> This seems like a good place to talk about
>Messianic prophecies concerning Christ, which
>Mrs. Issachar was wondering about earlier. A
>study of Messianic prophecies is, I think, not
>only another set of reasonable evidence to
>support the divine inspiration of the whole
>Bible but also specifically substantiates the
>New Testament and the divinity of Christ.

You cover the issue of retro-fitting after this, but there is one problem I have with all of it. Everything you say here is contingent on one simple fact--that there *was* a historical Jesus, that all of the events recorded in the Gospels about him happened, just as they are recorded. It would be very hard to massage details from the life of a real man and make them fit prophecy if they don't. It would be quite easy to take the prophecies and make up out of whole cloth a man to fit them.

What is the historical record on Jesus apart from the Gospels and other religious works? Again, history is not my area of expertise, so I can't just go ahead and anwer my own question and refute (at least in my own mind) your assertions from this post. Do we have a record apart from the Bible (and other obviously religious works such as non-canonical Gospels) that back up the facts of Jesus' life as written in the Gospels? I don't know--I know I've heard opinions from both sides. I've heard the bald statement that there is *no* historical evidence from non-religious works that supports the fact of a "historical" Jesus, and I've also heard the opposite--that there are plenty. This is again something worthy of further study, however.

-- Dave