Unraveling the Jesus myth

[The Duke of Vandals]

So, yeah... New to your site and didn't catch that a debate topic has to be explicitly specified. So here it is:

The gospel Jesus never existed. This is demonstrable by examining the evidene beyond the bible.


I. Josephus.

Apologists often like to point to Josephus as an "extra-biblical source" for the existence of Jesus. Setting aside the argument of how much of Josephus' testimony was his own and how much was entered in by the church aside, Josephus tells us of more than a half dozen Jews by the name of Jesus whose deeds and actions closely mirror the accounts of the gospel Jesus. Many of them predate the alleged time of the gospel Jesus. This is significant because it sets the stage for "Jesus cults" which existed before 1 ce.

Add to this early pagan cults and we have the beginnings for a formula that leads to Christianity.

II. Philo of Alexandria

Philo of Alexandria was a philosopher who associated with the early Essenes (individuals who would later be thought of as some of the first Christians). Philo was a hellenized Jew who was terribly interested in Jewish and Greek religion. He lived at the same time the gospel Jesus was alive and we know he visited Jerusalim at least once. That this writer would miss an incarnate Jewish godman is inconceivable. It would be like a civil rights movement writer living in Memphis during the 60's yet failing to speak a word about Martin Luther King... neither mentioning him directly ("I saw MLK / Jesus") or indirectly ("People keep talking about MLK / Jesus").

Understand that Jesus showed up in the equivalent of the blogger community of the era. With a written & read religion (Judaism) and Pax Romana ensuring safe travel, there was no conspiracy or campaign of persecution that could have stopped writers from chronicling the godman.

Yet history is utterly silent. Where we expect to see volumes we hear crickets.

III. The Gospels

Most apologists are convinced that the gospels existed as recently as two decades after Jesus' death. There's simply no evidence of this. The apologist claim is based on so-called "internal evidence"... meaning because so-and-so said such and such within the context of a specific date, they're guessing it happened then.

Thus, if an apologist were to read, "I'm eager to go to New York and climb to the top of both buildings of the World Trade Center", they'd have no choice but to conclude the statement was written before 9/11... which it wasn't. I wrote it just now, years after the fact.

The first gospel to be written was the gospel of Mark. We have no evidence of who actully wrote it or when, but the evidence we do have indicates it was written around 70 ce. Mark hsa nearly no miracles in it and depicts a nearly human Jesus. Mark, like Paul, when read alone is woefully ignorant of Key life events in Jesus alleged life... like the virgin birth.

The other gospels were collections of myths borrowed from earlier religions and invented outright by early church fathers. Each new gospel adding slightly to the tale, they don't come into Christian consciousness in any meaningful way until 180 ce where they're mentioned by a third party. We have no copies or originals of gospels from before the second century nor any writings which specifically mention them.

IV. The personhood of Jesus

In the early second century Athenagoras, a Christian philosopher, writes an explanation of Christianity to the Alexandrian church. In his 37 chapter "A plea for the Christians" he makes no mention of Jesus as an actual person. The closest he comes is to imply that Jesus is the son of god, but in this same sentiment he also intertwines Jesus with the logos or word of god. Athenagoras later writes another essay on how a resurrection should be possible, but this makes no mention of Jesus nor of any key life events of Jesus. Reading between the lines, it makes it sound as though he's speaking metaphorically and doing little more than musing.

It establishes that the gospels and notions that Jesus was an actual person was NOT in all Christian consciousness in the second century.

V. The Disciples and the Sales Pitch

At the core of Christian argumentation is a VERY strong appeal to emotion (guilt). We are told of Jesus (a re-telling of Mithras who's more accessable) who's everyhing to everyone: king and pauper, righteous and meek, etc. We are told that he died for our... specifically our sins. We are given a story that's very obviously impossible that demands additional evidence. After all, people don't just come back from the dead nor does water spontaneously become wine, etc.

Instead of evidence, we are given the emotionally charged claim of the disciples; those brave martyrs who believed so strongly in the Jesus story that they died for it. This is the REAL argument that apologists use. As human beings, we're naturally inclined to be motivated by guilt. We're SUPPOSED to feel guilty for questioning the bravery of people who sacrificed their lives for what they believed.

