For example, ref the story where Jesus goes to mount Olives and the disciples fetch the two Donkeys, one big and one small. The story goes on and Jesus went riding on THEM!

Now ref to old testament and note that it was prophesised that the King will come riding on a small male donkey, to liberate jerusalem.

Also ref to the ancestor list and compare of Luke to Mathews.

Ref also to virgin girl, which meant at that time a girl of marriageable age and not a girl whose virginity had been broken as we understand now, becoming pregnant and the story of Jesus living in Africa for 30 years, without any trail of evidence.

It is about mastery of sentence changing to suit the story character
and fabrication upon fabrication. Thus Mark,the unknown,the copy cat, saw the obvious mistakes and corrected by virtually copying sentence by sentence, and making a few additional tales himself.

Luke with a different ancestor list saw “good” to tell the story as he saw best, in his opinion.

John, the writer is more funny than the rest in that the word becomes light and flesh and spirit!!!

paul, the self proclaimed torturer and a fugitive, a man who carried double edged bible! “circumcise but don’t circumcise”. He went to the lands of the gentiles boldly where Jesus, if true to be, had “refused”.

I suggest we all follow only one saying, and that is “Be Good, Do Good”, for the cause of humanity and stop lying that we see god and talk to God!!! It is all for Money, right?!/!?

Please reply to this comment after thoroughly comparing the Old and the New Testaments.

I am just examining the independent evidence that is cited most often by Christians. I have concluded that most of one claim was created by fraud, one claim suggests that someone known as Christus did exist, and three claims are not even claims about the existence of Jesus.

What seems most likely to me is that Paul and other early Christian writers invented the Jesus legend based on a combination of:

(a) exaggerated stories about various different preachers and social activists who did exist (one of whom may well have been called Jesus), plus

(b) archetypal storylines and scenes from the legends of other gods that people believed in at the time, such as the Persian sun-god Mithra.

Then, as time went on, the early Christian religion borrowed more stories and rituals from pagan and other beliefs to make it easier for people to convert.

Can you please let me know where I can find any of these contemporaneous Roman records of Jesus?

I have not seen any reference to them, including in articles defending the historical existence of Jesus.

Of course if you take out all of the ones considered ‘friendly’, and believe that all the unfriendly sources have been created by fraud - it is not surprising you are going to end up with nothing.

Then it’s quite simple to convince yourself on how rational you are being.

I wrote a less-well-researched piece on the same subject here:

http://whateveryourethinkingyourewrong.blogspot.com/2008/08/wrong-jesus-definitely-existed.html

Yours is the better piece, but mine features Jesus’ grave in Japan, which you may find interesting.

In the case of the new testament there are many more books giving accounts of the life and times of Jesus. A real question for believers is why don’t you ‘believe’ in these other books. However, most believers haven’t even heard of the apocryphal gospels.

Religious authorities are quite happy to infantilise their followers and don’t want any historical enquiry (outside academic circles) into the origins of Christianity as it would throw up so many unanswerable questions, but really if anyone wants to wean people off such beliefs then raise questions about the validity and exclusivity of the Four Gospels.

In my comment above, I didn’t say “one must infer from the absence of evidence that the figure never existed or the event never took place”, I said “one can infer..”.

Some theists compare the historical evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great with that of Jesus. The earliest known history of Alexander the Great was written by Plutarch around four hundreds years after Alexander’s death, yet people don’t doubt he existed. Therefore, some Christians say, Jesus existed.

However, when reading about Alexander the Great, a trained historian doesn’t take what was written as, well, gospel. What’s more, there is some archaeological evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great.

I don’t doubt that the gospels are based on a real person, but the stories are wildly inconsistent. That’s all I was really saying.

It is hard to accept that Christianity could have flourished in the early years without some basis in reality (whatever that was). Josephus does make a reference (disputed) to Jesus.

The important point is not whether the historical Jesus existed but did the Jesus of the Gospels exist. The answer is undoubtably NO.

The problem is not Jesus’ existence but the faith that is put in books that are mostly works of fiction. The Council of Nicea 325AD decided that the current editions were the only true ones by putting all the books giving an account of the life of Jesus into a room overnight and allowing god to put his favourite four (why four?) on top.

There are loads of accounts of the life of Jesus and what matters is not whether we can establish whether or not he existed, but that all the accounts of his life are as factual as the DaVinci Code.