." The section of the article I am referring to is in Sources, where a coherent discussion of what Ehrman says about sources (referring to Pilate & Josephus, not Paul) is both appropriate and necessary. The 'fudged' sentence reads "Ehrman argues that the historical record for the time period was so lacking that no contemporary eyewitness reports for individuals even such as Pontius Pilate or Josephus survive." Why does Ehrman say this? Because the same thing applies to Jesus as to Pontius Pilate and Josephus. Ehrman is stressing a lack of certain types of source. He is obviously correct to do this, and what he writes needs to be made clear, not evaded. Brymor (talk) 18:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
That is an odd response since you ignored the whole quote - he answers the question immediately afterwards. You also ignored all of the other quotes above where Ehrman clarifies his views on this and addresses your point directly. He actually rebukes your point explicitly. Since you are, like the IP, essentially cherry picking one sentence and ignoring paragraphs worth of rebuking and context from Ehrman, I would say that this is not an improvement for the article. Also the Sources section is an intro on the nature of the historical record at that time. The details of eyewitness testimony is in the subsections below which go into more detail. Also other scholarly works such as Richard Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony" shed more light on the matter as a different view than Ehrman's. Ramos1990 (talk) 00:10, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
Come again? It is surely obvious that "Can we get any closer to an eyewitness report than this?" is not an argument, it is rhetoric, and talking about putting a monkey wrench in the works is not an answer either - it is also rhetoric! I personally am with Ehrman here (Chapter 5, Peter & James): he has put forward a clever argument, and I like it. But it still doesn't amount to an eyewitness account, and he knows it.
Why are you going off at a tangent and ignoring what it says in the Wikipedia article? Chapter 5, although fascinating, is irrelevant to Ehrman's point about Pontius Pilate and Josephus, which comes in Chapter 1. I am not cherry picking, I am concentrating on a point Ehrman makes that is so important that he goes out of his way to stress it. Quote: "I need to stress that we do not have a single reference to Jesus by anyone — pagan, Jew, or Christian — who was a contemporary eyewitness." (p26) Are you disagreeing with Ehrman here? If so, you are promoting your views above Ehrman, which contravenes NPOV. Brymor (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
Actually Ehrman argues that your point is completely irrelevant and unimportant with respect to historicity. He spends more time explaining against it. (From quote above) "This fact too, however, should not be overblown when considering the question of whether or not Jesus lived. The absence of eyewitness accounts would be relevant if, and only if, we had reason to suspect that we should have eyewitness reports if Jesus really lived. That, however, is far from the case. Think again of our earlier point of comparison, Pontius Pilate. Here is a figure who was immensely significant in every way to the life and history of Palestine during the adult life of Jesus (assuming Jesus lived), politically, economically, culturally, socially. As I have indicated, there was arguably no one more important. And how many eyewitness reports of Pilate do we have from his day? None. Not a single one. The same is true of Josephus. And these are figures who were of the highest prominence in their own day. In no small measure this relates, again, to the problem of literacy in that time and place. Hardly anyone could write, and most of the people who could write did not produce writings that have survived from antiquity."
He does NOT place weight on your point and he sees it a unimportant and irrelevant because of how the record is for everyone in the first century. To ignore this it to mischaracterize Ehrman.
He actually places weight on other things instead "What can we say in conclusion about the evidence that supports the view that there really was a historical Jesus, a Jewish teacher who lived in Palestine as an adult in the 20s of the Common Era, crucified under Pontius Pilate sometime around the year 30? The evidence is abundant and varied. Among the Gospels we have numerous independent accounts that attest to Jesus's life, at least seven of them from within a hundred years of the traditional date of his death. These accounts did not appear out of thin air, however. They are based on written sources—a good number of them— that date much earlier, plausibly in some cases at least to the 50s of the Common Era. Even these sources were not fabricated purely from the minds of their authors, however. They were based on oral traditions that had been in circulation year after year among the followers of Jesus. These oral traditions were transmitted in various areas—mainly urban areas, we might surmise—throughout the Roman Empire; some of them, however, can be located in Jesus's homeland, Palestine, where they originally circulated in Aramaic. It appears that some, probably many, of them go back to the 30s CE. We are not, then, dealing merely with Gospels that were produced fifty or sixty years after Jesus's alleged death as the principal witnesses to his existence. We are talking about a large number of sources, dispersed over a remarkably broad geographical expanse, many of them dating to the years immediately after Jesus's alleged life, some of them from Palestine itself. On the basis of this evidence alone, it is hard to understand how Jesus could have been "invented." (171) Ramos1990 (talk) 00:58, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Just to support what Ramos1990 explains in detail above. Brymor, your suggestion is not in line with what Ehrman writes and adding just the section you want to add would create a false impression of Ehrman's argument. Jeppiz (talk) 10:18, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
