My memory may be faulty, but at various points in this thread, I believe that DeJudge, IanS, Maximara, and/or Tsig have each stated -- or broadly hinted -- that proponents of HJ enfold the clearly magical woo associated with some apologetic accounts of Jesus the human rabbi into the historical background of the Jesus biography. Frankly, to say that proponents of HJ do any such thing is patently false.
IIRC that is mainly DeJudge thinking. For me the magical woo has never been a deciding point and I even gave the example of
Davy Crockett and the Frozen Dawn as an example of a
known historical person being used in a fantastical impossible story. In fact I pointed out that
my issues with the Jesus story are NOT on the supernatural stuff but on the
nonsupernatural elements (If we are to reject Jesus as having any historical basis we must do NOT just on the merits of the fantastical things attributed to him. It is when the non mythical parts of the Jesus story don't fit with history as we know it that we can say that something here doesn't add up.):
1) Matthew describes Herod going on a child killing rampage about 2 years after Jesus parents have gone to Egypt while Luke expressly states they went to temple
every year. No one else talks about Herod going on a child killing rampage.
2) The scope of Luke's census anachronistic...the closest census of that scope was in 74 CE. The moving around of people of a census makes little sense from a logistic matter.
3) The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.
4) Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy why Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus crime has been sedition then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas.
5) Jesus preaches in the open so there is no need for the whole Judus betrayal. Some one mentioned an account where Pilate sent soldiers into a group causing problems and on a prearraigned signal the soldiers started killing them until the group disbursed.
6) The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per
The Life Of Flavius Josephus (75)
7) Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out an about after word certainly the Roman might have wondered if they had been tricked yet there is nothing in the reports of the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describe how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.
8) the Roman Empire was the most literate in the ancient world ("no one, either free or slave, could afford to be illiterate" (
Di Renzo, A (2000) “His master's voice: Tiro and the rise of the roman secretarial class,” Journal of technical writing and communication, vol. 30, (2) 155-168)) and yet not one
known contemporary of Jesus writes anything about him. In fact, no Churchman even mentioned anything regarding the actual account in the Gospels until 130 CE. Paul who supposedly met Jesus' brother give us no real details in the seven letters agreed to be his-rather they are the same vague broad outlines we see for John Frum who likely started out as an idea rather then a person.
No one of these points is a major deciding point but taken together they suggest that if Jesus did exist he was a short lived preacher who exploits were wildly exaggerated many decades latter.