The problem is the disciples are as fictional as their mythical creator.

Nearly all of them are attributed multiple different deaths in multiple places in multiple manners.

Peter, for example is beheaded by Nero according to Anicetus, given a 25 year pontificate as bishop of Rome in the Clementines (making it impossible for him to be murdered by Nero) and was crucified upside down by the imaginings of Origen. Bartholemew (Nathaniel) travels to India, Persia, Armenia and somewhere in Africa before being beheaded in Armenia... AND Persia. The list goes on and on.

It's an ingeneous argument: Unsupported claims (Jesus) being evidenced by more unsupported claims (the disciples) with a powerful guilt trip and an exaltation of those who believe WITHOUT evidence. It's the perfect way to get people to believe in something they'd normally scoff at.

There's other evidence we can get into later, such as the non-existence of Nazareth in the first century, but that's enough for now.

By the by, I'm The Duke of Vandals and I look forward to your responses.

--------------------------------------------------

Sources:

http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_textual_evidence

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

http://www.bibleorigins.net/

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/

http://www.christianorigins.com/

http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/jesus/

http://members.aol.com/fljosephus/testhist.htm

http://jesusneverexisted.com/

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... chap5.html

[Lotan]

Lotan, I'm not sure what caused you to go from being a fan to an apologist...

I haven't changed my position on this subject one bit. Nothing presented so far has compelled me to do so.
Nor does the claim that there is sufficient reason to accept that there was a human being at the root of the NT make me an apologist. I suspect that's just ad hominem anyway. The fact is that your arguments have all the earmarks of apologetics. I will be happy to dig up some examples if you like, although I've already pointed out many as we've gone along.

...the problem with your argument (as I've pointed out numerous times) is right here:

The short answer to your question is that we consider the NT evidence for a historical Jesus because that is what it purports to be.

You're argument, as I understand it, is that we have no reason to believe the gospels aren't accurate accounts of individual eyewitnesses that happen to be embelished.

There's the problem right there! You don't understand it, so you misrepresent it. How could the gospels be "accurate' and at the same time "embelished"?

The gospels are nowhere near "accurate accounts of individual eyewitnesses" and I have never suggested that they are. I only said that they aren't "100% fiction" either. They are best understood (and compared) as interpretations by their authors of the significance of Jesus' life and teachings, admittedly based on even earlier traditional interpretations. Much of the material in the gospels can be identified as invention of one sort or another, but even that can be revealing. For example the elaborate birth narratives in Luke and Matthew serve, among other things, to place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem (according to 'prophecy') rather than Nazareth. An entirely fictional Jesus could have avoided this detail altogether. There are other aspects of the gospel stories that similarly don't make much sense if they were wholly fictional, such as the portrayal of Jesus' family (negative) or the apostles (stupid). The gospels aren't supposed to be history. They are a reflection of the theological beliefs of the evangelists at that particular period of Christianity. What little we know of the pre-war, pre-gospel Yeshua faith among the original Jerusalem Christians suggests that they held a low christology; no miracles, no atonement, no trinity.
In any case, it's not my responsibility to provide the evidence for Jesus' existence. It is yours to provide evidence to back your claim that "The gospel Jesus never existed." It's very easy to explain away the miracle stories, but what about all the rest?

There's simply no evidence for this.

Glad I didn't make the claim in the first place then.

There's simply no evidence for this. Neither Tacitus nor Josephus mentions the man behind the godman in any meaningful way.

I believe I asked this before; How "meaningful" must their references be merely to provide evidence for Jesus' existence?

Yes, there are a lot of scholars who have looked at the NT and concluded it all matches up, but really, what do we have?

About 18% according to the Jesus Seminar (but what do they know? ). I doubt if any two scholars would agree on the validity of every source of evidence. SkepticWiki lists some of the most popular arguments. If you'd like to discuss them let me know, I just don't want to repeat them all here.

What do we have that evidences Jesus, Lotan?

I gave you one example in my last post, but you ignored it...

