A thought on the attempts to deny that Jesus existed:
Could it be that the character of Jesus in the Gospels is so compelling and so attractive that many atheists feel they can't afford to admit he existed?
It's as if - if they admit that he really existed, he must be what he's claimed to be.
See novelist Anne Rice's description of her research on the reliability of the NT:
As you did your research, what was your impression of modern biblical scholarship?
As I plunged into modern Bible scholarship, I assumed the skeptics would be right, but I soon discovered that their “late date” theories of gospel creation were flimsy, full of assumptions, and that a dislike of Jesus ran through many of their arrogant and pompous books. The field came across to me as a huge scandal. There were believers and non-believers claiming to be Jesus scholars, and the skeptics, the famous Jesus Seminar, had been throwing out some outrageous nonsense to get the attention of the public. I have never seen sloppier scholarship in any field of study than what I saw in so-called biblical scholarship.
I soon realized that the skeptical scholars had very little evidence at all of their extravagant theories and they were anti-supernaturalists.
But let me mention my discovery of solid scholarship by believers, especially N.T. Wright and John A.T. Robinson. These men worked a miracle on my thinking as they offered brilliant response to the non-believers, and, perhaps because of the attacks of the skeptics, these men wrote very solid and convincing books.
How did your scholarly research affect your personal quest for Jesus the Lord?
My own biblical scholarship has drawn me closer to the Lord. I have found the gospels to be utterly convincing first-person witness to Jesus, and my studies have led me to conclude that the tradition regarding the writing of the gospels is in fact the truth.
John bar Zebedee wrote the books attributed to him; Matthew the tax collector did write Matthew; Luke is the physician who traveled with Paul; and Mark did transcribe Peter’s sermons. My evaluation of this involved intense study of the Scripture itself for the “voice” of the person writing the document, and studies of the work of Bauchkham and Hengel and John A.T.Robinson as mentioned above.
The time I have spent reading Scripture has deepened my sense of obligation to our blessed Savior and my intense desire to write books for Him. He is alive for me in the pages of the Bible, far more than I ever dreamed he would be when I began my own quest in 2002.
I feel that my meditation on the gospels and my reading of ancient historians have all deepened my sense of the world in which Jesus likely moved from day to day. I feel myself drawing closer and closer to our Lord as I work, which is both a good thing and also a frightening and sometimes intimidating thing.
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