David - in much of the above you really do not seem to be stating much disagreement with me. The only substantial point of dispute is that you seem still to be claiming that events such as Thermopylae are indeed believed true by historians only upon the same sort of entirely anonymous hearsay writing as we have for Jesus in the gospels, and with absolutely no other external independent support of any kind (which is the case with the gospels).
But you must realise by now that when you made that claim, it was simply wrong - genuine historians (not bible scholars!) do not claim that historic events are true merely on the sole basis of the sort of completely anonymous hearsay that we have as the religious gospels.
Where historians believe such events and figures are true, they will always cite other evidence that supports and confirms any such hearsay writing. Whereas in the case of Jesus there is no such credible external independent support or confirmation for what was claimed in the gospels.
The only other thing which you now seem to be complaining about is that I have referred to academics like Randel Helms to show that what was written in the gospels was being taken from the OT prophecies of a messiah. Where you seem to be saying we cannot trust Helms because he is a professor of English Language studies and not a bible studies scholar like Dominic Crossan or Bart Ehrman.
But how many times do you need reminding that bible scholars like Ehrman and Crossan are so hopelessly unreliable and unobjective as to keep claiming that the evidence which makes Jesus in their claim a "certainty”, is that Paul met “the Lords brother" (because it says so in the bible!), and in Crossan’s case saying (from memory) “the crucifixion of Jesus is just about the best attested event in all of ancient history” (again, because it says so in the bible!). With expert scholars like that, it’s a darned good job none of those people are working in any remotely serious academic field, or else they would have screwed up half the planet by now with their inability to tell fact from fiction.
You really do not need academics like Helms, Wells, Ellegard or other such sceptic authors to point out the very obvious glaring errors, naivety and apparent overwhelming self-servicing bias of so-called “bible scholars” who believe that anonymous hearsay gospel writers who never knew Jesus can present evidence of a real Jesus when they insist that a Jesus who none of them ever knew produced impossible miracles on every page of everything they claimed about him. Gospel authors like that are not credible. And neither are authors like Ehrman and Crossan who rely entirely on that non-credible biblical writing to claim Jesus was certainty.
Whereas, authors like Helms, Wells, Ellegard are certainly not merely credible, but far more than that when they point out literally hundreds of instances in that biblical writing which are unarguably fiction and certainly untrue, no matter how much it convinces highly religious people like Dominic Crossan.
And finally just to address your last remark where you say the following -
What you are calling a “mythicist alternative” which you say is far less convincing than the belief of certainty expressed by bible scholars like Ehrman, Crossan and all the many thousands who Ehrman obviously includes when he says “every properly trained scholar on the planet”, that so-called “mythicist alternative” which you apparently think that I am offering to you, is only an alternative which says that the claimed evidence from the bible is not good enough to reliably conclude that Jesus probably existed … if you think that is a mythicist claim then you have misunderstood the claim entirely - the claim is that the biblical evidence is nowhere near reliable enough, and in most of what it says not remotely credible either in the 21st century.
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