Are these people christians?

I question the agenda and reliability of a site named the "Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry".
 
The Talmud
Pliny the Younger
Thallus Circa
Tacitus

...because they all talk about Jesus in some ways that, well.....

http://www.carm.org/evidence/extrabiblical_accounts.htm

Well, I wouldn't say they all talk about Jesus. Some APPEAR to, but the degree to which they do is disputed.

Look at the Talmud quote for starters. I don't recall anything about a crier going out for 40 days before the Crucifixion.


"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favor he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!"

There are several things that discount that passage.

As for the others. one is a remark about what someone else said nearly 200 years earlier -

"Thallus Circa AD 52, eclipse of the sun. Thallus wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean world from the Trojan War to his own time. His writings are only found as citations by others. Julius Africanus who wrote about AD 221 mentioned Thallus' account of an eclipse of the sun. "

I'm in no position to dispute this, but it's shaky at best IMHO.

The Josephus writings are disputed to varying degrees in the thread you started on the quote from him.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55448
 
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There's a guy here called Roof Hawkins who seems to know a bit about this stuff;

"A bit" seems to me to be the correct designation. Based on that single thread I'm tempted to classify him among those atheist fundamentalists who are willing to believe anything as long as it is against Christianity.

From the start: "There is NO EVIDENCE at all for a historical Jesus." Wrong. There is evidence for historical Jesus. He just chooses to reject it. If he had said something like: "The evidence for historical Jesus is so weak that we can't conclude that he existed", I wouldn't disagree much.

He also has a couple of completely idiotic claims in his posts such as:
(9) Pliny says they sing a hymn to Christ as to God which Christians in Pliny's time would consider blasphemous since Jesus was no more than a man to them. His divinity was not established until 325 A.D.

He can't even keep his versions straight. He says that there was no historical Jesus and Jesus was a mythical crucified savior god from the beginning. So why exactly would the early Christians consider him to be "no more than a man"?
 

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