He wasn’t “the man” in his lifetime or even generation. That’s the point. Even Ehrman agrees Jesus was a nobody in his own day, as that is the only way to explain why no one recorded anything about him apart from a very small number of his followers.

That he was promoted better lifetimes after his time is a testament to those barkers and marketers. It clearly had nothing to do with any special fame or influence of the man himself. That had essentially failed.

Indeed, had there been no Paul, Christianity itself would have failed. So we have more to thank him for, for getting Christianity a fighting chance to become a world religion. And yet even in his day it didn’t. It took centuries of marketing and selling, and a couple of lucky accidents.

On that story, see Not the Impossible Faith.

Anyway, great job Richard.

Read the book. It’s not about what might be. It’s about what actually necessarily follows from the mythicist hypothesis and Scripture. Probabilistically, that entails a wash. OHJ, Ch. 11.9.

As to the simplicity argument, see my refutation of it in response to Bermejo-Rubio.

I do admire your theory about Philo’s angel though. It’s so much more plausible than the idea that the Jesus story ripped of pagan myths.

I agree that Ehrman is dissapointingly weak. For me it’s just a question of Occam’s razor. As you note yourself there were more than forty biographies of Jesus and even more epistles. What’s the simplest explanation of so many lives and references and the bewildering variety of Christianities that produced them (not to mention Josephus Tacitus etc). You have an explanation which is better than any other mythicist (though I repeat the suggestion you could make a stronger case by blaming Paul for historicisation). But let’s face it it isn’t the simplest is it?

However, if the truth is found concerning the existence of Jesus Christ, then the complexity is lost. In turn it is replaced with simplicity. Great attention is now also lost due to the boredom of simplicity. Thus an attempt of giving a global presentation of this truth, will draw little attention, if any attention at all.

The human mind has been exposed to this kind of ongoing behavior, since day one. Simplicity is most often misinterpreted as being of no great value at all.

Thus if proof of the existence of a higher power is discovered, but is flawless and simple in form, the entire interest in this proof of the existence of a higher power, vanishes in an instant, all due to man having defined simplicity as both boring and valueless. Thus, via the minds of today’s man, simplicity currently overpowers pretty well anything, including any proof of the existence of God himself.

This is astonishing. If the truth is so simple in form that it can be shared with all mankind, then it is immediately tossed into the trash can. In man’s mind, simplicity clearly can not be related to something as massive in scale as Jesus or God.

Go to http://goo.gl/38qhp and click on the yellow flashing words “Watch / Listen”, and be bored.

What sources do you have about “Christians saying”, please share.

I don’t understand the question. Are you saying the Gospels were written after Tacitus? Or that they were unknown to the Christians interrogated by Tacitus’s friend and correspondent Pliny years before Tacitus wrote? Or what? Because otherwise, the answer to your question should be obvious.

Tacitus is not magically inerrant. He is in fact often not wholly reliable (see the more recent expert analysis of Michael Grant in Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation…BTW, that’s an actual doctor of ancient history and world renowned expert in ancient historiography, not some random amateur Christian apologist…you are quoting J.P. Holding, infamous liar and distorter of facts, who in turn is quoting a sixty-year old out-of-date work that doesn’t actually make the specific claim you want). And Tacitus conspicuously doesn’t cite a source for this information–most odd since you just said he usually does that; so why didn’t he? He would not need to waste time checking records (records that had burned up twice before his time so would not even have been available to him in Rome) to repeat what the Christians were saying, because what the Christians were saying was already so incriminating in Tacitus’s view that he would have no reason to doubt it. Indeed, his most likely source was his friend Plin, who had interrogated Christians only a few years before when Pliny and Tacitus were governing neighboring provinces and regularly corresponding about facts to include in his history (see On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 342-46).

In any event, in turns out, Tacitus probably did not even mention Christ. I published a peer reviewed article in Vigiliae Christianae proving that this year. A copy of that is available in my book Hitler Homer Bible Christ.

My position(without other sources , please provide, if any):
Overall, Tacitus’ reliability as a historian counts against his having borrowed information uncritically from any source. Moreover, and as further support:
That Tacitus got his information from Christians is shown unlikely by the negative tone of the reference.
In the Annals, the work with the paragraph on Jesus, Mendell cites 30 instances where Tacitus uses specific phrases “to substantiate a statement or to present a statement for which he does not care to vouch” [ibid., 205]. Mendell also notes that “In Books 11-16 of the Annals (the Jesus cite is in 15) Tacitus “concerns himself with the evidence and source references to a greater extent than in the earlier books.” He relies on other historians, a bronze inscription (11.14), reports or memoirs (15.16), personal testimonies (15.73), and physical evidence (15.42). There are indications of searches for first-hand (15.41) and written (12.67, 13.17) evidence [Mende.Tac, 207]. Thus, the cite on Jesus comes in the middle of one of Tacitus’ most carefully-documented works.
In reporting a conspiracy of Piso to assassinate Nero, Tacitus acknowledges the difficulty of accurate knowledge of such conspiracies, indicates where his knowledge is uncertain, and does not use even one of Pliny’s quotes as positive evidence because he considers it to be “wholly absurd” (15.53) [ibid., 209].
In short, Tacitus was a very careful historian – he would certainly not trust a source that he held in such disdain as he did Christians, and he would carefully check material that came to him, even from his friends.

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