Lately I’ve heard people attacking the veracity of the fairy tale book with statements like “Jesus wasn’t real” or it was a psy op operation by the Romans that got out of control. And I hate talking about reddit but it’s basically the atheism mods policy over there that Jesus wasn’t real.
I usually rely on the Wikipedia as my litmus test through life, which shouldn’t work in theory but is great in practice:
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Virtually all scholars agree that a Jewish man called Jesus of Nazareth did exist in Palestine in the 1st century CE. The contrary perspective, that Jesus was mythical, is regarded as a fringe theory.
Edit: My suggestion to any who would like to see my opinion changed (see above quote) is to get on the Wikipedia and work towards changing the page. My upvote goes to Flying Squid for reminding us “does not matter at all because that’s not who Christians worship”
Edit 2: practicality changed to practice
I guess the way I see it, it doesn’t matter if a person named Jesus existed or not. “Love your neighbor” is a good message, regardless of who said it. I think people get too bogged down in “proving” what they believe to be historical events portrayed in the Bible that they miss the point entirely. They see loving your neighbor as something to worry about once you’ve gotten the important parts out of the way: convincing everyone that Jesus came back from the dead and Mary was a virgin. If all you care about is “these historical events happened” and you don’t care about the message of the person you claim to worship, what’s the point?