I admit this is not at all my area of expertise..but perhaps you'd like to write her a response.

Star

Until recently, I had always assumed the existence of Jesus as a historical figure as a given. "OF COURSE HE EXISTED." Doubt of this never even crossed my mind. Of course, I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian. So when it came to light that some people even questioned the very historical existence of Jesus, well, I wondered - why not? The movie, The God Who Wasn't There, presents some thin evidence for the non-existence of Jesus. While the title of the movie would suggest that it is all about Jesus' supposed existence, the movie itself is really more of a personal journey for a once-fundamentalist christian, and the resulting anger he had at realizing the fallacy in the "truths" he had been taught as a child. I can relate.



Thanks to Carl Sagan, for the more accepted belief of the historical existence of Jesus.



The Existence Of Jesus From Skepticwiki

http://www.skepticwiki.org/wiki/index.php/Existence_Of_Jesus

Introduction

Case for the existence of Jesus

Evidence trivially explained as having a historical basis

G. A. Wells and Earl Doherty both have their objections to "brother of the Lord" meaning physical brothers of Jesus. Wells argues that when Paul makes the above references to a "brother" or "brothers" in Galatians 1:19 and 1 Corinthians 9:5, he means it in the same sense as in Matthew 28:9ff and John 20:17, where "brothers" refers to the eleven apostles or disciples. Gerd Thiessen points out that this interpretation is untenable in The Historical Jesus--A Comprehensive Guide, where he writes,

Paul implies Jesus was a human who recently died

Also, as pointed out above, David was purportedly flesh-and-blood, which would preclude kata sarka from referring to an event in the heavens and not on earth.



Layman Bernard Muller has further pointed out that Doherty's translation does not work for verses such as Romans 4:1, "What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh?"; 1 Corinthians 1:26, "Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards [kata sarka], not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.", 1 Corinthians 10:18, "Behold Israel after the flesh [kata sarka]: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?" (KJV translation). It does not work for several non-Christian works, such as Josephus' Jewish War, where verse 2.154 speaks of the Essenes: "For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh [kata sarka], they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward." Nor does it work for Aristotle, as in his History of Animals, Book III, Part 17, which reads "These cartilaginous fish themselves have no free fat at all in connexion with the flesh [kata sarka] or with the stomach. The suet in fish is fatty, and does not solidify or congeal. All animals are furnished with fat, either intermingled with their flesh [kata sarka], or apart," or with Epicurus, in Principal Doctrines 4, "... pain, if extreme, is present a very short time, and even that degree of pain which slightly exceeds bodily [kata sarka] pleasure does not last for many days at once." Doherty objects by pointing out that the same phrase can have different meanings depending on the context, and protests that he is interpreting kata sarka according to context not on an ad hoc basis to support his own hypothesis. However, considering Doherty's justification of kata sarka was dubious to begin with, such an ad hoc interpretation appears to be exactly what he's doing.




Paul makes very exalted claims for Jesus, and he does not mention much detail about any life he purportedly had before his crucifixion. The details that he does mention, however, indicate that Paul understood that Jesus had been human and that his death was an event around Paul's lifetime. To make these details consonant with a mythical Jesus requires ad hoc justification, and Doherty even went so far as to misportray his source in order to make his case. This is readily consistent with there having been a historical Jesus of Nazareth rather than a mythical one.

Nazareth as hometown and possible birthplace

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke resort to contorted stories to have him be born in Bethlehem, and these stories aren't quite consistent. The Gospel of Matthew implies that Jesus' family grew up in Bethlehem and moved to Nazareth to avoid the threat of Herod and his son Archelaus, while the Gospel of Luke implies that the hometown of Jesus' family was Nazareth and that they took a relatively brief trip to Bethlehem. This and other problems (see [9] and Birth narratives of Jesus) point to the birth narratives being made up to fit the prophecy. What is curious here is that both the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke attempted to fit Nazareth into their stories. If Jesus were mythical, and the supposed prophecies required him to be born in Bethlehem but said nothing of Nazareth or a Nazorean, the most obvious thing to do would be to have him be Jesus of Bethlehem, not Jesus of Nazareth, and avoid the complications. The contortions, however, are trivially explained if the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were forced to deal with a real Jesus who was really from Nazareth, and thus had to account in their birth narratives for how he ended up there.

Existence of Nazareth

On examining the data more closely it very soon becomes evident that Epiphanius has no thought of connecting Christianity with the Jewish Nazarite heresy. He places the latter's origin before the Christian era and classes it along with the Hemerobaptists, etc. On the other hand, he describes Christian heretics whom he designates Nazorees [Nazwraioi], distinguishing with perfect clearness between them and the Jewish non-Christian Nazarees. The difference is not merely one of name; they have very distinct characteristics. The Nazarees are distinguished for the unorthodoxy of their Jewish beliefs and practices; the Nazorees are pre-eminently rigid Jews who have added to their Judaism a smattering of Christian belief. Hence they derive their name from Jesus the Nazorite, the name by which the Christians were called before they received the designation "Christians" at Antioch. Epiphanius' thought is often very hazy, but on this subject he is perfectly clear. There was among the Jews even before the Christian era a heresy of the Nazarees; then came the Christian movement, which at first was known as the sect of the Nazorees and which finds its proper continuation, as Epiphanius takes great pains to prove, in the catholic church; and finally there was a third class who took upon themselves the primitive Christian name of Nazorees but who adhered so rigidly to Judaism that Epiphanius curtly remarks, "they are Jews and nothing else."



