today.
The Christian Church like all others, depends on faith for support and wipes aside all criticism of romantic deceit with casual mention of one document or another which effectively do not exist in the form stated. There is only one genuine, historical mention of a man of some stature who resembles the figure we call Jesus and he is not mentioned by name. This is the much vaunted text from Josephus who fought in the Jewish wars that ended in Masada and wrote very vivid accounts of the period. The terrible thing about this document is that it has been altered so much by so many people that it is almost impossible to tell which is the original and which the altered one. The text has to be carefully distilled and identified with common sense and this requires reading the translations carefully and working out what is hardly likely to have been written by anyone other than by Josephus himself. There is a Slavonic version which appears to be the oldest and which, quite categorically, simply states that there was a man much respected by many, who had an impressive and somewhat fearsome aspect whose beard was a little wispy and not strong. A full growth of luxuriant beard was something that Nazzareans (who did not cut their hair), valued as a sign of good social presence. This man was apparently killed ritually and he was either a hunchback or had a very thick neck. That, is as much as we really know of a man who fits the description of Jesus and was killed by the Romans. He was it appears from the translation, an impressive character and it leaves little doubt in anybody´s mind that it refers to the man we call Jesus. There were others also executed around the same time , one of whom was a Simon called the Magus or
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