This page is a response to the article "Did A Historical Jesus Exist?" by Jim Walker.  The full text can be found at this site:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

I am responding to this text per the request of a visitor.

Walker's text will be italicized.  My responses will not be.

Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer.

Sure, and the question of whether the Jewish Holocaust happened rarely confronts the average person who believes (as I do, of course) that it happened.  Yes, when the evidence for an event, or person, is so overwhelming to be beyond question, people tend not to question it.  However, that doesn't stop a few people from personally discarding the overwhelming amounts of evidence for invalid, unscholarly reasons.  I've discussed Jesus' existence with "Christ-mythers" and I've once discussed the Holocaust's existence with a "Holocaust Denier", and they use the exact same methods.

-First and foremost, they put the standard of evidence so high that little, if anything, could be proven to be true if subjected to the same standard (and then pretend that their standard is the one everyone is supposed be using, of course).  However, they accept claims from other those they agree with without question, even if there is zero evidence to back up the claim.

-They take anything they view as an inconsistency (the type of inconsistencies which tend to exist in any instance of two or more people describing the same sequence of events) and claim that it proves that none of the events described ever happened.

-They give "arguments from silence", asking why, if such-and-such event happened, so-and-so didn't mention it (even if "so-and-so" isn't someone we would expect to mention it).

-They argue that the mainstream understanding of the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy (just as Christ-mythers believe that the mainstream understanding of the historical Jesus is a Christian conspiracy) and accuse anyone who believes in it to be brainwashed and gullible and accepting the claims on "blind faith".

-At least from my experience, anyone who is a "Holocaust Denier" has some sort of bias against the Jewish people in general, just as (also from my experience) anyone who is a "Christ Myther" has some sort of bias against the Christian religion.  For example, the website I got this article from also has pages calling Jesus immoral and comparing God to Hitler.  Why have I never met a Holocaust Denier who isn't anti-Semitic or a Christ-myther who believes that Christianity isn't bad?

The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.

ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

When it comes to historical documents, the word "hearsay" practically loses all meaning.  The purpose for rejecting many "hearsay" accounts from criminal trials (though not civil trials) is that the legal system gives the accused the right the cross-examine those making the accusation.  If one person is just repeating an accusation made by another individual, then there is no way to cross-examine the one who is making the original accusation.  So unless there is an "accused", there is no valid reason to reject "hearsay" accounts.  A document giving a historical account of past events is not, in most cases, accusing any living person of anything, thus there is no reason to dismiss it by simply saying it is "hearsay".  And the fact is that historians would never, ever dismiss a historical text on the basis of the author not having personally witnessed the event, since almost all ancient histories are not first-hand accounts.

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people.

Which is true of most historical figures.

There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.

This is an example of an "argument from silence" that I mentioned earlier.  Christ-mythers pretend that no contemporary records showing Pilate executing Jesus is significant.  It's not, since there occurs no contemporary Roman records of Pontius Pilate executing anyone else, either.  Nor is there any reason to expect there to be.  Almost all records of that type longer exist, so it's hardly surprising that we don't have such a record for Jesus.

Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus.

That's hardly "devastating", but is no more than what we would expect.  Almost all records from that era, over 99%, didn't survive to this day.  Almost everything we know about ancient times comes from writings that post-date the events they are describing.  The vast majority of people who lived at that time have "not a single contemporary writing" mentioning them either, but it doesn't mean they didn't exist.  This is yet another puffed-up "argument from silence".

All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings.

Incorrect.  The evidence suggests that the majority of the New Testament was written by known authors, most of whom had met the earthly Jesus.  And there is no evidence that any of the New Testament writings were fraudulent, mythical or allegorical.

Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts.

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.  Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.

This is what I was talking about with "Holocaust Deniers", when they hold the accepted historical evidence to such a high standard that little, if anything, could possibly meet the standard.  If historians refused to accept any document not written by an eyewitness to the events described, we'd end up throwing away about 99% of ancient history, and even much of modern history.  Though, of course, some of the New Testament was apparently written by eye-witnesses.  Jim says later on his page that any document written "after the fact" needs to be disregarded also, which pretty much wipes out the other 1%, including the rest of the New Testemant, since essentially all history, even modern history, is written after the fact.

The truth of the matter is that almost all accepted historical writings were written by non-eyewitnesses to the events described.  Jim seems to think that historians have an assumption of an event's non-existence until historical writings can prove it happened beyond a reasonable doubt.  This is not so, and would make no more sense than an assumption of an event's existence until historical writings can prove it didn't happen beyond a reasonable doubt.  In honest modern historical scholarship, a preponderance of the evidence suffices.

