So we have plain references to a human Jesus, gradually and progressively overlaid with more and more strongly supernatural interpretations of his nature.
Embellishment, exaggeration, embiggenment; techniques used to great effect by writers of fiction, of fantasy, and the rewiters of history.
Stone insists that I must be a
"flagrant bigot", that I exhibit
"sheer ignorance of ancient history" and that I have
"Texas-style pride of my own ignorance. He seems to insist this is so merely because my understanding of ancient history differs from his, and because I don't believe Jesus was a real historical person. Well to those accusations, all I can say in my defence is that I am not a young person, I am 57, a former teacher, and I am very well read in history (it being one of the subjects I have taught). I'm not making an appeal to experience here, just putting my cards on the table.
Obviously, since history is such a vast subject, I don't claim to have read everything, but what I have read tells me that even the more "minor" philosophers, rulers, and historians of ancient history were written about by their contemporaries, and that records do exist of writings that were contemporaneous with their life and times.
One of the philosophers that Stone suggests has no proof of historicity was Leukippos of Miletus. He was, in fact a contemporary of Zeno, but more importantly, Aristotle and Theophrastus later
explicitly credited him with the invention of Atomism. The most famous among his lost works were titled
Megas Diakosmos (The Great Order of the Universe or The great world-system) and
Peri Nou (On Mind). While the historicity of Leukippos is contentious, unlike Jesus, there is at least some evidence for it. If you are really into ancient history, here is an interesting paper about this issue...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98915197/Leukippos%20tract.doc
Essentially what is really
my truth is that I have NO FAITH. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is a work of historical fiction that has little if any merit as a historical record; perhaps even less merit than anything written by Dan Brown. If that makes me a bigot in the eyes of Christians, then so be it.
But no matter how you slice it, no matter what your belief system is, it is a cold, hard fact that the gospels of Matthew, Mark & Luke ALL make Jesus out to be a person of great fame, who
- was followed by tens of thousands of people
- was brutally and very publicly executed.
- came back to life in a dramatic fashion.
That these issues are so public, demands that there ought to be some reference to, or record of him outside of the NT. There is none, and since I lack the faith to believe in something for which there is no evidence, it is impossible for a non-Christian person like me to accept the proposal that Jesus was a real person.