In Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman builds a technical argument and shows that one of the reasons for knowing that Jesus existed is that if someone invented Jesus, they would not have created a messiah who was so easily overcome.
"The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the enemies – and so if you're going to make up a messiah, you'd make up a powerful messiah," he says. "You wouldn't make up somebody who was humiliated, tortured and the killed by the enemies."
Also, I'd point out, if you wanted to be anti-Christian, you could point out it was basically a cult at first, and cults kind of need "a charismatic leader" claiming to be the son of God or whatever to work. So, Jesus is a David Koresh type character that worked.
Unless you mean who's Bill Maher, and in that case, well, good job avoiding that, but for the importance to this conversation, his documentary Religulous helped popularize the "Jesus wasn't real" instead of "Jesus wasn't magic" idea in America.
His main point is the story of Jesus is a lot like the story of Horus from Egyptian mythology, which is really easily debunked by actually looking up the story of Horus. For instance, he claims Horus was born of a virgin birth, which is laughable. Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris, and they totally fucked, like, all the time. Set, Osiris's brother, killed him and chopped him into little pieces and hid them all over the world, so Isis and Osiris's bastard son with Set's wife Nepthys, Anubis (yeah, Anubis, despite being a death god, is totally a good guy) went on a fetch quest to find all those chopped up body parts. They found all but one piece, Osiris's penis, which had been eaten by a fish. Well, the fetch quest had a purpose; since Osiris had no legitimate son, Isis had Anubis mummify him (Anubis was the inventor of mummification, and was so good, when he did it, people sort of came back to life) so she could fuck Osiris's dead body and get produce a legitimate heir. The missing penis thing was a problem for this plan, so Anubis, instead of just saying, hey, I'm right here, I'm a son of Osiris, I did all I could with the incestial necrophilia plan (I hadn't even mentioned that Set, Nepthys, Isis and Osiris were all siblings yet), I'll fucking fight Set, made a dildo out of wood and magicked it up and apparently that worked. So that's how Horus was conceived. And then Horus grew up to murder the shit out of Set, Osiris's mummy became the king of the underworld, Anubis got a menial bureaucratic job involving weights and measures, and ISIS became a Muslim terrorist organization.
Uh, this guy, for one. I like this point:
Also, I'd point out, if you wanted to be anti-Christian, you could point out it was basically a cult at first, and cults kind of need "a charismatic leader" claiming to be the son of God or whatever to work. So, Jesus is a David Koresh type character that worked.
Unless you mean who's Bill Maher, and in that case, well, good job avoiding that, but for the importance to this conversation, his documentary Religulous helped popularize the "Jesus wasn't real" instead of "Jesus wasn't magic" idea in America.
His main point is the story of Jesus is a lot like the story of Horus from Egyptian mythology, which is really easily debunked by actually looking up the story of Horus. For instance, he claims Horus was born of a virgin birth, which is laughable. Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris, and they totally fucked, like, all the time. Set, Osiris's brother, killed him and chopped him into little pieces and hid them all over the world, so Isis and Osiris's bastard son with Set's wife Nepthys, Anubis (yeah, Anubis, despite being a death god, is totally a good guy) went on a fetch quest to find all those chopped up body parts. They found all but one piece, Osiris's penis, which had been eaten by a fish. Well, the fetch quest had a purpose; since Osiris had no legitimate son, Isis had Anubis mummify him (Anubis was the inventor of mummification, and was so good, when he did it, people sort of came back to life) so she could fuck Osiris's dead body and get produce a legitimate heir. The missing penis thing was a problem for this plan, so Anubis, instead of just saying, hey, I'm right here, I'm a son of Osiris, I did all I could with the incestial necrophilia plan (I hadn't even mentioned that Set, Nepthys, Isis and Osiris were all siblings yet), I'll fucking fight Set, made a dildo out of wood and magicked it up and apparently that worked. So that's how Horus was conceived. And then Horus grew up to murder the shit out of Set, Osiris's mummy became the king of the underworld, Anubis got a menial bureaucratic job involving weights and measures, and ISIS became a Muslim terrorist organization.
So, you know, exactly like the Gospels!