Timetospend

Brash. Harsh. You seem to have difficulty with adjectives for an individual not having a chip or wanting to pick a fight.

Although you called it "harsh," I figured that the individual who asked "such as" was also wanting to pick a fight (that suspicion apparently verified in another post), which is why I indicated that I did not want to debate the point as I do not feel that I am an expert. However, just in case that it was a real request, I did not feel that I could ignore it.

Your comments above seemed reasonable at least. I might summarize the situation as this:
1. It absolutely cannot be proved that Jesus was not cited by Josephus (contrary to your original post). My citation did not suggest that all of the quote was original.
2. There is some probability that the quote is forged. The percentage is debatable.
3. The fact that early Christians might want to elaborate the passage increases the probability.
4. If there were existent variants of the text, this probability could be upped again.
5. There is some chance that passage is basically original, again the percentage being debatable.
6. This probability is greater that the original cited Jesus, but without the elaboration.

I felt that your innuendos to the following in your original post were not fully rational:
-Most historians do not believe in some kind of historical Jesus, not necessarily the Jesus painted in the Bible. (Since most historians are likely Christians or Moslems, or believe that some kind of Jesus lived, you should be concerned about this statement being attributed to you.)
-The Bible has no historical value.

I have made these statements stronger than perhaps intended by your innuendos. If so, please correct, and also accept my sincere apologies if have misjudged you. In the meantime, please understand that I am not particularly interested in having irrational discussions.

My original three statements do not prove that there was a real Jesus, but certainly indicates evidence for his existence.

Thanks,

Toto

I think you need to get more of a feel for the customs in this forum. You have walked into the middle of a discussion that has been going on for years and tried to offer a few arguments which have been discussed here before, as if you were giving us new information. But really, you are just repeating old arguments that have been shot down time and time again. You are just making yourself look like - well, a newbie who just walked into the room and tripped on a banana peel.

I'm not sure where this "summary" comes from, or how you figure the probabilities. Most would rate the probability that Josephus called Jesus "the Christ" to be about 0. This means that the passage has been tampered with. This means that, while you can speculate that there is some probability that Josephus wrote something about Jesus, you can't be sure that you can recover it at all, and the usefulness of this passage for proving the existence of Jesus is about 0.

These are not my words, and they don't make any sense.

You alluded to Chris Price, who likes to argue that almost all historians of every persuasion believe in a historical Jesus. This is true as an observation, but you and Price then go on to use that as evidence that there was a historical Jesus. This is not a valid conclusion.

In fact, there are historians who do not think that there was a historical Jesus, or who do not think that they can prove that there was a historical Jesus, or who think that the whole question cannot be answered.

Chris Price tries to argue (or imply) that many historians have all looked at the evidence using historical methods, and have all reached the independent conclusion that there was a historical Jesus. But this is not the case. Most scholars who study the historical Jesus avoid the question of his existence; they assume that he existed, or that the question is settled, or can't be answered.

There is a new Jesus Project, a successor to the Jesus Seminar, which aims to use historical methods to examine the existence of Jesus. This is a radical idea - it has not been done before.

I think that the Bible has some historical value, but has to be used with great caution. I don't think that the Bible can be used to show the existence of the historical Jesus.

Nope, sorry, you have not given evidence, just some of the tired old rationalisations that people come up with to justify what they want to believe.

Cheerful Charlie

A close look at the gospels suggests Jesus was born any where but Behlehem. Hard headed apocalyptic Jews awaiting a messiah stated that Messiah would be of the line of David and born at Bethlehem. Jesus was widely known to have been from Galilee.

So we have two different and wildly contradictory tall tales, the infant narratives of Matthew and Luke designed to 'fix' the problem with some tall tales. Too bad both wrote seperately and made different claims.

This lends a great deal of credibility to the idea that Jesus was born in Galilee, and not Bethlehem. "Can anything good come out of Galilee?".

CC