(January 21, 2019 at 9:37 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: -Josephus is not a first hand account of anything.
Never said he was a first hand account. But he is the only Roman historian writing about that entire period in 1st century Palestine, that we have, and even if you exclude the disputed portion, you still have a reference to the death of James, Jesus brother. Unless non historical people have literal brothers, this indicates Jesus was a historical person. Trying to due away with Josephus would leave a significant gap for that entire period, pretty much all we have about Pilates life is found in Josephus, etc..
What we do have a first hand account of is someone (Paul) who met both his brother, and his disciples, in fact having various disputes with them.
I’ll wait while you try and take these two pieces and make a more compelling argument for a-historicity based on them without verging on the credulous
Quote:“Jesus" wrote nothing.
No but he said of bunch of things, attested to in multiple writings, credited to him.
Quote:It doesn't matter when christian fiction was authored, the rise of christianity, in 300ad... had little to do with that, early christians being wholly unaware of the various stories floating around. This is why the first order of business for that nascent unified church (read, catholic, lol)..after securing the will of the people and the backing of the imperial apparatus in exchange - was selecting a romanized canon from the prodigious works of literature available to them, and eradicating any competing liturgical authority. Quite a lift, for a bunch of folks who had contained themselves to handing out cakes to poor people for so long.
No the gospels were the prevalent and oldest texts held by the wide variety of Christians way before three hundred AD, it’s a result of how commonly shared they were, that they were canonized.
