Bart Ehrman is one of the world's leading scholars on the history of ancient Judea during the time of Jesus, with a focus on the development of the early Christian community. He is by his own account not a Christian. Yet is his refutation of persons who contend that the Christian proclamation is fictional or analogical to other ancient myths is just devastating.
For example, the charge that Jesus is himself a fictional figure:
“Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.”Read the whole thing.