On the basis of these, and similar claims it should be easy for you to identify the sources of the gospel stories. How about the "Little Commision"? (Mark 6:6-13, Matt. 10:7-11, Luke 9:1-6) Where did that come from exactly? Was it Krishna?

Now, if the gospels are only myths and legends as you claim, it should be easy for you to provide the 'real' source for this pericope. Explain it away, that is your claim.

[The Duke of Vandals]

Ah. I think I see where the disconnect is.

If someone claims "UFO up there in the sky!", you're assuming that the person making the claim saw something with a natural explanation and simply embelished the story into UFO / alien / little green men / etc. It seems as though you're doing the same thing here. Since there's a story, there must be an ORIGIN of the story, right?

The answer is not necissarily.

Remember that the gospel writers had a very specific agenda in mind: they were attempting to create a new religion... to "re-judify" Judaism. We're talking about a time period in history when things were rough for the Jews. The rebellion had failed, the temple was thoroughly corrupt, their high priest was appointed by Romans and those same Romans were levying taxes (hefty taxes) against Jews just for being Jewish. They needed a religion that people who want to adhere to even if they were being persecuted.

We're not talking about a handful of innocent scholars & writers who happened to be in the right place at the right time. We're talking about individuals who had a clearly defined goal and agenda: to create a new religion.

Remember also that no one has a clue when the gospels were written. What we do know is that Mark was the first to be written and the other three borrowed heavily from it and the writings of other first century Christians.

So, there's not much point in asking where specific stories came from: without corroborating evidence, I would ask you why do you think it's anything other than a tall tale?

[Lotan]

Ah. I think I see where the disconnect is.

If only that were true.

If someone claims "UFO up there in the sky!", you're assuming that the person making the claim saw something with a natural explanation and simply embelished the story into UFO / alien / little green men / etc. It seems as though you're doing the same thing here. Since there's a story, there must be an ORIGIN of the story, right?

Wrong. (Your analogy isn't apt BTW)

The answer is not necissarily.

No kidding.

Remember that the gospel writers had a very specific agenda in mind: they were attempting to create a new religion... to "re-judify" Judaism.

That's fantastic! I mean really 'fantastic'. Who told you this? If the evangelists had a motive (and they had several), the one most commonly mentioned is that they wished to present Christians as more Roman-friendly than the rebellious "Jews". In that sense, they were differentiating themselves from Judahism, so I would say that they were actually trying to de-Judify Christianity. Besides, how could they "create" something that was already 40-50 years old?

We're talking about a time period in history when things were rough for the Jews. The rebellion had failed, the temple was thoroughly corrupt, their high priest was appointed by Romans and those same Romans were levying taxes (hefty taxes) against Jews just for being Jewish. They needed a religion that people who want to adhere to even if they were being persecuted.

What Temple? It fell down. The Jewish peasants had been oppressed for centuries. During the earlier part of the first century, there were various popular uprisings, and messiah types to lead them. The Jews didn't need any new religion. The one they had suited their situation perfectly. Messianic and apocalyptic expectation were high.

We're not talking about a handful of innocent scholars & writers who happened to be in the right place at the right time. We're talking about individuals who had a clearly defined goal and agenda: to create a new religion.

No. You are talking about "individuals who had a clearly defined..." blah, blah, blah. You're deluding yourself with this story. You have no evidence that these "individuals" were trying to "create" anything. We know from Paul's letters that there were churches ('assemblies') across the diaspora decades before the gospels. The (Judahist) Yeshua faith was almost a half century old when 'Mark' wrote his gospel. Why do you mention this? Do you want to claim really late or really early dates as an ad hoc support for your Christ-myth theory?

Remember also that no one has a clue when the gospels were written.

That's not really true. No one knows exactly when, but there is internal and external evidence that supports the range of dates that represent scholarly consensus.

What we do know is that Mark was the first to be written and the other three borrowed heavily from it and the writings of other first century Christians.

There you go. They "created" Christianity using material borrowed from other Christians! Now, that is a 'disconnect'!

