I think that atheists who deny the existence of the historical Jesus really don't make themselves look credible. Many members of the "AtheistNexus.org" forum reject the historicity of Jesus. A small number of members of the forum defend the view of the historical Jesus, but they are in the minority. The vast majority of Biblical scholars and historians with verifiable credentials whose work has been peer-reviewed agree on the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. There are a number of agnostic, atheistic and nominal secularly Jewish Biblical scholars who make compelling cases for their existence of the historical Jesus and they are some of the most trusted and reliable Biblical scholars that exist.
To me, denying the existence of the historical Jesus or rejecting every aspect of the Bible as being entirely "untrue" in a historical or cultural context is no better the hardcore creationists who reject the theory of evolution and other scientific concepts. The research done by Biblical scholars and historians largely seems to indicate the a good deal of the Bible is either fictional or legendary, has very few historical references and is filled with political bias and plagiarism. A good deal of the New Testament is plagiarized. The Bible's view of Jesus is not entirely accurate, Biblical scholars and historians have been admitting this fact for a very long time. The gospels can give us a glimpse into who the historical Jesus might have been like as an apocalyptic Jewish preacher, but they are not considered to be accurate accounts of the historical Jesus' life. The gospels were not written down until a few years decades after Jesus' death and most of what people might have known about him was passed down through oral traditions, some of which was probably extremely exaggerated anyways. Jesus would not have been considered as having been a very important person in the eyes of the historians who wrote about him, except for the idea of having had a following of people claiming that Jesus was the Messiah.
Many of the non-Biblical writings that mentions Jesus don't consider him as being of much importance, except for the idea of his followers believing him to be the Messiah, an idea that many of the historians who mention him seem to reject. The historical Jesus was a faith healer and doomsday preacher from Nazareth which probably wouldn't have been a very important place in the eyes of most historians. Jesus was essentially a nobody from nowhere you could say. As far as Jesus being an apocalyptic Jewish preacher, that would not have been of much interest to the historians because apocalyptic preaching amongst the Jewish people was very common around that time.
The epistles written by Paul mention some of the basic facts about Jesus' life, such as Jesus being born in Nazareth, learned about Jewish rituals and laws in the Temple, a rabbi who was baptized by John the Baptist and who preached about the "coming" of Yahweh's "kingdom" and the destruction of those who persecuted the Jews, that Jesus caused a disturbance in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. I'm guessing that this would also have included Jesus being condemned by the Jewish High Priests as a "heretic" and a "blasphemer", would have been seen as a "rabble-rouser" by the occupying Roman authorities, that Jesus was executed by the orders of Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius and that Paul of Tarsus had met Jesus' brother, James who I think was a part of Jesus' messianic movement, was a leader of a congregation in Jerusalem and helped dispose of one of the Jewish High Priests. These are the facts that the vast majority of Biblical scholars and historians seem to agree on. Why do so many atheists have a problem with accepting such ideas?
If I can accept and understand such ideas, why can't other atheists?
Sincerely,
B.W.
Why do atheists find those
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