One of the main reasons for studying history is to get a better understanding of why things today are as they are by grasping what has gone before. But it only works with a good grasp of how we can know about the past, the methods of analysis used, and the relevant material our understanding should be based on. It also only works if we strive to put aside what we may like to be true along with any preconceptions (since they are often wrong) and look at the material objectively. Atheists who attempt to use history in their arguments who don’t do these things can not only end up getting things badly wrong, but can also wind up looking as misinformed or even as dogmatic as fundamentalists. And that’s not a good look.

The enormous popularity among atheists of the massively historically illiterate thesis that Jesus never existed is such a gigantic howler that any atheist who asserts it instantly renders himself absurd to me, like a high school sophomore who sneeringly announces, “If evolution is true and clams are older than dinosaurs then how come there are still clams but no dinosaurs? Huh? Huh? How come? See! You can’t even answer me!” It’s so ignorant of so many elementary things and so cocksure that you don’t even know where to start. O’Neill is a better man than I am in treating this stuff patiently.

The enormous popularity among atheists of the massively historically illiterate thesis that Jesus never existed is such a gigantic howler

ant wrote:It does not follow that because there are similarities then Jesus must also be mythical.

DWill wrote:We have someone named Jesus of Nazareth interacting with both of them

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god – surprise, surprise! – no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.

• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.

- See more at: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazare ... dgebo.dpuf

The Myth of Nazareth meticulously reviews the archaeology of the Nazareth basin from the Stone Age to the present, and shows that the settlement of Nazareth came into existence in the early second century C.E., well after the time of Christ. In this study René Salm reviews all the structural and movable evidence from the first excavations in the late 19th century to the most recent reports. This review also encompasses the extensive secondary literature, found in books and reference articles in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Salm shows that traditional conclusions found in all these works regarding the settlement of Nazareth are radically inconsistent with the itemized evidence in the ground.

the massively historically illiterate thesis that Jesus never existed

Josephus, the first century Jewish historian mentions no fewer than nineteen different Yeshuas/Jesii, about half of them contemporaries of the supposed Christ! In his Antiquities, of the twenty-eight high priests who held office from the reign of Herod the Great to the fall of the Temple, no fewer than four bore the name Jesus: Jesus ben Phiabi, Jesus ben Sec, Jesus ben Damneus and Jesus ben Gamaliel.