Did Jesus Exist? Yes and No
by rjosephhoffmann
I have come to the following conclusion: Scholarship devoted to the question of the historicity of Jesus, while not a total waste of time, could be better spent gardening.
In this essay, however, I will focus on why it is not a total waste of time.
What seemed to be an endlessly fascinating question in the nineteenth century among a few Dutch and German radical theologians (given a splash of new life by re-discoverers of the radical tradition, such as G A Wells, in the twentieth) now bears the scent and traces of Victorian wallpaper.
While equally hard on mythicism and credulity in this 2010 post, I adopted a position that some readers called :Jesus agnosticism'; a more appropriate label would have been "Jesus Fatigue". I now would argue, qua the Jesus Process, that the historical existence of Jesus is the only reasonable postulate based on the material we now possess; but for reasons I will discuss in further essays, I do not believe that this postulate has been adequately articulated by recent defenders of historicity. A recent attempt by a well-known NT scholar is exceptionally disappointing and not an adequate rejoinder to the routinely absurd ideas of the Jesus-deniers. For that reason, like it or not, I have had to abandon my indifference and get back into the fight--on the side of the son of man.
