…there are several points on which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree. Jesus was a Jewish man, known to be a preacher or teacher, who was crucified in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea. Even though this is the view of nearly every trained scholar on the planet, it is not the view of a group of writers who are unusually labeled, and often label themselves, Mythicists.
This is Bart Ehrman’s book, Did Jesus Exist? The whole book is good. He refutes the claims I often hear from non-expert atheists – that Jesus was just a retelling of older pagan stories, that there are no reliable sources which cite Jesus’ existence, that there is no record of Jesus’ trial under Pontius Pilate, as if we should expect there to be. And some of the silly wordplay they use -- Jesus was the “son” of God meant he was the “sun” of God – Jesus was an astrological symbol for the sun, as if the language used at the time were the same, and even if it were that that would amount to anything like evidence. Another one is the true meaning of “Gospel” is “God’s Spell”. Yeah, okay.
Beyond the ridiculous Zeitgeist sort of stuff, Ehrman uses most of the book to build a strong case from the ground up for Jesus’ existence.
