Tenorikuma wrote:stephan happy huller wrote:But that wasn't the original sense of Psalm 110.
But I'm not sure Christianity
needed a historical Jesus either.
I'm just writing all this off the top of my head, so feel free to point out any egregious errors.
All the witnesses of early Christianity are a theological interpretation of life, teachings, deeds, death and resurrection of a person called Jesus. Therefore, as a matter of fact, Christianity
needed an historical Jesus. For whatever reason. They may have fabricated it, but they needed it.
It's also true that in Gospels and Epistles you can find many references to Scriptures (both canonical and apocryphal) for almost any aspect of Jesus' life, however, you can tell a story in multiple languages - and Scripture was definitely a sort of language.
To me, the existence of Jesus - who preached as a prophet, died on the cross and then some people had visions of him - it's best and easiest (although not necessarily the only) historical explanation for the birth of Christianity. Since historicity is measured in terms of probabilities, the Jesus' existence is the most probable event. Any other explanation of independent sources converging on a basic set of facts, while diverging on theological implications, it's much more difficult to explain.
Put aside Casey and his polemics, you may find *very interesting* the following Dale Allison's interview on the subject (D. Allison is, in my modest opinion, one of the best NT living scholars):
http://christian-agnostic.blogspot.co.u ... 31-14.html
Ciao