If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.

Jim gives a good example for the reason "hearsay" is generally (though not always) rejected in criminal trials, but fails to show how it would, or why it should, apply to historical scholarship.  The problem is that the reasons it is generally rejected in a court of law don't apply in any way, shape or form when it comes to accepting or rejecting historical documents.  Hearsay is generally rejected in criminal trials because there is an accused person who, if falsely convicted, may spend years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and thus the accused is given the right to cross-examine those making the accusation against him.  How on earth does this compare to judging the validity of historical documents?  No one is going to spend years in prison if a historical document is confirmed as valid, nor does anyone have a reason to cross-examine a historical document.

By the way, I did point out that "hearsay" is not always rejected in courts of law.  One of the types of "hearsay" that is allowed in courts is historical documents [Fed.R.Ev. 803(16)] as long as the document is "(A) is in such condition as to create no suspicion concerning its authenticity, (B) was in a place where it, if authentic, would likely be, and (C) has been in existence twenty years or more at the time it is offered." [Rule 901(8)], all of which applies to the Bible.

Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.

Then let's just dismiss practically every historical figure who ever lived, then, shall we?  Except for Jesus, of course, since the evidence for Him is NOT completely based on hearsay.  Only two of the four Gospels (Luke's and Mark's) would technically qualify as "hearsay" accounts in most matters.

Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim.

And even ancient writers of history usually wrote from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim.  Josephus, who wrote many volumes of historical texts, almost universally regarded among historians as valid, witnessed very little of the events he wrote about, and wrote about much that occurred before he even lived, even thousands of years earlier.

THE BIBLE GOSPELS

The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons.

No, he considered those four because they were the only ones which dated to the lives of the supposed authors.  I would more likely believe that someone was a witness to the 1963 JFK assassination if I knew he was born in the 1940's than if I knew he was born in the 1980's.

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]

Then Pagels is, as with Holocaust-deniers, holding the burden of evidence to an unreasonably high standard.  We don't 100% absolutely know that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but for that matter, we don't 100% absolutely know that Edgar Allen Poe wrote "The Raven", do we?  It's hypothetically possible that he successfully plagiarized it from someone else.  But there's no evidence that he did, so there's no logical reason to assume someone else wrote it.  There's also no convincing evidence that anyone but Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote their Gospels, so there is no reason to assume someone else wrote them.

When the evidence overwhelmingly and consistently points to a certain author for a certain texts (as they are for the Gospels), historians assume the given authorship credit is correct.  They never bother to question the authorship of a text unless there is some kind of evidence against the authorship.  Doing so would be dishonest.  If some early copies of the Gospels were attributed to other authors, or were known to have no authorship credit, or if people within the early church admitted that the authorship credits were wild guesses or simply based on tradition or otherwise recklessly added, then we'd have some basis for doubting their authorship.  As it is, we don't.  It's as unscholarly as claiming (as many Holocaust Deniers do) that "The Diary of Anne Frank" wasn't written by Anne Frank.

Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus,

Yes, most history is written after the fact.

nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus.

They most certainly do.

Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.

Also true of practically all ancient manuscripts, so it's hardly suprising.

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E.,

The evidence suggests Mark's Gospel was written prior to 62 A.D., actually.  Mark's was written prior to Luke's, which was written prior to Acts (which Luke also wrote), and the most recent events mentioned in Acts, a history of the early church, were around 62 A.D.  Had Acts been written after 70 A.D., it certainly would have mentioned the martyrdom of Paul, which was in 67 A.D., and the fall of Jerusalem, which was in 70 A.D.

and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms].

It could have been that late, but the concensus is more like 80 A.D., with some arguing as early as 70 A.D.  Either way, it was written during John's life (he lived to about 100 A.D.) and most of the evidence suggests John wrote it, so the exact year he wrote it is hardly an issue.

This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him!

Practically everything we know about Alexander the Great, who lived from 356-323 B.C. comes from the historians Arrian and Plutarch, who were born in the 1st and 2nd century A.D., and historians consider their biographies to be quite valid.  Yet Jim would have us disregard them, since if writings 40 years after the event don't count, then writings 400 years after the event should be completely unreliable, right?

