"Did Christ exist? Is the life story of the founder of Christianity the product of human sorrow, imagination, and hope- a myth comparable to the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and Mithras? Early in the eighteenth century the circle of Bolingbroke, shocking even Voltaire, privately discussed the possibility that Jesus had never lived. Volney propounded the same doubt in his Ruins of Empire in 1791. Napoleon, meeting the German scholar Wieland in 1808, asked him no petty question of politics or war, but did he believe in the historicity of Christ?"
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CHAPTER XXVI: Jesus: 4 B.C.-A.D. 30, Part 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization
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The Story of Civilization
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