(Continued for u/ExpressionOfTheSoul and u/guywholikesDjtof2024.)

Since you give me new Josephus data, I'll research it and get back to you, but, even if your assumption were correct that it would prove the Josephus account a forgery, it wouldn't alter one detail of the holistic report of Jesus.

There's a difference between believing that a man named Jesus was crucified by the Romans versus believing that he was a God-man.

Here you're starting to focus on real history; that statement is accurate. I just pointed out above that the facts follow a natural hierarchy of evidence. First, the evidence he was crucified for claims of being king of the Jews. Second, with that history established, what we can build of that man's character, using conservative assumptions, based on multiple testimonies, Christian and not, about what Jesus got in trouble for saying. Since much of what Jesus said interpreted Jewish written tradition in ways that we can trace definitively that he was part of the flow of those thoughts at that time, this is much easier. I listed seven categories of Jesus's teaching about himself identified by Bill Craig that are drawn from plural testimony and congruency with context; and those are important enough they deserve their own post, which I can do next. (Third: what we do with it!)

The symbolic nature of the Gospels can easily be seen in Matthew 1. Three sets of 14 generations, that wouldn't be historically accurate. That's symbolism.

I think I told you separately without recalling that you've answered: that is not how histories or biographies of that era presented data. They selected from historical fact, without misrepresenting any fact via the selection, to combine details that were supportive of general narrative of local and global text. When a particular fact (a number) will likely have extra significance, that fact is highlit for selection, sometimes alongside an explanation (which may or may not be contemporary with the history described but which is the author's contemporary understanding of it).

This is exactly what Matthew 1 does. It was never intended as saying "let's invent some names to make up a person who should have existed", that would belie his whole point with the rest of the reference to historical persons. Instead it was to say that even Jesus's genealogy, which was eminently appropriate matter for the beginning of his bio, could be more easily remembered by reference to the mnemonic number 14. (Memes simplify history into easily transmitted detail: Lincoln and Kennedy were inaugurated 100 years apart even though killed only 98 years apart.)

What was known was that David's genealogy from Abraham had 14 generations and that the numerical value of the name D-V-D (4+6+4) was 14, and so that mnemonic clearly goes very far back. About 18 kings descended from David, but Matthew skips 4 of these (likely ones he didn't like) so that he can use the end of the (first) Davidic kingdom as his next memory point. Then he gives Jesus's right to the Davidic throne, which by Jewish law is his by the declaration of his adoptive father, by listing a select 14 generations of that genealogy (again, if any generations were missing it was selective, completely understandable, and not regarded by anyone as deceptive because it was not a statement of direct father-to-son but of the father-to-son chain, son routinely being taken to include grandson). Therefore Matthew is saying that just as David came in the fullness of time from Abraham, and the diaspora came in the fullness of time from David, so the time had then come for Messiah to be revealed.

In short, he's teaching both the symbol that Jesus is Davidic and rightly expected and the history that he came of the Davidic line of Joseph in Nazareth. To read any less is to ignore how people wrote anything in those days.

The Gospel of John placing the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of the ministry...blatant changing of the narrative.

It has never been proven that just because two people mention a similar event that we must assume they are referring to the same event (i.e. prejudging them as contradictory). If we are giving them ordinary witness credit their testimony would be taken as two events. It is only by inserting some assumption that it couldn't have possibly happened twice that we would be able to sustain a proof of contradiction. I've just reviewed all four accounts, and it's clear that there are enough differences (even though some actions and one verse quote were repeated) that they need not be taken as identical when the authors clearly frame them as distinct. In John there is a whip and sheep and oxen absent from the others; the money is specifically poured out; there is the reference to 46 years of temple-building (which doesn't date to the later event); and the reference to miracles is in context about the wedding of Cana. In the synoptics it is not the Passover itself (the 14th) but about the 10th of the month; it is the seats that are turned over, not the money; the blind and the lame are healed; and the children are still calling "Hosanna" from the processional earlier (which doesn't date to the earlier event). So for a skeptic to constantly criticize passages about the same event with slight differences as contradictory, and then to criticize passages stated to be about different epochs with slight similarities as also proving contradiction via the assumption that the differences of timing prove falsehood, is the height of bias against the text rather than historical inquiry. The only point that might be favorable is the (wholly manufactured) assumption that the event was notable enough that it couldn't possibly have happened twice or someone would've mentioned it happening twice. That idea has no basis and, though it could be postulated as possible, is only a secondary hypothesis to be judged by the primary texts, as I have just done. It's not like the case that historians constantly face of a person being reported as dying in two different times and places where one is clearly wrong; it's perfectly understandable that many would have reset their tables and continued their former practice in later years, and this probability is supported by the fact that the second account has less work to undo (no sheep and oxen) and less opposition but much more public approbation and praise. One might just as well theorize that the synoptics omitted the first cleansing because they regarded the second as a vindication against the rejection of the first, while John supplies the first as a corrective because he as an early apostle was well aware of the importance of establishing the 3-day claim from the beginning of the ministry (just as he establishes what the first miracle was), and the opposition of the leadership and the first great uprising event attributed to Jesus. That theory is just as tenable as the idea that they all only knew of one event and deliberately lied about it somewhere. The fact is that Matthew (whom the others follow) wasn't an apostle yet when John was and so John didn't think it necessary to focus on so many of the prior events that had been already circulating (so many that Luke already noted they were diverse); so there being two cleansings is a probability that fits the facts quite well. At a minimum the person who uses the two cleanings as if it's a reason for disbelief is again indicating bias and methodological dishonesty.

