From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!hao!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!tektronix!tekmdp!dadla!dadla-b!hutch
Newsgroups: net.religion
Title: Re: The Historical Jesus
Article-I.D.: dadla-b.419
Posted: Mon Apr 18 15:11:28 1983
Received: Sat Apr 30 00:11:10 1983
References: watmath.4856

Oh good grief.

THere are plenty of non controversial references to Jesus and to his
popularity.  There is an entire literature of things called "gonstic
gospels" which attest to the popularity of a mystery-religion brand
of Christianity.  The New Testament and related books cannot be called
controversial, at least in the sense I understood cbostrum to mean.
They are probably the best resource of evidence, despite the fact that
they are the work of Christians.  A very good indicator of the popularity
of Christianity is the CLEARLY DOCUMENTED adoption by the Pharisaic
Jews (in synagogues, precursor to modern Rabbinic Judaism) around the
year 70 AD of a ritual curse on the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which
was introduced in order to get them OUT of the synagogues so they would
stop converting people there.

mutter grumble poor shoddy scholarship gripe growl

-Hutch