The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[downbeatplumb]

I hear there were thousands of them back then, take your pick! Stick a robe on him and get him fondling some lepers and you're golden.

Wow, Randy now has an atheist strawman in his signature? I think I've seen quite enough from him now.

Indeed messiahs were ten a penny at that time as parodied in the life of brain.

"Your the real messiah and I should know I've followed a few"

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sffSw-et9UM

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1st century[edit]

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Jesus Christ

• [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus]Jesus (ca. 4 BCE–30 CE), in Galilee and the Roman province of Judea. Jews who believed him to be the Messiah were the first Christians, also known as Jewish Christians. It is estimated that there are 2.5 billion Christians in the world today,[8] making Jesus of Nazareth the most widely followed Messiah claimant.
  
• Judas of Galilee (6 CE), Judas led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around 6 CE. The revolt was crushed brutally by the Romans.[9]
  
• Menahem ben Judah (?), the son or grandson of Judas of Galilee, was a leader of the Sicarii. When the war broke, he armed his followers with the weapons captured at Masada and besieged Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem, overpowering the troops of Agrippa II in Judea and forcing the Roman garrison to retreat. Emboldened by his success, he behaved as an "insufferable tyrant",[10] thereby arousing the enmity of Eleazar, the Temple Captain and de facto a rival Zealot rebel leader, who had him tortured and killed.[11] He may be identical with the Menahem ben Hezekiah mentioned in the Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 98b) and called "the comforter that should relieve".
  
• Theudas (?–46 CE), a Jewish rebel of the 1st century CE, at some point between 44 and 46 CE, Theudas led his followers in a short-lived revolt. Some writers are of the opinion that he may have said he was the Messiah.[12]
  
• The Egyptian (between 52 and 58), Flavius Josephus (in Jewish War 2.261-262) says "There was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former; for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also, and got together thirty thousand men that were deluded by him; these he led round about from the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives. He was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; and if he could but once conquer the Roman garrison and the people, he intended to rule them by the assistance of those guards of his that were to break into the city with him." livius.org
  
• Vespasian, c.70, according to Flavius Josephus[13]
  
• John of Gischala (? after 70), was a leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War, and played a part in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE.[14]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah_claimants