Did Jesus really exist?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,182341,00.html

This is interesting.  An Italian priest is being taken to court to prove the existence of Jesus Christ.  Luigi Cacioli, a life-long atheist, has filed a legal complaint against the priest for "abuse of polular belief" and "impersonation" in which someone gains by attributing a false name to someone.

I'm not a historical scholar, but from my understanding the historical evidence for Jesus' existence is rather strong.  The article cites Favius Josephus' "Jewish Antiquities" dated within the first century.  There are also Pliny and Tacitus as ancient historical sources.  In addition, there are the overwhelming amount of surviving biblical manuscripts some of which can be dated to within a few centuries of Christ.  The biblical record, of course, makes much mention of the historical person of Jesus.  And then there is the whole difficulty of explaining the rise of the Christian religion, which began on the basis of an actual historical person called Jesus who died and rose from the dead and appeared to many witnesses.  (See 1 Corinthians 15:1-8)

For more on the historical evidence for Jesus see William Lane Craig’s article online at:
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html

For a dissenting opinion on the issue you can check out our friends at infidels.org:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/historicity.html
They don’t know what they’re talking about, but, hey, at least they try real hard!!