I think there are two very good points to look at. Remember, when Jesus was crucified, not only was he a target, so were the apostles, I'm pretty sure the Romans were keeping a close eye on them. So for the apostles, not long after they witnessed Jesus being crucified, to claim they had seen the risen Lord, was a very bold statement indeed. I really don't think they were making it up, because this type of behaviour was punishable by death. Yet they said it anyway! Pretty powerful evidence if you ask me and this is one of the reasons why Christianity grew to what it is today.

"The number of people that follow any particular idea is not evidence for anything."

This all encompassing statement includes of course, you yourselves. Further it can equally be said that the number of people believing something is no evidence whatsoever of its falsity.

Further St. Paul seems to have known Jesus' teachings very well and in one point offered new material that is nowhere else quoted by the Apostles or the Q material, namely "It is more blessed to give than receive".

Yeshua has multiple etymological meanings, so I'm assuming you mean Jesus. The NT was actually compiled centuries after the death of Jesus. The writings of the NT authors were written decades after the death of Jesus. So What? The Emperor of Rome, Nero had nothing contemporary or non-contemporary written about him until 50 years after his death. The next was written 150 years after his death. What is extraordinary is to have so much contemporary writings about a condemned criminal who wasn't even a citizen of the Roman empire.

>"the NT was almost certainly not (written) by contemporary follow(er)s of Yeshua". Your use of contemporary and what most historians of ancient writings define as contemporary are two different things. The Emperor Nero existed. Jesus of Nazareth existed. There is far far less contemporary evidence of Nero than Jesus.

Most scholars agree that Josephus' text were corrupted to some extent; but the extent of the corruption is disputable. What most scholars would say is the TF contains what would be called interpolations by subsequent christian scribes. It doesn't make it fake, it makes it corrupt. Also it doesn't take away from the other non-biblical evidences of Tacitus and Sertonius nor the Babylonian Talmud. Also the Mara bar Sepapion references how the Jews had their "wise king" executed because of the "new law" he laid down. Josephus is the only corrupt version of non-christian historical evidences.

>An example of this is the empty tomb. The descriptions in the 4 gospels
are disturbingly different in many details (who was there, who was seen
in the tomb, etc.) As an historian, one could use this as evidence that
a) the event never happened b) that the events were written up a long
time afterwards when eye witnesses were dead, that c) the accounts were
doctored to fit certain points of view, etc.

You reveal your bias when you fail to mention what is perfectly obvious that d) The four authors describe different details from multiple sources of the same historical event to different audiences for different purposes. Ask four coworkers what they remember from your holiday office party. You will get four "disturbingly different" accounts. In fact if you saw identical accounts you could be certain that some of the accounts were plagiarized or really just one person's account retold by three others to convince you that's exactly what happened. None of the "disturbing details" exclude the other accounts. In order to have 2 of something (angels) you also need 1. There is no contradiction unless one author says there was only 1. If an author says people W, X, and Y were there it doesn't mean person Z (Mary Magdelene) wasn't there unless the author specifically says so. "Still dark", "very early in the morning", "just after sunrise", and "at dawn" are all within 1/2 hour of each other.

I think you misunderstood who BE is and what he does. He is an historian, not a theologian. His job is to evaluate the likely course of past events based on the most plausible evidence. He does not, if I understand correctly, discount the supernatural but relegates it to last place if there is other physical evidence. An example of this is the empty tomb. The descriptions in the 4 gospels are disturbingly different in many details (who was there, who was seen in the tomb, etc.) As an historian, one could use this as evidence that a) the event never happened b) that the events were written up a long time afterwards when eye witnesses were dead, that c) the accounts were doctored to fit certain points of view, etc. These and other explanations based on the written evidence are what an historian will look at, even if they do not discount a supernatural event. That is their job.

That is your claim and your interpretation. As the gospels were written decades after the purported death of Jesus, there is at least the possibility that the accounts were written to conform to these "prophecies".

Are they? What proof do you have? The reason most jews rejected Jesus was because he did not fulfil the criteria for a messiah that are mentioned in the OT. You need to be careful about how you prefigure. It's a double edged sword.

Who says they were prefigured? That can work both ways. saul of Tarsus taught a completely different theology to Jesus. One could argue that he was prefigured in Deuteronomy as a law breaker.