Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

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Personally I've never had an agenda against Jesus. I was in fact predisposed to believe he was a historical character.

Ironically, I was thusly predisposed because I was immersed in the fundagelical culture, just as you speak of immersing yourself in the culture of the times in which the scriptures and various things said about Christians were penned.

My bias toward believing Jesus was real, much less the son of god, has switched from pro to con, based on the preponderance of evidence and the growing conviction that it's all bullshit, ALL the way down.

But the ancient Romans and Christians, etc. also had biases. I take those biases into account when evaluating what little survives of their asserted truths, too.

Personally I don't give a fig whether Bible Jesus has any basis in a real person in history, in large part because as you and I agree, Bible Jesus never existed, so even if in some small sense Bible Jesus was "inspired by true events", it does not make Bible Jesus more possible or believable or compelling. However, I also have much reason to think he has no such historical basis, and little reason to think that he does. I admit to not being particularly persuadable by technical arguments alone, and being more attuned to my own bullshit detectors and personal experiences. Maybe if I had devoted enough years to the study of ancient historical methods I'd feel a little different.

But we are on page 100 of this discussion (at least in my browser) and so for better or worse, I know more about the topic than 99% of the people in this world by simply having read it. And I remain unpersuaded. Whether this says more about the "arguments" or about me, the reader can decide; I don't really have any skin in the game.

See? I have absolutely no problem with this opinion at all, and the reason for that is Mordant isn't making any positive claims either way. He's simply not persuaded to accept historicity as factual.

And frankly neither am I. The only thing I am persuaded by here is that the argument for historicity is a better argument than the one for complete mythology, and even then nothing is proven and never will be.