Not really. Perhaps if this thread the certainty of their historical existence. I'd suspect there various arguments for a historical for each. I don't think this thread is a place to present those argument any if I had an interest in doing so.
Too late, this threads over 1K long and it already contains many posts on the subject, despite your thinking that this thread is not a place to present those arguments, the horse is out of the barn. I guess too many did have an interest in doing so.
Objective means setting aside one's own bias. If there was any evidence to prove this was not the case.
It is not possible to prove the absence of something ... burden is on you to prove existence, if you can, and the contemporaneous sources that you need to do so do not exist.
Fine, I'm open to to anything that isn't reliant on mere speculation.
That's awfully good of you, now hurry along and find a source that is something other than mere speculation.
So the answer is? That's what I want to hear, something reasonable.
The answer is: you need to go find something reasonable, that is contemporaneous or even better eyewitness, not just assume that things are the way you'd have them.
Correct, so you take what is available, weigh it, and make a reasonable call. Right now from what I've seen (I realize there ain't a lot) it topples just over the line of certainty.
Mostly you have the existent of Christianity plus Josephus plus the gospels plus the letters of Paul.
The last two are iffy but there is something. I'm just saying with what there is, accepting a historical Jesus character is reasonable.
The first is ludicrous, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world today. Using the ratio of today's population to all the people who ever lived, that yields about 63K religions for all of Homo sapiens' history. If you consider polytheism that number easily grows to about 28 million. So get reasonable, why should anyone see your special case as anything different than all that others that were or are extant.
As far as Josephus is concerned, he makes a much better case for the historicity of Hercules than he does for Jesus. Everyone agrees that a great deal of what we currently have is a forgery, there is "general agreement" that while the
Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then subject to Christian expansion. The exact nature and extent of the Christian expansion remains unclear. You gonna bet your immortal soul on that? I wouldn't take that bet without really longs odds.
Need we really discuss Paul, who is more rationally explained by a bad Ergot mold trip than divine intercession?
I would happily go the other way but it'd have to be reasonable to do so. I don't see that it is yet.
We have four "things" that tilt the scale towards certainty versus nothing on the other side. I'm not saying it's much , just that it is what there is.
Coming into focus for you yet?
You see, the real problem it that today's "biblical scholarship" started out as Christian Apologetics and hasn't progressed much beyond that. Add to that, the fact that if the historicity of Jesus goes by the way, Christianity also goes by the way, and all those scholars and apologists and preachers and priests and missionaries and what-not will all have to get regular jobs.
