The Historical Jesus III

[maximara]

I am familiar with these words of Remsberg; but they are not well sustained by the general trend of his argument, so that he is used - and legitimately so, I think - by deniers of the historicity of Jesus in any real sense.

Remsburg is quite clear on his position early on:

"This volume on "The Christ" was written by one who recognizes in the Jesus of Strauss and Renan a transitional step, but not the ultimate step, between orthodox Christianity and radical Freethought. By the Christ is understood the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ, a myth. He is the Christ myth.

[...] It may be conceded as possible, and even probable, that a religious enthusiast of Galilee, named Jesus, was the germ of this mythical Jesus Christ. But this is an assumption rather than a demonstrated fact. Certain it is, this person, if he existed, was not a realization of the Perfect Man, as his admirers claim."

The very first sentence Remsburg give us in the book proper (the above is part of the intro) is:

"Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity, the pathetic story of whose humble life and tragic death has awakened the sympathies of millions, is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist."

The stuff after that could just as easily come from dejudge:

From the beginning to the end of this Christ's earthly career he is represented by his alleged biographers as a supernatural being endowed with superhuman powers. He is conceived without a natural father: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When, as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. i, 18).

His ministry is a succession of miracles. With a few loaves and fishes he feeds a multitude: "And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments and of the fishes. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men" (Mark vi, 41-44).

He walks for miles upon the waters of the sea: "And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray; and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves; for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea" (Matt. xiv, 22-25).

[and it keeps on going but you get the idea]

But Remsburg made it clear from the get go he is writing about "the Jesus of the New Testament" and NOT any hypothetical "Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity"

"Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew, and his religion, with a few innovations, was Judaism. With his death, probably, his apotheosis began. During the first century the transformation was slow; but during the succeeding centuries rapid. The Judaic elements of his religion were, in time, nearly all eliminated, and the Pagan elements, one by one, were incorporated into the new faith."

 

[Mcreal]

Again you misunderstand the point: as you write above, the Holocaust is one of the best documented of modern events. But in a world where there are people who deny the Holocaust happened despite it being one of the best documented of modern events, who would be surprised that there are people who deny that there was a historical Jesus?

That's the point that Ehrman made. Trying to make it sound like there was an attempt at moral equivalency between the two positions is misrepresentation.

You all - Stone, Ehrman, and you - are using false equivalence (a fallacy), a non-sequitur (another fallacy), and applying a red-herring fallacy. It's immoral to equate arguments about the veracity of a poorly documented entity with a well documented enormous act of genocide. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Especially you, GDon, for repeating it.

 

[Mcreal]

I mean, haven't you actually demonstrated my point?

No!

What if I said "I don't believe in ghosts!" Would that disprove your analogy?

'not believing in ghosts' is a far better analogy for *not believing in Jesus* than 'denying-The-Holocaust' is.

 

[Mcreal]

'Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writing or in Judging ill,
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' Offence,
To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense:
Some few in that, but Numbers err in this,
Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss;
A Fool might once himself alone expose,
Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose ...

A perfect Judge will read each Work of Wit
With the same Spirit that its Author writ,
Survey the Whole, nor seek slight Faults to find,
Where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the Mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull Delight,
The gen'rous Pleasure to be charm'd with Wit ...

Much was Believ'd, but little understood,
And to be dull was constru'd to be good ...

No Place so Sacred from such Fops is barr'd,
Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Church-yard:
Nay, fly to Altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
Distrustful Sense with modest Caution speaks;
It still looks home, and short Excursions makes;
But ratling Nonsense in full Vollies breaks ...

Content, if hence th' Unlearned their Wants may view,
The Learn'd reflect on what before they knew:​

excerpts from the Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope

 

[Craig B]

But Remsburg made it clear from the get go he is writing about "the Jesus of the New Testament" and NOT any hypothetical "Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity"

Yes. Let that illustrate my point. This "Jesus of humanity": where is evidence of him to be found? The NT. There alone, as has been repeated numerous times by the mythicists.

So it is impossible, under the assumption of the fabrication of the entire Christian scriptures, to estimate the probability of existence of a "human Jesus". As dejudge has asked - how many thousands of times? - where is there to be found any other Jesus than a water-walking transfiguring bastard produced by a ghost raping a thirteen year old child, and sustained by forged hoax documents?

Where is the "human Jesus", as opposed to a "New Testament Jesus"? The "human" HJ is entirely a product of the NT just as the miracle God-man Jesus is.

 

[maximara]

As if to prove my point you have now written this. These are arguments dismissive, in the most contemptuous terms, of the historicity, not merely of a miraculous "man-God" but of any possible real Jesus.

