If you want to get into specific details though, please be a tad more specific in your question. But I would ask that you please focus the questions on the Bible text and not a specific religion. I don't really care about nor pander to the various religious groups, and am in fact quite thoroughly disgusted with them.
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> Your last paragraph indicates some degree of irritation in my questioning. I meant in no way to be annoying. My background in the NT is essentially gospel related, and I am appreciative of your explanations of the value you receive from all of the NT. I constantly struggle with the prejudical reasoning I have: the Gospels were written from heresay 60-80 years after the fact. The one contemporaneous comment about a living Jesus in Josephus' writings appears to be a forgery. Like you I have always felt that a Jesus-like person lived and taught. But immaculate conception with a virgin sounds like a miraculous fairy tale invented to convert non-believers to a religion of Jesus, because his teachings alone weren't converting the non-believers. But his teachings are marvelous, and I try to live as he suggested in his life. Thank you for showing me a glimpse of the values in the NT, beyond the Gospels, from which my prejudice has blocked me.-
I am not annoyed with your questioning. I just don't want to get involved in trying to defend ideals like the Trinity, immaculate conception, and prophecies and such again. They are too subjective and some of them I disagree with and don't want to feel the need to argue for them regardless of my personal views. There is also the fact that there are simply too many 'branch' religions for any one person to be able to even remotely keep up with all the disparate and often minute differences between them that are often not based on the actual text of the bible, but on some other political, moral, or philosophical grounds. My interest is in the Bible, and other religious texts, not in the various bickering groups that sprang up from them.

In 19th century England "freethinker" meant one prepared to go against the dominant religious orthodoxy.
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> "The Freethinker" magazine has been "the voice of atheism since 1881"
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> http://freethinker.co.uk/
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> There's lots of good arguments to show that Jesus never existed:
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> http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/
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> and very little evidence that he did.
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> Of course a lot of the NT consists of nice stories and parables, 
> just as do the tales of King Arthur or Robin Hood or William Tell.-Thank you, George, for this post. I found it very educational and I appreciate it.

You mean no evidence like:-Tacitus (56-117AD) a senator and Roman historian wrote in his Annals rather deogatively about the Christians and specifically about Jesus as the Christ ('Christus'):
>"Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [Chrestians] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."-or-Josephus (37-100AD) was a Jewish historian (not a Roman), but, like Paul, had Roman Citizenship. There has been some controversy regarding Josephus' inclusion of this passage, mostly by sceptics and atheists wanting to 'disprove' the existence of Christ, as some sceptics claimed it was 'added' later. However, these claims have been categorically discredited by Roman scholars, as so many ancient copies of Josephus' works exist and textual criticism and the style of Latin used corrroborates Josephus' writing of this passage. In his Antiquities he wrote:
>"About this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man. For he was a performer of paradoxical feats, a teacher of people who accept the unusual with pleasure, and he won over many of the Jews and also many Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon the accusation of the first men amongst us, condemned him to be crucified, those who had formerly loved him did not cease to follow him, for he appeared to them on the third day, living again, as the divine prophets foretold, along with a myriad of other marvellous things concerning him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day."-or-Suetonius (69-140AD) wrote of riots that broke out as a result of Romans attacking Christians, who were then expelled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius:
>"As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ), he (Claudius) expelled them from Rome".-or-Thallus wrote a history of the Trojan War and wrote of the earthquake that hit the area of Judaea as Jesus died - exactly as recorded in the gospels at the same time:
>"On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down."-or-Celsus (Greek: Κέλσος) was a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Early Christianity. He is known for his literary work, The True Word (Account, Doctrine or Discourse) (Λόγος Ἀληθής), preserved by Origen. This work is the earliest known comprehensive attack on Christianity.
Celsus explained that Jesus came from a Jewish village in the Holy Land. Jesus' mother was a poor Jewish girl. This girl's husband, who was a carpenter by trade, drove her away because of her adultery with a Roman soldier named Panthera (i.32)]. She gave birth to the bastard Jesus. In Egypt, Jesus became learned in sorcery and upon his return made himself out to be a god. Celsus confirmed the Historicity of Jesus but not the Virgin birth. Celsus also confirmed what the Talmud said about Jesus.[1]-There are many such references, including a recently discovered one that concerns James, the disciple, and is being translated by Robert Eisenman. By his books if you want a good, detailed criticism of historical Christ. All of this has no bearing on questions of his divinity or any other such, but there is quite a bit of evidence that the man actually existed.