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THE HISTORICAL JESUS CHRIST Almost everything we know about Jesus comes from the Gospels,particularly the Synoptics.This body of information does not provide a complete biography of Christ,but rather describes in detail important events in his life:his birth in Bethlehem,is life in Nazareth,his preaching,his death sen_ tence and subsequent death on the Golgotha, his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. Catholic scholars are unanimous in recognising that the Evangelists belonged to the group of Apostles,or to their direct disciples,and were thus in a position to speak as direct witnesses or with first-hand knowledge of the events in Christ's life,as witnesses bound to the truth on account of their saintly lives,they reported Our Saviour's words as they had been said, fully aware of their role as mere intermediaries.If we consider the Protestant point of view, the effort to distinguish the historical from the religious Christ has not in any way undermined the certainty of his existence and of his preaching ... The most important non-Christian sources that attest to the existence of Christ are: Tacitus,Annals XV,44 ... Suetonius ... Pliny the Younger (1st Epistle,10,96) ... Christ is alluded to in a satire by Lucian (De morte peregrini) as wen as in the treatise by Celsus. Not all historians agree on the reliability of Giuseppe Flavio's accounts ... Other references appear in the Jewish Talmud:one source is concerned about ensuring that the trial of Jesus appear to be conducted in full compliance of the law. Borkmann's judgement of these non-Christian sources of information is noteworthy: "Such pagan and Jewish sources are important only insofar as they confirm the already widely-known fact that in early times no-one,not even the fiercest enemy of Christianity, ever cast the slightest doubt over the historical existence of Jesus". A statement taken from volume IX of the "Grande Enciclopedia" published by the Istituto Geografico De Agostini of Novara in 1974.
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