No they are not. I have
I have suggested three "historical" Jesuses to show the problem:

1) In the time of Pontius Pilate some crazy ran into the Temple trashing the place and screaming "I am Jesus, King of the Jews" before some guard ran him through with a sword. Right place right time...and that is it. No preaching, no followers, no crucifixion, nothing but some nut doing the 1st century equivalent of suicide by cop.

2) Paul's teachings ala John Frum inspired others to take up the name "Jesus" and preach their spin on Paul's visions with one of them getting crucified by the Romans by his troubles whose teachings are time shifted so he is before Paul. (John Robertson actually came up with a variant of this in 1900 with this Jesus being inspired by Paul's writings rather then teachings)

3) You could have a Jesus who was born c 12 BCE in the small town of Cana, who preached a few words of Jewish wisdom to small crowds of no more than 10 people at a time, and died due to being run over by a chariot at the age of 50.

Exactly like the examples I gave in my post on Remsberg and his followers.

I agree that Remsberg gets misused by a lot of the 'Jesus didn't exist as a human being part of the Christ Myth' but as I showed with a direct quote Remsburg felt there was enough to show there was a man behind the myth.

ETA Your post #1379 makes the same point even more vociferously. Your argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus notice is an argument against a possible human Jesus, for the Tacitus passage ascribes no miracles to the founder of the religion to which he refers.

Total non-sequitur as an the argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus notice is NOT an argument against a possible human Jesus.

If as Mead and Allegro are right and a possible human Jesus did live nearly 100 years before Paul then clearly the "Their founder, one Christ, had been put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius" would be inauthentic.

By this loopy logic Irenaeus claim of Jesus being crucified during the reign of Claudius Caesar is also an argument against a possible human Jesus because if it was true then the Tacitus notice would be inauthentic.

You seem to have forgotten Carrier:

"But notice that now we don't even require that is considered essential in many church creeds. For instance, it is not necessary that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Maybe he was, But even if we proved he wasn't that still does not vindicate mysticism. Because the 'real' Jesus may have been executed by Herod Antipas (as the Gospel of Peter in fact claims) or by Roman authorities in an earlier or later decade than Pilate (as some early Christians really did think). Some scholars even argue for an earlier century (and have some real evidence to cite)"... My point at present is that even if we proved the founder of Christianity was executed by Herod the Great (not even by Romans, much less Pilate, and a whole forty years before the Gospels claim), as long as his name or nickname (whether assigned before or after his death) really was Jesus and his execution is the very thing spoken of as leading him to the status of the divine Christ venerated in the Epistles, I think it would be fair to say the mythicists are then simply wrong. I would say this even if Jesus was never really executed but only believed to have been Because even then it's still the same historical man being spoken of and worshiped."

Price makes a similar argument that if Jesus could be shown to have lived and died in the time Alexander Jannaeus we would still have a historical Jesus (which would be an argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus notice)

Craig B, you have just demonstrated by the mythists get so much mileage--let them ramble on long enough and many pro-historical Jesus supporters will eventually say or write something really and make the case for the mythist that the pro-historical Jesus side is composed of people who wouldn't know logic if it walked up and shook their hand./

 

[Belz...]

Antiquities 20 and Annals 15 are such tenuous foundations for belief in a historical Jesus.

Indeed. Everybody here probably agrees to that.

 

[GDon]

You all - Stone, Ehrman, and you - are using false equivalence (a fallacy), a non-sequitur (another fallacy), and applying a red-herring fallacy. It's immoral to equate arguments about the veracity of a poorly documented entity with a well documented enormous act of genocide. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Especially you, GDon, for repeating it.

No, it is not an equating arguments at all. That's twisting what Ehrman was doing. He claimed that in a time of conspiracy theorists on Holocaust denial, Moon Landing hoaxes and Obama Birthers, it isn't surprising to have conspiracy theories like Christ Mythicism. To call such a statement 'immoral' is ridiculous. While Ehrman explains that there are a small handful of mythicists who should be taken seriously, like Doherty, Price and Carrier, he recognizes that most Christ Mythicist theories are conspiracy theories.

Need I remind you that probably the most popular Christ Myth book is Acharya S's "The Christ Conspiracy"? The one that claims the Pope is the Grand Master of the Freemasons and who knows that there was no historical Jesus but keeps it hidden? And that the movie "Zeitgeist" has had millions of views and is often referenced by Christ Mythicists?

 

[GDon]

And I agree! It is that easy. So what does that tell you? I mean, haven't you actually demonstrated my point?

No because the Holocaust evidence can only be made weak by indulging in conspiracy theory level nonsense. The evidence for Jesus doesn't require that.

