(January 2, 2017 at 4:25 pm)Crossless1 Wrote:(January 2, 2017 at 4:15 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Actually, they flat out suck.
Well, yeah . . . they do.
But I'm willing to grant them the smallest measure of respect as historical documents, if only to encourage the chew toys to keep coming back.
The problem with ancient historical documents is that they tend to tell us far more about the times in which they were written than they do about the times they are supposed to be talking about.
So while any document is a "historical document" what it tells us is what later xtians in divergent sects tended to believe at the time they were written. They don't need a "historical" jesus for that.