Not really. There is no contemporary evidence and all tales about him were written decades or centuries after his purported life. And even if there was a preacher named Jesus that got executed by the Romans for sedition, that still doesn’t make any of the supernatural claims any more plausible.
Though nearly all modern scholars hold that the passage, in its present form, cannot be authentic; most nevertheless hold that it contains an authentic nucleus referencing the life of Jesus and his execution by Pilate, which was then subjected to Christian interpolation and alteration.
That’s one of the passages. The passage about Jesus being the brother of James is not historically disputed.
I’m willing to concede that original passage likely had the part about him performing miracles and explicitly calling him the Messiah was a later alteration, knowing that Josephus did not convert to Christianity, but the passage was not invented out of whole cloth.
Not really. There is no contemporary evidence and all tales about him were written decades or centuries after his purported life. And even if there was a preacher named Jesus that got executed by the Romans for sedition, that still doesn’t make any of the supernatural claims any more plausible.
Jesus and John the Baptist were historical figures.
That’s still a big maybe.
That’s one of the passages. The passage about Jesus being the brother of James is not historically disputed.
I’m willing to concede that original passage likely had the part about him performing miracles and explicitly calling him the Messiah was a later alteration, knowing that Josephus did not convert to Christianity, but the passage was not invented out of whole cloth.