Quote:And, that's the point -- when does the "critical mass" get reached?
I would settle for any non-canonical source which indicated there was even the rumor that some people in the early first century believed that a dead jew came back to life. We do not have that. At all.
All we have is the blathering of later believers and we have no idea how much even that has been edited because all we have are copies of copies of copies of copies etc.
Elsewhere on this site I have posted a thread about the Doctrina Jacobi. This is a Byzantine reference from c 536 AD to a "prophet having arisen among the Saracens." It is hearsay to the third degree by its own admission and you would think that muslims would seize upon it as a reference to mohammed but they don't for a couple of reasons. One, it states that the prophet is still alive whereas islamic legend has him dead several years earlier. Two, and probably worst, it calls him one who proclaims the coming of christ. So no muslim is going to trot that out.
Still, it does suggest to us that however faulty the story and/or transmission there were some people who believed that there was a religious basis to what we now think of as the muslim conquest of the Levant. As piss poor as the DJ is, we have nothing remotely like it for jesus in the first century.
