There is just about as much historical texts pointing to Jesus as there are to Socrates and Spartacus. Like Jesus, neither of them wrote anything themselves. The writings about Socrates come largely from people he taught. The writings about Spartacus come from two different sources who were doing it over a century after he was dead, and the two have a glaring contradiction in the middle of the story.
This highlights the whole problem with the “Jesus don’t real” position. It lacks understanding of how history is pieced together. If you’re putting the bar of evidence that high and apply it fairly across all historical sources, you end up deleting a whole lot of history. That is clearly not the intent of the argument, but that’s what happens.
It sometimes gets even worse than that by misrepresenting things. For example, “this was an important part of the Roman empire and a center of learning. We should be overflowing with sources”. Nope, not at all correct. Judea was a backwater, and it’s amazing we have literally any sources at all on a rando peasant preacher like Jesus. He was a nobody who happened to get popular long after his death.
If you think this is all fundie-supporting nonsense, read it again. Fundies don’t make arguments like “he was a nobody who happened to get popular later”. That’s not at all helpful to their position. Same with many of the other arguments involving the historical Jesus. They’re not at all complementary to treating the Bible as literal, inerrant truth from beginning to end. The same historians arguing this stuff will also tell you that, in all likelihood, his body was tossed in a big pit with a bunch of other hung criminals, because that’s just how the Romans did things.
There is just about as much historical texts pointing to Jesus as there are to Socrates and Spartacus. Like Jesus, neither of them wrote anything themselves. The writings about Socrates come largely from people he taught. The writings about Spartacus come from two different sources who were doing it over a century after he was dead, and the two have a glaring contradiction in the middle of the story.
This highlights the whole problem with the “Jesus don’t real” position. It lacks understanding of how history is pieced together. If you’re putting the bar of evidence that high and apply it fairly across all historical sources, you end up deleting a whole lot of history. That is clearly not the intent of the argument, but that’s what happens.
It sometimes gets even worse than that by misrepresenting things. For example, “this was an important part of the Roman empire and a center of learning. We should be overflowing with sources”. Nope, not at all correct. Judea was a backwater, and it’s amazing we have literally any sources at all on a rando peasant preacher like Jesus. He was a nobody who happened to get popular long after his death.
If you think this is all fundie-supporting nonsense, read it again. Fundies don’t make arguments like “he was a nobody who happened to get popular later”. That’s not at all helpful to their position. Same with many of the other arguments involving the historical Jesus. They’re not at all complementary to treating the Bible as literal, inerrant truth from beginning to end. The same historians arguing this stuff will also tell you that, in all likelihood, his body was tossed in a big pit with a bunch of other hung criminals, because that’s just how the Romans did things.