Hey, I took a class too, but I hate going into this stuff :p

Heh, I don't have my notes handy anywhere. I hated the professor but the subject matter was interesting. I'd love to go back and talk with him some more. At the time I hated him because I felt he was attacking my religion. Then his attacks shook my faith to an unrecoverable point. Now I'm grateful for it.
This stuff is fascinating to me.

lol my teacher was great too, though since my class was at a Jesuit university the point was seperating "Jesus of History" from "Christ of Faith"

Very good. Some people couldn't deal with it either.

/I also hate to get into these debates at work... can't type as much as I'd like... AND we need a debate forum ;)

And yet some people do. :rolleyes:

BTW, you're quite correct that there is little if any real contempory evidence of Jesus's historicity. Those writers that do mention him, like Josephus, do not attest to his actual existence as much as to what was believed/not believed about him, or perhaps have been subject to revisionism.

One could argue that the Gospels and other contemporary writings about Jesus that were not accepted as canonical must have some basis (with regard to the existence and teachings of the person, not necessarily with regard to the resurrection or other beliefs) in historical fact. One could also argue that the growth of the early church cannot be explained absent a historical Jesus who bore at least some resemblence to the Jesus of the Gospels.

At the end, it's definitely a question of faith, not of historical evidence.

Okay. /highjack