So, there's not much point in asking where specific stories came from: without corroborating evidence, I would ask you why do you think it's anything other than a tall tale?

Do you mean a "tall tale" like...

"Also, nearly all of the alleged life events of Jesus are seen in earlier myths and legends, establishing the back story for Christianity." (Post 10)

You see, a theory should account for the evidence, and yours does not. Just because you can find similarities between the gospel stories and other myths doesn't mean that Jesus didn't exist. Have you even supported one claim yet? I don't think that you have.

Anyway, to answer your question; I have answered your question. I have provided evidence for Jesus' existence. You continue to ignore it or dismiss it. All you have is the same old argument from incredulity.

[Cathar1950]

It seems they are discovering that there was a lot of diversity going on in just the apocalyptic, dualistic and Messianic sects, which included a lot of Zealots. The stuff I have read seems to think the person thought of as Jesus, if he existed, could be a composite of leaders from before Judas the Galilean all the way to James, “The Egyptian” and others. It sometimes looks like a cover-up hidden behind layers of stories. Maybe he was the Teacher of Righteousness or some other leader. Paul if we can believe him seems to think some one died and was a spirit being now. Who it was we don’t know for certain and Paul does not tell us when or even where if I recall. Some even think “Jesus” was a title.
It is difficult if not impossible to make a claim that he never existed as much as it is claiming it as a historical fact. The needed information is too sparse and diverse. We do know there where Diaspora Jews and even communities of what we call the Essenes and Zealots throughout the Roman Empire. There were Hellenistic Jews such as Philo that had a lax or allegorical view of the Law and circumcision. The development of the stories show a mythic development that at one time may not have been as simple or as strange a story at it’s roots.

[The Duke of Vandals]

I'm not sure when or how Lotan found Jesus, but he clearly hasn't been doing his homework. You should read more of what ever Cathar has been reading because he's on the right track.

I despise taking posts apart sentence by sentence, but if I must...

First, the UFO analogy is ABSOLUTELY apt because the gospel writers aren't writing about normal events. They aren't writing about some normal person who happened to survive a car crash or the like. They're writing about fantastic events that are very obviously impossible without a shred of evidence... just like UFO enthusiasts.

That's fantastic! I mean really 'fantastic'. Who told you this? If the evangelists had a motive (and they had several), the one most commonly mentioned is that they wished to present Christians as more Roman-friendly than the rebellious "Jews". In that sense, they were differentiating themselves from Judahism, so I would say that they were actually trying to de-Judify Christianity. Besides, how could they "create" something that was already 40-50 years old?

What Temple? It fell down. The Jewish peasants had been oppressed for centuries. During the earlier part of the first century, there were various popular uprisings, and messiah types to lead them. The Jews didn't need any new religion. The one they had suited their situation perfectly. Messianic and apocalyptic expectation were high.

Indeed they were. I couldn't agree with the underlined sentence more. Into this atmosphere of expectation came a many named Jesus. He was fulfilling prophecies and drawing the ire of both Roman and Jewish authorities. He was healing the sick and performing miraculous deeds. Regardless of this high-profile stuff, he managed to exist "off-the-radar" in one of the most literate regions of the world at that time. (having a written religion will do that...).

The gospel writers knew exactly what they were doing. They fabricated a godman who, to this day, remains completely unevidenced. It's important not to lose track of that: the only "knowledge" we have of Jesus, in spite of these alleged high-profile feats of magic, is the third party accounts of alleged eyewitnesses that don't agree with one another.

That's it. Nothing more.

Where we should have evidence, we have emotionally charged arguments and logical fallacies. You, sir, seem to have fallen into the appeal to popular opinion and appeal to authority. People have written that there was a Ceasar and an Alexander the Great, so why not a Jesus, right?

