Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[Minimalist]

Stim, over at JNE I asked Ken for the backup on his assertions about Nazareth.

He referred me to Eusebius and I looked up the references and found that he was correct. In Life of Constantine, Eusebius duly recounts the church building exercises of Constantine in Palestine and momma Helena's trip. "Nazareth" does not merit a mention at all. In his Onamasticon, Eusebius does mention Nazareth as a "village" (this in the 4th century) .

I also went looking for something which Dever had written and after a brief search found it. Unfortunatley, the only thing I can find on the web is a Google Books review of "Who Were The Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From" which cannot be copied and pasted...so I took screen captures of the relevant pages - which fortunately were part of the preview - and pasted them below.





And moving on to Moab:





What we have here are two examples of more or less modern religiously-based expeditions which went out to dig for backup for their fairy tales and instead not only found the exact opposite but, showing a great deal of scholarly integrity, published their results anyway.

Now, these two observations are important because they demonstrate that not all theists who dig in the dirt are frauds, like the Ron Wyatts, Bob Cornulkes and Simcha Jacobovicis of the world. Moreoever, we can be charitable towards the early "bible in one hand and spade in the other" crew of the early 20th century which went out and with a certain obvious confirmation bias pronounced every rock they dug up as something that Moses had pissed on. With no pottery shard database of any value and no dating techniques at all they can be forgiven for allowing the zealous imaginations to run wild in favor of their holy "guidebook."

But such forgiveness cannot be extended to those who cling to fairy tales and insist they are inerrant because to believe otherwise would mean throwing their god in the shitter because "god" can't be wrong.
Well, to such people I say that if you hadn't put your "god" on such an impossible pedestal in the first place you wouldn't now be facing the dilemma of having to admit your mistake or alternatively look like fools. This problem is of your own making and if the Seventh Day Adventists and friggin' Southern Baptists can figure it out then you have no excuse at all.