I'm not as well versed in the specifics and that's fine for me right now. Let me ask though, do you believe just because ONE one person says something it is true? In EVERY FIELD there are academics who disagree. I can show you disagreements on something as basic as sugar or whether satellite launches cause more ozone depletion than all the aerosol cans ever made. The point is the list goes on forever so what do you do then? How do you take two different mutually exclusive opinions and decide which one is false? If you can do that with religion as you've concluded, you would win not only a nobel prize, you wouldn't have time to post here. You want to talk about PROOF. Good f'ing luck. This again more unreasonable illogical nonsense. If you think through it, there is very little to argue about and more for both sides to learn!
So what do you make of all the scholars who are very intelligent, very articulate who disagree? How do you tell which OPINION is more true than the next, how do you personally already know if you are smarter than at least a few of these people put together? What do you make of all the departments in various academic institutions that devote time to studying these things?
Let me spell it out silly wabbit: A D H O M I N E M! Ad hominem. Understand?! The length of the post has ZERO association with anything, any lunatic knows that. You did nothing but IGNORE, maybe some avoidance, derailment, etc. Typical behaviours. Let me repost for your edification: Two logical arguments were presented, and you perceived one of them as emotional. Why are they not both emotional since they both came come from humans? You are showing more than your bias. Why isn't your response just emotion? Because whatever you agree with is logical and what you don't agree with is emotional! If you disagree, you have to change your words. Further, this is almost saying that "emotions are bad", and that any response that appeals to a high EQ isn't worth considering. If you push that approach to it's limit you get anti-social personalities, the question is where do you draw the line. YOU have drawn a line by your words, and that's what I mean about giving things away. I could be wrong, none of this is exact to start and based on a few sentences? Ha! If I'm even close I'm a genius! As for your other comments, they are all just assumptions and projections. Then you take these projected assumptions and use that to develop a worldview and call that reasonable? It's all based on whatever you want, it's all YOUR assumptions. With taht attitude, you can make anything up and never be wrong.
Try answering the question instead of avoiding it. The question was, do you believe something just because ONE one person says it is true?
show us the quote you lying sack of shit. You distorted a quote from a former catholic priest who is a cable channel production media whore.... and even then he still did not say anything about the quote in antiquities from Josephus. you are a lying sack of shit. by the way this is what the crackpot ex priest pushes.. "Crossan suggests Jesus was an illiterate "Jewish Cynic" from a landless peasant background, initially a follower of John the Baptist.[citation needed] Jesus was a healer and man of great wisdom and courage who taught a message of inclusiveness, tolerance, and liberation. "His strategy . . . was the combination of free healing and common eating . . . that negated the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power . . . He was neither broker nor mediator but . . . the announcer that neither should exist between humanity and divinity or humanity and itself."[3] Out of his study of cross-attestation and strata of the ancient texts, Crossan asserts that many of the gospel stories of Jesus are not factual, including his "nature miracles", the virgin birth, and the raising of Lazarus.[citation needed] While pointing out the meager attestation and apparent belatedness of the miracles' appearance in the trajectory of the canon, Crossan takes the opposite view, that Jesus was known during earliest Christianity as a powerful magician, which was "a very problematic and controversial phenomenon not only for his enemies but even for his friends," who began washing miracles out of the tradition early on.[citation needed] Crossan maintains the Gospels were never intended to be taken literally by their authors.[citation needed] He argues that the meaning of the story is the real issue, not whether a particular story about Jesus is history or parable.[citation needed] He proposes that it is historically probable that, like all but one known victim of crucifixion, Jesus' body was scavenged by animals rather than being placed in a tomb.[4] Crossan believes in vision hypothesis "resurrection" by faith but holds that bodily resuscitation was never contemplated by early Christians.[citation needed] He believes that the rapture is based on a misreading of I Thessalonians.[citation needed]"... Central to Crossan's methodology is the dating of texts. This is laid out more or less fully in The Historical Jesus in one of the appendices. He dates part of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas to the 50s CE, as well as the first layer of the hypothetical Q Document (in this he is heavily dependent on the work of John Kloppenborg). He also assigns a portion of the Gospel of Peter, which he calls the "Cross Gospel," to a date preceding the synoptic gospels, the reasoning of which is laid out more fully in The Cross that Spoke: The Origin of the Passion Narratives. He believes the "Cross Gospel" was the forerunner to the passion narratives in the canonical gospels. He does not date the synoptics until the mid to late 70s CE, starting with the Gospel of Mark and ending with Luke in the 90s. As for the Gospel of John, he believes part was constructed at the beginning of the 2nd century CE and another part closer to the middle of the century. Following Rudolf Bultmann, he believes there is an earlier "Signs Source" for John as well. His dating methods and conclusions are quite controversial, particularly regarding the dating of Thomas and the "Cross Gospel."[citation needed] The very early dating of these non-canonical sources has not been accepted by many biblical scholars.[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dominic_Crossan see that last sentence... the guy is a crackpot... And he still never said that the antiquities passage was wrong. Note by his dating... many of these these books could have been first hand accounts. so once again Stu... you are wrong about the facts.
Wait. Just one sec. Put the phone on hold. Are you ACTUALLY saying that something from an athiest is out of context?! <gasp> No way, get out, what the?!?
You look for valid historicity , the same way everything is historically validated. As far as Jesus and many other biblical characters are concerned , there is NONE. Nothing at all What is astonishing is they way a myth like the bible Jesus one, can dead brain so much of humanity. Apparently willful ignorance has a lot to do with it .