Your tone is so insulting!Swammerdami's version of Jesus is ad hoc. We have no evidence that Jesus was "a minor figure;"I think the historic Jesus may have been a rather minor figure (during his lifetime) about whom VERY LITTLE is known for sure except that he was from Galilee, was executed by order of Pontius Pilate (and probably had a brother named James!)
I try to write PRECISELY. Had I taken my time I might have been even more careful: "Jesus MIGHT have been a somewhat minor figure" but in any event what I did NOT write is "Jesus MUST have been a minor figure."
Do you know the difference between MUST and MAY, @Unknown Soldier ? I'm sorry if I sound irritated and/or pedantic, BUT You EITHER skimmed my post with low comprehension, OR you find it convenient to erect a strawman.
In any case, you offered the possible hypothesis that Jesus was not well known during his lifetime. I responded by critiquing that possibility. If you don't want scenarios you come up with to be scrutinized, then don't suggest them.
Let's see.certainly nothing in the New Testament describes Jesus that way. Historicists actually claim Jesus was a minor figure to explain away the lack of evidence for Jesus from the time he supposedly live. In so doing they impugn the very sources they use to base his historicity on!
Wrong again.
What evidence do you have that John the Baptist was more famous than Jesus? I don't know of any evidence for that. On the contrary, both Matthew 4:24 and Mark 1:28 state explicitly that Jesus was famous in the regions he supposedly preached in.John the Baptist was likely more famous during his lifetime than Jesus was and he is barely mentioned in surviving texts outside Christian literature.
Not at all. I'd recommend you do some research rather than just parrot apologists. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:Pontius Pilate was the most powerful man in Judaea for a while and, again, historical mentions, while exceeding Jesus', are rather uncommon.
We have far better evidence for Pilate than for Jesus.Sources
Sources on Pontius Pilate are limited, although modern scholars know more about him than about other Roman governors of Judaea.[11] The most important sources are the Embassy to Gaius (after the year 41) by contemporary Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria,[12] the Jewish Wars (c. 74) and Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94) by the Jewish historian Josephus, as well as the four canonical Christian Gospels, Mark (composed between 66–70), Luke (composed between 85–90), Matthew (composed between 85–90), and John (composed between 90–110);[11] he is also mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (composed between 85–90)[13] and by the First Epistle to Timothy (written in the second half of the 1st century).[14] Ignatius of Antioch mentions him in his epistles to the Trallians, Magnesians, and Smyrnaeans[15] (composed between 105–110 AD).[16] He is also briefly mentioned in Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus (early 2nd century AD), who simply says that he put Jesus to death.[11] Two additional chapters of Tacitus's Annals that might have mentioned Pilate have been lost.[17] Besides these texts, dated coins in the name of emperor Tiberius minted during Pilate's governorship have survived, as well as a fragmentary short inscription that names Pilate, known as the Pilate Stone, the only inscription about a Roman governor of Judaea predating the Roman-Jewish Wars to survive.[18][19][20] The written sources provide only limited information and each has its own biases, with the gospels in particular providing a theological rather than historical perspective on Pilate.
Then there's not much left of him! It's really weird to argue that a miracle worker lived only to say he wasn't a miracle worker.If Jesus had actually raised the rotting corpse of Lazarus from the dead, or walked on water in the presence of witnesses, might such a deed have been mentioned in a preserved papyrus? Maybe, maybe not. But anyway very few, if any, here are arguing that Jesus really performed miraculous deeds.
Oh sure, it's possible that a famous Jesus went unnoticed by the historians of his day, but it's not likely. If you want to make a strong inductive argument, then your premise(s) needs to have a probability exceeding 50 percent.In any event, the story should help Infidels realize the absurd wrongness of the claim that if Jesus were highly charismatic and admired, his story would have surely been preserved by multiple sources. In an age where parchment and the hire of scribes was very expensive, no less.