I don't know why I was surprised by this

[lovelyjubilly]

8yo dd: Alexa, happy Easter!
Alexa: Thanks, hoppy Easter to you.
Dd: Jesus is alive!
Alexa: No. Jesus Christ is not alive.

It made me sad to hear her rebuffed so strongly with no acknowledgment that her belief is valid.

Apart from the Bible and the Koran." Priceless. The new testament writings can be seen as eye witness accounts. The fact that they dont all say exactly the same thing doesn't stop us from seeing the central truth in it.

The King James Bible was written 1600 years after the event. Eye witness accounts makes it sound as if people were telling the author what they saw. Whereas it had been handed down thru 64 generations, likely being embellished with each telling.

You see the central truth in it because you want to. I just see made up nonsense. No one turned water into wine, fed 5000 with a few loaves and fishes, or walked on water. Didn't happen.

Lifecraft I'm not arguing for biblical literalism. The discussion was "is JC a historic figure and what are the sources for supporting the existence of someone that lived so long ago?". I am saying there are numerous sources which mention JC. Not all collected in the bible and religious writing.

As sources go, however, the NT is still historic info. The various parts of the new testament are dated between 50 and 100AD, so within 20 to 70 years of JC crucifixion. What does the King James version have to do with it? That's a collection of works and a particular translation. Not the original writings.

The KJV was written but not composed 1600 years after the events described in the NT.

You shouldn't dismiss the bible as a historical record that has quite a lot of archaelogical evidence to back the gist of it just because you don't believe the central message.

Jesus is a historic figure not fiction. That at least atheists can agree on with Christians, or at least anyone who does any research.

There is some debate on the existence, and I don't mean on here, not all Biblical scholars agree. Some think it was more than one person and stories were amalgamated. eg the story of the woman taken in adultery first appears about 500 years after the earliest manuscripts of the new testament and originally was as an example of what the scribe thought Jesus would do.

The story of the woman taken in adultery was first cited in the third century CE, about 230, in the Didascalia Apostolorum, with previous allusions to it possibly in the writings of Papias of Hierapolis and in the proto-Gospel of James.

We also have historical evidence of various early followers of Jesus (Jewish followers of course at that stage) and they were all willing to die for their belief in him, many of course did die. It would be strange to be willing to die a horrible death for your Rabbi if he never existed.