One of the claims of Jesus Mythicists is that there was no historical Jesus. If you ask them why they believe this, they likely will respond with some variation of: “There is no historical evidence of Jesus’ existence.”
Then people like me will point to sources such as the Gospels, Paul, and Josephus, among others. It is not that Mythicists are unaware of these texts, they just do not believe they are of sufficient historical value.
From my interactions with Mythicists, it would seem that the standards required for valid historical evidence would include:
- Writings by the alleged historical figure.
- Writings by enemies are those unsympathetic to the figure.
- Supporting writings from within a couple of years of the events.
- Archaeological evidence such as coins, statues, etc.
- Writings that are not currently being used as Scripture by a religious group.
- Writings that do not include any description of supernatural events.
- No similarities to any text that we know to be legendary.
- Biographies of similar quality and detail as modern biographies.
While I am sympathetic to the desire to have the best quality of historical evidence as possible, the standards of Mythicists are not what historians use.
When I read books on ancient history, these are what they look for to determine if a figure is historical or not.
- The figure lived in a historical time and just the mythic past.
- They lived in a recognizable geographic area that we can visit today.
- They interacted with or their associates interacted with recognizable historical figures.
- Preferably they are mentioned in multiple sources that represent different traditions.
- Evidence that people were talking about this figure relatively soon after their death.
That would be enough to affirm that a person was a historical figure rather than a legendary creation. Most often, historians do not require all of these items. Frequently, historians give the benefit of the doubt, holding to the historicity of a figure unless there is good reason to doubt it. That is why there are Egyptologists who suspect there was a historical Osiris that the god was based on even though our current sources are clearly mythical.
There would have to be some very good reasons for doubting the historicity of Jesus and just disliking Christians and Christianity is not a good enough reason.
