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Sorry Christians, the atheists win. Plucky author 'proves' Jesus is a myth

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Apparently the scriptures don't count as evidence either.

Sorry Christians, game over. Jesus never existed. This is the remarkable conclusion of a man who said he couldn't find any references to Christ in 126 historical texts. Michael Paulkovich says that he concludes Jesus was a mythical figure.

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By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
10/2/2014 (9 years ago)

Published in Living Faith

Keywords: Jesus, exist, atheists, evidence, myth

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to author Michael Paulkovich, Jesus was a mythical figure. In his book, "No Meek Messiah" Paulkpovich claims he could not find evidence for the claim that Jesus existed.

Paulkovich says he used 126 primary sources to locate any references to Jesus, but his search turned up nothing but one source from Josephus Flavius, the Jewish-Roman historian. Josephus' account was allegedly edited to include the reference to Jesus, long after it was originally composed, according to Paulkovich.

We need to send these guys a few copies of the Bible, apparently they're unfamiliar with it.

Simply put, Paulkovich does not believe that Jesus existed because contemporary writers did not refer to Jesus. Instead, he says several writings did refer to other rabbis and charismatic leaders. The person we know of as Jesus could have been concocted from several such people, and created so Christians would have a messiah to follow.

The claim Pauljovich makes sounds far-fetched because the simplest explanation is that Jesus did live, he lived humbly, and his apostles writing in four different places recounted his life four different times in four different Gospels.

Atheists and other scholars have become much more critical of Jesus and the scriptures in recent years. Their approach has been to claim that scriptures have been mistranslated and that any accounts with which they don't agree are clearly fabricated. However, the lack of mention by other writers is a sure sign that a person did not exist.

Paulkovich also points out that Jesus himself never wrote anything.

Despite Paulkovich's conclusions, most historians still believe that Jesus was a real historical figure and that his existence was influential, giving rise to a new religion, one that would become Christianity. This new religion was not established by a few crazed rabbis in the desert, but rather seems to have been established by one man and his apostles who traveled for a short time in the province of Judea.

It may be that many Roman authors have no mention of Christ in their works. After all, the Romans did not immediately discern that Christianity was an independent religion, distinct from Judaism for years after the crucifixion. Fortunately, we do have the Bible as evidence, which accurately foretells the birth of Christ and contains the subsequent Gospel story of His coming, His life, death and resurrection.

Christians, and more importantly Jesus Himself, do not need the mention of obscure Roman historians in order to exist.

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