Whether there ever was such an array of sects bearing a similar name--and Epiphanius adds yet another, the Nazirees, represented by Samson in the Old Testament and later by John the Baptist--may be questioned. Judging from the same writer's skill in splitting the original Essenes up into Jessees, Ossenes, and Ossees, we may wonder whether he did not occasionally invent a name, in his ardor to defend Nicene orthodoxy against every "hydra-headed serpent of error" that could ever possibly have existed whether commonly known or not. But one thing at least is clear. His statements about Nazarees, Nasarees, Nazorees, and Nazirees involve no ambiguity whatever as to the date of Christianity's origin. The traditional date is the only one suggested. Those who argue for a pre-Christian Jesus can find nothing for their purpose here except the bare mention of the early existence of a Jewish Nazarite heresy. To prove the reliability of this statement, and to show further that the sect was "Christian" in character, is another problem. Epiphanius supplies no argument for this. He does not even so describe the Nazarees as to suggest characteristics which show them to have been precursors of the Christian movement. (pp. 102-106)

Crucifixion as a core doctrine

There was graffiti with a crudely scrawled picture of a crucified donkey-headed man captioned "Alexmenos worships his god."



Arnobius, in Book 1 of the apologetic work Adversus Gentes, argues "But, says my opponent, the deities are not inimical to you, because you worship the omnipotent God; but because you both allege that one born as men are, and put to death on the cross, which is a disgraceful punishment even for worthless men, was God," ( 1.36) and says in 1.41 of his opponent, "O ye who laugh because we worship one who died an ignominious death" .



Now if Jesus really had been crucified, then it makes sense that the doctrine of his crucifixion would be there; the disciples were forced to deal with the crucifixion of their master, and the doctrine evolved from there. However, the prejudice against crucifixion makes it unlikely that anyone would have wanted to make up from whole cloth a religion with a crucifixion as its center.




Now aside from the easy familiarity with Christian symbolism, mythicist arguments also obscure the scandal of the crucifixion. Earl Doherty's work centers on speculation about a mythical crucifixion in a lower level of the heavens based on a dubious translation of the Greek phrase kata sarka as "in the sphere of the flesh" rather than "according to the flesh." (See section entitled Paul implies Jesus was a human who recently died.) Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy argue that there was a crucified pagan godman, Osiris-Dionysus, but resort to pseudohistory in The Jesus Mysteries, using distortion and stretched interpretation to make the case for Dionysus having been crucified. For example, they misrepresent the understructure of a wooden idol of Dionysus as a being a cross on which he was crucified.

How much impact on the historical record should Jesus have had?

Theudas (45 C.E.) Led a crowd to the river Jordan and promised to part it, echoing Joshua 3:14-17. Intercepted by horsemen sent by Fadus, the current procurator of Judea, who killed and arrested those following Theudas, who himself was executed by beheading. Reported by one non-Christian author, Josephus, in Antiquities 20.97-98, and briefly mentioned by the author of Acts in verse 5:36.





The Egyptian prophet (52-58 C.E.) Led a crowd to the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem. Felix, the current governor of Judea, attacked and "slew four hundred of them, and took two hundred alive," but the Egyptian escaped. Reported by one non-Christian author, Josephus, in Jewish War 2.259-263 and Antiquities 20.169-171, and briefly mentioned by the author of Acts in verse 21.38.





Menahem, the son (or grandson) of Judas the Galilean (66 C.E.) An early leader of a revolt at the beginnings of the war between the Jews and the Romans in 66-70 C.E., which eventually led to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. Menahem "captured the governor's palace at Jerusalem, laid siege to some minor Roman fortifications and ordered the execution of the high priest," but was later tortured and killed. Reported by one author, Josephus, in Jewish War 2.433-450.


John of Gischala (67-70 CE) and Simon bar Giora (69-70 C.E.) These were leaders of the revolts during the war between the Jews and the Romans in 66-70 C.E., which eventually led to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. John was a personal enemy of Josephus, who, like Josephus, had commanded Jewish armies in northern Galilee, and had led about 6,000 men. Simon was a rival of John, and he led 60,000 men. Josephus spent several books of his work Jewish War describing their activities.







The attestation for these possible messianic claimants is not very broad. Most of the men in the above list were only mentioned by one author, Josephus, and of the ones mentioned by other authors, only two get more than brief mentions by those other authors: Simon of Peraea, in Tacitus' Histories, and John the Baptist, in the Gospels. Even finding such claimants is nontrivial, since the historians of the first century do not outright describe them as such, so one has to rely on inferences and guesswork to even find possible claimants. For most of these possible claimants, the attestation is not very deep, either. Josephus spends most of his words on the last two men mentioned, John of Gischala and Simon bar Giora, who were major players in the war in which Josephus himself participated [16]. The rest of the men get roughly a paragraph or two. Josephus was also not writing a catalog of messiahs, but rather was writing about the war between the Jews and the Romans in 66-70 C.E. and the buildup to it in Jewish War, and he later wrote the work Antiquities about the history of the Jews from the supposed date of creation in the book of Genesis up to the beginning of the Jewish War in 66 C.E. [17]. In the former work, one would expect him to focus on the violent possible claimants, and he does; neither John the Baptist nor Jesus of Nazareth are mentioned, nor are even Theudas and the Samaritan prophet, who were perhaps potentially violent but more minor threats. The latter work covers a broad range of history, so expecting this work to name all the possible messianic claimants is unrealistic. As noted before, there is little coverage of possible messianic claimants in the first century outside of Josephus' work. Given this, the meager coverage of Jesus outside the New Testament is unsurprising.

Conclusion

References and Suggested Reading

Books and Articles

Online material