Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
There were dozens of Jewish prophets preaching in Palestine at the time. I don’t see any reason to be skeptical of claims that one of them was named Jesus, his teachings roughly accorded with what the apostles set down in writing decades later, and he was crucified for being a troublemaker.
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I generally don't have an issue with the idea that there was a first century Jewish prophet named Jesus. I am pretty skeptical that his surname was the anointed one, although I would not be surprised if he took that name in public. And I feel a great deal of certainty that almost all of the stories about him were drawn from tales about the other prophets you are mentioning, which leaves me a little incredulous to the idea most of the stories of the new testament are about that guy or that he was particularly unique at the time.
So when I say it's controversial to Jesus existed, I'm of course not talking about the existence of guys named Jesus, I'm sure there was a guy in that area at the time named Jesus. I am saying the character of the new testament divine or not is probably mostly legendary rather than historic. This is where I think King Arthur is probably a good comparison, It generally starts with a guy like Aurelius Ambrosius a ex Roman War lord controlling the ethnically Latin people of the UK as the empire fell, then with every generation you layer in stories of Welsh kings, and Anglo-Saxon war bands until the story is codified ~600 years later. Likely whatever image of Jesus anyone is conjuring was probably formed in a similar fashion.