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Flilix on 13 January 2019
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Chris Hu said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

There is good evidence that he existed. Just not proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. Josephus is one such piece of evidence. Paul never knew Jesus but met Jesus' birth brother. And that alone is equal in evidence to a first person account of Jesus. If we know somebody's brother existed, then we know that somebody also existed as well. Finally, we have Tacitus a Roman Senator and Historian saying that Jesus existed, and was killed. 

Now what about evidence for Jesus Mythicism? There isn't any. It's all speculation, and theory. 

So even though the evidence isn't an absolute slam dunk of irrefutable proof, I have to side with Jesus being a historical figure. Few things in history are ever proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. For that we would need archaeology. But most of history relies on the written word. 

Nope, there is zero evidence that Jesus ever existed.  Of course if you believe in some or even most of the ancient myth and fair tales in the book that also contains Jesus then its pretty easy to convince yourself that he actually existed.  With most historical real people from the past there are numerous sources of evidence that they actually existed. 

There's indeed no conclusive evidence for his existence. However, it's more likely that he did than that he didn't. It wouldn't have made much sense for Paul to just completely make up this guy.

That said, even if we assume that Jesus is real, there are very few things we actually know about him. The vast majority was obviously made up by Paul to fit his ideology - in fact, Paul never really says that any of his proto-Christian beliefs were supported by Jesus (he didn't care about what Jesus said, he only cared about his alleged resurrection). Basically, the only things we can tell about him from Paul's texts is that he was some guy that had some alternative/rebellious religious and political views, and that he may have had a certain following, and that he got executed for that by the Romans (which didn't really make him special or unique, I assume that happened quite often).