The claim that the Jesus of Christianity is a fictional character may sound a bit absurd at first. This is essentially the contention that I lay out in Deciphering the Gospels. But this position is actually much more widely supported by the scholarship than most people realize – even than I realized myself.
I provide a brief overview of the growing consensus among respected biblical scholars that the Gospel of Mark is an entirely fictional story here: Fictional Jesus Synthesis.
The case that I make in Deciphering the Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed is really just the logical extension of the realization that the Gospel of Mark is a fictional story. Some people may not fully appreciate what is meant by saying that the Gospel of Mark is a “fictional story”, but what this means is that the Gospel of Mark was never intended to convey any real facts about someone named Jesus. The entire story was fabricated by a single individual with no objective of creating a biography. The story is an allegory, and the writer himself knew that Jesus was not a real person just the same as Mark Twain knew that Huckleberry Finn wasn’t a real person. Once this fact is realized the entire framework of Christianity falls apart. That is, essentially, what my book is about.
I do believe that this assessment of the Gospel of Mark will inevitably win out because the data to support it is overwhelming. I also believe that once it becomes widely acknowledged that the Gospel of Mark is fictional the conclusion that the human Jesus is fictional will be inevitable as well.