As far as ancient historical writings go, forty years between the event and the writing of the event (even if it was that late, which I doubt, except in John's case) is a relatively short amount of time.  And, again, Mark was probably written no later than 62 A.D. at the latest, making it no more than 30 years after the event (perhaps less).

Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]

There's zero evidence that the Gospel of Mark, or the other Gospels, were ever "anonymous".  It's amusing that Jim holds pro-Christian writings to such a high burden of evidence that hardly anything could ever meet it, but blindly accepts claims like Pagels' for which we have no evidence whatsoever.

The fact is that almost all important texts of that era were given some sort of title when they were written, just as they are today.  To leave a work title-less was completely impractical and confusing, especially if it was intended to be copied and/or read to large groups.  Furthurmore, let's suppose that the original Gospel of Mark (or any other Gospel) was originally title-less.  How, then, has every existing ancient copy ended up with the exact same title?  If those adding the titles to the texts in later years merely guessing as to what the title would be, how did they always come up with the exact same title?  Why aren't there any copies with alternate titles, or accidentally attributed to a different author?  Why aren't there any copies that were clearly title-less?  Why hasn't anyone in the early church commented about the lack of clarity of the authorship of any of the Gospels?

The fact is that there is absolutely NO evidence that any of the four Gospels were ever anonymous.

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories.

On the contrary, the evidence is overwhelming (greater than for any other non-Biblical text of its time or earlier) and unanimous (we find no record of the writings being attributed to any other author, or of a writer in the centuries immediately following the writing of the Gospel questioning its authorship or appearing not to know who wrote any of the Gospels) for three of the four, all but John's.  Historians never cast doubt upon the authorship of a given text unless there is some valid, historically-sound, reason to do so.  In the case of the Synoptic Gospels, there isn't any.

And with John's, the evidence overwhelmingly favors John as having written it, with a small amount of evidence suggesting another author.

Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ.

And scholars and historians, as well.

Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood.

What is he talking about?  The early church considered any follower of Jesus to be a "saint", so they used this term to describe themselves and the other followers, as we see happening throughout the New Testament.  They didn't wait for some sort of decree from the church.

But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Try it with all of Tacitus' writings, and you won't find his name within them, yet Tacitus was perhaps the most important historian of ancient Rome, and there is no reason to doubt that his many histories were written by anyone other than him.  But, nope, let's hold all ancient manuscripts to Jim's impossibly high standards and just pretend that the authors of Tacitus' many histories is actually unknown, shall we?

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.

Jim's not very good at math, is he?  He said that John wrote his text around 90 A.D., ninety years after the approximate year Christ was born.  So how does 0 + 90 equal 110?

There's no reason to suppose that either author died before their Gospel was written.  Mark's Gospel dates to prior to 62 A.D., which is well before the time he apparently died, and John was known to have lived to about 100 A.D., having written his Gospel sometime between 70 and 90 A.D.

The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew.

I'm not sure what he means by "deceptively", since it's not deceptive to order texts by something other than chronology, but Mark was probably written no more than ten years before Matthew, not a "generation".  Some scholars even put Matthew before Mark.

From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower.

It's certainly true that Mark (though he may have been a casual follower and probably witnessed the resurrected Jesus) couldn't possibly have had first-hand knowledge of most of what he wrote about.  His Gospel was primarily "hearsay", I agree.

Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time.

No, he wrote the story he got from the Apostle Peter, and Mark was likely a witness to the resurrected Jesus, giving him good reason to accept the accounts.

Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them.

Only a handful of passages in Matthew and Luke appear to copy from Mark. Both Gospels are significantly longer than Matthew, giving a lot more detail, which means that Mark couldn't have been the "main source" for them.

Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]

Many of the same EVENTS of Mark certainly do appear in Matthew and Luke, but that's because they're both histories of the same series of events.  Two people writing about, say, 9/11 are going to mention a lot of the same events, but that doesn't mean one is copying from the other.  And, again, Mark got most of his story from Peter, not "third" or "fourth" removed.

* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward.

True.  The last twelve verses may have been what Mark originally wrote and somehow got left off of early copies, but the overall evidence is sketchy as to whether this happened or if a different author finished the text.  I don't pretend to know which is true, since there's no real preponderance of the evidence one way or the other.  But even without the last 12 verses, Jesus' resurrection is mentioned.

The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs.

No, the evidence consistently and overwhelmingly points to the apostle Matthew being the author of Matthew's Gospel and thus knew most of the story he told from his own first-hand account.

The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4).

