It seems clear enough that ironclad “proof” that an historical person, Yeshua, who corresponds to the teacher and insurrectionist at the center of the New Testament texts, existed is not available to us. The best we can do is to try to determine levels of probability. Is it more likely than not, or less likely than not, that such a person existed? — and, how much more or, as the case may be, how much less?

I do think that there are at least a couple of problems with Peregrin’s third guideline.

The definition of “scripture” as “just something that somebody has written” is far too minimal and broad to be meaningful or useful. More helpful, I would think, to say that people regard as “scripture” those texts that they hold as revealing — or being capable of revealing — ultimate truths about the human condition. Seen in this light, it’s hard to imagine that anybody would regard as “scripture” a written claim about the historicity of Santa Claus. I can well imagine, however, that, for many people, the Gettysburg Address and the “I Have a Dream” speech function as scripture.

Also: From the fact that a great many people regard and use “the bible” as a faith document, it does not necessarily follow that the biblical texts have no value as an historical source(s) — as potentially harboring “evidence.” These texts are multivalent, and — like any text that has been written by a human(s) living in a certain time and place, and subsequently has been made the object of research — they have proven themselves susceptible to being analyzed in ways that force them (the texts) to “hand over” historical truths about their authors, their audiences, their subject matters, and the historical atmospheres in which they were written — independent of, and despite, whatever religious agendas “the Church” and Christians (both as individuals and as groups) have sought to protect and advance with these texts.

To say otherwise would appear to risk suggesting that the entire five-centuries-long project of the historical criticism of the biblical texts, going back as far as Spinoza, has been a fruitless enterprise — or perhaps even that every scholar who has engaged in this kind of criticism has been a charlatan or a spiritual axe grinder of one kind or another. That would be a very tall claim, indeed.

One relatively recent book on “the historical Jesus” that I can recommend without reservation is 1st Century Radical: The Shadowy Origins of the Man Who Became Known as Jesus Christ (AuthorHouse), self-published in late 2008 by Michael Calum Jacques, an English independent scholar of ancient classical and Semitic languages.

Michael and I met nearly 26 years ago, when he and I were students together at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. I don’t know if the University is as serious about teaching ancient languages today as it was then; but, at the time, one could — as an undergraduate — learn Koine Greek, Mishnaic Hebrew, Qumran Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Akkadian, and Ugaritic. Michael — who had both a voracious appetite and a genuine gift for ancient languages — learned them all, and, I daresay, remains one of the most meticulous and accomplished ancient language scholars the University ever has produced.

Michael went on to study at Oxford with Geza Vermes.

The book — a little hard to find now, and, when one does track it down, it can be a little pricey — is utterly erudite but is written in a popular, engaging style.

Michael strips away all the mythological, cosmological “accretions” — his word — that the Church has used to build up its Christ and instead is focused on the historical person of Jesus, who, he concludes, probably was a lot more like Osama bin Laden than most people would be comfortable dealing with.

Highly recommended.