[Remote]

Originally Posted by Alex Linder

I mean, is it not astounding that, in a mere eight pages of a 101-page book, the author can afford to list ALL non-christian references to the Main Player In All World History?

True.

But it is also possible that so little exists-- and that what does exist is largely buried within the Church Fathers' refutations-- because when the Christians got control of the decaying Empire, they simply destroyed what they didn't like; and perhaps what was closer to the time of Jesus was more damning, and so less acceptable to keep around.

Anyway, having studied this a bit recently (and feeling compelled to run my big mouth when my opinion was not requested), I just wanted to chime in to say that I can't accept a 100% mythical Jesus, although I am totally fine with the notion that he is a largely mythological composite figure. I do think that there was a man, named Jesus, who was an anti-Roman agitator and apocalyptic messianic Jew (probably a member of a radical Essene sect and perhaps a Galilean bandit), whose image was softened up by Marranos and Hellenized Jews and conflated with other, earlier, Jewish religious teachers and aspiring messiahs, some of whom were also named Jesus. (I saw a figure somewhere that claimed about 1 in 10 Jewish boys at the time of Christ were named "Yahweh Saves" -- Yeshua, or Jesus, or Joshua; all the same name; the same name as the guy in the Old Testament who 'saved' the Jews by supposedly genociding the Canaanites. Instructive, that.)

And Saul-Paul (whatever in the world he was, exactly-- schizoid Jew or perhaps even Roman spy provoking divisions within rebel groups) was largely responsible for the invention of the transcendent Christ, who got mixed up with the mystery religions (like Mithraism and the Cult of Cybele) which his mystical version of Jesus sort of sprung from to begin with, and which he pimped to the Roman gutters and to the mongrels in the Provinces.

A bit on the flesh-and-blood Gospel Jesus (instead of Paul's transcendent Jesus in the ozone somewhere):

Scholars generally agree that the first Gospel, Mark, was written during or just after the Jewish War of 70AD. One can discern through the redaction pieces of a Jewish zealot and political radical Jesus, edited to seem less so, presumably in a sort of propaganda act that would show the Goyim in Rome how the Jews who lived there were not really a theat: i.e., Jesus was just a faith-healing holy man (like other Jesuses), not an anti-Roman seditionist. Despite the many apparent revisions, Mark, as we know it, (almost certainly written by a Jew, and probably in Rome) is the most interesting gospel because it is least affected by developing Christology and because it lets a few things slip. The tale of the Syrophonecian Woman in Mark shows how Jesus felt about the Goyim: they were dogs fighting for Jewish scraps and unworthy of the Kingdom. Jesus is portrayed as a kind of epileptic; Mary, his mother, remarks that Jesus is "out of his mind"-- she apparently forgets that she was impregnated by God and his unusual behavior is Divine.

Most fascinating of all, however, is that "Barabbas", the Jewish rebel who escapes execution at the behest of the mob, in the earliest existing versions of the gospel actually bears the full name: Jesus Barabbas.

Barabbas is Bar Abbas, meaning literally, "the son of the father" (!).

So, you see, Goyim, it was that other Jew named Jesus, Son of the Father, who who was the anti-Roman seditionist-- not the pacifistic faith-healer Jesus, who was a good Jew, like us. We love Rome!

(Also interesting-- and R.P. Oliver mentions it, I remember-- Nero was right. It was 'early Christians', i.e., messianic Jews who set the fire that burned Rome nearly to the ground in 64AD.)

As time went on, and more Gentiles got on board with the help of Paul, and with the hands of Hellenized Jews covering their own asses among the Goyim obscuring the real Jesus, the Jewish Jeboo who hated the Goyim and longed for the fiery destruction of Rome faded.

And that's why Christianity is so destructive: it is a Jewish apocalyptic fantasy of the destruction of the Goyim masquerading as a Greek-ified religion of universal love; belief in Christianity is really the internalization of a immortal Jewish supremacist's desire for one's own destruction.

Lastly, the Church Fathers in the following centuries got rid of everything the others missed that didn't jibe with the then official story.

That's my take on it, anyway, having studied it for about a year now, I guess. The most thorough case I know for for the totally mythological Jesus is by Earl Dogherty in the Jesus Puzzle, whose work is based on an academic scholar's named Wells; and while I think it is obvious that Paul's vision of Jeboo is totally transcendent and uninterested in (and maybe even totally ignorant of) the flesh-and-blood Jesus, it is a stretch to claim that Jesus was totally metaphysical-imaginary and became 'real' later, in light of what scholars know about Essenes and especially considering the Jerusalem Church and Paul's conflict with it and the actual disciples of Jesus, which I guess could be historiography, but sure doesn't ring that way.