Eyewitness To Jesus? The Gospel Authors

Because the Christians in question were probably several centuries removed from the events and lived in precritical times, obviously. But I never ssaid that it was implausible for Paul and Seneca to have known each other. What is implausible is that Paul and Seneca should have known each other. In order for Seneca's silence about Jesus to have any significance, you (and I mean you, the one advancing the argument) have to give some reason that Seneca was likely to have known about Jesus.

It's not an issue of second century Christians being able to check on facts. The issue is how second century Christians came to suddenly start thinking about the savior they'd been worshipping as having had a physical, historical presence, without commenting on the radical change in their theology -- despite being quite outspoken and argumentative about theology.Your analogy doesn't address the question. Suppose instead that Mormon books appeared next week, claiming that Joseph Smith had actually lived in Tokyo. Do you think Mormons worldwide would accept them without comment or question?Your timeline is inaccurate, by the way, even according to your own arguments. If Ignatius dates to the 130s, then stories about a historical Jesus were already established by then.

Yes, I read that paper (well, skimmed it anyway). What I mean by intellectual honesty is that when presenting a case, you should also acknowledge any arguments against it. Here, Doherty has to deal with what looks like a clear statement by Paul about Jesus' physical origins. He does so by saying that we really don't know what "kata sarka" meant. The obvious thing to do, under the circumstances, is to ask how Paul, in particular, uses "kata sarka", especially in this kind of context. It turns out that Paul does use "kata sarka" in the context of one's physical origins elsewhere, and in the same letter. In Romans 9:5, Paul again says that Jesus was Jewish "kata sarka"; two sentences earlier, he describes himself as being Jewish "kata sarka". It certainly seems to me that Paul's parallel use of the phrase for himself and for Jesus argues strongly that when he uses it about Jesus it means exactly what it seems to mean: that Jesus was physically Jewish. And it also seems to me that if you're going to discuss Paul's use of the phrase at one point in Romans, you'd better address the other occurences in the same book.Also, is there anywhere in the kind of Platonic literature that Doherty is using as context an example of a spirit being who is said to be descended from a human, in any sense whatsoever?