Do you agree with mythicists who claim that Jesus is a purely mythical figure?

No and I'm an atheist. I think it's remarkable how we have absolutely no sources from before the 18th century that question whether Jesus existed. Not even his enemies demonstrably questioned whether he existed even though they would have stand to gain from such claims.

The Jesus story is clearly based on myth/allegory. ..which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Was Jesus a historical character? Maybe, but probably he was a kind of archetypcal figure, based on a common type in Palestine around 0 C.E. There is very little historical basis for his specific individual existence. Incidentally, the Jesus/Joshua faith of his original group, in Jerusalem, differed considerably from that of Paul...who seems to have been seriously emotionally disturbed. And, as Christianity became the official religion of the empire, this alliance with the State became very problematic. Finally, Christianity absorbed vast amounts of material from the "pagan" traditions--like Mithraism, and Attis worship---and the "Mystery Religions."

I don't. It strikes me that all the scenarios and hypotheses that make Jesus a made-up mythical figure, or a composite figure, are stretched to accommodate the idea he didn't exist. It's as if they are desperate to believe there was no Galilean teacher crucified at Pilate's orders, and they've invented suppositions to avoid believing that.

Of course the Jesus figure has had all manner of myths wrapped around him. But I can't swallow the notion that he was invented out of whole cloth to fit the Hebrew notions of a Messiah ... because he doesn't. Why would the inventor make him Galilean, then have to struggle to make that believable? Why would the inventor have the Romans crucify him, then have to struggle to make that fit the Hebrew scriptures? Pure invention seems out of the question to me.

They have a lot of time on their hands to cherry pick other occultic stories and see how well they stick to the true account of the bible. I believe that it could be possible for pagans in a hundred years or so to confuse the stories of Harry Potter with the bible.

No.

Here's just a few non- Christians sources that wrote of Jesus within 150 years of His life -

Besides Tacitus, (and sure, he had his biases and was hostile to Christianity but nevertheless mentioned Christ) there were other non-Christian sources like Josephus, Pleny the Younger, Mara bar Serapian, Lucian the Greek Satirist, (he called Christians "stupid").

Even one of the most liberal theologians today concedes that Christ existed when he read of these "mythicists" who claim that Jesus is purely a mythical figure -

"Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why..."

"With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) -- sources that originated in Jesus' native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus' life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus' closest disciple Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.

"Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the "pagan" savior-gods in most instances reside in the modern imagination: We do not have accounts of others who were born to virgin mothers and who died as an atonement for sin and then were raised from the dead (despite what the sensationalists claim ad nauseum in their propagandized versions).

"Moreover, aspects of the Jesus story simply would not have been invented by anyone wanting to make up a new Savior. The earliest followers of Jesus declared that he was a crucified messiah. But prior to Christianity, there were no Jews at all, of any kind whatsoever, who thought that there would be a future crucified messiah. The messiah was to be a figure of grandeur and power who overthrew the enemy. Anyone who wanted to make up a messiah would make him like that. Why did the Christians not do so? Because they believed specifically that Jesus was the Messiah. And they knew full well that he was crucified. The Christians did not invent Jesus. They invented the idea that the messiah had to be crucified.

"One may well choose to resonate with the concerns of our modern and post-modern cultural despisers of established religion (or not). But surely the best way to promote any such agenda is not to deny what virtually every sane historian on the planet -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, agnostic, atheist, what have you -- has come to conclude based on a range of compelling historical evidence.

Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed." - Bart Erhman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-je...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4s_u3h370I

I've read that the bible is all fiction. Like fairy tales but with a moral to every story, is just a lot of people take it too seriously. Jesus is just a sorry, saying that if you have to give something up of your own to save other people (god let his son die for the sins of others or something like that), then you should. Probably wasnt real, who knows.

Don't really know, don't really care. The evidence for even a MAN named Jesus is pretty poor, the evidence for a man-GOD is zero all around.

And most obviously so.

Nobody like that could have lived is such obscurity. Nobody even heard of him for a couple hundred years after he was "gone".

Are you talking about "Jesus, God in flesh, who died for our sins"? if that's the case, then yes.

Yup. Anyone who doesn't is a moron.