It was a period of political and religious upheaval and a period of discovery and trade with many distant lands (the Silk Road was open). There were many people preaching their "truth" at that time. I am sure more than a few of them had followings of different sizes. I am also sure quite a few of them with different sized followings were not written about by Jospehus, Pliny or anyone else.
Josephus' reference is still very disputed and unclear. Pliny and Tacitus were born after Jesus was gone.
The earliest Christian writings are those of Paul, followed by the writer of Mark. In Paul's writing Jesus is definitely a kind of divine being. He makes hardly any mention of his life as a man, and never met Jesus while he lived. You would like Tom Harpur's book 'Water into Wine'. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Care to give a synopsis? If I saw it in a book store I would pass it by assuming it is squishy, touchy-feely, Christian, self-help nonsense.
I don't care if he existed or not. It doesn't matter to me - I'll get to that later. I think that cults that powerful do not come from nothing. Historians AFTER his time talked as if he did in fact exist, while historians FROM his time, do not make mention. That means at his time he was very important to his (relatively) small group of followers. These followers did far more to create "christianity" than Jesus did. John in particular is the primary reason for Christianity going to Europe and thus it being able to "make it". I stick to my opinion I stated in feb on this: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1760734&postcount=29
Good post. One doesn't look in Madagascar for a history of the life of George Washington any more than one looks outside of Israel for the history of Christ. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The Catholics don't believe the bible so they're not Christians. That's why they call themselves the "Catholic religion", not the Christian religion. Their god is the pope because they believe everything he says, especially when it contradicts the bible. That's why they call the pope "Our Holy Father" when Jesus tells us we have only one Holy Father and He's in heaven.
I was trying to explain this before in a thread ages ago, I agree with Raven. People look past the gospels and say "but thats just the bible", The bible is actualy documented events of a persons life. Jesus in my opinion had decent philosophy nd was a good person, peple do not look at it from a philosophical point of view, they just see that it's about god and superstition nd debunk it without consideration. You will find people that believe in god or are open to the idea of god will consider jesus alot more, even if they are hindu or muslim they will approach it with open mind. People cannot separate the name of jesus from his so called miracles, they cannot view him as a regular guy with good philosopy. It is either jesus existed as was said, or it's ll complete myth with no truth. They do not take into consideration chinese whisper effect with exagerations. peace.
The History Channel did an interesting 2 hour peace on all the people who may have been Jesus. There's were quite a few....