Some might say that as long as you follow what most of us think of as Jesus' teachings, it wouldn't matter at all. As long as you're on track with loving God and your neighbor, feeding the poor, treating others as you want to be treated, you're good to go (to heaven that is). Those in the 'doesn't matter" camp maintain that it's his teachings that are important, and that those teachings are just as important if they were put together by fiction writers than if the Biblical Jesus was an historical person who is accurately portrayed in the Gospels.
Other, more literal-minded Christians hold the opposite view: that if Jesus, as presented to us in the Bible, didn't exist, then there is no point to life...and they certainly aren't "saved". To them, Jesus wasn't just some guy who spouted self-help advice, but The Son of God who "died for us". Without getting into the nuances of what specifically the death and resurrection of Jesus meant to the writers of the Bible (and it's not precisely the same from one author to the next) suffice it say that his death and subsequent not being dead accomplished something that wouldn't have been accomplished just by preaching sermons on the mount or multiplying bread and fish or walking in water. Or so many Christians believe. Not that most of them could actually explain it.
There's a metaphysical aspect to Jesus in the minds of the true believers that goes beyond what he is reported to have preached about in his alleged time on earth. By believing in him you get a free trip to heaven when you die. Although there's disagreement about just what "believing in him" involved: "confessing that God raised him from the dead" or "accepting him as Lord" are two that I have heard. In short, for a lot of people it matters very much whether Jesus existed - it's literally a matter of life and death.
As someone who now views Christianity, Judaism and the Bible from the outside it just doesn't matter to me - it's nothing more than an intellectual exercise to speculate upon the likelihood that there was an historical person upon whom the Biblical Jesus was based. Some of what he taught was definitely words to live by. Yes, just some. Jesus, as presented to us in the Gospels, was very much a believer that the world was ending in the short term. As such, he was very much concerned with people as individuals getting their acts together so that they would be worthy to enter the soon-to-be-established Kingdom of God. He was not concerned at all with family ties - he even told his potential followers that they had to reject (many versions use the word "hate") their parents and family to be his disciples. Not to mention his admonitions to followers to jettison all worldly riches. What do you need a bank account for if the world is about to end?
There are good arguments on both sides of the "did Jesus exist?" argument. There are some, also on both sides that I reject:
Con:
- The Romans kept scrupulous records of all legal proceedings and there is no record of Jesus' trial and execution
- This is a myth. The Romans in some jurisdictions, like Egypt, kept voluminous records, which still exist because the papyrus was preserved in a dry environment, but there is a lack of evidence for similar records in Roman Judea. There's no Roman records of Jesus' trial because there were no records of anyone's trials
- There are no contemporary references to Jesus. Even the first Gospel wasn't written until at least 40 years after his purported death.
- Very few historical records from Classical times were contemporary. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars is a notable exception. There are dozens of Roman emperors for whom we have no reference to them in their lifetimes. For some, we're not entirely sure if anything that was written about them is true. Lack of references in or right after his life are perfectly normal for that time period.
- The qualities ascribed to Jesus mirror the lives and missions of many other gods and saviors in the Mediterranean and Levant, including Osiris and Mithra.
- It would take too long to quote and debunk all of these comparisons, which crop up around Easter and Christmas each year, but in general they make false comparisons and misrepresent the stories around some of the other pagan deities.
- Debunking aspects of the Bible don't necessarily eliminate the possibility that a "Jesus" lived and preached and was executed in Judea around the beginning of the common era and that myths and legends attached themselves to him
- "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" is more an argument in support of the objective truth of what Jesus is reported to have said in the gospels rather than a strict argument in favor of his existence. It also ignores the alternative, that he was simply mistaken.
- Would the Apostles have risked everything, even their lives, for a myth?
- To be persuaded by this argument you have to assume that everything written about the Twelve Apostles in the Acts of The Apostles was true. Acts, like the Gospels, was written to tell a certain story and is no more verifiable than are the Gospels. The existence of the specific twelve men known as The Apostles is as difficult to verify as the existence of Jesus himself. The names, even, are inconsistent from one Gospel to the next.