True.  His Gospel was primarily, if not completely, "hearsay", as is most of accepted ancient history.

Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.

Again, true of most historical documents, so should we reject them also?  We do know that Luke was a historian who apparently talked to several of the apostles, other witnesses, and Mary the mother of Jesus.

As for "Q", there is little evidence for it having existed.  My best guess is that "Q" was probably just some notes taken by a follower of Jesus, perhaps Matthew, during Jesus' ministry, mostly (or perhaps exclusively) quotes of things He said, that the Gospel authors may have referred to when writing their Gospels.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus.

How's that?  I'm guessing Jim means that John, writing that long after the events, could not have kept Jesus' exact words in His memory.  But there's no reason to suppose that John was writing exclusively from memory.  He'd likely had notes written down earlier.

The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

No, it does not.

Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century,

True.  Most Jewish people wrote important texts in Greek, which was the scholarly language of the day.  Almost all of Josephus' writings were in Greek (Josephus was Jewish, also).

and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]

The passage says, "This saying therefore went out among the brothers, that this disciple (John) wouldn't die. Yet Jesus didn't say to him that he wouldn't die, but, 'If I desire that he stay until I come, what is that to you?'".  That is not a reference to John having died.

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves.

That's a conclusion not supported by historical evidence.  The evidence consistently and overwhelmingly says that the authorships given are correct, and there is zero evidence against them.  Jim inconsistently holds Christian claims to an impossibly high standard, yet accepts the opposing claims without a shred of evidence.

The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person.

In modern times, perhaps (but not always).  In the Gospel times, writing in the third person was the most common, even when people wrote about events they witnessed.  Josephus, a Jewish historian living around the same time as the Gospel authors, wrote about himself in the third person in "The Wars of the Jews".  Julius Caesar wrote about himself in the third person, also.

Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him?

Jesus probably told them afterwards.

It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts?

His followers, of course.

Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use.

And techniques that historians use, also.

OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS

Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation.

Yes, contrary to popular belief, Christians don't always blindly believe whatever the church says.  They do question things now and then.

Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Again, most history is written after the fact, and most of the authors are not unknown.

Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E.

The earliest (Galatians) was probably written in 48 A.D. and the latest (2 Timothy) was probably from 64 A.D. The bulk (Romans, Corinthians, Thesselonians) were probably written between 51-56 A.D.

Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth.

Meeting an "earthly" Jesus, yes.  His only meeting with Jesus was with a "heavenly" one on the road to Damascus.  But Paul most certainly does give reference to Jesus' life on Earth.

Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James. Which one?

The internal evidence (style, contents) and external evidence (place of origin, references to it in other ancient writings) suggests it was probably James the half-brother of Jesus.  Of the four James' mentioned in the New Testament, two of them (the son of Alphaeus and the brother of Judas Thaddaeus) were insignificant enough that, had they written the book, they would likely have identified themselves more clearly.  A third, the brother of John, was killed by Herod in 44 A.D., about three years before it was written.  James the half-brother of Jesus was well-known enough that simply calling himself "James" would bring him specifically to the mind of most believers of his day, and he was martyred in 62 A.D., after this was written.

Or maybe this James has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable James outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to.

Not for 100% certain, but historians generally go where the evidence points, in this case to Jesus' half-brother.  The evidence that it was him is pretty strong, and the evidence that it was anyone else is pretty weak.

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows.

The Gospel of John was, by all evidence, written by the apostle John.  Whether the epistles and Revelation were written by the same John or a different John is in some doubt.  But of course, the question of who exactly wrote the epistles and Revelation hardly reflect on whether Jesus existed or not.

Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John.

With the majority of historical texts (including Tacitus' histories), the name of the author doesn't appear within the body of work.  That's hardly significant.

Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it.

Obviously, since this Gospel was credited to Peter despite the Silvanus reference, this reference doesn't contradict the authorship to most scholars.  Silvanus was Peter's secretary, taking dictation from Peter and/or translating Peter's words into Greek.

Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and [3]). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church.

