The late Hector Avalos was a religious studies scholar, who wrote on a number of different subjects. He was a former Pentecostal and later became an atheist. He had a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies.
I came across an online post where Avalos discusses the Jesus Myth Theory. Regarding the existence of Jesus, Avalos states:
My own opinion, as an academic biblical scholar, is that there is not enough evidence to settle the question one way or the other. I am an agnostic about the existence of the historical Jesus.
This is interesting that he thinks there is not enough evidence to make a definite decision as most biblical scholars and historians, including atheists, see plenty of evidence for the historical Jesus. But let’s let Avalos speak for himself. Here are his reasons.
A main problem continues to be the lack of documentation from the time of Jesus to establish his existence definitively. Jesus is supposed to have lived around the year 30. But there is no mention of him anywhere in any actual document from his own time or from the entire first century.
While we do not have documentation during the life of Jesus, that is not uncommon for most other historical figures from antiquity (and later). As for the first century, his claim is simply untrue. We have Josephus, Paul and the Gospels. We will see his problem with this shortly.
The best known stories about Jesus are the biblical gospels. Despite recent claims to the contrary, most biblical scholars recognize that none of the actual manuscripts of these gospels originated earlier than the second century.
Pay careful attention to what he says. He does not say that the Gospels were not written until the second century, only that our existing manuscripts only go back to the second century. This is irrelevant. Our existing manuscripts are much closer to the events than is the case for most historical figures.
The best efforts of textual scholars have failed to recover the so-called “originals” of any biblical text. Thus, it is difficult to know what has been added or subtracted from any original accounts.
Again, this is irrelevant. Most of the ancient texts that we have as evidence for other historical figures are copies and not originals. There is an entire discipline called textual criticism that helps us to recreate as closely as possible to the originals. There are no textual critics that call into question enough verses that we would begin to doubt the existence of Jesus.
But that absence of evidence is still curious because, when speaking of Christianity, the Bible says that “everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22, RSV). More traces should remain in the first century of a group that everyone was speaking against.
From this quote, one would assume that we have an abundance of Roman and Jewish writings from the first century and that the absence of reference to Jesus and his followers is rather suspicious. However, we actually have very little from the first century and so we could not be surprised. Most texts didn’t survive and were not important enough to be copied. The only author who we might have expected to mention Jesus is Philo and I address that here.
On the other hand, 1 John 4:3 states: “Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.” The rest of this biblical epistle suggests that there were other self-described Christians who did not believe that Jesus had come in the flesh.
If the existence of a real flesh-and-blood Jesus was so well established, why were there Christians who did not believe in such a flesh-and-blood Jesus in the first place?
The point of 1 John is not that people disbelieved in the existence of Jesus. The question was about the nature of Jesus. This is a rebuttal of Docetism. Today, people are more likely to doubt the divinity of Jesus than the humanity of Jesus. Such was not the case in the beginning. Jesus was so highly esteemed that some doubted that he could have had a human body, since in their Platonic understanding, flesh is evil.
To be honest, I am surprised that someone with a PhD from Harvard would make such claims. What Avalos says here does not fit with where Biblical scholarship is in general.
