(March 13, 2015 at 7:58 pm)Nestor Wrote: Tim are you dating the events they record by extra-biblical sources, such as Josephus' mention of JtB or something? Certainly you don't mean we should take their use of Pontius Pilate or anyone else as containing historical veracity amidst the teleportations and transmutations when the point of the story is the latter... right?
I'm using both. As I keep pointing out, the mere fact that elements in the story may not be historical is not good enough reason to reject them. And the references in Josephus and Tacitus to Pilate and in Josephus to James, the Baptist and Caiaphas all make the chronological setting pretty likely. It also fits with some of what Paul says about the timing of his conversion. So we have multiple vectors of evidence, both Biblical and extra-Biblical, all supporting the idea that this stuff happened sometime in the late 20s or early to mid-30s AD.
