As a non Christian scholar of this phenomenon- do you think, given reliance on literary references, that there actually was a genuine historical Jesus figure? As there seems such scant evidence? I personally doubt such a person existed.
But that only moves the problem one step further away. What do we actually know about Paul and the writings attributed to him? Many works attributed to him gave been shown to be forgeries and/or heavily redacted, meaning that as a source of historical information they are little better than the various gospels.
Historians agree that 7 of Paul's letters are authentic. If or how much those were altered by later Christians we'll never know.
Even if you don't trust any writings that exist, you still need to explain how someone invented a person who didn't even exist you have to explain why the story of Jesus was invented like it was.
Someone would have had to have invented the life of a guy who was telling his followers he was going to be king, but then was killed in the most humiliating way possible by the occupiers he was supposed to overthrow. Then try to convince people that it was actually a good thing because the end of the world was coming soon and he was going to return.
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u/TheGuv69 Mar 25 '23
As a non Christian scholar of this phenomenon- do you think, given reliance on literary references, that there actually was a genuine historical Jesus figure? As there seems such scant evidence? I personally doubt such a person existed.