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<\/a><\/div>\nThe truth is that I am perfectly open to the possibility that Jesus might not have existed. If the evidence leads me there, I will go there. The problem is that the lack of certainty here, the lack of a persuasive explanation there, a significant disagreement among experts over there, all that does not make the existence of Jesus unlikely, any more than similar points about evolution somehow undermine the strength of that best-tested of scientific theories. Lack of evidence is simply lack of evidence \u2013 a good theory has to actually account for the evidence we do <\/em>have. Indeed, perhaps comparing mythicism and historicism to theories in the natural sciences will be helpful.\u00a0A theory is a framework within which to integrate, explain and account for a wide array of data. Both mainstream and history and mythicism claim to offer that. I certainly may have missed something important (who isn\u2019t capable of doing so?), but from my perspective, mythicism doesn\u2019t account in anything near as straightforward and plausible a manner with the relevant data as does mainstream scholarship on the historical Jesus.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/rockbaptist.endisinsight.com\/Images\/Content\/36\/11280.jpg\")
<\/a>What I\u2019m hearing from mythicists lately sounds like an ironically inverted altar call: only doubt, and\u00a0the truth\u00a0become clear. The problem is that I have<\/em> doubted and continue<\/em> to doubt. And it is skeptical, critical investigation of the evidence that persuades me that Jesus\u00a0almost certainly\u00a0existed, just as it has led me to accept that there are plenty of things in the New Testament Gospels that Jesus is alleged to have said and done which he almost certainly didn\u2019t do. The failure of mythicists to acknowledge that it is possible to genuinely question Jesus\u2019 existence and be persuaded by the evidence that he existed presumably explains why they have felt no need to offer a coherent, plausible account of Christian origins from a mythicist perspective. Like fideists in Christianity, the mythicist standpoint seems to say \u201cSimply doubt, and you will know the truth.\u201d Well, I have doubted, and doubt has not led me to mythicism, but to the conclusion that it is more likely that Jesus existed than that he didn\u2019t.<\/div>\n
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