re: #502 Resistance is futile. You’ll be discombobulated.

No, we’re arguing about the approaches to historicity of Jesus. I rely on certain authors, while you try to derive “Jesus by definition” - i.e. to assign the label to whoever the author of that system of teaching was. Since it is quite possible that there was no single author, I don’t see why this approach should work.

the possibility that “jesus” was composed of more than one original author does not invalidate the idea that best evidence we have of a historical personage is that some person or persons must have written the things that they are purported to have done and said

i repeat: the most concrete historical fact we have about “jesus”, by far, is the existence of the gospels

our best bet is to figure out where they came from