Well, let's see, your post is like a spider web of error in mutual support of itself. First of all, we need to dispose of the farcical "Jesus Seminar", of Funk and his colored balls. Funk and Company approach their study with the predetermination that miracles didn't happen, and that there was no resurrection, so they discount the testimony of the New Testament accounts before they begin. But let me address at least one of your more egregious errors:
it is important to remember what we do know--that he was a Jewish rabbi from the countryside, that there is nothing in the historical record about him for over a hundred years after his death.
To begin with, historians have a body of evidence in the New Testament itself. And Josephus mentions Christ in his Antiquities. There is also a considerable body of writing of the students of the Apostles themselves, Polycarp and Ignatius, Irenaus et al. And since these men quoted extensively in their letters we know what New Testament letters were familiar to them. As for dating the New Testament writings themselves, it isn't all that hard. We know that Nero executed Paul. Luke and Acts were written by an associate of Paul's, so they had to be written before Paul's death in AD 64. Paul's letter to the Romans was written before he was taken to Rome to plead his case before Caesar. It had to be written sometime in the '50s. Besides the internal dating possible from the letters themselves, there have been important manuscript finds in recent years, one fragment of Mark dating back to the '60s. All of this argues against the post '70 dating important to the theories of the Jesus Seminar. |
