Reddit reviews The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

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>actually

probably*

That's the best we can do, since the evidence is suspiciously lacking and internally contradictory.

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Happy Ēostre, and happy reading!

> I'm genuinely interested in how a person can balance the stories and beliefs of a particular religion and conversely understand it on an intellectual and scholarly level.

From a psychological perspective, it's easier for educated and intelligent people to construct an alternative narrative (or explanation) for facts that may contradict what they want to be true for some reason. This isn't constrainted to religious beliefs; you'll also find the pattern in secular contexts (here climate change and politics). Atheists are capable of this, too.

For instance, there's a several different possibilities for scholars of the Historical Jesus, which – for atheists – naturally triggers the question: Why can someone like this still believe in the theology about Christ?

Some answer: These two areas have nothing to do with each other. The fields have different objectives and constraints, so the results from a historical perspective has no implications for theology.

Others think, the historical perspective has implications, but these do not contradict the theological perspective, but informs or supplements it.

Still others seem to perceive a contradiction, and accept only one of them (atheists, for instance).

Edit: I'd recommend Allison's "The The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus" if you want to learn more.

>you imbecile

I can already tell this is going to be fun.

>Jesus has literally ZERO contemporary historical data.

That's not what you asked for. You asked for peer-reviewed arguments for the historical existence of Jesus, of which I said there are thousands, and to which I said you'd have a much more difficult time finding the opposite--- peer reviewed articles and books arguing that Jesus was entirely a myth.

>I’ll wait for those libraries of sources you have.

Where do you want to start?

Probably the best place for you to start is with Bart Ehrman, a leading scholar of on the development of Christianity, and he's also a popular skeptic speaker and writer. In addition to publishing he's written popular books about how many of the books of the Bible were forgeries, and how the belief that Jesus was divine developed in early Christianity, he also wrote an entire book laying out the widely accepted case that Jesus was likely a real historical person, written directly to skeptical lay people like yourself.

If you want a great introduction to the scholarly debate about the historical Jesus, you could start here or here. I also think Dale Allison's work is great critical look at some of the issues at work in the debate. There are lots of historical reconstructions of Jesus' life. Some of the more popular ones like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan tend to sell books to liberal Christian audiences, so I've always thought E.P. Sanders treatment was perferable. I'll spare you the links to scholars who identify as orthodox Christians, like Luke Timothy Johnson or N.T. Wright. It sounded like you specifically wanted more scholarly sources and not popular books, so you could just look at the scholarly journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. Or the Jesus Seminar. Or either of the following Introductions to the New Testament textbooks which are used in secular universities throughout the english speaking world:

Introduction to the New Testament by Mark Allen Powell

Introduction to the New Testament by Bart Ehrman

These are the ones I'm personally most familiar with. There are tons more like Geza Vermes and Amy Jill Levine I haven't read and I'm not as familiar with.

But I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't learn in any basic 101 intro to New Testament Class. The academic consensus is that regardless of what you think about him as a religious figure, it is extremely likely that there was a first century Jew named Jesus who started a faith movement that led to him being crucified. Why do scholars think this? Because by the time Paul started writing his letters 20 years later there was a growing, spreading religious movement that worship a crucified Jew named Jesus as their messiah, and given critical analysis of the texts produced by this movement, some of which are now in the New Testament, there really doesn't exist a coherent argument for the development of this movement that doesn't include the existence of a first century Jew named Jesus who was crucified.