- Even assuming that the apostles and other, later, followers of Jesus risked martyrdom, this is a weak argument for the historiography of Jesus. There are many, many examples of people going to theirs deaths for beliefs that were demonstrably false. I'm sure Christians would consider Islam false, yet there's no shortage of Muslims who have died for it over the centuries.
- References in Josephus, Tacitus and others.
- None of these were eyewitness accounts. Most are referring to Christians, not Christ.
I lean toward the opinion that there was someone upon whom the Jesus of the Gospels was based. He had a loyal cadre of followers who became convinced, for whatever reason, that he was resurrected after being crucified. Stories circulated and were passed by word of mouth and grew in the telling. Different factions had their own ideas about what he taught and what his life and death meant. Eventually people started writing down these stories, some of which have survived to modern times, four of them incorporated into The Bible. These biographies are historical documents and hold as much weight as any other historical document from that age - in other words we consider the source, consider biases and take it all with a grain of salt. I find it unlikely that these myths and legends were created and only later did his followers insist that he was a real person - I find it much more likely that the myths and legends were pasted onto to the fairly unremarkable life of a real person.
The existence of the "Apostle" Paul confuses things a bit. By his own admission he never met Jesus. Everything he claims to know about Jesus and God's purpose for Jesus and how Christians should conduct themselves was received in visions. If you didn't know how the story eventually turned out you might suppose that Paul was a faker who attempted to hijack the nascent Christian movement and mold it according to his own views. And many thought just that! In many ways Paul, whose mission was to non-Jews, taught a Christianity that was very different than what was being taught by Jesus' original followers. According to Paul's own letters the original apostles were teaching that converting to Judaism was a prerequisite to becoming a Christian, which Paul vehemently opposed. He claimed that it was God's will that pagan converts not be required to conform to Jewish law.
There is an argument to be made that Paul created the story of Jesus out of thin air - why else would The Twelve had allowed him to become as influential as he did with resisting him? The argument assumes that neither Jesus nor The Twelve existed. I find this argument unpersuasive. Paul refers in his own writings to Peter/Cephas and to James, Jesus' brother as well as to "The Twelve". (Was "The Twelve" a generic reference to a ruling body? Was it literally twelve guys named in the Gospels? I don't know) So they presumably existed. I don't find it plausible that they created the Jesus character, or that Paul created them just to give himself an antagonist. No, I view Paul as someone who always thought he was the smartest person in the room. I'll assume for the sake of discussion that he had some kind of vision and ran with it. So, if their were original followers of Jesus still around, how did he get away with it?
It is an undisputed fact of history that there were multiple varieties of Christianity a generation or two after Jesus' time. We have Paul's testimony in his letters that already 20 years after the crucifixion there were multiple factions. Is it unbelievable that Paul's faction, based as it was on converting the more numerous Gentiles, would outcompete the groups that maintained adherence to Jewish practices, including circumcision and complex dietary laws? The fact that he never met Jesus and converted before ever meeting a real follower of Jesus (except to persecute them, by his own admission) apparently was no bar to his version of Christianity becoming the seed around which the dominant Catholic/Orthodox churches grew.
In one of Paul's letters he makes the point that if Jesus didn't really live and die and rise from the dead, then our faith would be in vain. So he at least believed Jesus really existed! A counter argument can be made that Paul, in his epistles, makes no mention of any details of Jesus' life that we later read about in the Gospels (Gospels first appear around 70 CE, Paul began writing around 50 CE) and for that reason was making it all up. Of course, Paul didn't live in Judea or Galilee, but in what we call Asia Minor, modern Turkey. It's not inconceivable that while he was familiar with Christians prior to his conversion, he wasn't in a circle where the oral stories were circulating, or just didn't think the biographical details were all that important compared to the fact of the redemptive nature of his death and resurrection.
At any rate, there are good arguments pro and con and bad arguments pro and con for the existence of Jesus, or at least someone upon whom the Biblical Jesus was based. However, I long ago found the reasons for going beyond that and accepting the supernatural, spiritual, aspects of the Bible to be unpersuasive.
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