I think we'll probably just have to accept that we differ on this prediction.
As far as I've ever seen, the physical resurrection of Jesus has been a pretty big staple of the religion; it's in short-form Mark even, but more importantly, it's a part of just about every Christian creed since creeds in the religion began; it was a rather hefty part of the original debates back in the 3rd and 4th c CE, and carries its roots back to the Hebrew idea that a spirit is a demon and not to be trusted whereas a physical body is divine.
Either way; my main point in the off-hand comment was that no one really interested in an historical Jesus.
Everyone really just wants their solution to supporting their position.
Finding the bones of Jesus would strip out a ton of those positions; secular and non-secular alike..
If Christians, whether in the 1st century or in the 21st century, say that Jesus was physically resurrected, then they are being loose with their wording and in danger of contradicting both their own beliefs and what is actually said in their NT. And in particular contradicting what Paul said as the earliest and first known mention of Jesus (the earliest according to their own dating).
In Paul’s’ letters, nobody ever sees Jesus as a bodily entity, either alive or after resurrection. He appears to Paul as a vision, not as a solid bodily entity. And he is described as appearing to the 500 and the rest as if in a vision too. Paul is clearly not describing himself observing a walking or floating corpse of a dead human Jesus.
By the time the gospels were written, those writers had never seen Jesus in any form, dead, alive, or as a spirit-vision, and not one of those authors quoted anyone else who ever claimed to see Jesus in any such form either. Those gospel authors were only reporting the legendary stories which told of individuals who had, in the unknown past, once been Jesus’ disciples. The point of stressing that about the gospels is that their accounts are worth far less than that of Paul. Because the gospel authors never claimed to witness any form of Jesus, and never quoted anyone who had told them that they had witnessed any form of Jesus either.
The only person ever to say he had actually witnessed Jesus, was Paul. But what Paul described seeing and hearing was some sort of spiritual vision, and clearly not a physical dead body appearing to him or speaking to him.
I'm not really sure how to point out to you how vastly different these texts are as a whole than the material which you are citing.
We can compare components within them to a variety of different forms and stories, absolutely, but these texts did indeed create a distinct style that is rather noticeable.
Specifically; it is closest to Zoroastrian legends, but they craft a new approach to telling those stories in a much more Hellenistic format mixed with Hebraic format of narrative structure.
The result is rather unique.
You have indeed pointed it out. And I am not disputing that the Jesus story includes vastly more “walking amongst us” detail than the little we have of ancient OT writing about figures like Moses or David from 1000BC.
But I am pointing out that we did not have any such “walks amongst us” accounts from Paul either!
If the gospels were written after Paul’s letters (and I know
dejudge thinks Paul’s letters are later, but see footnote) then it’s obvious that the gospel writers could have been simply building on what Paul had already said. And in particular, it’s certainly true that Paul had made very clear that he was looking in the scriptures for confirmation of what he believed about the messiah. And g-Mark and then g-Mathew were undeniably also taking their Jesus beliefs from those same OT scriptures.
Lets take a step back for a moment and see why what I have just said about the gospels counts against what you have been saying. You were saying that one of the items of evidence which convinces historians that the Jesus stories may be true, is that they contain all this “walks amongst us” detail, which you say is not known in any comparable sense or extent before the gospels. Right? Well the problem with relying on that as evidence that the gospels may be true, because of all the “walks amongst us” detail, is as I just pointed out that (a)those gospels followed Paul’s letters in which there is none of that “walks amongst us” detail, and where the gospel writers were clearly taking their Jesus beliefs from ancient scripture just as Paul’s letters said Paul had also done, and (b)what that “walks amongst us detail” of the gospels actually says is that Jesus walked on water and raised the dead etc.
So whether or not the gospels contain a unique and previously unknown mass of “walks amongst us” detail, that detail is actually not evidence of Jesus, because what the detail claims is mostly impossible miraculous fiction.
It will also be interesting to read what Carrier's forthcoming book is going to say on the issue of Euhemerisation. Because he has already said that Euhemerisation will be central to his explanation of why he thinks Doherty’s book The Jesus Puzzle was essentially correct to say that Paul thought of Jesus only as a divine spiritual figure who was crucified in a heavenly realm rather than on earth. That is - from what Carrier has already said, he may well list many examples of precisely this sort of “walks amongst us” story applied to other figures long before Jesus, and where the story has been created by Euhemerisation … i.e. by taking an earlier story of either imaginary figures or supposedly real figures from a distant past, and writing a later account of those figures saying that they did all sorts of things amongst all sorts of people, but where all of that later realistic sounding story is “euhemerised”, i.e. essentially “invented” in order to bring the figure to life for a later audience.
Anyway, I only mention that speculation about Carriers book, because he has said many times that it will contain a central idea about Euhemerisation as a means of creating such detailed, and yet fictional accounts. So it may be interesting to see if his book does give convincing examples of that.
Footnote - whichever were written first, either Paul's letters or the gospels, the fact is that we only have much later copies for any of those documents. So it's an undeniable fact that we do not actually know what either Paul or any gospel author originally wrote about their Jesus belief. But the earliest copy we have for Paul is P46 from c.200AD, and that is at least 100 to 200 years or more before the earliest relatively complete and readable copies we have for any of the canonical gospels. And it’s the relatively complete and readable late copies that everyone is using to obtain the details that everyone quotes as contained in the gospels … i.e. that all comes from copies dated 4th-6th century and later, and mostly after 6th century.
So in terms of what is actually known as the words in existing copies, our copies of all Paul’s letters far pre-date that of any useable extant copies of any canonical gospels.
Based on Pliny's remark about "innocent food," I'd guess the doctrine was there in some form early in the Second Century, and it's doctrine in the current churches that are in full communion with Rome, Constantiniple or Alexandria. Regardless of exactly how old the idea is, boneless Jesus is nothing new.
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