Introduction : Did Jesus Christ Even Exist? Before venturing into the facts and fictions related to the history of Chris- tianity, we must tackle one central question that is crucial to a topic that takes us back two thousand years: Did Jesus ever even exist? While there is some discussion about whether Jesus Christ actually ever existed, experts in the field do not doubt that he was a real person. Even some of the most skeptical Bible scholars, such as Bart Ehrman, go to great lengths to prove that, in fact, Jesus existed. In his 2013 book Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman discusses how every week he receives emails from people asking whether Jesus ever existed. Some of these inquirers even use Ehrman as their authority, showing how Jesus never existed. The problem, however, is that Ehrman firmly believes that Jesus was a real person. How could people be so mistaken about such a basic fact? Could it be true that the most famous person in history never existed? Ehrman finally decided to engage this “Jesus never existed” scholarship, and, to his surprise, he found “a whole body of literature out there, some of it highly intelligent and well informed” (Ehrman 2013, 2). After engaging the overwhelming amount of evidence and analyzing the sources, Ehrman’s conclusion is resolute: “Jesus did exist, as virtually every scholar of antiquity, of biblical studies, of classics, and of Christian origins in this country and, in fact, in the Western world agrees.” He compares those who doubt Jesus’s existence to those who doubt the Holocaust, astro- nauts walking on the moon, or the assassination of American presidents. As he states it, they “simply will not be convinced” (Ehrman 2013, 5).
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