This article is too long for me to write a response to all of the rhetoric and weak poor arguments in it.  There are so many logic errors in this article that I simply cannot know how to begin.  Let me just give a couple of them.

First, he uses the kind of language which should not be used in such a discourse, calling belief that Jesus fulfilled the dozens of clear historical prophecies “silly.”  This is not an argument, but mere ad-hominum rhetoric, of which this article is full.

This gentleman tells us that the earliest possible date for Mark is AD 70, when scholars agree that it was probably written in the 50s or the 60s at the latest.  Then he tells us that Paul wrote his letters forty years before Mark was written, which does not even work mathematically, as it would mean that Paul wrote in AD 30 or earlier.  You can see right away that this person is not being careful about his “facts.”

Then he tells us that Paul is a useless source on the reality of Jesus because his vision cannot be confirmed.  I will admit that his vision itself is not the most convincing proof, but his conclusion that Paul’s belief in Jesus is useless is so illogical, it is hard to know how to respond to it.  What he ignores is that Paul personally knew dozens of eye-witnesses to the life of Jesus, many of whom he met personally and names in his letters.  If Paul is making up the existence of Jesus, then how can we explain that several dozens of his closest friends reported to him seeing Jesus?  All agree that Paul was a very intelligent and well-educated man.  This would have to suppose that Paul is an extremely gullible person, and also a liar, none of which is consistent with what we know about Paul.  The idea that an entire religion, with tens of thousands of followers by twenty years after he lived, could be based on the life of a man who never even lived is simply not tenable. It is not rational te believe that thousands who lived where Jesus lived and who reported publicly knowing him could all simultaneously be completely deceived is simply ludicrous.  How gullible does one want to propose that the people who lived in the city where Jesus was killed (or supposedly killed, if you believe this author) if they could devote their lives to a belief based on tens of thousands of people who said they saw this man.  This would have to be the greatest conspiracy ever launched times ten.  That Paul reported the reality of this man Jesus within twenty years of his execution is proof positive that he lived.

Think about this.  This author is proposing that seventy AD is so long after the life of Jesus that people could make up a pure fantasy because after forty years people would not remember what happened in Jerusalem.  Well, I am 63 years old, and I certainly would know if I had spent time with Jesus forty years ago.  The Church in Jerusalem was led by the brother of Jesus, as Josephus, a non-Christian, reports.  Would the brother of Jesus not know if Jesus was a real person?  Again, no person using common sense could possibly end up where this person is.  You can completely discount this article as so biased as to not even deserve your attention at all.

We can debate how precisely the gospels reflect the actual sayings of Jesus.  This is a reasonable debate that we can have with a reasonable skeptic, but to claim that the very existence of Jesus is in doubt is to prove that there is really no need for discussion at all with this sort of person.  This is the kind of person who believes that the US sponsored the 9/11 terrorist attacks or that the US never landed men on the moon.

Again, surely you know that this argument is completely unreasonable, so I cannot believe that you are tempted to believe the proposition of this person.  Therefore, I can only conclude that there are certain specific claims that he makes that you are not sure how to respond to them. So, please do me a favor and choose one or two or possibly even three or four of the statements which you would like me to respond to.  I guarantee that every single argument in this article is completely ridden with holes.

John Oakes