When I first came across the following in Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian", a lecture he gave in 1927, I was surprised: "Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one." Now it seems very naive of me to have assumed a philosopher would say such a thing if he didn't have good reasons, but I do wonder what scholars he was thinking of who might have looked at the difficult historical question.
When I first came across the following in Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian", a lecture he gave in 1927, I was surprised: "Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one." Now it seems very naive of me to have assumed a philosopher would say such a thing if he didn't have good reasons, but I do wonder what scholars he was thinking of who might have looked at the difficult historical question.