But again that misses the point!

Look: Do you agree that there are nutty Christ Myth conspiracy theories out there (like detailed in Acharya S's 'The Christ Conspiracy') or not? And if there are, are you surprised by that? And if you are not surprised, is part of the reason for not being surprised because you know that some people believe in even more nuttier conspiracy theories?

 

[Mcreal]

... The "human" HJ is entirely a product of the NT just as the miracle God-man Jesus is.

Exactly. Therefore what the NT is a product of becomes a key issue.

The earliest NTs we know of are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus; and they are not the final versions.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia says

The formation of the New Testament canon (A.D. 100-220)

The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm

I don't agree with the thrust of a lot of the rest of the text on that page, but some is worth considering -

The period of discussion (A.D. 220-367)

In this stage of the historical development of the Canon of the New Testament we encounter for the first time a consciousness reflected in certain ecclesiastical writers, of the differences between the sacred collections in divers[e] sections of Christendom. This variation is witnessed to, and the discussion stimulated by, two of the most learned men of Christian antiquity, Origen, and Eusebius of Cæsarea, the ecclesiastical historian. A glance at the Canon as exhibited in the authorities of the African, or Carthaginian, Church, will complete our brief survey of this period of diversity and discussion ...

 

[Mcreal]

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who, once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. 'The Speeches of Adolf Hitler', April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." 'Fighting Jews as Defending God' [p.60], in Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.

"The Jew’s domination in the state seems so assured that now not only can he call himself a Jew again, but he ruthlessly admits his ultimate national and political designs. A section of his race openly owns itself to be a foreign people, yet even here they lie. For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks." Adolf Hitler; 'On the Weapons of the Jews' [pp. 293-296], 'Mein Kampf'.

 

[GDon]

We have Paul who is giving what amounts to spectral evidence (that didn't work too well in 1692 Salem did it?) Then we have several author forging stuff as "Paul" (forged evidence is so useful. uh NO IT ISN'T )

Then we have the Gospels written sometime between 70 and 130 with everyone who could have actually been with Jesus either was dead or sold into slavery and have so much historical INaccuracy that they read more like bad historical fiction then anything like historical works.

The Gospel of Mark and the letters of Paul are enough to demonstrate that there probably was a historical Jesus. They provide independent confirmation that there was a Jewish man who was crucified in the first half of the First Century CE, and that is enough evidence to give an overwhelmingly high probability that there was a HJ. After all, we accept the existence of other people based on little more than one or two sentences in Josephus (the Egyptian, Jesus Son of Damneus, etc) and other sources. Based on that, we have more than enough to establish with high probability that there was a historical Jesus.

But of course that is a separate question to the one of trying to define who that historical Jesus was. As I've always said, from what we can tell about him with any degree of confidence (what he did, what he said), he may as well not have existed.

Jeffery Jay Lowder, co-founder of the Secular Web, wrote this:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/indconf.html

When skeptics question the existence of Jesus, they often assume that anyone who accepts the historicity of Jesus must be able to provide extra-Biblical confirmation of his existence. According to this view, the New Testament does not provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus; independent confirmation is needed.

In my opinion, that view is mistaken...

Second, independent confirmation is not necessary to establish the mere existence of the Jesus of the New Testament. There simply is nothing epistemically improbable about the mere existence of a man named Jesus. (Just because Jesus existed does not mean that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead, etc.) Although a discussion of the New Testament evidence is beyond the scope of this paper, I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament "the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material,"[19] we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.​

That's the bottom line, I'm afraid.

 

[Craig B]

I have suggested three "historical" Jesuses to show the problem: <snip "historical" Jesuses>

I agree that Remsberg gets misused by a lot of the 'Jesus didn't exist as a human being part of the Christ Myth' but as I showed with a direct quote Remsburg felt there was enough to show there was a man behind the myth.

Total non-sequitur as an the argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus notice is NOT an argument against a possible human Jesus.

If as Mead and Allegro are right and a possible human Jesus did live nearly 100 years before Paul then clearly the "Their founder, one Christ, had been put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius" would be inauthentic.

By this loopy logic Irenaeus claim of Jesus being crucified during the reign of Claudius Caesar is also an argument against a possible human Jesus because if it was true then the Tacitus notice would be inauthentic.

You seem to have forgotten Carrier: <snip Carrier>

Price makes a similar argument that if Jesus could be shown to have lived and died in the time Alexander Jannaeus we would still have a historical Jesus (which would be an argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus notice)

If pigs could be shown to fly that would be an argument against the authenticity of biology text books; but let us proceed.

