The first point to note is the lack of any clear evidence that Christ did in fact exist... If there were any, we can be sure that it would be trumpeted by Christians at every opportunity.
This web page looks at early writings on Christianity, and discusses problems with the "historicity" of Jesus.
The most critical line here, of course, applies both ways: "What on earth could possess otherwise intelligent and educated people to be so uncritical in their beliefs regarding the existence of Jesus?" Christians, as a rule, accept the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels without question. They would, one imagines, question miraculous accounts of any other historical figure, even if there was no doubt whatsoever that the person actually existed. With Jesus Christ, however, there remains the intriguing possibility that the person himself wass nothing more than an amalgum of myths.
This position is supported by finds of documents from the Qumran ("Dead Sea Scrolls") sites, dated to before 100 BCE, which contain teachings similar to those found in the Gospels. [sm] [mj]
Religious Tolerance continue:
"Conservative theologians date the gospels much earlier. The Scofield Bible asserts that Matthew was written by a tax collector by that name who was mentioned in Matthew 10:13. Dr. Scofield accepted what he referred to as the traditional date of 37 CE. If the authorship and date are correct, then the gospel represents convincing support that the author was a disciple of Jesus and an eyewitness to his 1st century CE ministry." [rt]
However, this "37 CE" date is not accepted by any scholars outside of the most extreme Christian Fundamentalism [es].
Some scholars, like Alvar Ellegård, argue that "Jesus Christ" was a myth that developed from the "Teacher of Righteousness", a figure from second century BCE Qumran:
"Ellegård believes that first century Christianity developed within the Jewish matrix of the Essene Church of God: "Thanks to the 'evangelisation' carried out by the earliest apostles, Paul and his contemporaries, the communities were made to realise that the great teacher and prophet whom they took to be the founder of their Church, and who they believed had been dead for over a hundred years, had now been seen in Heaven, and should be regarded as the Messiah, their Saviour. In the Qumran texts - largely unknown to the Diaspora communities - he was never named, but referred to by the title Teacher of Righteousness. But after the apostles had been overwhelmed by the experience of seeing him in Heaven, they began to use instead, exclusively, the name Jesus, a name meaning, roughly, Salvation, and therefore very appropriate for somebody they had now come to look upon primarily as their Saviour. The designation Teacher of Righteousness disappears completely." (Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ, p. 120)"
"In addition to arguing that the earliest Christians believed their Jesus to have lived in the past (the time of the Teacher of Righteousness depicted in the Dead Sea Scrolls), Ellegård argues for a redating of several Christian documents. Ellegård argues that 1 Clement, the Pastor of Hermas, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of John were contemporary to Paul. Ellegård argues that Ignatius (c. 110 CE) represents a halfway point between Paul and the Gospels, which were written well into the second century. Ellegård concludes that the story of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by Pilate, was a fictional construction." [ej]
Read independently of the Gospels, the teachings of Paul [qp] and Hebrews [jh] do not appear to teach of Christ as a historical figure.
The Oxyrhnchus 1224 fragment (c. 100-120 CE) tells of Jesus "appearing in a vision", rather than in physical form [gn].
The first important Christian sect were the Gnostics [jh] - later exterminated by the early Church. They taught that Jesus Christ was not a historical figure, but "the god within".
The early Christian Minucius Felix wrote that the crucifixion, the resurrection; and even the existence of Jesus Christ as a physical person were "abominations" against Christianity.
The second century Christian apologist Justin Martyr repeatedly pointed out the similarities between "Christ" and other mythological god-men. His explanation was that "demons" had planted these earlier myths to make the story of Christ seem unbelievable.
The second century pagan Celsus ridiculed the belief in Christ as an historical figure: "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians -- and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God."
The only undoubted "historical" references to Jesus are contained within the Bible. All other alleged external sources are either possible forgeries, or based upon Christian teachings [ss].
Jones and others have concluded that two centuries of Biblical research give a clear indication of Christianity developing from a set of vague teachings in the first century CE, to a belief based on the actual physical resurrection of "the Son of God" some time in the second century [qj].
