What ancient historians and archaeologists mean by “X probably existed” is not what a physicist would mean. They mean something closer to “hey, why not.” (Though stronger than that.) They hold onto belief of a person’s existence quite lightly, knowing that tomorrow a new find could change everything.
We can say with confidence that Paul existed, even though the only evidence is the Bible—textual analysis shows that seven of the fourteen epistles attributed to Paul were written by one person who calls himself Paul, and a few others were this person’s work with additions by others. So calling this guy Paul is not controversial.
The evidence for Jesus is far more meagre. Also, evidence that would be expected to be there if the person described in the Bible existed is absent.
We know nearly nothing of Pythagoras with confidence, but his body of work (if it was his) stands. If Socrates turned out to be a fictional character invented by Plato, philosophy would be unaffected. If Gautama Buddha turned out to be fictional, Buddhism wouldn’t even bobble. But Jesus existing or not is a big deal. This means that getting a good answer is unlikely, as too many people have been too heavily invested in the answer “yes”.
Bishop Eusebius, a close ally of the emperor Constantine, is one of the main culprits, shamelessly distorting the historical record at the time to slant Christianity in the direction suitable for Constantine’s needs in terms of an official religion for the Empire. (He’s the likely perpetrator of the forged mentions of Christ in Josephus, for example.) He muddied the waters horribly, leaving the history of the history in such a state that just learning the evidence we in fact have can be enough to explode a good Christian’s head.
To expand:
I have worked on the RationalWiki article on this topic, which is not too bad IMO. (The list of objections by theists is actual real-life objections, not straw men invented for the article. [Yes, citations needed.])
What ancient historians and archaeologists mean by “X probably existed” is not what a physicist would mean. They mean something closer to “hey, why not.” (Though stronger than that.) They hold onto belief of a person’s existence quite lightly, knowing that tomorrow a new find could change everything.
We can say with confidence that Paul existed, even though the only evidence is the Bible—textual analysis shows that seven of the fourteen epistles attributed to Paul were written by one person who calls himself Paul, and a few others were this person’s work with additions by others. So calling this guy Paul is not controversial.
The evidence for Jesus is far more meagre. Also, evidence that would be expected to be there if the person described in the Bible existed is absent.
We know nearly nothing of Pythagoras with confidence, but his body of work (if it was his) stands. If Socrates turned out to be a fictional character invented by Plato, philosophy would be unaffected. If Gautama Buddha turned out to be fictional, Buddhism wouldn’t even bobble. But Jesus existing or not is a big deal. This means that getting a good answer is unlikely, as too many people have been too heavily invested in the answer “yes”.
Bishop Eusebius, a close ally of the emperor Constantine, is one of the main culprits, shamelessly distorting the historical record at the time to slant Christianity in the direction suitable for Constantine’s needs in terms of an official religion for the Empire. (He’s the likely perpetrator of the forged mentions of Christ in Josephus, for example.) He muddied the waters horribly, leaving the history of the history in such a state that just learning the evidence we in fact have can be enough to explode a good Christian’s head.