From: utzoo!watmath!cbostrum
Newsgroups: net.religion
Title: The Historical Jesus
Article-I.D.: watmath.4856
Posted: Wed Apr  6 13:49:24 1983
Received: Thu Apr  7 07:35:45 1983

i was reading my bible last night (matthew) and noticed that it tells
how amazingly popular and famous and wellknown etc etc jesus became.
*if* this were indeed so, then we should expect a lot of reference
to him in the secular historians of the day and the period shortly 
thereafter. on this we are all agreed. so what do we find?

thanks to the wonderful josh mcDowell, who really wants to prove his case,
we have a probably exhaustive list of all references. in the list submitted
here, some of them have been pointed out to be xtian apologists, so they
dont count for much. the others that i am familiar with are also nothing to
write home about. the sueotonius (sp) that i could find were references
to "christians" and not to jesus, and no one is doubting that due to the
fanatical work of paul, et al, that there were **christians**. i
imagine that many of them are similar.

also, the josephus ones (there are two passing references) are commonly
believed by biblical history experts today to be spurious xtian additions.

the point is that if jesus really did have such an influence in his day, then
there should be oodles of non controversial references to him. and there
are not