Glenn Miller gives a good defense of the apostle Peter having written it here: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/ynotpeter1.html

As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have got written more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield]

This is true of all ancient manuscripts, so it's hardly good evidence against the NT texts.  When weighing whether the copies we have accurately reflect what the original authors probably wrote, scholars use several criteria - the number of existing ancient copies, how geographically widespread those copies were, the length of time between the likely originals and the copies we have, the severity of differences between them, and references to the texts in other ancient works.  They call the results its "manuscript support".  The fact is that the NT writings have BETTER manuscript support than any other ancient non-Biblical texts.  There isn't even a close second.  Most ancient non-Biblical texts have only a few ancient copies surviving, and earliest copies average about a thousand years after the likely originals.  For the New Testament, we have about 24,000 ancient copies, some fragments within a single generation of their originals, and no entire copies more than 250 years after the originals.  We also have 86,000 quotes from the New Testament in other ancient writings, and zero instances of severe differences between the various copies, only minor differences.

LYING FOR THE CHURCH

The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of the Church possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.

But zero evidence that they did so.  Since no single individual or geographically close group had access to all copies, serious changes or modifications would have meant serious differences between various copies from one location to another.  Instead, the copies we have today are over 99.5% in agreement in wording and 100% in agreement in doctrine.

Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church [Remsberg].

No, he did not.

The first mention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2).

Which is what ALL historians do, sort through large amounts of material and choose what is useful for their purposes and intended audience.

In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32).

Incorrect.  The word translated as "Falsehood" here is the Greek "Pseudos", which means "fiction". It can refer to a lie, or it can refer to a parable, novel, or other non-literal device. And the title as originally written says nothing about being "for the benefit of those who want to be deceived", but, accurately translated, says "for the benefit of those who require such a mode of treatment." It was purposely mistranslated by someone wanted to back up the translation of "pseudos" as "falsehood".

The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."

Though the quote is essentially correct, it is being taken out of context.  First of all, it's clearly an example of hyperbole, not actually meaning that anything the church says, even if it's contrary to our physical perceptions, must be considered true.  It's just meaning that "we" should trust that the church is correct.  Secondly, the "we" of this passage is not , as Jim is suggesting, all people, or even all Christians.  And there is nothing in this, or any, writing suggesting that questioning the church "could result in death".  This passage was from a series of spiritual exercises for those becoming Jesuit priests, essentially saying that if you're becoming a Jesuit priest, then you need to be able to trust the church.  This is for a specific group who are voluntarily in their position.  It's like military soldiers being told to follow orders without questioning them.  It doesn't mean that non-soldiers need to take orders from the military without question, also.

The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer] The early Church burned many heretics, along with their sacred texts. If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them because of their heretical nature. We will never know.

Actually, the evidence suggests that early Christians were more interested in studying and preserving non-Christian texts than in destroying them.  Early Christians like Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Origen, Pamphilus, Pope Alexander, Pope Agapetus, Emperor Severus, Emperor Julian, Boethius, Saint Benedict, and Eusebius, not to mention Irenaeus himself, all collected, studied, and/or preserved non-Christian texts.  The only early Christian known to have destroyed "heretical" texts was Emperor Theodosius, who burned a small library in 391 A.D. (though many Emperors before him were known to have censored and/or burned Christian texts).

With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying for its cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and biased position, as reliable evidence?

That's a loaded question based on false premises.

GNOSTIC GOSPELS

In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E. Others have put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979]

Either way, none of them could have been based on eyewitness accounts, or even second-hand accounts, if they were written so late.

Other Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag Hammadi texts, shows a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospel tells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that of the canonical gospel stories. Note that the text does not claim that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy written in Coptic, dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably dates to between 130 and 170 C.E., around the same tine as the Nag Hammadi texts. Irenaeus first mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we know that this represented a heretical gospel.

Since these Gnostic texts could only have its unknown authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.

Except that the Canonical Gospels don't have "unknown authors", but have consistent and overwhelming evidence pointing to their authors, and, though written after the events they describe (as all history is), they were written well within the lives of their credited authors, unlike with the Gnostic Gospels.

That's not to say that texts written 100+ years after the events they describe cannot be accurate.  We have many examples of texts written hundreds of years after the events that many historians believe to be reliable.  But when texts written 100+ years after the event conflict with texts written by apparent eyewitnesses to the event, the earlier texts should be considered much more reliable.

NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES

Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus.

Again, that's hardly "devestating", but the simple fact that, as with almost all history, it was written after the events being described. Again, Jim is holding the standard of evidence to impossibly high standards, the same way Holocaust Deniers do.

Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence.

And once again, Jim seems to think that any history not written by eyewitnesses shouldn't be seriously considered, meaning he wants us to disregard practically ALL of ancient history, an idea any true historian would find laughable.

Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius),

No serious scholar believes that both of the accounts are interpolations (later additions not made by the author).  Josephus mentions Jesus twice.  One account (Antiquities 18.3.3) was either a complete interpolation or, more likely, an actual reference by Josephus that was later interpolated.  The other (Antiquities 20.9.1) is, by all evidence, exactly what Josephus wrote.  I discuss the evidence here.

Josephus' birth in 37 C.E., well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay.

Practically everything Josephus wrote about was "hearsay", yet historians consider him a major and reliable source for information about that time.  Why is that?

Pliny the Younger, a Roman official, got born in 62 C.E. His letter about the Christians only shows that he got his information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his birth date puts him out of the range of eyewitness accounts.

As were most historians.  The earliest biography of Mohomad was written over 200 years after he lived, using a source from 100 years after he lived, yet historians consider it a valid and relatively accurate biography.

Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which got written around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus and wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts.

Making it no different than most ancient history.

Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 C.E. mentions a "Chrestus," a common name. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ" (a disputable claim). But even if Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius' birth occurred well after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay.

Again, Jim seems to think all history written by non-eyewitnesses should be disregarded, which is lunacy.

The above sources get quoted the most as "evidence" for Jesus by Christians. All other sources (Christian and non-Christian), some of which include: Mara Bar-Serapion (cira 73 C.E.), Ignatius (50 - 98? C.E.), Polycarp (69 - 155 C.E.), Clement of Rome (? - cira 160 C.E.), Justin Martyr (100 - 165 C.E.), Lucian (circa 125 - 180 C.E.), Tertullian (160 - ? C.E.), Clement of Alexandria (? - 215 C.E.), Origen (185 - 232 C.E.), Hippolytus (? - 236 C.E.), and Cyprian (? - 254 C.E.). All these people got born well after the alleged death of Jesus. Not one of them provides an eyewitness account, all of them simply spout hearsay.

As do almost all ancient historians, yet modern historians consider much of ancient history, such as Josephus' writings, to be quite trustworthy.  Why is that?

As you can see, apologist Christians embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or deceptively violate the rules of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the event itself.

So it's a "rule of historiography" that any text written after the event cannot be used?  Are historians aware that they're supposed to be living up to Jim's impossibly high standards and throwing out practically all of ancient history, and most of modern history, as well?  Even newspapers usually write about events after they happen.

Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with evidential material about Jesus. Although we can provide numerous reasons why the Christian and non-Christian sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly about them, we can cut to the chase by simply looking at the dates of the documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what these people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening and gives no detectable sources for his material can only give example of hearsay.

As do all ancient historians.

All of these anachronistic writings about Jesus could easily have come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers themselves. And as we know from myth, superstition, and faith, beliefs do not require facts or evidence for their propagation and circulation. Thus we have only beliefs about Jesus' existence, and nothing more.

Let's be consistent and dismiss practically every historical figure from ancient times, of whom we only writings about them that came to be after the fact, shall we?

FAKES, FRAUDS, AND FICTIONS

Because the religious mind relies on belief and faith, the religious person can inherit a dependence on any information that supports a belief and that includes fraudulent stories, rumors, unreliable data, and fictions, without the need to check sources, or to investigate the reliability of the information.

It's true that a religious person can inherit such a dependence.  But even if one chooses to instead rely upon the same standard of evidence that historians use for other writings and other historical figures, the Gospel accounts of a historical Jesus would surpass the level of evidence that we have for most other writings of practically all other historical figures.

Although hundreds of fraudulent claims exist for the artifacts of Jesus, I will present only three examples which seem to have a life of there own and have spread through the religious community and especially on internet discussion groups.

At this point, Jim mentions three such hoaxes, namely the Shroud of Turin (a medieval hoax), the Burial Box of James (a modern hoax), and the Letters of Pontius Pilate (not really a hoax, but a 20th-century work of fiction told from Pilate's P.O.V. that some gullible Christians have mistakenly accepted as history), and gives the evidence against them that proves that these are not real.  Since I agree that none of these are what they appear to be, I see no point in discussing the evidence.

So how do we know that they're not real?  Because when we've put them to the same standard of scrutiny that we do for any ancient artifact or writing, they don't stand up to the scrutiny.  Though each artifact was supposed to have been from the 1st century, the fact of the matter is that each of them were apparently frauds or fiction created at a much later time, at least twelve hundred years later.

Of course, this doesn't take a single step towards disproving a historical Jesus, any more than a charlatan trying to pass off a fake Shakespearean play suggests that Shakespeare did not exist.

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