stephan huller

No its not that I think it is certain Jesus was a historical figure. It's more like the distrust of the agendas of anyone who embraces a label for themselves. I hate it even when locals speak about the home town team with the word “we” - ie “we could have won last night but our defense let us down”

Doug Shaver

You're in plenty of company. An aversion to labels does seem to be quite the intellectual fashion these days.

stephan huller

That's rather clever. I'm in good company in not wanting to be lumped together with bad company. It's quite common to want to be unique. You should patent that.

shadowfox

Since the time of the existence of a Jesus falls within written history, it may be entirely possible there was a historical Jesus. The gospels were written long after the fact of his possible existence and not as near as I can tell written by anyone who actually had known him. There may even be some evidence in other sources that there was such a man who ran afoul of the traditional authorities.

Even as there is some evidence for the existence of a man called Arthur in another land.

I find it interesting that the return of both is foretold. . . .

Doug Shaver

And we all are unique, whether we want to be or not.

No two apples are exactly alike. Nor are any two oranges exactly alike. Thus, every apple and every orange is unique. From this, it does not follow that it is inappropriate to put the "apple" label on some fruits and the "orange" label on other fruits.