RationalWiki is a specific tertiary source with a certain bias. That bias is very evident when you read this article.

The short version of it all, essentially: all the evidence in the world (thus far amassed) hoping to be be able to lend plausible confirmation (or, at times, even general support) to the case for a historical Jesus leaves much to be desired. Yes, it leaves much to be desired. I would say all ancient historians feel that the data available to them leaves much to be desired.

Two immediate issues strike me about this page. Firstly, attempting to do history under the framework of science. History isn’t science and it’s not a science. I find this issue prevalent among people who think that all knowledge is scientific and knowledge that isn’t scientific isn’t knowledge. Philosophically this is untenable, since the scientific method is not itself provable by the scientific method and is a form of presupposition. Methodologically this is untenable since history is not a discipline subject to experimentation. You cannot run repeatable experiments with the data of historical investigation.

Secondly, the page quotes Jesus-mythicist writers without any serious critique, I mean people like Carrier, Price, etc.. Within historical circles these writers are viewed as cranks. Are all their ideas or writings irretrievably bad? No, of course not. But a lack of critical historical engagement with these writers, who tend in the conspiracy-theory direction of reasoning, suggests a form of bias that misunderstands historical scholarship and fundamentally misunderstands history as a discipline.

I find it interesting that several times they refer to “peer reviewed scholarly published On the Historicity of Jesus”. Why? Yes, it was a peer-reviewed book, published by a scholarly imprint associated with a very minimalist school. The reinforcement of its peer-reviewed status is a kind of appeal to authority probably because Carrier is known for producing a lot of non-peer-reviewed material that isn’t taken seriously. Certainly Carrier can do historical research and has produced some peer-reviewed material, but a lot of it isn’t.

On the Christ/Chrestus issue, there is some debate, but I think this article is pushing very hard to raise as many possible variations of other theories to generate ‘doubt by number of possibilities’. i.e., suggest enough variations of possibilities, and one option begins to seem very less supportable.

In fact, the word χριστω (christ) appears in the Old Testament[85] but is translated literally as "anointed" or "anointed one" in many English Bibles to hide this.[86]

This is not even the proper text for Christ in Greek (Χριστός), which does appear in the OT; the translation as “anointed one” is not an attempt to ‘hide this’, it’s a very legitimate translation choice. The reason for translating it ‘Christ’ in the new testament has to do with new testament usage patterns and historical legacies of bible translation; not an agenda.

Never mind that as the cargo cults in general and John Frum show, not only does a religious cult not need a founder but the cult can latch onto the idea that a person founded their religion regardless of that person actually doing so, such as is the case with the Rusefel (Roosevelt) and Johnson Cargo Cults.

The continued comparisons with cargo cults is unfortunate, as well. Cargo cults are an interesting religious phenomenon worth studying in their own right. They do not, in my view, make a great set of comparative religious phenomena for the origins of Christianity though. This is a common appeal by Jesus a-historicists for how the idea of Jesus arose.

I think I’ve read enough of the article. As I went on, it became more and more clear that there is a very heavy reliance on Carrier to frame a lot of the arguments. It does raise a lot of the evidence, but it lack investigative depth. On the pro-Jesus side it often engages apologists, and rarely engages a serious range of pro-historical Jesus scholarship at any depth. On the a-historical and mythicist side, it relies very heavily on Carrier.

tl, dr: go and read some books, and Carrier 2014 and Remsburg 1909 are not enough.

I don't think so. To be honest, I don't think I have ever seen a more dishonest article on RationalWiki (and trust me, that's saying something). I'll cite their stuff in italics and attempt to show why I think it's not trustworthy. (1) While it is true there are arguments regarding the existence of Nazareth in the 1st century, its existence (or nonexistence) wouldn't prove (or disprove) the existence of Jesus They add, somewhat contradicting their earlier sentences, 'Scholars generally have agreed that Nazareth did exist during the time of Jesus, however, with due skepticism their scholarship, we find that they are strangely not as highly qualified as the few scholars who believe that Nazareth did not exist then'. They assume that the consensus is that Nazareth did not exist during the Time of Jesus. I know of no scholar who takes this view anymore (it was a theory back then, but it's been debunked by top scholars like Ehrman). And is it not strange that the scholars who believe Nazareth did not exist at that time are somehow more qualified than the numerous ones who believe it did ? Once again, no citation is given, but I don't think they could find a source to back up this ludicrous claim.

