Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman s Did Jesus Exist?

When New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman published DID JESUS EXIST? THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT FOR JESUS OF NAZARETH, he not only attempted to prove the historical reality of a man called *Jesus of Nazareth*, he sharply criticized scholars who have sought to develop a new paradigm in the study of Christian origins scholars who have claimed that Jesus was a mythical, not historical, figure, and that the traditional, Jesus-centered paradigm for studying the origins of Christianity must be replaced by an actual science of Christian origins. In the present volume, some of those scholars respond to Ehrman s treatment of their research and findings, showing how he has either ignored, misunderstood or misrepresented their arguments. They present evidence that *Jesus of Nazareth* was no more historical than Osiris or Thor. Several contributors question not only the historicity of *Jesus of NAZARETH,* they present evidence that the site of present-day Nazareth was not inhabited at the time Jesus and his family should have been living there.