Thanks Pericles - you stole my thunder.

However, I am concerned about Philo's line of reasoning which appears to be thus: 'If you believe Julius Caesar existed then you must believe Jesus Christ existed.' This has to be the ultimate straw-man argument ever. Back to Debating 101 for Philo.

Back to DVC - what a storm in a teacup. Would any of the religious please explain why they are so defensive about a work of fiction? - I am being deliberately ambiguous here ;-)

Pericles
I suggest you read my post again. There is more historical resultant implication from the life of Jesus than there is for Julius Caesar. What legacy has Julius Caesar left us other than an actual figure in history and his records?

Jesus reports of coins bearing Caesar's image, and Paul finally appealed to Caesar. Books written by Paul were written while in prison in Rome. The book of Romans is his final appeal and claim to identify his faith in Christ to the Romans. It was Caesar that gave the verdict that Paul be put to death for being the subject of riots.

I never challanged the existence of Julius Caesar, I in fact used his communications from Pilate to state my point. I would suggest that the books of James, Jesus family sibling, have had far greater influenced on society than any writings of Caesar. The Bible still remains the most read book in history in which the recorded words of Jesus and the writings of James, Jesus 8 years elder contemporary appear.

Paul was Jesus contemporary and a former member of the Sanhedrin and approved of the death of the followers of Jesus, till he realised he was acting against God. He wrote most of the writings comprising the New Testament, and was ulimately willing to die for his new revelation. Why would a member of the Jewish heirarchy change his mind only to be persued to his death by other members for his defection; to follow a Messiah despised by the Jews who plotted his cricifixion? Paul was a person of power in Judaism that could put Christ's followers to death and he had; Stephen was one of them.

Jews were forbidden from making statues or images of other humans, as the other nations like the Greeks and Romans who worshipped them as gods. God is to be understood in purity of character not human dictarors.

Scout pretends to know how to debate. Nice to pump yourself up! I bow to you superiority but I suspect Scout lives in a world of fiction.

Hi Snowy
A few corrections to your post.
1) Tacitus mentions the apostles following Christ. But there is a problem here. He seems to have got his information straight from the christians themselves, not from independent evidence. How do we know? Because he writes that Jesus lived while Pontius Pilate was PROCURATOR of Judaea. Pilate was NEVER procurator he was the prefect. A stela has been found with the inscription "Pontius Pilate Prefect of Judaea". So Tacitus is ruled out as an independent witness.

2) Pliny [writing in 112 CE] merely mentioned that he wrote for advice on how to handle troublesome christians in his area. There is NO mention of Christ in any of his works.

3)The Roman historian Suetonius mentions trouble being caused by "Chrestus" while he [chrestus] was in Rome. No record of Jesus ever having been in Rome therefore it is unlikely to have been him.

4) There is one last source that mentions Jesus. It mentions "Yeshua the Nazarene" & claims that he "practiced sorcery and enticed Israel astray" The source is the Talmud.
There are two problems however.
1) The Talmud wasn't written down until the 2nd Century CE and we don't know if these are earlier passages. There is no way to be sure.
2) In one passage Yeshua is mentioned as having five followers "Mattai, Nakkia, Netzer, Buni and Todah" NONE of these names are found in the New Testament.

That's it for sources outside the bible.

By the way Snowy. A multitude of historians are mythicists. Metzger is quite simply wrong. Check out this site if you don't believe me:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/cutner.htm

Philo
The impact a text has does NOT guarantee its historical reliability!
Caesar had numerous people write about him in his own lifetime including his opponents. eg: Cicero
All we have of Jesus are people who want to sell you the idea that he existed. That's all!
But aren't the Gospels reliably written by eyewitness you ask?
I'll deal with that question next post

I just watched a Disney cartoon starring Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Most of it was total bullsheet. I had absolutely no accuracy to the story line in my Golden Book published circa 1974.
The cartoon made Donald out to be a greedy duck who despised Mickey.
And if that wasn't bad enough- suddenly out of no where they introduce this fast talking Rabbit who takes the piss out of all of them. I'm now convinced there’s a conspiracy being hatched to debunk the true story of Donald and Mickey. Its’ simply blasphemous!!.

To Philo & co.

Gospel introduction.

Luke based most of his Gospel on Josephus & the Gospel of Mark. Unfortunately Luke doesn't seem too concerned about the accuracy of his reports. eg. In Luke we read that Jesus was born when Herod reigned [1:5] & Quirinius was govenor of Syria [2:1]. But Herod died 4 BCE & Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 CE. A gap of 10 years!?

If Matthew was written by a former tax gatherer why did Matthew need to borrow so much of his material & even his wording from Mark who wasn't one of the 12? Why did Matthew make stupid mistakes like calling Pontius Pilate Procurator when he was the Prefect of Judaea?

If the Gospel of Mark was written by John Mark why'd he make so many mistakes concerning geography, the people & the language? He'd lived in the area all his life.

If the Gospel of John was written by John the Galilean fisherman then why did he leave out EVERY event in which John was supposedly an eye witness? John even starts out his gospel with a quote from Parmenides' the way of truth. Did John study Greek philosophy while he was waiting to pull the nets in? :)

How about the accuracy of the Gospels regarding the crucifixion. Was it the 3rd hour as Mark 15:25 declares? Or was it the 6th hour as John 19: 14, 15 says?

Concerning the resurrection - No two gospels agree on who found Jesus' empty tomb first.

Mark: 3 women go to the tomb first & see a young man [not an angel].

Matthew: 2 Mary's approach the tomb first, when an earthquake occurs, an angel rolls away the tomb & sits on it.

Luke's women on the other hand already find the tomb empty & two [not one] men in shining robes.

While in John, Mary Magdalene is the first to find the tomb empty & she finds it ALONE.

Complete disagreement!

These are eyewitness accounts? Garbage! These are accounts by people who NEVER met Jesus or anyone who had.