Over the last few days, these two debates on the historicity of Jesus have popped up:

I just watched Richard Carrier’s friend Godless Engineer interview Jacob Berman on the Christ Myth theory.  I liked it very much and Berman said he thought some of the best evidence for the historical Jesus is 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 where Paul says:

14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last.

Clearly if Paul thought the Jews killed Jesus then Paul thought Jesus was a historical person who lived on earth, not a myth.  This is a heavily debated passage, but I’ve been arguing for a while in agreement with Paul specialist Prof. Benjamin White that the passage is authentic to Paul.  I really flesh that out in some of my recent Secular Frontier posts on the “The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus” collection of essays, particularly:

(16) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Class Conflict by Robert Myles

(20) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Death and Martyrdom by Michael Barber

(24) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Violence and Trauma by Nathan Shedd

Richard Carrier has his own interpretation/dismissal of the 1 Thessalonians passage here.

I don’t think Berman needs to make the Marcion case to make his argument, as my above links show.