Bible: Was Jesus Really A Historical Person?

You bring up some good points, and as someone coming from a scholastic background on this subject, I might like to add a few things about why we take certain things seriously. A few years back I remember Richard Dawkins made the claim in one of his books that historians are not in agreement whether or not Jesus existed. It was a very well known idea among many people and to this day is repeated in various forms-but here's the thing...Dawkins was actually wrong, and he was called out on that statement and had to recant what he said. The truth is that I'm not really aware of any serious historians anymore who question Jesus existence-and even most liberal scholars whom I know will say that the continuation of the Jesus movement was based on the belief that the disciples believed that they had seen Jesus alive again after His passion. I do not blame people for being skeptical of the argument "because the Bible says so", because it is often used in a circular manner "the Bible is true because it says so"-in that case any other religious claim could be used as such-however, reasons why even secular historians do take certain things in the Bible seriously are worth mentioning-the Apostolic witness for one thing. For example, the scholarly community accepts the person of Paul/Saul as a historical reality, as it does his interaction with the Jerusalem community, James, Peter, John, and the friction which at times would happen re. certain issues-these are things scholars take seriously because controversy is often seen as a real marker of events-why fabricate arguments between groups which never existed? That is, we know there were Jesus followers, because we have their arguments over certain issues-to suggest that these followers were following a fabrication of someone who never existed is fairly poor reasoning and is actually a more or less paranoid conception of events. That is to say, like Occam's razor argument, reducing things to simplistic statement, the most simple answer is probably correct-they were real people talking of a real person who they believed in. That is rational, and it is one of the main reasons why even secular scholars take Jesus as a historical person seriously. One of the problems is, a lot of people, Christians and non Christians at times, are not very well versed in what the scholarship really says, but are often debated outdated rhetoric based on a very simplistic understanding of topics at hand. Part of dealing with that is, that Christians must begin to understand why we accept the Bible-we accept it because it is the Apostolic witness.

He is in history of the world, written on the best book..the Bible