[Cathar1950]

I am going out on a limb here but I don’t think Lotan is saying the gospels are fact, true or history.
I think he is simple saying that we can’t say he didn’t exist in some form and there does seem to be some story or people being referred too. We just don’t know enough to say he either existed or didn’t exist. I don’t think he is saying the gospels are a clear known story that is true. It is hard to prove someone didn’t exist maybe even impossible.
I see influences in the later movement and mythology from all kinds of sources. If you read the Dead Sea Scrolls you will find dualism, messianic ideas (more then one) apocalyptic literature that was related to Jubilees, Enoch, Daniel, astrology, and allegorical readings. You can spot the Persian influences. These were widespread throughout the Roman Empire in many forms. There were Gnostics. Later believers with differing needs wrote much of the gospels and one need was to battle other’s ideas including Pharisees and fellow Christians.
I am over simplifying of course.

[The Duke of Vandals]

I think he is simple saying that we can’t say he didn’t exist in some form and there does seem to be some story or people being referred too. We just don’t know enough to say he either existed or didn’t exist.

We have four books with staggering inconsistencies thinly veiled under general agreement that depict a magical godman and his non-existent disciples which were written by individuals with a clearly defined agenda & doctrinal axe to grind.

We have a host of early mythologies that mirror Christianity including Mithrasism and a host of Jesuses including Jesus ben Pandira who lived during the time of Alexander Jannaues (106-79 BC) who we mostly know of from the parts of Josephus that HAVEN'T been tampered with by the church.

Which are you going to believe?

Sometimes, when we hear stories of UFO's they really are from people who have an agenda / want attention... they're not all based on weather balloons and swamp gas.

[Goat]

Ah. I think I see where the disconnect is.

If only that were true.

If someone claims "UFO up there in the sky!", you're assuming that the person making the claim saw something with a natural explanation and simply embelished the story into UFO / alien / little green men / etc. It seems as though you're doing the same thing here. Since there's a story, there must be an ORIGIN of the story, right?

Wrong. (Your analogy isn't apt BTW)

The answer is not necissarily.

No kidding.

Remember that the gospel writers had a very specific agenda in mind: they were attempting to create a new religion... to "re-judify" Judaism.

That's fantastic! I mean really 'fantastic'. Who told you this? If the evangelists had a motive (and they had several), the one most commonly mentioned is that they wished to present Christians as more Roman-friendly than the rebellious "Jews". In that sense, they were differentiating themselves from Judahism, so I would say that they were actually trying to de-Judify Christianity. Besides, how could they "create" something that was already 40-50 years old?

We're talking about a time period in history when things were rough for the Jews. The rebellion had failed, the temple was thoroughly corrupt, their high priest was appointed by Romans and those same Romans were levying taxes (hefty taxes) against Jews just for being Jewish. They needed a religion that people who want to adhere to even if they were being persecuted.

What Temple? It fell down. The Jewish peasants had been oppressed for centuries. During the earlier part of the first century, there were various popular uprisings, and messiah types to lead them. The Jews didn't need any new religion. The one they had suited their situation perfectly. Messianic and apocalyptic expectation were high.

We're not talking about a handful of innocent scholars & writers who happened to be in the right place at the right time. We're talking about individuals who had a clearly defined goal and agenda: to create a new religion.

No. You are talking about "individuals who had a clearly defined..." blah, blah, blah. You're deluding yourself with this story. You have no evidence that these "individuals" were trying to "create" anything. We know from Paul's letters that there were churches ('assemblies') across the diaspora decades before the gospels. The (Judahist) Yeshua faith was almost a half century old when 'Mark' wrote his gospel. Why do you mention this? Do you want to claim really late or really early dates as an ad hoc support for your Christ-myth theory?

Remember also that no one has a clue when the gospels were written.

That's not really true. No one knows exactly when, but there is internal and external evidence that supports the range of dates that represent scholarly consensus.

What we do know is that Mark was the first to be written and the other three borrowed heavily from it and the writings of other first century Christians.

There you go. They "created" Christianity using material borrowed from other Christians! Now, that is a 'disconnect'!

So, there's not much point in asking where specific stories came from: without corroborating evidence, I would ask you why do you think it's anything other than a tall tale?

Do you mean a "tall tale" like...

"Also, nearly all of the alleged life events of Jesus are seen in earlier myths and legends, establishing the back story for Christianity." (Post 10)

You see, a theory should account for the evidence, and yours does not. Just because you can find similarities between the gospel stories and other myths doesn't mean that Jesus didn't exist. Have you even supported one claim yet? I don't think that you have.

