The debate between me and Joe Hinman about the existence of Jesus has begun.

We are focusing on just the external (non-biblical) evidence.

Joe has published his positive case for the claim that:

…the external (not in Bible) evidence is strong enough to warrant belief in Jesus’ historicity.

Here is a link to Joe’s initial post that summarizes his positive case:

http://christiancadre.blogspot.hr/2016/06/debate-bradly-bowen-vs-joseph-hinman.html

Joe has divided his case into five arguments, four of which are based on specific external sources:

I. The Talmud

II. Papias

III. Josephus (mainly the brother passage)

IV. Polycarp

V. The web of historicity

I plan to respond to each of these arguments/sources with a separate post here at The Secular Outpost, so I plan to write five posts.

I believe that Joe will respond to my posts over on the Christian CADRE blog.

After Joe responds to my five posts (either with five posts or with one long post), I believe that we will write one more post each to wrap up the debate, summarizing the issues and arguments and what we think the debate has shown.