Craig B, you have just demonstrated by the mythists get so much mileage--let them ramble on long enough and many pro-historical Jesus supporters will eventually say or write something really and make the case for the mythist that the pro-historical Jesus side is composed of people who wouldn't know logic if it walked up and shook their hand./

It is not I who am rambling on, and your last comments are without substance, disparaging as they are.

I have stated that the "human Jesus" is as much an artefact of the NT as is the supernatural Jesus. To attempt to rebut that you peddle the speculations of others, and your own, about a never executed Jesus, a Janneus-time Jesus, a Cana-born Jesus, a killed in Temple madman Jesus - and you offer us Carrier's "maybe this, maybe that" Jesus. And all manner of other Jesuses too.

Why this stuff? Well, they're historicaj Jesuses without being NT Jesuses. But that's merely because there's no evidence for them either in the NT or out of it. In relation to these phantasms, dejudge's arguments are not without force.

The HJ is the one baptised by John who was executed by crucifixion under Pilate. If there was no such Jesus, there was no HJ. And the evidence for that HJ comes exclusively from the NT, examined through the prism of higher criticism.

 

[Mcreal]

An historic Jesus is as likely to be a 2nd C preacher as the current 1st C proposition (or even a 3rd C preacher).

 

[maximara]

But again that misses the point!

Look: Do you agree that there are nutty Christ Myth conspiracy theories out there (like detailed in Acharya S's 'The Christ Conspiracy') or not?

And there are nutty Pro historical Jesus theories out there. The one where the Gospels are seen as true history miracles and all prime example of that. How about Jesus the spaceman?

It is only in the last 200 some years that the Jesus story stepped out of "EVERYTHING IN THE GOSPELS IS TRUE" mindset and is still to some degree trying to hammer out a history that is on Planet Reality.

 

[Craig B]

An historic Jesus is as likely to be a 2nd C preacher as the current 1st C proposition (or even a 3rd C preacher).

Why? Paul, Mark, the Synoptic Sayings, all contain evidence, or are associated with evidence, of first century composition. Why is it equally likely that he was a third century preacher as a first century one? Or a peripatetic preacher at all, rather than maximara's "lone nut".

Once you remove the NT, you are left only with Josephus, for Suetonius and Tacitus must have derived their information, such as it is, from Christian sources. And Josephus is, with good reason, heavily suspected of being interpolated.

 

[maximara]

The HJ is the one baptised by John who was executed by crucifixion under Pilate. If there was no such Jesus, there was no HJ. And the evidence for that HJ comes exclusively from the NT, examined through the prism of higher criticism.

That is a (weak tea) Triumphalist Jesus. Again it begs the question of WHY the Jews would have this Jesus who lived 100 years earlier which the HJ STILL haven't come up with a reasonable explanation for.

 

[Craig B]

That is a (weak tea) Triumphalist Jesus. Again it begs the question of WHY the Jews would have this Jesus who lived 100 years earlier which the HJ STILL haven't come up with a reasonable explanation for.

Here's an explanation. There was indeed a Jesus a hundred years earlier. Probably ben Stada. Jewish sources - much later sources - confuse him with ben Joseph, the Nazarene, of whom they no doubt learned either from the Nazirite followers of Jesus, or from the Paulinists.

You are the last person who needs reminded how common a name Jesus was, or that Josephus mentions about fifteen people of that name.

 

[Mcreal]

The Gospel of Mark and the letters of Paul are enough to demonstrate that there probably was a historical Jesus. They provide independent confirmation that there was a Jewish man who was crucified in the first half of the First Century CE, and that is enough evidence to give an overwhelmingly high probability that there was a HJ.

Not if these texts are shown to be mid-2nd century texts, as recent books argue ie. the NT Gospels were developed after the texts of Marcion and his community were written -

1. Joseph B Tyson (2006) Marcion and Luke-Acts: a defining struggle (University of South Carolina Press)
makes a case for not only Luke but also Acts being a response to Marcion, rather than Marcion's gospel being a rewrite of Luke.

2. Matthias Klinghardt (2008) 'The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Problem: A New Suggestion'
Novum Testamentum; 50(1):1-27.

Abstract: 'The most recent debate of the Synoptic Problem resulted in a dead-lock: The best-established solutions, the Two-Source-Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goodacre-Theory, are burdened with a number of apparent weaknesses. On the other hand, the arguments raised against these theories are cogent. An alternative possibility, that avoids the problems created by either of them, is the inclusion of the gospel used by Marcion. This gospel is not a redaction of Luke, but rather precedes Matthew and Luke and, therefore, belongs into the maze of the synoptic interrelations. The resulting model avoids the weaknesses of the previous theories and provides compelling and obvious solutions to the notoriously difficult problems.'

