From a historical-critical methodology, I'm not sure if we could ascertain exactly what Jesus said. There are scholars such as John Paul Meier, who authored the Marginal Jew series, that would contain more information about this subject matter.
>But to your basic question, no, I do not believe a person was tortured and murdered to forgive me of a sin I was not alive to have committed, and then that person was reanimated back to life after 3 days in a tomb.
I don't know why you're entangling all these issues together. I didn't ask if you believed in the resurrection. I asked you if you think a person named Jesus existed and was put to death by crucifixion.
Part of your logic here is that Jesus quoting Psalm 22 is made up because it's an allusion that doesn't make sense if it actually happened.
Given this logic, what is behind people inventing the Jesus story of crucifixion? What is this alluding to?
Part of the reasons scholars are practically certain that Jesus did die by crucifixion, is precisely because it's such an unnatural story to invent. If you're going to invent a god wholesale, you don't invent that he was defeated by the Romans in a humiliating way. You write that he conquered a city, or was assumed directly into heaven after causing the death of Nero, or something.
Rather, it looks much more like Christians are rallying behind a historical event yet saying it was intended to happen. That's FAR more likely than inventing up embarrassing details, only for you to have to explain them to people.
I think your problems with the gospels are FAR more fundamental than whether or not Jesus had ever read the book of Psalms before. It goes all the way down. I fear you've been listening to people like Richard Carrier and assuming their ideas make sense. It's just shocking history. I would urge you to apply your criteria of objective methods to reach a conclusion. Mythicism is absolutely the worst of the worst methods.
Something like A Marginal Jew is far more robust than Carrier's cosmic space sperm ideas.
>Could you please explicitely present those "sound arguments" here and not just keep claiming you have them?
Honestly, no, I cannot explicitly present it here in any depth. It's a very complex topic that isn't easily summarized. I can tell you I have no ax to grind; I'm quite content accepting scholarly consensus.
>Paul is not a source on Jesus whatsoever.
While he's no eyewitness, Paul interacted with people who knew Jesus firsthand. There are actually some historical details to be gleaned from that.
But yes, sorry; I cannot go into it. If you are interested you should read some books with a little more meat on them than Ehrman. This one is quite good:
http://www.amazon.com/Marginal-Jew-Rethinking-Historical-Problem/dp/0385264259