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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Evidence for Christianity
Message-ID: <403@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Oct-84 11:34:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.403
Posted: Fri Oct 19 11:34:50 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Oct-84 07:44:22 EDT
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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[Yiri]

>One of the reasons such discussions drag on interminably with no real
>progress is that the participants do not insist on validitiy of the
>sources. As I have shown in other articles, the legitimate ancient
>writings of the Bible do NOT (!!!) support ANYTHING historical about
>"Jesus" nor about Christianity. They are totally unrelated except by
>the counterfeiting of the "Jesus image" from the historical figure.
>Until that is dealt with, the rest is an exercise in ignorance and
>futility.

Well, unfortunately ignorance is what we have.  To paraphrase Screwtape:

Attempts to find a historical Jesus (or Y'shua) in the Christian writings
are futile.  The documents do not contain biography or history, and so,
to get biography or history out of them, one aspect of the writings must
be distorted out of shape, another minimized.  

I myself think that all this debate on the historical Jesus is worthless,
since we have no historical evidence.  What we have are Greek texts, the
earliest of which comes at least 150 years after the fact.  Now, when
someone produces a Hebrew Gospel, I might be able to evaluate Yiri's
claim; until then, I must count it as yet another Historical Jesus
attempt, and view it with suspicion.

Charley Wingate