“References to Jesus in Pagan Literature”

“Mythicism” — the notion not only that Jesus wasn’t divine but that he probably never existed at all — has become very popular among some online atheists and religious skeptics.  (It’s found little support among scholars in the relevant disciplines, whatever their religious views.  They tend, in my experience, to have no great patience for mythicism or mythicists.)

One of the arguments advanced by mythicists points to the lack of references to Jesus outside the New Testament.  Why, they ask, isn’t he mentioned in contemporary pagan historians?  Doesn’t that suggest that he’s not really historical?

Here’s a brief response to that argument supplied by Robert Boylan:

http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2016/03/references-to-jesus-in-pagan-literature.html

I’ve written a few brief newspaper columns that are relevant to the claims of mythicism:

“An agnostic’s argument that Jesus did exist”

“He was the Son of God, and one of us”

“The evidence for Jesus is early and powerful”

“Archaeology and the boyhood of Jesus in Nazareth”

“Recent scholarship and the search for the historical Jesus”