(January 9, 2014 at 11:37 am)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:Asserting as evidence of absence that Justin does not mention other "authors" seems a stretch.
Baloney. "Paul" is not just another "author." Supposedly he was the guy who brought jesus to the gentiles. Xtianity is littered with concepts like "Apostolic Authority" but you blithely suggest that the greatest apostle of all was not cited once in a major work?
Perhaps you should begin by figuring out exactly how much of the story you find credible?
Of the story I find credible that Jesus was born, was working-class, that he became after he was thirty or so some sort of a charismatic leader to a lower-class, probably uneducated bunch, after having become a John-the-Baptist groupie. That the oratorical sway went to his head, to a degree, as is often the case with new celebrities, however small the celebrity may be. That he went to Jerusalem for a Passover, got into a fight in the Temple over something trivial, thereby both insulting the Temple cult and damaging the lawful and proper businesses of a couple of the scores of moneychangers and a birdseller or so of the dozens of them. That upon a proper complaint by the merchants and the Temple he was arrested and, it being the Holy Day and the Jewish courts thus were not in business, he was processed in a magistrate's proceeding wherein the eyewitnesses identified him as the perp. He was promptly handed over to the Romans, who did whatever passed for a judicial proceeding, and he was promptly executed. The removal from the cross was because he only committed property crimes and insulted the Temple, and notwithstanding the latter the Jewish authorities would not deny a Jew the proper burial, not let him be accursed for hanging overnight. This proves it was not for sedition. The temporary entombment, etc., I have laid out elsewhere in this thread. That's all I find credible, and much of that little I have inferred; the rest is invention.