Question about Jesus' historicity

by thisisstupidbut

This is a question I correctly guessed would come up semi-regularly here, so I did a search on this subreddit and read all of the related threads, the ones listed on the FAQ and the Wiki page. That being said, so far every answer has been "historians agree," "primary sources are limited" and some squabbling about the credibility about Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus. So I've been looking for a couple sources to read about this topic, namely:

  1. Some authoritative analysis about those three writings I mentioned, because I hear conflicting accounts about whether they're forgeries or whatever from reddit, blogspot and the few other (usually self-appointed) historians who've written about this on the internet.
  2. Some information on the historical evidence surrounding the crucifixion, sources esp. appreciated
  3. Some information on which historians agree. It seems like confirmation biases abounds on both sides when I try to learn a bit more about this subject, so I'm really keen on finding just a few authors with a deep understanding and objective POV so I can read through some e-books in my downtime.

Super thanks to anyone who can help me out.

talondearg

I confess I'm a little confused by your questions:

You want some authoritative analysis of the historical Jesus question, you've read through the FAQ answers, including I presume the lengthy answer by myself, which includes a bibliography that points to a range of major treatments of the topic by published historians. But you are asking reddit for authoritative analysis from... relatively anonymous 'historians' writing on the internet. It would seem to me that the tools for you to conduct further academic research on this topic are already in your grasp.

Again, on point 2, if you've read these things, then every primary document is already in your digital grasp: the New Testament documents, Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, and background documents dealing with 1st century Judaism and Graeco-Roman contexts. Almost all of these can be read in translation, online, for free, with a search. What exactly are you missing here?

About the only thing historical Jesus scholars agree firmly on is a consensus that, on the balance of evidence, a figure called Jesus existed. There are no objective POVs, there are just scholars who are honest and transparent about their biases. As for a few authors, I refer you to my questions about point 1.

I guess I am asking, what exactly are you asking for that you can't already find?