Evidence Jesus existed: Why do people ignore it?

[_Abyssinia]

Well to begin with although Matthew,Mark;Luke and John are the putative authors of their respective Gospels, only Matthew and John are mentioned as disciples and witnesses to to events in the life of Jesus. Mark and Luke did not claim to be eyewitnesses to events in Jesus’ life.

Now we know that the Gospel of Mark (who was not an eyewitness) was the first synoptic Gospel since Matthew copied about 90% of the Gospel of Mark (600 out of 660 verses) and Luke copied over 50% of the Gospel of Mark. Now if Matthew really was a disciple and a witness to events why would he need to copy Mark and rely so heavily of Marks version of events ? (why would he refer to himself in the third person in Matthew 9:9?). Which leaves us with John which contains material not found in Mark, contradicts events reported in Matthew and Luke and contains none of the" historical material" contained only in Matthew and Luke such as infancy and childhood.To make matters even more complicated, whenever they reported "historical material"l not found in Mark (on whose Gospel they obviously relied) and although they were not eyewitnesses, they contradict each other and make alterations and additions to Mark’s Jesus story.

The Epistles make no mention of the Gospels which strongly suggest that the Gospels did not exist until after the Epistles were written. Although this earliest Christian document was written much closer to the alleged lifetime of Jesus, the Epistles speak of a divine being with virtually no reference to physical events on earth or in history. There are no sayings of Jesus, or parables, or miracles or details about his life. There is no crucifixion mentioned, no empty tomb, no alleged rising from the tomb.

Although Christian scholars put forward that the Gospels existed in some form by the late first century of the common era, the first time there is a written reference to a Gospel is a reference to the Gospel of Mark in 125 c.e. and the first written reference to all four Gospels is in 175 c.e.

Now although Christians believe that a god had literally come down to earth, this was missed by every one of the 41 historians who lived during the first and early second century, who wrote about Judea and Rome and whose works have survived. Not a single one of them mentioned Jesus, his alleged disciples, his apostles or any of the miraculous events described in the Gospels.

The lack of sources outside of Christianity has led to reliance on forged passages from Josephus and even trying to interpret Talmudic passages as somehow referring to the Jesus figure. Now Jesus may have existed historically but there is little or no credible evidence supporting his existence.

John does not contradict any of the Gospels. I read on here once that you have to realize that the gospel authors are like 4 reporters attending a White House function. Depending on the reporters’ readership, each will list those persons there and what happened according to his own perspective. So, one or two of them might leave out details or mention of persons that the others left out. It doesn’t mean the WH function never took place or that they colluded together to lie, but rather that they each reported what they believed would be of interest to their particular readership. It’s the same with the Gospel writers. They weren’t being modern historians, but rather they were being story-tellers. Story-tellers relating a true story as they saw it and understood it.

The fact that all the gospels don’t line up perfectly word by word is what gives the Gospels more credibility.

It is not 100% known whether the Jospephus text was forged or not, there are arguments for and against the Josephus text being forged.

Craig Bloomberg who has written and contributed to work about the gospels has given four reasons why more was not written about Jesus in his time:

“the humble beginnings of Christianity, the remote location of Palestine on the eastern frontiers of the Roman empire, the small percentage of the works of the ancient Graeco-Roman historians which have survived, and the lack of attention paid by those which are extant to Jewish figures in general” (Bloomberg, Historical Reliability, 197. See Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 64-67).

But saying that, there are 42 sources for Jesus, nine of them secular which is notable and shows the importance of Jesus.