Jesus probably didn’t exist
What’s Up Heathens! Today we are going over why I don’t believe in the historicity of Jesus. I go over all the points which leads me to conclude that was most probably a fictional character made up by first century Jews.
There are multiple lines of evidence against the historicity of Jesus. The first line is Paul. He never cements Jesus here on earth. He has only a spiritual Jesus that exists. He emphatically says that he got his information only from a vision of the risen Jesus and scriptures. Basically, he hallucinated the encounters with Jesus and then used scriptures to gain more knowledge about Jesus. This is why Paul never mentions an earthly ministry or birth.
Another bit of evidence is Philo of Alexandria where he describes the messiah of the Jews and gives characteristic things that we attribute to Jesus. This is because the Messiah is a pre-existent figure in Judaism. He was around when God created the earth. In fact, Jesus is described as God’s “Agent of Creation. ” The Gospel of John is the most blatant example of this theology in the New Testament (John 1:1).
Then there are the supposed extra-biblical references to Jesus. I go through the most popular ones like Tacitus and Josephus, but none of them actually prove Jesus existed on earth. Josephus contains blatantly forged insertions that are defended with bad apologetics. Tacitus only recites what Christians believed at the time and not any kind of first-hand account of Jesus living on earth. These two examples represent the status of the extra-biblical sources because they are either forged (like 2 Peter) or they only relay information about the belief and not eyewitness accounts.