2. stated above, arguments regarding Jesus as a historical person tend to improperly mix reductive and triumphalist theories. So instead of debating the existence of an ordinary man one gets a lot of nonsense about miracles, earthquake, and darkness (any argument involving Thallos). Interestingly enough, there are many scholars, ranging from non-religious to religious who agree that a historical Jesus did exist. We will demonstrate why this means nothing, and why a deferral to certain scholars is nothing but a logical fallacy. The term "scholar" can be a weasel word. It's worth asking the question "Who is this scholar, and what are his investments in the issue?" If he is a theologian, then it is worth asking "Would this theologian ever be able to even say that the Christ did not exist, or would his theological underpinnings prevent him from saying that?" When apologists quote scholars or 'experts' of Jesus' historicity, they are often quoting theologians whose focus is theology, and whose vestment in the argument is clear.[213] Further, those who have a bias towards not challenging the theology as they know it have often preselected the texts that are "canon" and "authentic"[214] This section was especially laughable, and was written as a 'counter-apologetic' to the fact that the vast majority of scholars who study the subject, whether religious or not, believe Jesus did exist. According to them, 'scholar' is a weasel word, and the vast majority of people who support the historical Jesus have biases (yet Hector Avalos, Robert Price and Carrier, their main sources of data, are somehow exempted from having biases) or are theologians who have 'clear investments in the issue'. The claim that a deferral to the authority of 'certain' scholars means nothing almost comes across as satire, since they themselves are deferring to the authority of one historian who is not even a New Testament Historian. Apparently, according to Richard Carrier, the methodology used in Jesus studies is much lower standard than other historical figures - although no citation is given for this claim, which to me seems like they made it out of wholecloth. If anything I would expect it to be higher, given that a religious figure almost 'always' has extraordinary claims attached to their names which must be diligently separated from history by the critical historian.

3)1) The only known possible contemporary is Paul (Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians and Philemon) who not only writes some 20 years after the events but seems more intent on the Jesus in his own head than any Jesus who actually preached in Galilee. In fact, even though in his own account Paul meets "James, brother of the Lord" we get no details of Jesus' life, not even references to the famous sermons or miracles. And in any case, Paul never met or even saw Jesus in person. The Gospels are anonymous documents written sometime between 70 CE to 140 CE and there are no references to any of them until the early 2nd century. "A viable theory of historicity for Jesus must therefore instead resemble a theory of historicity for Apollonius of Tyana or Musonin Rufus or Judas the Galilean (to list a few very famous men who escaped the expected record more or less the same degree Jesus did.)"[227] The claim that Paul 'seems more intent on Jesus in his head' is flatly ridiculous. How likely is it that he would be sending out letters about some fictitious person, whom he 'gave' a brother? During his debate with Carrier new Testament scholar Mark Goodacre states that Paul actually did know stuff about Jesus teachings (I can't remember which, but it's on the show Unbelievable, if you would like to see it). The Gospels being written as late as 140 AD is not a view given the vast majority of scholars....although perhaps I shouldn't complain about that since it says 'between'

4. Josephus (ca. 37 - 100 CE; oldest Greek copy is 11th century though there is a 5th century version in Latin): The Jewish historian Josephus is claimed to be earliest non-Christian to mention Jesus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (ca. 93-94 CE) with the two references being referred to as the Testimonium Flavianum and the "Jamesian Reference". However, there is much debate regarding how much of the Testimonium Flavianum (if any of it) was written by Josephus[140] as there is no reference to it before the 4th century [141][142] While Carrier use Bayes’s Theorem to argue that both passages are not from the hand of Josephus the consensus is that some part of the Testimonium Flavianum and all of the "Jamesian Reference" are genuine[143], but based on Carrier's examples of Ned Ludd and John Frum even if the entire passage as we have it was written by Josephus it would still not show Jesus existed as a human being simply because it is too brief and there is no consensus on exactly what parts of the Testimonium Flavianum are actually from Josephus. This was under the section that attempts to counter the point writers mentioned Jesus. I don't know how it being brief somehow devalues it as a source of information, but according RationalWiki it somehow does. According to Bart Ehrman, “It is certainly worth knowing that the most prominent Jewish historian of the first century knew at least something about Jesus—specifically that he was a teacher who allegedly did wonderful deeds, had a large following, and was condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. This account confirms some of the most important aspects of Jesus’ life and death as recounted in the Gospels.” (Jesus Interrupted, p. 150) Use RationalWiki to get a good laugh or two - I would certainly agree it can be downright hilarious at times - but I would take a bag of grain of salt when using it as a source of info on Jesus' life. I hope my answer helped :) PS: The guys on RationalWiki actually think this article is good, so they talk and try to discuss on how to improve it. Here's for more laughs! .

In this subreddit, people have asked for historical evidence for Jesus a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/religion#wiki_did_jesus_exist.3F