I don't think that link is what I would consider "credible". It is highly skewed against Jesus existing without taking many other facts that most scholars agree on into consideration.
There are almost no religious scholars today that believe that Jesus didn't exist. In fact most all evidence points to a man who was born in Galilee during the reign of Augustus roughly around 4 B.C. Which oddly enough is around the time of the Census of Quirinius which would back the story of Joe and Mary being forced to travel during the time of his birth.
There is also an official roman record stating that "Christus... was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontious Pilate."
Another historian of the time (Lucian of Samosta) stated that Christ was the man who was crucified in Palestine.
In addition to this there has actually been quite a bit of investigation into the birth of Jesus, which seems to point to Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera being the father. This man was a Roman soldier of the time, and it is speculated that he either seduced or raped Mary causing the famed "virgin pregnancy"
I would like everyone to note that the Roman records are about as small as I wrote them, so Rome did not find this man important , Think something more like a minor note in a courts criminal record toady. Also The part about Pantera, while accepted as fact by many people is still only speculation. Regardless it is all rather interesting stuff if you have the time to look into it, if enough people are interested I can dig up my old college books out of storage and give you more definitive sources (I double majored in Philosophy and Religion for my undergrad)
In a nutshell I truly believe there is more than enough evidence out there to convince any reasonable person that a man named Jesus lived and died in the appropriate time frame given in the bible. However, there is absolutely no hard evidence to prove the story of the virgin birth, the miracles that were supposedly performed, or that Rome found this man to be the least bit important all of that has to be left to faith, the gospel, and other religious accounts such as the Talmud.
*edit - found two spelling errors and apparently the forums don't like my tab button -.-
I believe this link is about as credible as any other piece of writing. Even if you did gather up the books you got your information from I could still say the same thing you are about this, that it isn't credible to the conversation as this person has done their research just the same as those other writers and does deserve to have their opinions, beliefs and views read. At least their views are a breath of fresh air rather than the stale gas others keep writing which is normally the same thing just with different wording and a different author name.
No offence to the books you read or your beliefs but the things you've mentioned are basically the same thing he is saying, jesus was a normal man and not some magic worker or born from a virgin etc etc.
But that is just my views.
... I am still not understanding your view here. How were the romans neo-pagans? They had their own religion, and assimilated different cultures and technologies to add to their own. My question remains, why would the Romans write about a single person belonging to a recently conquered culture on the fringe of Roman society?
I was shown and told that the romans were technically neo-pagans if you want to put a title on their beliefs. But who knows about that, no one can really say what they were but reading about their beliefs they certainly sound like neo-pagans rather than anything else.
Well why not write about a recently conquered place? They may have had new ways of doing things etc, plus the romans were some of the best historians around at the time so they wrote about anything and everything that happened around them at the time.
Think of it like this, when at school you had those lessons where you had to watch/study animals etc. You weren't part of their lives nor anything to do with their culture, you were a complete outsider, yet still you watched, studied and recorded what you saw. Every piece of writing we have of the past was done in basically the same way, we wrote about things to learn about them and to record our findings. Also they didn't only write about this person, or any one person they just wrote about what they came across, this writer just mentioned that one part as it has something to do with the rest of his writing and making it less confusing.
