[Serious] Time to embrace Islam!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If my claims are unsupported, you'll need to show contemporaneous accounts (meaning accounts written during his purported lifetime) of a figure who corresponds to the Jesus of the Gospel narrative.

You can, of course, list whatever accounts you think would support an historic Jesus.  I only asked that you not do so because these (Tacitus, Pliny, Josephus, etc) have been refuted so often that it becomes tiresome.

If being frequently written about is a basis for historicity, then King Arthur and Robin Hood are historic figures.  But perpetuation of the Jesus myth isn't all that hard to explain.  It perpetuated in the same way that any other religion does.  Are you claiming that the figures in Greek mythology and Hinduism are historic?

But I don't think the Jesus myth is a conspiracy in the sense you seem to be using the word.  I suspect that the great majority of Christians sincerely believe in an historic Jesus and aren't trying to fool anybody about it, which would seem to be required for this to be a conspiracy.

Boru

The historical Jesus is pretty well documented.  I have not heard of any serious historians that refute the existence of Jesus but I’m sure they exist.  Along with the historical writings of the individuals you mentioned are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  The writings of these men have been verified by those contemporary historians.  No where have I found controversy over his existence by historians of the period.  That being said, historical data can always be called into question no matter the reputation of the historian.

As for conflating the story of Jesus with King Arthur and Robin Hood...These are stories written hundreds of years after the events depicted and were known at the time as fictional characters.  Far less writings exist on, say king Arthur and it is widely known that he was a fictional character.  In short, your argument is based on a blatant false equivalence.  

Thanks

Max

Where is the documentation for an historical Jesus?  Historians and theologians have been looking for this for centuries.  Failing to find it, they've made the same mistake you're making - wishful thinking.

But the individuals I mentioned were not contemporaries of Jesus, which is what I asked you to provide. You can't point to authors I said were not contemporaneous with Jesus and cite them as contemporaries.  It's a brute fact that there are NO writings of Jesus until well after his purported death.  You'd think that a wandering preacher who performed miracles, drew crowds of thousands, and got into trouble with the authorities would have gotten some sort of mention in official channels.  There's nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

When I mentioned Arthur and Robin Hood, it wasn't a conflation, it was a comparison.  Yes, it's probably true that both of them started out as folklore, but I don't think that strengths your argument.  The idea is that a imaginary person is written about to the point where people come to accept that person as having an historical basis.

Boru