Yeah, well, there's also a chance that you did and I missed it. But, fifth time's the charm and all that.

I thought I did introduce it at the appropriate point. But I appreciate your sentiments. No hard feelings I hope.

Now that's funny -- I just posted my mention that your link above was what I had been looking for all along. As I said just a moment ago, that link would have saved you a lot of time the first time around, I think.

Hey, I just want to say that I came back to this thread at lunch and followed the link to your site and read your post (on your blog) from January on the topic of the Historical Jesus, along with a lot of the comments.

I have to say that the article on your blog covers pretty much all of the questions I had been asking here -- I think if you had just referenced it early in the discussion it would have saved a lot of your time.

I suppose that you come across a fair amount of dilettantes and recalcitrant conspiracists on this topic, and that explains your exasperation with my line of inquiry. I would only suggest to you that not every person who considers trying to understand the mythicist explanation need be a wingnut or incapable of honest dialogue on the topic -- I actually think the mythicism could be a great way to introduce more people to a deeper study of this period, and also bring up the topic of historicity (meta history), etc.

Anyway, I appreciate all the work you've done to bring this to a broader audience (like me), and just wanted to point out that I thought the article on your blog was very helpful to me for better understanding your take on this issue.

Cheers.

*chuckle* Ummm, "stridency"? You guys really do have active and over-sensitive imaginations. My tone has not risen above "increasingly weary and bored". If I felt anything that would lead me to "stridency" I'd actually be bothered to tackle your cluster of bad arguments and contorted non sequiturs above.

But while we're leaving those future readers to ponder things, I'll leave them with this detailed summary of the flaws in the Myther position. They can then decide which position represents the most logical and unforced interpretation of the evidence and which is a contrived tangle of suppositions, excuses, conspiracy theories and weird excisions of inconvenient but pertinent evidence.

Have a nice day.

Yeah, I'll leave the increasing stridency of your responses here for future readers to determine who has adopted the "true believer" position regarding the merits of the historical versus mythical Jesus.

Cheers.

"I haven't said Augustus and Caesar are myths."

And anyone can see that I didn't say you had. Stupid responses like that show me that I'm pretty much wasting my time with you and that this is descending into yet another sucking black hole of bad Myther arguments. It's also well off topic for the original article. I've been over this stuff with Myther true believers too many times to not find doing so again boring and pointless. You don't accept a historical Jesus? Terrific - enjoy. I'm not actually interested enough in what you think to try to convince you otherwise, particularly given that I don't think any evidence that we could reasonably expect for a peasant preacher of this kind would convince you anyway.

"Over 100,000 words in 22 books by a dozen or more authors and not a reference to a Jesus of Nazareth"

Er, yup. Look when I see tired Myther arguments like that one I realise that I'm wasting my time. I could ask how many of those "22 books by a dozen or more authors" mention any other Jewish preachers and why, if they don't, we'd expect them to mention this one. But that would be expecting a sensible answer.

I'm not interested in yet another endless rehashing of Myther arguments, because I've been there dozens of times. You aren't convinced by the evidence that convinces the experts? Great - remain unconvinced. I'm not interested enough in what you think to bother trying to teach you why the Myther arguments are nonsense to objective analysts. I might bother if I felt you were open to having your mind changed, but I'm not getting that impression.