Was Jesus the Bastard Son of a Menstruate and Promiscuous Woman from 100 BCE?

[Minimalist]

These religious documents, historicists argue, can be used to demonstrate that Jesus was an historical person.

Jesus Interrupted was a fine book but that section on the historicity of jesus had a touch of desperation about it. It was almost as if, having spent a couple of hundred pages trashing xtian's precious mythology, that Ehrman felt he had gone too far and had to pull back so as not to smash his own rice bowl.

I wonder if Ehrman would use the quoted section above to substantiate the existence of Sumerian and Greek gods who were also written about extensively.

Anyway Ehrman has a new book out which deals with the subject. It was reviewed over at Internet Infidels ( or whatever they call it now) and generally panned for that kind of specious reasoning noted above.