You're welcome here comicsandwho .  The Captain  and I both enjoy this forum and proclaim that Jesus Is lord ! Byrne really burned a lot of bridges ( no pun intended).

I've noticed that Byrne criticizes conspiracy theories such as the 9/11 Truth movement and the conspiracists who support them, yet at the same time is an anti-Stratfordian and a Jesus mythicist, two views held by very few mainstream scholars. I wonder if he's ever recognized the irony of that. Probably not.

Byrne hates faith traditions? That is an odd thing to be worried about... A bit like being angry at the month of August because it celebrates the first Roman emperor (down with imperialism!!!)

FWIW, I don't believe the historical Jesus and the Biblical Jesus are one and the same; I do believe the canonical gospels contain embellishments. My issue is with the claim that Jesus never existed period.

In the past, he has said that his father turned to Buddhism later in life, and 'seemed disappointed' his son didn't 'follow that path'.

The particular passage where Josephus speaks of Jesus also seems to have been altered by later copyists to emphasize the special nature of the man... In Antiquities 18.3.3, Josephus is describing the struggles of the Jews under Pilate when he mentions that “...there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works -a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongsts us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct at this day”.

This passage fits quite well with the Gospels, but the placement of the paragraph is really weird. One would imagine that a historian mentioning the appearance of the Christ would devote at least as many pages to the man as to things like Cain being killed when his house’s roof fell on him, but no... Even if Christ’s coming is, arguably, the single most important event in mankind’s history, Josephus stops right there and devotes the following pages to something that’s suddenly more important to the narrative: the amorous affairs of Paulina, her husband Saturninus and one Decius Mundus (all living in Rome) and the impact of the affair on a certain temple of Isis. Wait, what? We were just introduced to the son of God living among us, and he’s barely worth one paragraph before we return to the Roman equivalent of Days of Our Lives? That makes no sense at all.

The parcimonious interpretation of this passage is that like Tacitus, Josephus acknowledges the existence of Jesus and his influence in starting what was then a minor Jewish sect that also welcomed Gentiles. An actual event, but at the time seen as a minor historical note.

Personally, I do not doubt the historical existence of Jesus. I do believe that the Evangelists (either the actual John, Luke, Mark and Matthew or whoever wrote the Gospels) mixed actual events with hearsay and outright poetic license, but I’m pretty convinced that behind the stories there was a real Jesus who taught universal brotherhood and who got crucified at one point. The same way, say, I am pretty convinced that there was a siege of the city of Troy by Hellenic forces at one point.

I do not deny the power of the Gospels as inspiring texts of deep poetic and philosophical meaning, and if some want to ascribe them to divine influence more power to them... but as actual historical texts, they fail in many instances: first, the authors report events that they had no way to know about. How are they supposed to know what Jesus said while all alone on the Mount of Olives? He never got a chance to tell anyone as he was arrested immediately thereafter. How are they supposed to know what was said during Caiaphas, Annas and the Sanhedrin's secret plotting session against Jesus? If anyone was taking notes, how did the apostles get access to them, busy as they were running for their lives? It's a gripping story but hardly a historical account, because historians are not ubiquitous storytellers.

Second, there are discrepancies between the four Gospels, most notably in the description of the resurrection. Earthquake or no earthquake? Stone already rolled or not? Angels in the tomb or on the road that leads to it? How many women were present? No big deal if these are stories relating an event that no surviving author was actually witness to, but one gets the impression that the tale grew in the telling. ("Let's add an earthquake and the sun hiding itself! Let's have dead people walk around, it'll be more dramatic!") Third, there is of course the discrepancy with other historical sources, with the impossibility of Herod having still been around after the Census of Quirinus, having died years before. 

I don't think it takes anything away from the Gospels as religious texts, because as my priestly friends used to say the truth of them is meant to go beyond mere facts... but as history, they may include as much invention as Herodotus' or Thucydides'. 

Still, I don't think that there is much evidence for Jesus himself not to have existed at all; meanwhile, the very existence of Christianity suggests that someone must have given rise to it at some point. (And he was... a peace-loving socialist!!!  )