I'm having an interesting debate with someone on-line. This individual hasn't declared whether he/she be a Theist or an Atheist but the debate is about whether or not Jesus, Biblically and/or historically, existed.
This is an interesting proposition as my opponent quotes Bart Ehrman as being a Jesus historicist whereas I myself am an avowed Jesus mythicist.
Bart Ehrman has spent most of his academic career disputing the authenticity of the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles (only six of the thirteen Letters of Paul are considered authentic whilst the other seven are considered forgeries [there are scholarly propositions that the whole thirteen are forgeries]). My opponent only offers Bart Ehrman's academic qualifications and asserts that as all of academia professes that Jesus did actually exist, then I must be alone in my position and that is proof that I am wrong. I have debated the Flavius Testimonium (Flavius Josephus), the writings of Tacitus, letter No 10 of Pliny the Younger, and all of the tenuous 'evidence' of Jesus' existence outside of the Bible. I have enlightened him/her of the manipulation by Philo of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea (aka Eusebius Pamphili) on Emperor Constantine and the first Council of Nicea and also the Council of Constantinople and how Christianity and Jesus were man made by the aforementioned and that the Holy Trinity was agreed upon by the Councils as the only way to reconcile the problems in scripture. I have examined the Pauline Epistles and Paul only proffers Jesus as a celestial being without existence. Bart Ehrman in his book Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth uses the Bible as his source evidence for the proof of Jesus' existence as we are all agreed that outside of the Bible there is no inference to the existence of Jesus other than which has been forged and interpolated into the writings of Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger etc. So Ehrman uses the Bible as a source yet has spent most of his academic life showing that the Bible consists of texts that refer to Jesus having been forged, interpolated, manipulated etc. So confirmation bias and circular reasoning at its best - using something that has been discredited as proof of what you want it to say whilst it actually doesn't. Having read Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle, Robert M. Price's The Case Against The Case For Jesus, Richard Carrier's Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, and his On The Historicity Of Jesus, Raphael Lataster's There Was No Jesus, There Is No God, and his Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists, I am very firm on my position as the matter of Jesus being purely mythical and didn't actually exist either historically or Biblically. So I know I am on foundations of rock and not on foundations of sand (Matthew 4:24-27).

So my question is this:

Do I need to get out more????