Quote:
Originally Posted by boxcar
Yeah, you do because you are so duplicitous, as you have just proved again. Always moving the goalposts.
Again, Jesus' existence is accepted by most scholars in this world. Some eyewitnesses to his life, death, burial and resurrection actually wrote parts of the NT -- John and Peter. Luke traveled with Paul and had the eyewitness accounts of the apostles Paul met with -- plus other eyewitnesses. Paul also saw the risen Christ and he wrote at least seven epistles. It is also very likely that Matthew is the Jewish tax collector Levi who came to faith in Jesus. (It was very common in the ANE for a person to have two first names!) Mark was very good friends with Peter and undoubtedly drew very much of his material from the apostle, etc.
In short, Jesus' existence is extremely well attested to. It is no wonder that no ancient writer or historian ever disputed his existence. Not even the Christ-hating Jews in the Babylonian Talmud denied his existence. And if anyone didn't want Jesus to exist, it would have been them!
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The gospels of the NT were all written anonymously, and nothing in them identifies, in ANY way, who the authors were...or with which other "gospel authors" these anonymous writers "associated".
Oddly enough...the author of the "Gospel of Thomas" fully identifies himself in the text as "Thomas O Didymos", who was "Doubting" Thomas...an acknowledged disciple of Jesus. But that gospel, although written by an authentic Jesus disciple, did not please the Church...so, it was despised and subsequently rejected. As a result, the "anonymous gospels" were accepted as "fact"...while the text written by the legitimate disciple was called "heretical"...and thrown away. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.