Disclaimer: I do not know much about the academical (or otherwise) value of this report, but I think it is an interesting subject nonetheless. The title does not imply or suggest anything outside of this article or what this specific author argues.

The authors arguments:

• Jesus never actually existed, but is instead a fictional character, made up to give followers of the religion founded in his name a central icon worthy of their worship.

• Only one of the 126 texts examined contains any mention of Jesus — and that, he says, is a forgery. That text is the first-century history book The Jewish Wars by the Roman historian Josephus Flavius, who wrote his work in the year 95 CE.

  • Despite making his home just one mile from Jesus’s supposed hometown of Nazareth, Josephus appears totally unaware of the famous miracle worker who later went to Jerusalem where he became such a political threat that the Romans found it necessary to execute him by crucifixion.
  • The few mentions of Jesus in The Jewish Wars, were added by later editors, not by Josephus himself, the author argues.

• Despite the remarkable feats Jesus is alleged to have performed and the great deal of political unrest caused by his arrival in Jerusalem, not a single writer from the time and place of Jesus’s life finds that Jesus so much as rates a footnote.

• The Dead Sea Scrolls, also known as the Qumran texts, also contain no mention of Jesus.

• The Apostle Paul, the New Testament figure credited with spreading the new religion that came to be called “Christianity” shortly after the supposed death of Jesus, never says that Jesus was a a real person — even in the Bible itself.

“Paul is unaware of the virgin mother, and ignorant of Jesus’ nativity, parentage, life events, ministry, miracles, apostles, betrayal, trial and harrowing passion, (...) Paul knows neither where nor when Jesus lived, and considers the crucifixion metaphorical.”

• The invention of a mythical figure for followers of the cult to rally around gave the early Christians the strength to survive, according to this theory

• When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not, and Paul, Marcion, Athenagoras and Matthew with a tetralogy of opposing Christs, the silence from Qumran and Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions, I must conclude that Christ is a mythical character.”

The claim that Jesus, the messianic figure at the center of the world’s largest religion, Christianity, was simply a fictional character is not a new one:

• Another "recent" advocate of the “Mythical Jesus” believes that Christ was invented by the Romans as propaganda to pacify the public.

• CNN: "The Jesus debate: Man vs. myth"

• Nigel Barber: If Jesus Never Existed, Religion May Be Fiction

• "Historicity of Jesus": The "historicity of Jesus" concerns whether Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical figure, whether the episodes portrayed in the gospels can be confirmed as historical events as opposed to myth, legend, or fiction, and the weighing of the evidence relating to his life