Grog

That isn't the outlandish part. I say "somehow incurred the wrath of Rome" because we don't have any credible evidence as to what it was that caused Jesus to be crucified. You seem to have missed the point...

mountainman

Please! Please! Please! You must understand that the Great Commission (which may have started in the 4th century) continues to happen century after century. It is still IN-PROGRESS. New versions of the "Holy Writ" have been fabricated almost every century, and are still being fabricated by human hands and minds in the 21st century. How many versions are there now? Doesn't the short ending of gMark appear in Codex Vaticanus, dated to the 4th century? Perhaps the longer version of gMark appeared in the next edition after Vaticanus?

aa5874

Well, Papyrus 75 with parts of gLuke and gJohn is dated by Paleography to the late 2nd-3rd century and Papyrus 45 with parts of gMark, Matthew, Luke and John are dated to the mid 3rd century.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri

aa5874

Hold on a minute!!! Can you say that again??? Please WHEN was Jesus crucified??

There is NO credible evidence that an actual human being named Jesus was crucified under Pilate as stated in the NT.

Please do not fall for the Presumptions of HJers.

Let us NOT miss the point.

HJers have NO credible evidence that the Jesus stories are historical accounts.

Surely we are NOT dealing with history when author Pulblishes a book and states Jesus was FATHERED by a Ghost, walked on water, transfigured, was resurrected, visited his disciples in a resurrected state and ascended in a cloud.

Will Wiley

What you have not explained is what is is you believe about that jesus that would have made him worth commenting on. This is what you are avoiding.

You tell us that Philo visited Jerusalem and that this one of the reasons you greatly expect he should have mentioned Jesus. But, there were thousands of people who lived in Jerusalem at that time. Why would you strongly expect that Philo would have thought to mention Jesus?

You don't seem to have paid enough attention to your learned friend here, although here you try to shift Philo back to a 'could have".
Yet when you repost your list again you have Philo as a "should have" with a weighting of 5

Grog

I accepted the proposal FTSOA.

Grog

I am interested in what your assumptions about Jesus are...

Logical

I'd be interested to know what each person here thinks of Jesus and how sure they are about that (percentage).

For example (pure made up example):

Historical figure: 90%

DCHindley

Logical,

Good luck on that one.

Henry Chadwick, though, has written The Early Church (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Revised ed 1993), which is a fairly straightforward presentation of the people, controversies and events that occured through the 4th century, maybe even a little later.

If you look at the book cover, you will see the model for my avatar in the upper right corner.

DCH

spin

This post doesn't belong here. If you are interested, you could start a thread specifically on the subject. Perhaps a poll, giving incremental percentages from 0% to 100%, if you can meaningfully express what you meant by 0% and 100%. Does 0% signify the historicity of Jesus cannot be successfully evaluated and 100% mean that Jesus was certainly a historical figure? Or does 0% mean Jesus did not exist? Historicity and existence are two different scales.