An alternative, unfalsifiable hypothesis is that someone existed who played a causal role in the founding of Christianity but that they were so boring they left no trace in history and hence bore very little resemblance to the figure described in the Bible.
Someone—many people—played a causal role in the founding of Christianity, since Christianity was, in fact, founded [1]. Does modern scholarship have anything to say about what did happen to start Christianity?
[1] I have just thought up an imaginary Christian heresy that claims that Christianity was in fact never founded at all. God planted it as an already well-developed sapling some time in the late 1st or early 2nd century “AD”, giving everyone involved false memories of how it had started. That’s why there’s no historical evidence from Jesus’ lifetime.
Paul of Tarsus is assumed to have existed. The only evidence for him is his works in the Bible—seven written by the same author, a few more by this author with others’ text mixed in, a few clearly not written by this author—but this is evidence that one person, who called himself Paul, wrote these things. I suppose it’s possible he was an entirely fictional construct, but scholars tend to go with “dude wrote this stuff.” Much like Socrates (and unlike Jesus), his existence is secondary to his body of work.
Someone—many people—played a causal role in the founding of Christianity, since Christianity was, in fact, founded [1]. Does modern scholarship have anything to say about what did happen to start Christianity?
[1] I have just thought up an imaginary Christian heresy that claims that Christianity was in fact never founded at all. God planted it as an already well-developed sapling some time in the late 1st or early 2nd century “AD”, giving everyone involved false memories of how it had started. That’s why there’s no historical evidence from Jesus’ lifetime.
Paul of Tarsus is assumed to have existed. The only evidence for him is his works in the Bible—seven written by the same author, a few more by this author with others’ text mixed in, a few clearly not written by this author—but this is evidence that one person, who called himself Paul, wrote these things. I suppose it’s possible he was an entirely fictional construct, but scholars tend to go with “dude wrote this stuff.” Much like Socrates (and unlike Jesus), his existence is secondary to his body of work.