Judaism The most powerful reason on why I reject Jesus as messiah

[Jason]

OK. And many would say something similar about Moses.

Indeed.

But -- returning to Jesus -- I distinguish between claims of divinity and claims of historicity as does Carrier (along with most others familiar with the Jesus debates).

That's just the problem, though. Jesus supposedly existed at a time when many small-time wannabe Messiahs were running around. If the NT is to be trusted, Jesus was much more high profile than any of these other claimants to the throne. However, in the work of the historians of the time, several of these minor insurgents were mentioned and their tales told. Jesus wasn't mentioned by a single one - and he should have been. Thousands of people supposedly followed him from the Galilee Lake to the mountains of Jerusalem. He supposedly led a three-year ministry healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching the gospel to the poor, feeding thousands with a couple of loaves of bread and a few fish. If anyone should have received a simple mention by one of the many historians of the time, it was Jesus. That is, unless the story was simply invented after the fact (which I think it was).

The emergence of Christianity can be better explained without a historical Jesus.

I'm simply suggesting that you should believe in the distinction between opinion and fact.

I do. I've read books on the "historical Jesus." Most recently, I read Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?. I don't stick my head in the sand and ignore what people offer in defense of historicity. There just isn't any evidence where evidence really should exist. In this case, absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.

If you could briefly share the evidence we have for believing in an historical Moses it would give me some sense of what you mean by the term.

I don't recall claiming that Moses was an historical person. It's good enough that we have historical mentionings of the House of David and the kings of Israel. I don't know that we could even expect to find a mention of Moses in historical materials.

(I'm heading off to visit a bunch of grandkids and will be offline for about a week. Have a great week.)

I hope you had fun. I've taken up some new Hebrew students in the past weeks. Looking forward to teaching from the new Hebrew grammar Learning Biblical Hebrew and its workbook by Kutz and Josberger.