http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/200 ... cal-jesus/
What he ends up doing instead is writing an essay on Haile Selassie, which comports with an argument for the mere plausibility of a historical Jesus.
Yes, the writer by this circuitous, verbose route has established the possibility that a historical Jesus existed, on analogy with other historical figures whose mythology has taken a turn for the euhemerist. Do I need to explain how this utterly fails to disprove the "position we have no adequate reason to believe that the gospels refer to a historical figure called Jesus at all"?What the strange case of Haile Selassie demonstrates is that it is perfectly possible for a real historical figure to become so overlaid with mythology and religious notions that very little factual historical data remains. I contend that the same principle applies to the historical Jesus. That there was a historical figure, most likely a Jewish apocalyptic preacher, whose story was greatly embellished by devotees who misrepresented and exaggerated him in many ways seems to me entirely plausible. That there was no historical Jesus, and that the gospel accounts in their entirety are mythological texts that do not – and were never intended to – refer however obliquely to an actual historical figure seems to me an argument that takes scepticism a step further than it can justifiably go.
This is the kind of thing that so often passes for argumentation on this subject. Somebody puffs up a few thousand words on to a page, prefaces and concludes it with some disparaging words about "mythicists," and the audience is expected to join the author in jeering at these lost souls. Practically speaking, it doesn't even seem to matter to some people what the body of the article actually says. As long as the right conclusion is reached, an article like this can be cited as yet another "refutation" of the "mythicists."