Anyway, to answer your question; I have answered your question. I have provided evidence for Jesus' existence. You continue to ignore it or dismiss it. All you have is the same old argument from incredulity.

I think you have provided evdience of the BELIEF in Jesus. Just as the BOM is evidence of the BELIEF in Morononi. The various thelogical lessons that are alledged to have been taught by Jesus are not unique to Jesus in Jerusalum in that
time period. There is no evidence that any one specific person is the prototype of the Jesus that was in the gospels.

Now, Jesus, I will admit ,was a very common name in 1st century Jersualum. I also will admit that many thousands of people were crucified.

The question I have to ask.. how far does the picture of someone in a myth have deviate from the inspiration to not have the myth be evidence of the historical?

I personally think, due to the conflicting view of Jesus by the various Gospel authors, that there probably were more than one prototype. You have the view of Jesus as a rebel (I come not for peace, but with a sword).. which is expected by such groups as the Zealots, and you have the one that is that pushes peace and forgiveness, and reaches out to the poor and the outcasts of society.

It could be that there was 'one' prototype, and people's theological agenda was grafted onto the teachings of Jesus... or it could be multiple preachers whose various lessons got put into Chrisitanity. A lot of the philosophy of Philo Judas definately got meshed into Christianity. But, in my opinion, there is not enough information to rule out a single 'protogype' or a melding of a number of different religious movements from that time period.

[Lotan]

I'm not sure when or how Lotan found Jesus, but he clearly hasn't been doing his homework.

Jesus is my friend!
As for doing my homework, at least I don't claim to "know" that Jesus ben Pandira lived, or call Jesus of Nazareth a "rock-star-level-famous godman". You betray your ignorance of this subject in every post, and your reliance on the Jesus Never Existed site confirms it.

You should read more of what ever Cathar has been reading because he's on the right track.

Please. Who ever takes Cathar seriously? Look at this...

The stuff I have read seems to think the person thought of as Jesus, if he existed, could be a composite of leaders from before Judas the Galilean all the way to James, “The Egyptian” and others.

Well, Cathar, tell me who was Judas the Galilean a composite of?

First, the UFO analogy is ABSOLUTELY apt because the gospel writers aren't writing about normal events. They aren't writing about some normal person who happened to survive a car crash or the like. They're writing about fantastic events that are very obviously impossible without a shred of evidence... just like UFO enthusiasts.

I don't know if anything like the following ever actually happened or not, but it's the first example that I came across, and it's enough to answer your objection...

Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.
And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.
And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.
And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.
And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught.
And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. Mark 1:14-22

This little pericope describes real historical persons (Baptist and Peter, James and John), whose existence is also attested by Paul and Josephus*, engaged in "normal events" and interacting with Jesus in a clearly defined geographical setting. There's nothing fantastic about it, and it is just one of many little stories, like the "Little Commission" that are not only unremarkable, but are not easily explained away by the Christ-myth 'theory'. Even some of the healings may have some basis in fact. Also, as I have shown, even the more fantastic stories can be revealing of an historical basis.
(*Peter, for example is attested by Paul, gThomas, gEbionites, the Synoptics, gJohn, and Papias.)

Into this atmosphere of expectation came a many named Jesus.

A "many"?

He was healing the sick and performing miraculous deeds.

Faith healers and wonder workers were a dime a dozen in 1st century Palestine. That's hardly evidence against Jesus' existence, the evangelists' hyperbole notwithstanding. Besides healing in the context of Judahist ritual purity rules would be directly in line with Jesus' mission to inaugurate the 'Kingdom of God'. The miracle stories should be read as metaphor anyway.

Regardless of this high-profile stuff, he managed to exist "off-the-radar" in one of the most literate regions of the world at that time. (having a written religion will do that...).