Full article: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B75F1hKk4E3XZU5SQXFWTWFrZWs/edit?pli=1

notes: presents an argument that the Marcionite Evangelion text ('the Gospel of the Lord') more than likely preceded the canonical Gospel of Luke. Klinghardt deduced that the 'Gospel Marcion' had influenced the formation of both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke.​

3. Vincent M (2014) 'Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels' (Studia patristica supplement 2) Leuven: Peeters.

Summary: Are the Synoptic Gospels at odds with Early Christian art and archaeology? Art and archaeology cannot provide the material basis 'to secure the irrefutable inner continuity' of the Christian beginnings (Erich Dinkler); can the Synoptic Gospels step in? Their narratives, however, are as absent from the first hundred and fourty years of early Christianity as are their visual imageries. 'Many of the dates confidently assigned by modern experts to the New Testament documents', especially the Gospels, rest 'on presuppositions rather than facts' (J.A.T. Robinson, 1976). The present volume is the first systematic study of all available early evidence that we have about the first witness to our Gospel narratives, Marcion of Sinope. It evaluates our commonly known arguments for dating the Synoptic Gospels, elaborates on Marcion's crucial role in the Gospel making and argues for a re-dating of the Gospels to the years between 138 and 144 AD.

"One of the most important insights of my 'Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels' (2014) was the discovery that Marcion’s Gospel existed in two different versions, first as a pre-published, presumably stand-alone draft, and secondly as a published edition with the framing of the Antitheses and the 10 Pauline Letters.
http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/marcions-two-recensions-of-his-gospel.html​

4. In 1881 Charles B. Waite, in History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two-Hundred, had suggested that Marcion's Gospel may have preceded Luke's Gospel; and John Knox, in 'Marcion and the New Testament' (1942), had also agreed with Waite's hypothesis.

After all, we accept the existence of other people based on little more than one or two sentences in Josephus (the Egyptian, Jesus Son of Damneus, etc) and other sources. Based on that, we have more than enough to establish with high probability that there was a historical Jesus.

We are only contemplating Jesus Son of Damneus b/c of the focus on Jesus Christ.

... from what we can tell about him with any degree of confidence (what he did, what he said), he may as well not have existed.

Jeffery Jay Lowder, co-founder of the Secular Web, wrote this:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/indconf.html

When skeptics question the existence of Jesus, they often assume that anyone who accepts the historicity of Jesus must be able to provide extra-Biblical confirmation of his existence. According to this view, the New Testament does not provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus; independent confirmation is needed.

In my opinion, that view is mistaken...

Second, independent confirmation is not necessary to establish the mere existence of the Jesus of the New Testament. There simply is nothing epistemically improbable about the mere existence of a man named Jesus. ... I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament "the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material,"[19] we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.​

That's the bottom line, I'm afraid.

Things have progressed since Lowder wrote that in 1997; such as the interest in and investigations into 2nd century texts, such as those of Marcion, as I give examples of previously in this post.

Previous to that last paragraph, Lowder said in the previous, penultimate paragraph -

I therefore suggest that we think of the 'historicity of Jesus' as meaning 'whether the Jesus of the New Testament is based upon a person who actually lived'

The way the NT seemed to take a long time to develop is relevant to the notion of a 1st century Jesus.

As I proposed in this post, the prospects of some or all of the synoptic gospels having been written after Marcion's texts is worth of consideration.

And a 2nd or 3rd C Jesus is also worthy of consideration.

 

[Craig B]

@ maximara

This is from the Jewish Virtual Library on ben Stada.

While the Babylonian tradition clearly seems to identify Ben Sṭada with Ben Pantira (Jesus), it is highly unlikely that this reflects any historical tradition deriving from the tannaitic period. On the contrary, it is almost certainly a classic example of the Babylonian Talmud's "creative historiography" which seeks to identify obscure and unknown figures (like Ben Sṭada) with significant and well known figures (like Ben Pantira = Jesus). The Babylonian Talmud here as elsewhere reworks early sources (Tosefta and TJ) in order to achieve its own literary and polemical ends. It is therefore not surprising that inconsistencies remain between the older, more original elements, and the more recent trends and interpretations which coexist in the Babylonian Talmud's final retelling of these stories. Attempts to relate all of these various elements to a particular concrete historical figure will therefore almost always result in contradiction.

That source has no problem in reconciling the historicity of the NT Jesus with the probable existence of other characters with that name, and the Talmud's confusion on the question. Although it makes ben Stada later than, rather than prior to, the Nazarene. I don't suppose that matters.