Hello Sailor posted:

I'm not sure you know what the scholarly arguments for a historical Jesus are, if that's your takeaway. Under the methods of historical criticism, you don't just entirely reject a document because the writer was biased or because it contains fanciful elements.

But let's go ahead and throw them out, anyway. From non-Christian documents, we know that the Jews were really chafing under Roman rule (the three Jewish Rebellions took place between 66-136 CE) and that one of the effects of that friction was the regular appearance of Jews claiming to be the Messiah, who would then be executed by the Roman government. Do you really think it's likely that exactly zero of them had teachings that survived their death? Because there are still Branch Davidians who think Koresh was the real deal and that he's coming back.