I do appreciate the efforts you have made to state your case, Ramos. These Ehrman quotes do indeed cover important parts of his argument for a historic Jesus. However, as far as I am concerned, you are pushing at an open door. I moved from a partly mythicist position to a historicist one decades ago, loosely following the trajectory of G.A.Wells. So when Ehrman came along, he was preaching to the coverted as far as I was concerned. I even thought he undercooked his argument in some places. So in the second passage you quote, he says there must have been an "oral traditions that had been in circulation year after year among the followers of Jesus. . . It appears that some, probably many, of them go back to the 30s CE." I would suggest the oral traditions went back further than this, to significantly before 30 CE. Where i part company with Ehrman is when he says, addressing our topic, "The absence of eyewitness accounts would be relevant if, and only if, we had reason to suspect that we should have eyewitness reports if Jesus really lived." No! The absence of eyewitness reports is relevant because if they existed, the argument for a historical Jesus would be even stronger.
Stepping back from this point, what I am trying to address is a systemic flaw in this article, which has been pointed out by others (see Style above), that is the tendency to close down debate whenever something seems to threaten the so-called 'consensus'. To be fair, editors who exhibit this defensiveness are mostly following the sources - the American sources, anyway. Except for Ehrman: he isn't defensive, he takes on all comers! For example he says (p64) "at the end of the day I simply trust human intelligence. Anyone should be able to see whether a point of view is plausible or absurd, whether a historical claim has merit or is pure fantasy driven by an ideological or theological desire for a certain set of answers to be right."
Defensiveness is counter-productive, because it looks like weakness. This is evident in several places in the article - I have simply chosen one of the easiest ones to put right. Suppressing any reference to an obvious truth such as the lack of eyewitnesses is counter-productive because it implies that the arguments against it are weak, and the mythicists will pounce on it with glee. But the arguments against it are not weak, they aren't perfect, but they are good enough. Ehrman's approach to this sort of thing is to state the difficulty up front, then argue effectively against it (as you have convincingly demonstrated). That is the correct approach, which we in Wikipedia can applaud. Defensiveness in the face of uncomfortable truths is wrong. Brymor (talk) 21:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Hi. I was just redirecting to the extensive quotes that I had already extracted because Ehrman already addressed your point. The fact that I had to requote it again for you to see that is unfortunate since this could have been resolved much earlier. I highlighted in blue to perhaps hone in better. If eyewitness records carry much weight on historicity of anyone (especially Jesus), then a proper source should be found that says that or makes such an argument. The Justin Meggitt ref in the article already addresses a similar point on IF there were a lack of non-Christian sources "To deny his existence based on the absence of such evidence, even if that were the case, has problematic implications; you may as well deny the existence of pretty much everyone in the ancient world." Probably because the whole historical record is in pieces and far removed from other historical figures like say Pythagoras, Homer, Apollonius of Tyana, etc. History becomes impossible to do. In general, no scholar that I know of has ventured to say that eyewitness records make or break historicity. Most never argue for or against the historicity of other figures. Only Jesus gets questioned by mythicists and overanalyzed for obvious reasons. If anything such sources help, but I know that it does not really do much because of say Socratic problem on Socrates. Ramos1990 (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
Clearly we are not going to agree about eyewitness reports. I have already stated what I think is wrong with the article in some detail. There is no point in repeating myself, so let's leave it there. Brymor (talk) 20:32, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (2012). Did Jesus exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York NY: HarperOne. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-06-220644-2. Still, to press yet further on the issue of evidence we do not have, I need to stress that we do not have a single reference to Jesus by anyone—pagan, Jew, or Christian—who was a contemporary eyewitness, who recorded things he said and did.

