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Sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic or the Lord. But there could be a fourth option – legend.

Bart D. Ehrman

Related Topics

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  In terms of the historical record, I should also point out that there is no account in any ancient source whatsoever about King Herod slaughtering children in or around Bethlehem, or anyplace else.

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• 

  Jesus existed, and those vocal persons who deny it do so not because they have considered the evidence with the dispassionate eye of the historian, but because they have some other agenda that this denial serves.

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• 

  I don’t know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.

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  A fundamentalist is no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.

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  Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate—whether the inspiring writings of the Bible or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama.

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• 

  The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don’t want to go there.

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• 

  His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!

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• 

  As time goes on, thing do get made up.

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  [P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally.

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• 

  No other author, biblical or otherwise, mentions this event. Is it, like John’s account of Jesus’ death, a detail made up by Matthew in order to make some kind of theological point?

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  In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet.

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  Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another.

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• 

  Different authors have different points of view. You can’t just say, ‘I believe in the Bible.

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• 

  I have such a fantastic life that I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it. . . . But I don’t have anyone to express my gratitude to. This is a void deep inside me, a void of wanting someone to thank, and I don’t see any plausible way of filling it.

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• 

  My students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition.

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  I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing.

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