(May 7, 2016 at 10:11 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: The Bible is not evidence of a historical Jesus.
I think it is some evidence of Jesus, however weak or faint.
Here's my theory:
Asimov says that census didn't happen. And the censuses that did happen didn't happen in that way. You don't go to where you were born to be counted, because that would be useless. A census is so the local tax collector will know how many chickens you have. I was born in California. What would be the point of me going to California to tell people there how many chickens I have somewhere else?
So Joseph did not take his family to Bethlehem because of a census. What, then, is the point of that weird and implausible story? What if it's point is to harmonize Jesus with the legend of the savior? Everybody knew Jesus was from Galilee, and everybody knew that the savior had to come from Bethlehem, so the story is an elaborate way of saying, "Hey, this guy from Galilee is also really from Bethlehem."
If Jesus were entirely mythical, then they wouldn't have had that problem, and so they wouldn't have needed that solution.
This is not a compelling argument, of course, but it is enough that I have a lightly-held belief that a real person named Jesus was at the core of the legend about the superhero called Jesus.
