Can't tell if serious, or poe...

First, accepting a video on face value is not the best way to go about finding historical facts. Just because he's a Yale professor does not mean every word he says is the full truth, unbiased, researched and tested. He is a professor of Religious studies. His bachelors degree (B.S. in Music Education) is from Abilene Christian University. He received a Masters in Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. He did receive a Ph.D. from Yale, but it seems fairly clear that he has much to gain personally by dispelling the idea that Jesus may not have existed, especially to himself. If you look at the books he's written, they are not as much critiques of christianity as a promotion of it (Slavery as Salvation being one). His thesis at Yale was, “Slave of Christ, Slave of All; Paul's Metaphor of Slavery and 1 Corinthians 9." As his publications seem to talk mostly about validating or explaining certain controversial topics in the bible, everything on his CV would express a serious bias towards christianity as being true in every respect. I'm sure he is fantastically knowledgable about his subject, but he is claim cannot be accepted on face value. His video doesn't do much to dispel this, showing an overemphasis on the bible as a historical document and looking at scholars well after Jesus' supposed life.

He even says, "When we talk about history, we're not talking about the past, we're talking about an account of the past." This is, of course true. He goes on to say that you can't get a full picture of the history because we can only get a basic picture based off text. He even says that the historical Jesus cannot be found in history because he isn't in written history, and we cannot go back in time. However, this does not lay credence to the claim he did exist. Saying we can't prove he never existed doesn't prove that he did.

Saying you can construct an historical Jesus, comparing it to past presidents or rulers of ancient empires, is ridiculous. These things were far more documented and have far more evidence to prove their existence than Jesus. Jesus is never mentioned by any contemporary writers or historians, even though he seems to have made a huge impact based off the claims made by the bible, and even Paul says, "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." Paul, the first reference to Jesus, coming decades after his supposed death, says he didn't even learn this through word of mouth. This is what the gospels are based off of, and even they have huge differences between in regards to who he was, what his philosophies were, how he died, etc., which show that each writer has a specific goal and ideology he is pushing through the words. Looking at the life of Paul, whether or not he existed, makes his claims even more suspect.

Here is a well researched paper about myths about Jesus, specifically how people think the idea he didn't exist is ridiculous. I assume you'll probably look at it the same way I looked at your video, so here also is r/atheism's partcial culmination of history and literacy analysis. I don't expect you to read any of that, though there is a lot of information there, in general, and a lot specifically on whether or not Jesus existed.

Basically, there is no record of this supposedly highly influence character in history. The only evidence for his life came from writers decades later, who had never been around him. If you look at Bart Ehrman's lecture about Misquoting Jesus, you'll see how the texts differ from each other in story lines and depiction of the character, along with how certain conversations only make sense if spoken in greek, specifically one which centers around the confusion of what Jesus is saying based on a double meaning of a word. When jesus was born and when he died are also suspect to variation between the texts. The kings he was said to have lived under and died under differ, showing a period of a hundred years he would have had to live over to meet all the timeline, and he would have had to be born and to die multiple times to match the accounts. Also, there were many characters similar to Jesus. Here is a video discussing this, which exposes a severe contradictions in his life within the first minute.

I'm not saying I know he never existed, I'm saying that there is no evidence to express that he did. Anyone who tells you there is evidence is either lying or fooling themselves. The texts that came decades after are no more proof of his existence than the Terminator movies are to the terminator. And, saying I would be more inclined to believe that he existed if we don't make any assumptions of miracles made, as espoused in the texts, would be disingenuous. That would be like saying I believe the could have terminator existed if you remove the time travel and the whole robot thing, and that his running around killing and blowing things up was just never reported by anyone. No, it's far more likely that Jesus was a fictional character.

Also, the claim that, "All reputable historians agree that Jesus did in fact exist," is false. Typing it in bold doesn't make it any more valid (linking it to a site could have, but I bet anyone on r/atheism could find serious error in whatever group was making that claim). You might be right that the majority of scholars believe he existed, but truth is not ruled by the majority. Further, this claim seems far to broad. You should be making the claim that all historians of that period agree, and not just the ones in America. Still, this is wrong. Also, while many may assume he existed, they did not necessarily look into the evidence for his existence and are just accepting it as truth. Wanting to believe that he existed isn't going to make him exist, and wanting the people who say he did to be right isn't going to make them right. You need to accept that their is very little evidence for his existence, and what is available is highly contradictory.

I feel what I wrote was sufficient, at least in providing a reason for my strong skepticism. While I could certainly provide more information on the subject, I feel like it would be a pointless effort on my part to accumulate more information on the topic because you wouldn't read it anyway. I've already provided enough information here for you to ignore, why add to the pile?