Ehrman's clarification

Ehrman's view is NOT "already included and quoted in the lead". It has now been buried safely at the end of a long string of references.

I have said many times on this talk page that 96% of the controversy would disappear if only the article would make it clear that "virtually all scholars of antiquity" are supporting the historicity of Jesus the non-divine human but are NOT supporting the historicity of Jesus the supernatural being of the gospels. If that could be clearly clarified then everything would be fine, but instead there is an extraordinary amount of effort spent on covering up this important distinction.

This section is indeed on him as historical figure, but we also need to clarify what kind of historical figure - historical mere human vs historical supernatural divinity. This could be easily done, but the pro-divinity lobby prefers instead to maintain the ambiguity. Wdford (talk) 14:21, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Ehrman's clarification makes brutally clear what undermines most discussions on the historicity of Jesus (not just here). Scholars have no problem agreeing on the historicity of the charismatic preacher who was Jesus in real life. As for the other Jesus, the miracle worker who returns from the dead, scholars do not agree, and they never will. Ehrman understands this, and I can't think of a better way of stating it in the article than by quoting him word for word.
@Ramos: I am surprised you are doubtful about this. After all, it was you who included precisely this quote in your note (currently note 12), which means that you are fully aware of its significance. Brymor (talk) 16:43, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Hello. The lead already makes the distinction: "Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure and dismiss denials of his existence as a fringe theory, while many details like his alleged miracles and theological significance are subject to debate."
The quote you provide is not a consensus view on Jesus since clearly scholars who are Christians such as NT Wright would say the opposite of what Ehrman says. Ehrman's view and Albert Schweitzer's view are both portraits of Jesus, which there is no consensus on. All of this is covered in the Portraits section too. Ehrman is already there making the point in your quote.
The scope of this article is the historicity of Jesus as a historical figure, not how Jesus must have been. Two separate questions. For that, the Historical Jesus article is there to split how scholars think the historical Jesus actually was (i.e. Apocalyptic prophet, Rabbi, Cynic philosopher, etc).
Look at the FAQ of this talk page. It clearly distinguishes the differences between historical existence vs historical portraits. They should not be mixed as it confuses what what scholars unanimously agree on (that Jesus existed) and what scholars really disagree on (Jesus was this way or that way). Ramos1990 (talk) 18:56, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Regarding "pro-divinity lobby": misplaced. Please stick to to real arguments, instead of (mistaken) characterisatiins of your fellow editors. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:36, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Joshua Jonathan. The lobby characterization is ridiculous because there is none. But I think we already went over this same issue on the CMT page with Wdford over the same wording he was trying to insert then. So I will repeat what I wrote:
Ehrman in Did Jesus Exist? addresses miracles in p.315 and there he cites his earlier work "Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium" p.193-197 for his views on miracles and how he sees the limitations of a historian as unable to confirm or deny them. Theological neutrality is his actual position as a "historian", not outright denialism. He also acknowledges that many historians do believe miracles happen. In Jesus Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium p. 196-197 he says:
"I should emphasize that historians do not have to deny the possibility of miracles or deny that miracles have actually happened in the past. Many historians, for example, committed Christians and observant Jews and practicing Muslims, believe that they have in fact happened. When they think or say this, however, they do so not in the capacity of the historian, but in the capacity of the believer. In the present discussion, I am not taking the position of the believer, nor am I saying that one should or should not take such a position. I am taking the position of the historian, who on the basis of a limited number of problematic sources has to determine to the best of his or her ability what the historical Jesus actually did. As a result, when reconstructing Jesus' activities, I will not be able to affirm or deny the miracles that he is reported to have done."
In the same pages, he says "This is not a problem for only one kind of historian — for atheists or agnostics or Buddhists or Roman Catholics or Baptists or Jews or Muslims; it is a problem for all historians of every stripe." Ramos1990 (talk) 00:01, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
And thus does Ramos1990 continue to fudge the issue, distract from the point, and protect the ambiguity that allows readers to conclude that "Virtually all scholars of antiquity" accept that Jesus was indeed a god and that the gospels are indeed historically accurate. Why is this? Why is Grant quoted at length on his "mass of pagan personages" apology, but Ehrman is suppressed? Although everyone has their individual religious beliefs, does a significant percentage of mainstream scholars really make the case that the supernatural events of the gospels really happened? Or is this a fringe view? Modern historians "will not be able to affirm or deny" the existence of Zeus or Apollo or King Arthur and Merlin etc etc either, but does that mean such stories are "subject to debate", or are they rejected as fables by all except a faithful fringe? Stories of "pagan personages" can perhaps be accepted where they were humans doing human things, but Grant's "mass of pagan personages" whose "reality as historical figures is never questioned" does NOT include supernatural deities like Zeus and Jupiter. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - has any scholar presented extraordinary evidence supporting the supernatural events described in the gospels? If so, what and whom? In an article about the historicity of a literary figure with Zeus-like powers, when we confidently report at great length what "virtually all scholars" accept, let us at least be clear and honest about which parts of the story "virtually all scholars" are accepting, and which parts are fringe. Wdford (talk) 09:51, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
What "scholars" are unsure whether he was a divine being? Bible scholars??
I have trouble accepting that serious academics believe it's possible that a man rose from the dead and had super powers.
Is this is supposed a serious encyclopedia, or a collection of unqualified opinions? A serious encyclopedia should not suggest the possibility that mythological creatures don't exist. There shouldn't be any edit wars over which sources are most credible. Any purported "scholar" that is ambiguous as to whether demigods, angels or demons exist is not a credible source 2601:643:897F:5AE0:9C54:48B0:7208:887 (talk) 04:11, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

"Historical person" to me does not invoke the image of a god... Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 12:38, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

