Episode 27: Just Jesus

Cannon Fodder

Two Sikh doctors in Canada, brothers, made the difficult decision to shave their beards in order to serve their patients.

Sources: CNN

The More You Know

We can assume, safely, that Jesus existed. This is not a joke; there was a historical-critical trend that denied that Jesus existed at all. There are no documents written by Jesus himself, and the best sources outside of the gospels, are Josephus, a jewish historian whose very brief observation may have been altered, and Roman historian Tacitus, in AD 116.

There are other references, one in a Talmudic commentary that mentions a bastard sorcerer who deceives jews with egyptian black magic, and a stoic philosopher who gave a flattering reference to Jesus as a wise king who lives on through his just rules.

The records we have in the Gospels are religious biographies, full of miracles and exorcisms. If you don't believe in those things, you might think the whole story is a fiction. Can we extract something like a biography from a Hagiography? Separate the exorcisms, miracles, and divine plans from the Gospels?