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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • It’s pretty bold to say that there’s no evidence for him.

    For starters, the claim that he existed is rather unextraordinary. That he was the messiah might be extraordinary, but just that a dude with that name who did some of the same things isn’t too remarkable. This means that we don’t need a ton of strong evidence. Compounded with the fact that he was (if he existed) poor, and therefore it’s not expected that he’d leave much evidence, we need hardly anything to say the man existed.

    Since there seems to be a consensus by experts that he existed, and since neither of us are experts (probably, I don’t actually know about you), you need to either present a reason to be skeptical of those experts or present evidence contradicting their claim.

    I’m not able to filter through everything Josephus and Tacitus wrote, interpret it in the intended context, and judge it’s validity. Thus I need to trust other people’s findings.

    If you could show that these experts are unreliable (perhaps they’re religiously motivated, though I think secular historians agree), then we could start from scratch and the burden of proof would be on people claiming the man existed.