"Polêmico" - Jesus efetivamente existiu?

[Fernando Silva]

Objetivo do livro citado acima:

The purpose of this all-too-brief examination is to shed light on ten of these beloved Christian myths, ten beautiful lies about Jesus:
 
1. The idea that Jesus was a myth is ridiculous!
2. Jesus was wildly famous – but there was no reason
for contemporary historians to notice him...
3. Ancient historian Josephus wrote about Jesus
4. Eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels
5. The Gospels give a consistent picture of Jesus
6. History confirms the Gospels
7. Archeology confirms the Gospels
8. Paul and the Epistles corroborate the Gospels
9. Christianity began with Jesus and his apostles
10. Christianity was a totally new and different
miraculous overnight success that changed the world!
 
I also want to give a thumbnail sketch of how the evidence gathered from historians all across the theological spectrum not only debunks these long-cherished myths, but points to a Jesus Christ created solely through the alchemy of hope and imagination; a messiah transformed from a purely literary, theological construct into the familiar figure (or more truthfully, figures) of Jesus – in short, a mythic Christ. And finally, I want to briefly discuss how very different things would be if there had been a historical Jesus.

[Fernando Silva]

Comparando a historicidade de Júlio César e Jesus:

Jesus vs. Julius Caesar
 
For instance, historian Richard Carrier has pointed out the problems with Christian apologist Douglas Geivett’s claim that the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection meets “the highest standards of historical inquiry,” and is as certain as Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C.E. Carrier notes, “Well, it is common in Christian apologetics, throughout history, to make absurdly exaggerated claims, and this is no exception.” Then he compares the evidence for both events:

First of all, we have Caesar’s own account. In contrast, we have nothing written by Jesus, and we do not know who really wrote any of the Gospels. Second, many of Caesar's enemies reported the crossing of the Rubicon. But we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until over a hundred years after the supposed event, fifty years after Christian beliefs had become widely known. Third, there are numerous inscriptions, coins, mentions of battles, conscriptions and judgments, which form an almost continuous chain of evidence for Caesar's entire march. But there is no physical evidence of any kind in the case of Jesus.

Fourth, almost every historian of the period reports the Rubicon crossing, including the most prominent of the Roman age: Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio and Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have shown proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed with material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they consistently show a desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions.

But not a single historian mentions the resurrection until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only Christian historians. Of the anonymous Gospel authors, only “Luke” even claims to be writing history, but neither Luke nor any of the others ever cite any other sources or show signs of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims. None have any other literature or scholarship to their credit that we can test for their skill and accuracy. Their actual identities are completely unknown, and all overtly declare their bias towards persuading new converts.

Finally, the Roman Civil War could not have proceeded as it did if Caesar had not physically crossed the Rubicon with his army into Italy and captured Rome. Yet the only thing necessary to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief — a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon. Carrier concludes that while we have many reasons to believe that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, all of them are lacking in the case of the resurrection:
 
“In fact, when we compare all five points, we see that in four of the five proofs of an event's historicity, the resurrection has no evidence at all, and in the one proof that it does have, it has not the best, but the very worst kind of evidence — a handful of biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown, second-hand witnesses. Indeed, you really have to look hard to find another event that is in a worse condition than this as far as evidence goes.”1
 
So even before we begin to examine Jesus’ resurrection, we are forced to recognize that the historical evidence for it, and all the other extraordinary events of Jesus’ career, is not only far from ironclad, but already suspect. So there is nothing unreasonable about taking a skeptical approach to the Gospels’ image of Jesus in the first place. And it’s important to note that we are not just talking about the divine man-god Jesus coming under fire, because it is not just the supernatural aspects of Jesus that have come under suspicion. Even the mundane and perfectly plausible-sounding aspects of Jesus’ life have proved to be problematic, as we’ll see with our next myth.