rationalskepticism.org

TimONeill wrote:Sorry, what does this mean? If there is no contemporary record of Jesus, much as there isn't for most ancient figures except a few extremely important ones, how could there be any record of any of his "acts"? And what exactly does "any act that, if not carried out by Jesus, would have to have been carried out by some other, similar (and missing) figure" mean? I can't work that highly confused sentence out at all.

Pierce Inverarity wrote:You see, somebody had to have led the Carthaginian forces across the Alps and into Italy. Somebody had to defeat Scipio and the fleet from Pergamum. Somebody had to have been the brilliant tactician that had every military leader of the era learning and imitating his tactics. There's a big "hole" in history if we remove Hannibal from the picture, so it's not a matter of having a source from anyone that actually saw him. So much about our historical record of late Republican Rome would have to be rewritten to remove Hannibal that it's far more likely that he existed than that he did not.

As for this:

Exactly. We know of Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet and several others solely from Josephus. Yet no-one questions their historicity.

I think it's closer to the truth that no-one gives a shit about their historicity.

The only reason some apply a far higher requirement for the existence for Jesus than they do for any number of less well attested figures is that he is the focus of Christianity. So a level of attestation that is no problem at all for dozens or even hundreds of other figures who are accepted as existing without question even though they are mentioned in passing in one source is suddenly not enough for Jesus, for some strange reason. That's irrational.

Jesus is the one that people argue about because Jesus is the main character in the story.

No, Jesus is the one that suddenly needs a far higher level of attestation because Jesus is the main character in a modern religious story. In other words, an ideological desire to undermine Christianity drives certain non-believers to shift the level of evidence required to a higher level for Jesus because of a clear bias and prejudice.

That's not rational. The level of evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus should be no more or no less than that required for any other First Century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant. As rationalists, we should be careful to avoid bias based on modern Christian ideas about who this particular Jewish preacher was. To do so is irrational.