Quote from stu:
The tiny Josephus / Jesus writing is not and most has been established as forgery anyway inserted by exuberant christians.
Even now the same sort of over excitable Christians grasp at a few lines of dubious text because there is actually no historicity for Jesus.
All history is fiction. We agree that Jesus was fictional, but for different reasons. You say Jesus was not a character in the story that you call history, and what i call fiction.
How many characters, of all the players on the world stage 2000 years ago, have the historical credentials that you require for them to be bona fide historical figures? Likely, 99% of the world's population did not exist historically, according to your requirements.
You are requiring that Jesus be included in the 1% of historical figures that have sufficient documentation to convince you that they existed historically. Why do you think Jesus should be included in the 1% of historical figures that are sufficiently documented according to your requirements? What, exactly, are your requirements again?
Admittedly, the legend of Jesus may not reflect what Jesus actually represented anymore than the legend of Santa Claus reflects the man *Nicholas of Bari* (St. Nick). Fallacious legends do not mean that the initial catalyst (the historical persona) did not appear on the world stage.
Jesus, like Socrates, did not leave many texts penned of his own hand. We know of Socrates chiefly through his students Plato and Xenophon. We may also know of Socrates through Aristophanes, whose play, "The Clouds" is said (by Plato) to have been a slander that led to the trial and execution of Socrates. Assuming Plato and Xenophon represented Socrates while Aristophanes misrepresented, we have historical precedence for literary controversy over a historical figure, who, coincidentally, was also a teacher of sorts.
Like Socrates, Jesus' teachings were controversial. Explosive is a better adjective to describe what was fundamentally theological nitro glycerine. And like Socrates, literature that both represented and misrepresented was generated to caricature what Jesus was all about.
Over time, fanatics giving allegiance to misrepresentation literature attacked what literature was more representative, or what disagreed with their theological positions. Suppose the believers of Aristophanes version of Socrates went out and burned every last text deriving from Plato and Xenophon. This is parable to what happened with the legend of Jesus.
Quote from stu:
Yet there is not one scrap of actual historical evidence in support of a historical Jesus.
Evidence of textual persecution is coming forth, for example, with the finding of the Gospel of Thomas, buried for it's own protection, somewhere in an Egyptian desert. What other reason, except textual persecution, would we find a library of books buried in a clay urn in the desert? Besides the Gospel of Thomas, scholars believe that the historically victorious versions of the legend of Jesus (the synoptic gospels) are somehow rooted in a source document ("Q") that cannot be found. Possibly, it reflected the tone of the Gospel of Thomas too much to be included in the evolving documentation which was becoming more and more hearsay as the earliest most original documents were being more and more expunged from the historical record. The net effect is that we have stories of Jesus that are so ambiguous, fictional, and far removed that we are tempted to question the very catalyst (historical persona) of those legends, whether such a person existed or not.
Do you really think that there were not any fanatical theological book burners in those days? And are you really expecting the highest standard of historical documentation to survive a hot climate of ideological warfare, a climate for which we have much evidence? Are you expecting that this warfare was fought fairly? Is it fair, for example, for literary adversaries to insert interpolations into other authors works in order to support a fanatical agenda? Certainly not. And yet, study of history suggests this was not only done, but done audaciously, extensively, and with impunity (they either got away with it or they almost got away with it).
Jesus was a teacher who did not leave much of a physical footprint. This would be typical of any teacher who did not pen his own texts. Not all teachers penned their own texts. So let's not expect his footprint to measure up with figures who physically altered the landscape either through construction, destruction, or the survival of textual authorship. What Jesus taught was ideologically explosive. As a result, much of what we would consider evidence may have been destroyed. We have evidence that religious fanatics were not above textual destruction. Book burning was not so much an exception but a recurring practice by regional (religio) authorities, and would haunt any kind of controversial authorship.
What Jesus taught was so explosive that his own existence has come into question. Ironically, what he taught questioned the existence of his own life...questioned the very foundation of the world. Perhaps those who question his existence are closer to the truth than those who insist upon his place in history. Perhaps not. Those who question his historicity stand on the same ground as those who do not...and call it "reality". Each in his own way fabricates a legend built on a lie.