I have seen that CS Lewis passage many times and with all due respect it is a false dichotomy. Someone can simultaneously be both a lunatic AND have some good and valuable ideas. The two are not mutually exclusive. Jesus of Nazareth might well have been deluded about being divine, but still had some valuable moral insights.

The historical evidence of Christ Jesus according to Harnack , a famous Lutheran theologian/philosopher could, at most, fit on less than a quarto page of script. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_von_Harnack

Consequent to mankind's progression into singular a materiality, or sense bound knowledge, the knowledge of the spirit was lost to mankind. Therefore the professors gleefully stripped Christ Jesus of any spiritual consideration and led modern man into only Jesus, the man, a high man, but man nonetheless.

Differences between gospels and lack of historicity , through their eyes, stripped the Divine, not only in man but all of nature into a scientific thought process of abject ponderability. The Protestant professors, especially, became scientific mountebanks in this movement into an ignorant materiality.

Aphoristically , at the Baptism by John in the 30th year of Jesus of Nazareth's life the Christ Being entered into Jesus of Nazareth and walked the earth for 3 years until the Event of Golgotha. In ancient times this might be considered that an Avatar came into the body of the man, Jesus, but yes, this event was beyond ancient perceptions as the Word, the Logos, entered into the man, Jesus, and subsequently died on the Cross.

Only mankind experienced Death to this time and the Creative God, Christ, went through Death as a Grand Cosmic Sacrifice. Subsequently The Christ Being entered into the Earth as the Spirit of the Earth into the hearts of ALL Men and works as an IMPULSE which is within Man unto his future, the future of further existence.

A Man works through his judgement, aided by the Christ Being as a template to the future of human kind. Mankind is only at the beginnings of the Christian Impulse which is in the inner activity of Man; consciously and subconsciously the human being realizes this Christ within and in this a new historicity is spiritually created.

Very true

I've never met a Jew he didn't believe Jesus existed. We just don't believe he was the Messiah

When do they say, "Oh, these are all religions. All come from the same place. They're stories?"

Does anyone think it's at all possible that people even like Tacitus were just repeating common knowledge, or did they for sure know Jesus was executed by Pilate? The gospels honestly look made up. Like how can you write something like that from memory? I think the NT letters could just be manufactured religious material as well, not actual letters. Someone like Tacitus saying Jesus was executed by Pilate gives his existing some legitimacy, but if he's just repeating common knowledge from a position of authority it doesn't mean anything. I don't really know what to think to be honest, but I lean slightly towards there being some legitimacy towards Jesus existing. Jesus seems made up though.

The word Christ or chrustus would not have been used in tacticus time. Nobody in the area spoke Greek at that time which is where the word comes from

i'm not disagreeing with what you said, i have not studied any of this


most writing and administrative stuff was done in greek and thus even in areas where it was not natively spoken, anyone who was educated would know the language

i'm not saying you're right or wrong - just that your reasoning behind it is flawed

Tacitus may have written in Latin, but he was both highly educated and an administrator in Greek dominant regions - it's extremely unlikely he didn't know the language

this paper even describes how despite writing in latin, he used a lot of words and grammatical choices which reflect heavy Greek influence
https://camws.org/sites/default/file...citusGreek.pdf