Yes... It was a quote from a TV show... so what?
The whole point behind "faith" is that you have to take it at face value... I get that you do... I'm not saying don't... You can have it all day long, I don't criticize it. I simply say that when it comes to the whole Jesus thing, I don't.
You will never have any "proof" of his existence beyond your belief that Bible is a historical telling, but we all know that the history in it is confusing and I can't know that one part is wrong but believe the rest... It's not in me.
Now, the Bin Laden thing... I believe that whatever happened will come out and that we will know exactly what happened. I don't believe it's some big conspiracy.
That's all there is to it.
Faith has nothing to do with this. We are not talking about whether or not Jesus was the Son of God or anything like that. We are talking about the historicity of Jesus, whether or not Jesus is a real person who lived in Israel in the 1st century. You are claiming that Jesus is nothing but a myth.
Scholarly response to the Jesus Myth Hypothesis: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church's imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."
Burridge, R & Gould, G, Jesus Now and Then, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004, p.34. The classical historian Michael Grant writes:
"To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."
Michael Grant does not see the similarities between Christianity and pagan religions to be significant. Grant states that "Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of the deaths and rebirths, of mythical gods seemed so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit."
Grant, Michael (1995). Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Scribner, 199. ISBN 978-0684818672 . R.T. France points out that Christianity was actively opposed by both the Roman Empire and the Jewish authorities, and would have been utterly discredited if Jesus had been shown as a non-historical figure. He argues that there is evidence in Pliny, Josephus and other sources of the Roman and Jewish approaches at the time, and none of them involved this suggestion.
In response to Jesus-myth proponents who argue the lack of early non-Christian sources, or question their authenticity, R. T. France counters that "even the great histories of Tacitus have survived in only two manuscripts, which together contain scarcely half of what he is believed to have written, the rest is lost" and that the life of Jesus, from a Roman point of view, was not a major
event.
R.T France disagrees with the notion that the Apostle Paul did not speak of Jesus as a physical being. He argues that arguments from silence are unreliable and that there are several references to historical facts about Jesus's life in Paul's letters, such as that Jesus "who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David" (Romans 1:3, TNIV).
France, RT (1986). Evidence for Jesus (Jesus Library). Trafalgar Square Publishing, 19-20. ISBN 0340381728. Supporting a historical Jesus Bovon, François (2006). The Last Days of Jesus, trans. Kristin Hennessy; Louisville: Westminster, John Knox. ISBN 0664230075.
Burridge, Richard A. (2006). Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading, 2nd edn., Grand Rapids:Eerdmans. ISBN 0802829805 .
Charlesworth, James H. (ed.) (2006). Jesus and Archaeology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ISBN 080284880X.
Grant, Michael [1977] (1999). Jesus. London: Phoenix. ISBN 0-75380-899-4.
Komoszewski, J. Ed ; et al (2006). Reinventing Jesus. Kregel Publications. ISBN 082542982X.
Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols., New York: Doubleday.
(1991) The Roots of the Problem and the Person. ISBN 0-385-26425-9 .
(1994) Mentor, Message, and Miracles. ISBN 0-385-46992-6 .
(2001) Companions and Competitors. ISBN 0-385-46993-4 .
Sanders, E. P. (1993). The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9059-7.
Theissen, Gerd; and Annette Merz (1998). The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide , trans. John Bowden, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-3123-4.
Wright, NT (1996). The New Testament and the People of God. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. ISBN 0800626818.
