What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[Minimalist]

D-P begins a discussion of it in this very thread.

https://atheistforums.org/thread-31832-p...#pid888179


To build on that consider this passage from Contra Celsus. It was written c 250 AD, or, about 75 years before Eusebius' TF.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04161.htm

I would like to say to Celsus, who represents the Jew as accepting somehow John as a Baptist, who baptized Jesus, that the existence of John the Baptist, baptizing for the remission of sins, is related by one who lived no great length of time after John and Jesus. For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless— being, although against his will, not far from the truth— that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ),— the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.

Study the bolded part.

Now, this is generally what the 'partial authenticity' gang puts forward as original in the TF.

“Now about this time there lived Jesus a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who in the first place had come to love him did not forsake him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, continues to the present day.”

Now, study the bolded part in this and compare the two. Origen bitches and moans 75 years earlier that Josephus did not state that the reason for the disasters which befell the jews was the conspiracy against jesus and instead invents a tale about how it was the death of James the Just which caused the diaster.

Unless Origen was the stupidest bastard who ever lived how could he have made this mistake unless there was nothing written there which gave him the slightest hint that Pilate HAD crucified jesus on the accusation of the ruling classes?

Origen's bleating in reply to Celsus is as bad as any other xtian bullshit but clearly the man was not an outright idiot. If it was there...in any form...it would have clinched the case he was trying to make about the reason for the calamity of 70 AD.

And...he correctly identifies the John the Baptist passage in Book XVIII of Antiquities so it would seem that he had the right book.