German3945-That video said that Jesus wasn't the first to take his life for a religion in a "resurrection" type of way.
No, it doesn't. You should watch all three videos so you'll get better idea!
@MageGreyWolf - It seems like the Skeptical Bible Study Videos are no good as a source because your looking for evidence that Jesus was real outside of the Holy Bible, right? if you're not, then I apologize, because there's Paul. But even so, if non-Biblical, then those videos just trying to say that the Gospels are contradictory because they don't agree on the years. That's not a contradiction, it's just not precise. There's a difference, and is someting YOU already have to accept when you agreed with the 30 years of gap or whatever that exists before it was wrote down.
Your other video is really bad, sorry. The Jesus Myth, I don't know why you would even put that one up. He's thinking backwards, like CNN was broadcasting in the ancient times and all the historians would sit down to watch the news that Jesus was healing, etc. That guy makes the LIFE-IS-LiKE-THIS-SO-LIFE-WAS-LIKE-THIS-BACK-THEN-TOO-ERROR! I liked this part also: "these are the historians alive around when Jesus existed...ALMOST NONE of them wrote about his existence, therefore he didn't exist." So he really goes overboard in his conclusions, like those other angry ranting sub-academic guys did in that earlier source.
I guess what's hard about this question is that Christians already believe, and it's hard to share the Bible with non-believers. And non-believers don't want to believe, so you have to go with non-Biblical sources, but a lot of those sources are so anti-Christian that they talk so much against Christ's divinity and think that means Jesus didn't exist. That's just stupid.
They also find the evidence about Jesus, but then they find some conspiracy theory and make there suspicions out to be fact. Bzzzz. Sorry, you can't do that. If your looking for evidence you have to take the evidence, you can't omit some because you THINK it MIGHT be tainted.
But even looking through there eyes it doesn't make sense. A lack of direct evidence still isn't evidence against. So they should look at the indirect evidence to get a better understanding. Like whether its possible that a man was a leader of a sect of Jews who was killed by Pilate. Or even whether there were groups of Jewish tribes that practiced mystic rituals similar to pagan beliefs of their day, &ect.
All I'm saying is that your sources keep ignoring the indirect evidence, and there's no reason for that cause if they concluded that there's no direct evidence then the next step is to look at indirect evidence that's all!
Who was Paul?
Anyway, I think the show on Jesus in the National Geographic Channel will be good. I hope the three or four people actualy reading this thread will find time to watch it!
