Who Was the Historical Jesus?

[snopes]

Biblical scholar Rachel Havrelock is a MythBuster in her own right, dispelling popular beliefs about Christianity. The University of Illinois at Chicago professor traveled to the Holy Land to co-host the Discovery Channel documentary "Who Was Jesus?"

Havrelock recently sat down to speak with Discovery News' Jennifer Viegas about the historical Jesus, what she feels are some common misconceptions, and the role women played during Christianity's earliest years.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/0...cal-jesus.html

[hambubba]

No big surprises there, except for maybe the Baptists, what with the gender equality and all. What she says in this article is pretty well known in biblical circles though.

[Emily]

Interesting! Thanks for posting the info and link. Best HJ book I've read (so far) has been "Gospel Truth" by Russell Shorto. It's a summary of the findings of the various HJ projects, and pretty much conclusively proves that most of the "gospel" (and Christianity) is utter bunk.

Have also been reading at ex-christian.net Fascinating and eye-opening to say the least!

[KingDavid8]

It's strange that she counts Josephus' reference to Jesus in Antiquities 18 as evidence for Jesus, when it's the near-consensus of scholars that this passage was at least partially interpolated centuries later. Josephus' reference in Antiquities 20 is a bit stronger, IMO. It doesn't tell us much (just that Jesus was considered the Christ and had a brother named James), but there's no doubt that Josephus wrote the passage. Though I'd say that the Tacitus reference is the strongest non-Christian historical reference to Jesus, with no real doubt that Tacitus wrote the entire thing. It also talks about the execution by Pilate.

David

[Johnny Slick]

It was me, I admit it. 'Sup?

[Elkhound]

It seems that each generation reconstructs the 'Historical Jesus' in its own image.