What "high-profile stuff"? Are you suggesting that we need to believe the miracle stories to establish Jesus' existence?
If the gospels are to be believed at all, he spent the greater part of his mission in the Galilean countryside. Only after that failed did he make his grandstand play in the big city. Interesting that you mention the "off-the-radar" bit though, because there are some who would say that it was intentional. Some messiah types like Theudas gathered large followings and led them into the desert which made an easy target for Roman officials on the lookout for seditious behavior. Jesus' strategy was to send his apostles to single households in small villages to create many little decentralized mustard seeds of righteousness, that would hopefully reach critical mass and bring about YHWH's reign. Kind of like al Qaeda. The Baptist had a similar strategy; cleansing people and then sending them on their way, but he got caught too. The only real "high profile stuff" that can be attributed to the historical Jesus was his monkey business at the temple. That's all that comes to mind, unless you want to include the crucifixion. The gospel stories themselves (Mark, at least) contain elements that actually contradict the idea that Jesus was doing anything really miraculous. The miracle stuff is later embellishment, not history.

The gospel writers knew exactly what they were doing.

I'm sure that they knew what they were doing, but I don't think you do.

They fabricated a godman who, to this day, remains completely unevidenced.

I think that I made a mistake when I wrote that...

The short answer to your question is that we consider the NT evidence for a historical Jesus because that is what it purports to be.

...without more explanation (hey, I was tired...). Here's the longer answer-
Before we decide whether or not Jesus existed we need to look at any evidence that claims or at least supposes that he did. That includes the NT, gThomas, Josephus, etc. Unless one has already made their mind up, this evidence has to be weighed. When it has been proven that there was no such person, then we can say that there's no evidence, but not before. That hasn't stopped you though.
Also, the claim that the evangelists "fabricated a godman" lacks evidence. Paul mentions Jesus 20 years before 'Mark', so 'Mark' could hardly have invented him. No one is arguing that the "godman" Jesus Christ isn't a theological invention, but that's not the historical person, although find it convenient not to see the distinction.

It's important not to lose track of that: the only "knowledge" we have of Jesus, in spite of these alleged high-profile feats of magic, is the third party accounts of alleged eyewitnesses that don't agree with one another.

No one has lost track of the evidential situation regarding the question of Jesus existence, all sources do agree on that particular fact.

Where we should have evidence, we have emotionally charged arguments and logical fallacies.

You're talking about your own argument now.

You, sir, seem to have fallen into the appeal to popular opinion and appeal to authority.

Ever notice that when people are trying to say something that they can't prove, they use that phrase "seem to"?

Remember this...?

"We must often rely upon expert opinion when drawing conclusions about technical matters where we lack the time or expertise to form an informed opinion. For instance, those of us who are not physicians usually rely upon those who are when making medical decisions, and we are not wrong to do so."

The Fallacy Files site lists situations where an appeal to authority may not be appropriate. Maybe you can make your argument on the basis of one of those.

I gave you the opportunity to correct me then, but you never did. Now you're repeating the same charge that you couldn't prove before! You do realize that it's a problem when someone keeps repeating things that they can't justify right? That's what preachers do.

Besides that, unlike yourself I've actually offered evidence for my position re Jesus' existence that has nothing to do with "popular opinion".

People have written that there was a Ceasar and an Alexander the Great, so why not a Jesus, right?

Wrong. Again. People have written that there was a John Gulliver and a Baron Munchausen too, so save that strawman for someone else please. I've already told you too many time that my opinion regarding Jesus' historicity is based on the evidence that purports that he existed. I don't need you to invent arguments for me, as you tried to do earlier for the historians who disagree with you.

So, c'mon. Tell us all about those " "Jesus cults" which existed before 1 ce." I'm sure it's fascinating.

[Goat]

Well, Cathar, tell me who was Judas the Galilean a composite of?

No one. Judas the Galilean is not "jesus of nazareth". Judas the Galilean was the leader of the Zealots that lead a revolt against the Roman Empire due to the introduction of direct taxes to the Roman Empire that happened when Judah
came under the control of Syria in 6 c.e. The account of this is found it
Josephus's antiquites. (Jewish Antiquities 18.4-6), and in the Jewish wars.

The fact that Luke mentions him is just one more piece of evidence that Luke used
Jospehus as a reference.