Include that with a Jesus with a different portrayed persona than the other Gospels, and it's symbolic. A virgin birth, symbolic.

This fails to account for the Jewish emphasis on accurate transmission of events and the fact that it was only Greek influence (heavily resisted by the many myriads of first Christians) that could even conceive of writing a text that was flatly false but contained symbolic meaning. When John focuses on further aspects of Jesus's persona, it's clearly supplemental like any good history that takes a new tack on a previously covered subject. The virgin birth, which also has very early supplemental testimony (though not in John as you jump rapidly from him), is given as an accurate but uncomprehended (miraculous) historical event. Luke as a doctor did exactly the same as other doctors of the day reported unexplained (wondrous) events: preserving the testimony as accurately as possible alongside the fact that people didn't understand how it could come about that way. Many Greco-Roman histories contain fabulous reports alongside more mundane ones because they had no developed science for disproving certain classes of testimony so they reported them all and judged them on veracity of chain of transmission rather than on appeal to proven physical law.

The texts in the Bible are in line with the mythological accounts of what people did back then. The dying and resurrecting savior motif was nothing new.

That is an old and false canard. The gospels are biographies with extraordinary events, they are not mythologies divorced from time, place, and reality. They are in line with the supernatural events attributed to Caesar, such as his miraculous birth by C-section and his power to work miracles (though this usually meant fortuitous timing). Those use the same historiographic approach, namely to pass reports as they were heard and to suspend judgment without clear reason for controversion. When the Greeks and Romans spoke of mythology, they still regarded it as connected to history but the archetypal and pedagogical elements of the narratives of the gods were much clearer, and narratives were put far into the past rather than spoken of about contemporaries. Even the allegedly supernatural construction of the Artemis temple of Ephesus was put far back in the past rather than having any immediate interaction with the priests who served there in Paul's day. So it's pretty easy to tell the genres of history and mythos apart.

When we come to specific mythoi of dying and rising, I grant much has been made of trying to make the Christian version of it supplemental and dependent on other earlier established religions. Every time I've tested these claims of antiquity they've shown themselves false and invented: the covenant people always had the thing first. At the beginning of paganism you have the idea of Dumuzid's death and comeback, and when you look at it it's clear that it has strong parallels with Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, with Dumuzid overlapping Adam and Abel, and Inanna overlapping Eve. So when you trace both these back, there's a strong probability that the Hebrew version is the older because its narrative consistency is tight while the accounts of Dumuzid evince development, incorporation, and dependency. The theory that Dumuzid's curse of death and restoration to life would be automatically prior to Adam's curse of death and restoration to life needs to meet a burden of proof.

Dumuzid goes through Ninus (note that his wife was not Semiramis, who was a historical figure several centuries later who got templated over Ninus's wife as it developed). Now there we might have a historical core in saying that there might have been some king of Nineveh who died in his youth but whose pregnant wife yielded an heir who was taken as a restoration of the father. Of course the principle that the son carries on the work and eventually the identity of the father is not new at all and is clear in pre-Mosaic and Sumerian and Egyptian tradition, so by the time of Ninus there is nothing really added. Note also that Ninus's story has nothing to do with the same person rising from the dead.

By the time you get close to Christ with Mithras and the establishment that there is some (distant) deity who not only every year at a set time dies with fall/winter and rises with spring, but also is a figure who intervenes in immediate history at a near point in time to contemporary witnesses, you get some very different narrative about bull-wrestling as the demonstration of the deity's power (I think it has zodiacal roots). You get nothing about Jesus's claims of suffering for others' sins which are uniquely Semitic. Much of the Mithras literature is post-Christian and reactionary, and what can be proven to be pre-Christian doesn't anticipate a thing of Christianity.

But you do find that the Hebrew prophets are constantly getting vignettes about what God will do next and tying it to a coming suffering Anointed king, and that they are holding onto these as inspired without knowing their fulfillment until it's discovered that they fit precisely with Jesus's narrative. The skeptic might quibble that some fits are imprecise, but even if that were true the historical fact is that many people found them very useful and effective proofs that Hebrew tradition had the exactly right anticipation. Isaiah 53 presents a godly servant who dies for the sins of others but still sees the light and joy of life after his death (and whether this refers to a people metaphorically as later interpreted, or a single person, it still betokens a perfect fit to the personal resurrection testified by the gospels). Hosea uses the metaphor of the third day (that we call "day after tomorrow" with the same force) as being a day when all things get fixed, and that is the metaphor Jesus draws on in his entire period of testimony, as I will prove further in my next post.

So in all of this the idea that Jesus's resurrection was anticipated in and copied from some prior pagan source has never ever withstood the light of even ordinary scrutiny given all the historical facts. Because I pursue the truth at all costs, I looked into what the skeptics said about Mithras and the rest, and found that it was just another spiderweb tissue that yielded immediately. (And I will look into your link on Josephus because it appears scholarly.) To actually sustain an argument that any aspect of Jesus's life was a lie taken from paganism is an extraordinary claim that you haven't evidenced.

Which leads me to ask directly about method. I thought I pointed a couple such points out to you, Soul, but instead of seeing some cogent interaction I see you sniping at Guy instead, and by "sniping" I mean a gallop of several tired atheist tropes that all stem from the higher-critic school and never existed before 150-200 years ago. And every one comes from an assumption of bias against the text that comes from a known school of thought that wanted to reject Christianity and embrace immorality (as shown by its proponents' lives). But these sources are upheld as if they represent science when they are merely reflexive objections that a group sustains to continue to resist claims of morality. The fact is that when good methodological historians look at the data, the biased view fails. So question assumptions.