> "it's just a short list of facts intrinsic to the New Testament documents" It's a list of facts intrinsic to the New Testament documents, followed by an asse

> "it's just a short list of facts intrinsic to the New Testament documents" It's a list of facts intrinsic to the New Testament documents, followed by an assertion. There's no reference made to any of the potential issues that come up when investigating the historicity of Jesus. Now, to be clear, I believe in a historical Jesus, Savior, Messiah, second person of the Trinity -- I'm doctrinally quite orthodox. But I think when you're arguing for a historical Jesus, it's important to be clear on what the evidence both does and doesn't say. It's important to point out that, for example, the large number of manuscripts helps us determine that the story wasn't modified over time, but the accuracy of the original stories must be judged using other criteria (including some of the criteria you pointed out.) It's important to note that "unchanged" and "accurate" are independent questions. ----- As for the date ranges themselves, one of the most interesting arguments I've heard has to do with the distribution of names in the canonical Gospels. Modern archaeology has given us a fairly good idea as to the most common Jewish names in the region in that era, as well as in later and earlier eras and in other regions. And the canonical Gospels show the same pattern as early 1st century Palestine -- there are several characters named Simon, the most common male name in the archaeological record, and the name is treated like a common name that needs to be clarified (so you see things like "Simon Peter", "Simon the tanner", etc.) In short, the people who wrote the Gospels were clearly familiar with Jewish names in first-century Palestine -- people who lived there during the time of Jesus and then scattered before the fall of Jerusalem. Compare this to the various gnostic gospels, which hardly ever use names outside of Jesus and whoever their purported author was (Thomas, Mary, etc.) The lack of ordinary details like names and locations in those writings point toward their being mythology.