[photon]

I'm not so sure anymore, not that I've gone over to a mythic Jesus position, but does a historical Jesus fit more than, say, a collection of "historical Jesuses" and the authentic portions of the writings are themselves from collections of oral traditions that merged over time (or something like that)?

There's some books coming out regarding the historical Jesus that I'm waiting for.. Richard Carrier has a couple (the first outlining the usage of Bayes' Theorem in the context of history, the second applying that to the question of a historical Jesus), and Ehrman has one too coming out (Ehrman seems to conclude that there is a historical Jesus, but I don't know if he's changed that in his book).

I meant it more that the confidence in what is written and its internal consistency isn't sufficient (IMO) to warrant it being the absolute standard by which all other claims about divine revelation should be judged.