It may not invoke such an image to you. However to many people, "Jesus of Nazareth" was the incarnated god of the gospels, with the god-like power to raise the dead, and who was himself raised physically from the dead back into human form. When Wikipedia includes a line that "Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure", it is ambiguous enough to read that "Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus the living god with supernatural powers was a historical figure". That is false, but the careful ambiguity of the wording supports this assumption, and this ambiguity has been carefully protected for years. It is very easy to correct this ambiguity, but there are editors who refuse to permit such clarification.
The current article also uses the very ambiguous wording that the historicity of the supernatural stories is "subject to debate". This also allows the interpretation that mainstream scholarship takes this position seriously, and does not clarify how few mainstream scholars support this fundamentalist position, and which religious institutions they work at. Again, this ambiguity could be easily clarified, but again this particular wording was carefully chosen, and has been carefully protected. Wdford (talk) 10:21, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
I see no ambiguity in historical figure or the rest of the wording. In the same way that the Historicity of Muhammad page has scholars from different worldviews there too and no one is thinking that believing he existed equates to agreeing with Islamic beliefs about him. Anyways, you keep on ignoring the while many details like his alleged miracles and theological significance are subject to debate. part. It covers your concerns over the theological significance. There is no consensus on this among scholars and is thus subject to debate. The actual differences in debates belong in the Historical Jesus article, not here. Again read the FAQ. "The Historical Jesus: Five Views" edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy. IVP Academic. 2009:
"Contrary to previous times, virtually everyone in the field today acknowledges that Jesus was considered by his contemporaries to be an exorcist and a worker of miracles. However, when it comes to historical assessment of the miracles tradition itself, the consensus quickly shatters. Some, following in the footsteps of Bultmann, embrace an explicit methodological naturalism such that the very idea of a miracle is ruled out a priori. Others defend the logical possibility of miracle at the theoretical level, but, in practice, retain a functional methodological naturalism, maintaining that we could never be in possession of the type and/or amount of evidence that would justify a historical judgment in favor of the occurrence of a miracle. Still others, suspicious that an uncompromising methodological naturalism most likely reflects an unwarranted metaphysical naturalism, find such a priori skepticism unwarranted and either remain open to, or even explicitly defend, the historicity of miracles within the Jesus tradition."
Ehrman in the quote above also acknowledges that many historians believe miracles to have occurred, and that dealing with those is a problem for everyone, not any one group.
On top of that Mike Bird's 2017 "A Peer Reviewed Journal Takes Down Richard Carrier’s Jesus Mythicism" comments (from one of the FAQ drop down) reinforce the multiplicity of views among mainstream scholars:
"I sit on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ably edited by James Crossley and Anthony Le Donne. The editorial board is quite diverse (though could use a few more women) with Americans, Europeans, and even Australians. It also has people of many different religious affiliations, there are members who identify as Jewish, evangelical Christian, mainline Christian, agnostic, and atheist. We disagree on just about everything when it comes to Jesus and the sources pertaining to him. However, what we all agree on is that (1) Jesus existed and (2) people who deny his existence are cranks or bad-historians." Ramos1990 (talk) 12:27, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Beilby and Eddy (both professors at a Christian faith-based university) divide "historians" into three categories. Those who apparently "remain open to, or even explicitly defend, the historicity of miracles", are only one category, described as "still others". Even Eddy, himself a Teaching Pastor, doesn't claim that "virtually all scholars" accept the supernatural stories.

Ehrman in your quote explicitly states that when historians believe that miracles have in fact happened, they do this "not in the capacity of the historian, but in the capacity of the believer." That is a very telling statement – which you have seriously misconstrued.

Your quote from Mike Bird is another bit of misdirection – I do not contest the historical existence of "Jesus the non-supernatural human person"; I agree with Schweitzer and Ehrman et al that the supernatural parts of the story are myth, but that a human Jesus existed.

Since all participants in this discussion seem to agree that the line about "virtually all scholars of antiquity" means that they accept the historicity of the human Jesus rather than that of a supernatural "Christ of faith", there is no reason to avoid making this point slightly more clear to readers who may be confused. Wdford (talk) 08:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Only you seem to confuse what historicity of a person means and think about it as a false dichotomy. No one seems to be confused. The sources are clear too and they are linked in the lead. Ramos1990 (talk) 00:17, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
You have no idea whether or not the ordinary readers are being confused by this ambiguous wording. There is no definition of "historicity" which says that it means "excluding supernatural stories". The current wording definitely allows the interpretation that Jesus's supernatural attributes have been verified by "virtually all scholars". And you continue to protect this ambiguity, while claiming that you personally don't believe that's what it means. How is that helpful? Wdford (talk) 11:01, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
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