I’m an atheist, born Jewish, and even I think Jesus was a historical figure who almost certainly existed. fwiw, my mom who is a near-east archaeologist also believes this.

@mean_field_zane Is mere existence of Jesus in history a question that is to archaeology/history academics as le string theory is to physics academics in the sense we've already moved past this question like decades ago but the public knowledge of what the field is doing hasn't updated at all?

@scheminglunatic @mean_field_zane It's worse than that in the sense that academics never doubted the existence of the person, whereas physicists did have a period when they considered string theory