JESUS CHRIST: Myth or Historical Person?

[Alter2Ego]

A2E and any other TF defenders:

Is your Jesus a terrible misfortune? Josephus thought so, at least if you take the TF at face value and uncritically. Chapter 3 of his Antiquities XVIII opens with the policies of Pilate in his attempts to Romanise Jerusalem, with much bloodshed during a massacre at the aqueduct he provided with temple funds. Then we have 'his' fanwank about JC and the "ten-thousand other wonderful things concerning him" that make him "the Christ" - a peculiar thing in itself for a lifelong orthodox Jew to say. Immediately after, in the very next line, we get: "And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ..."

It's like the "under God" insertion in the US Pledge of Allegiance. It's in the way; it doesn't fit. Remove the obviously ill-fitting phrases and now the narrative, like that Pledge, suddenly makes sense.

ALTER2EGO -to- STIMBO:
I'm familiar with the claims by unbelievers that the Josephus writings about Jesus Christ are fabricated. Not surprisingly, none of these "scholarly" critics have presented a shred of evidence to prove what they are saying. What they come with instead is speculations aka their personal opinions. In fact, I even touched on this in the first paragraph of my opening post.

Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews" covers the whole of Jewish history up to AD 66. Out of twenty books, six cover the period from the reign of Herod the Great to AD 66 -- i.e. the period when Jesus lived. Concerning Jesus, below is a summarization of what Flavius Josephus wrote in book 18 of the Antiquities, pp. 63-64:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, for he was a performer of wonderful deeds, a teacher of such men as are happy to accept the truth. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. When Pilate, at the suggestion of THE LEADING MEN AMONG US [meaning the Pharisees], had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him at the first did not forsake him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day."


With that statement, Flavius Josephus identified himself as belonging to the group that made up Jesus' former death squad--the Pharisees. Josephus had nothing to gain from confirming Jesus' historicity.


WHAT JOSEPHUS WROTE:
http://www.facingthechallenge.org/josephus.php

JOSEPHUS' CREDENTIALS:
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/flavius-josephus.htm