Will the real JC stand up? SJ takes on the gospels

The Third Objection

My third objection was basically the poor evidence for the gospel Jesus. Given what it is possible to preserve or record for historical figures, what we have for the gospel Jesus is actually quite lacking.  I've used Julius Caesar as my benchmark, as despite being a minor historical character by Christian standards, we seem to have some quite good records.

To stop things getting too tedious, I've summarised the responses from Stephanie here:

The Tally Sheet

Objection	SJ Rebuttal	Analysis
...the gospels written well after the alleged events	Though scholars disagree on the precise dates in which the gospels were written due to their presuppositions, we have good evidence to suggest that the vast majority of the New Testament was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D…	That we have difficulty identifying even when the gospels are written is prima facie evidence they’re problematic! Mark is typically dated at 65-70 CE, Luke and Matthew 80-85 CE and John 90-100 CE. However you want to look at it, the gospels are composed 1-3 generations later than the alleged life of Jesus.
…they contradict each other in key details. The nativity of Luke and Mark Matthew describe entirely different events. (Oops, why did I write Mark?)	Next, I will turn to Kaimatai’s assertion that the gospels contradict one another. The gospels do not contradict one another on the most important points related to Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. … J. Warner Wallace examined the gospel accounts forensically, applying his years of work as a police detective to good use.* He states, “The accounts puzzled together just the way one would expect from independent eyewitnesses. When one gospel eyewitness described an event and left out a detail that raised a question, this question was unintentionally answered by another gospel writer (who, by the way, often left out a detail that was provided by the first gospel writer).” Some of the many examples Wallace provides are as follows: (deleted as not germane)	Red Herring Fallacy The nativity contradiction is not addressed. This is a key detail. The virgin birth and alleged divine origin of Jesus is important.  The nativity stories have Jesus born once, on two occasions, years apart!   False Authority Fallacy Alert! Wallace is not an historian. To pretend the gospel accounts are from independent eyewitnesses is every colour of stupid. They are hearsay accounts.  They’re not independent either. The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) all share the same source material! (Oh, and the resurrection stories have major problems)
Unlike Julius Caesar there are no writings of Jesus (Even Julius Caesar left stuff he wrote)	ignored	Not only did Caesar write the Gallic Wars, his authorship is confirmed in the contemporaneous letters of Cicero.  The battlefield of Alesia has been excavated and conforms to his account.
No contemporaneous historian, of which there were several in this era, noticed any of the fantastic things described in the gospels	ignored	Even later historians (Tacitus etc) who wrote much later, cannot corroborate the extraordinary stories of the gospels.
One feels an omniscient (all-knowing) deity would know this would reduce the confidence non-believers would have in the Jesus-mission	ignored

* Parenthetically, forensic techniques are employed when an event is know to have occurred. Like a murder. The life of the gospel Jesus (and I carefully say this to separate it from a possible historical Jesus) is a disputed event.  It's not a known event.  There's no point synthesising say, the different accounts of the resurrection, if the resurrection never happened.

Summary

There's not any way you can say my objections have been satisfied. This thing of just avoiding what I write and throw a lot of bible-talk at me, isn't how rebuttals work. It's just fail from start to finish.

Julius Caesar provides us with a good benchmark of what is possible. For an individual who is supposed to be more important than Caesar (at least according to Christianity), it's reasonable to expect something as good.  Julius Caesar gives us his own writing, confirmation from contemporaneous sources (like Cicero) and backings from archaeology (Alesia).  This just does not happen for the gospel Jesus.

Caesar also was recognised as a god in the Roman pantheon. This tells us that in ancient times, people had a low bar for what could be a deity.  That the claim to divinity was common.