Rewatching this video again, noticed that Jack Bull would be a hell of a teacher and that he has a traditional small altar in the back, with holy images and a crucifix.
5:18 I've only recently started watching these videos taking a serious historical approach to the early Christian period. I'm really looking forward to this one as it's been a huge question in my mind from the start. There seems to be such absolute confidence that what we think we know about Paul and his life is actually correct. And yet, I don't see much historical support for or against it. Thanks for taking on this subject!
Jacob, the issue of co-authorship was brand new to me. Perhaps others have written on it and I have just glossed over it, but that is worthy of a videocast all by itself later. I think there is a lot to consider here. Clearly the author of these documents was looking for credibility. Again, really enjoyed your dialogue with Jack Bull.
This is an important presentation and Jacob, your additional thoughts blend interestingly with the future Dr. Bull's thoughts. I really like where he is going. If Paul were important prior to 100, I bet we would have heard of him. That Marcion finds his letters important is helpful but there is nothing compelling in the Evangelion or the letters that lead you to believe Jesus was a God. There is compelling content to agree that Jesus was there, as a Messiah and not every messiah is risen from the dead, but I bet many are taken out of "battle" and patched up to fight again for another day.... Great show Jacob. Really enjoyed this.
Fascinating, insightful and thought-provoking, as always.Thank you Jack and Jacob! Jack - I'm imagining a Pythonesque or Black Adderesque re-enactment of this video: Canonical Paul's travels and works, but where nobody recognises him or has ever heard of him! 😂
26:20 Didache - I believe the earliest extent copy, from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, is dated to around 350 AD. I think that sort of thing should be factored into the discussion.
I took a course on the Pauline epistles at Trinty College Dublin and the professor, Dr. Daniele Pevarello, definitely emphasised the point about the coauthorship. However, I don't think he's written anything about it. I do agree that this is generally gloseed over.
14:50 Building on that point. If someone after the Jewish war were writing a "Pauline letter", probably to try to give their message authority, it would be foolish to refer to the Jewish war since Paul would already have been dead.
the confusion that leads to the idea that jesus died around 70 is, i think, caused by the fact that gospel writers lifted a lot ofback story from josephus, suchas details about cjrist repeating things josephus said about jesus ben ananais.
Seems only post Marcion and Paul did Christianity stop being just a Jewish sect and more of a Greek Mystery religion with resurrection as its big selling point. Interesting though that the letters HAD to exist before Marcion as Mark was based on them (many more examples than the 1 Jack gave) and Marcion's gospel was based on Mark. (though I'm starting to think these were all from the same source with Marcion being just "younger" Mark, which traditionally came from Alexandria)
I agree. There are several reasons to think "Mark" knew at least some of the epistles, so Mark must come inbetween Paul and Marcion. Also Markan priority seems to me to be absolutely rock solid with an overwhelming amount of scholarship behind it, mainly from scholars who studied the Synoptics, but also by how his gospel is composed using both the Pauline letters, probably the Homeric epics (MacDonald), and definitely using Jewish scripture (rgprice did an excellent interview on this). So there has to be time for the epistles to be written, Mark to be composed, and then the Evangelion that Marcion had, but that could all fit in the last quarter of the 1st century or slightly into the 2nd. Both Matthew and canonical Luke are later.
Christianity was clearly a Greek mystery religion in the letters of Paul. If you assume Paul is the earliest source we have for Christianity then it was a Greek mystery religion pretty much from the start long before Marcion’s time.
Another thought on this: If the proto-Orthodox drastically edited Paul's letters to fit with their theology and history, why are there still such gaps between the letters and Acts? OTOH, those same differences in Paul's life do suggest that Luke at least didn't have Paul's letters. Or perhaps not all of them. Knew of Paul and his teachings and considered him important, but couldn't compile the same itinerary from the letters that we can make out today.
The proto Catholics had as a starting point Marcion’s version of the Pauline epistles, and their primary goal in redacting them would have been to encourage Marcionites and people who liked the Pauline epistles to join the proto catholics. If you take a well known text that already exists and alter it to a massive degree, then people who are familiar with their slightly different version of the text will look at your redaction and see you as a major liar. Whereas if you keep it mostly the same but make more minor edits and perhaps here and there add a little bit extra or chop out a small part you don’t like, then people familiar with a similar version of the text are more likely to believe your sell that your version is legitimate. The more you alter it, the harder a sell it becomes.
1:10:18 I really enjoyed this interview and learned a lot. I encourage Jack Bull to take a little time, when he can spare it from other projects, and ask himself why he believes Jesus was crucified in the 30s and that Christianity existed in that period before the Jewish war. It would be worthwhile if he stepped back, for a moment, from his belief, and critically asked himself, "what is the evidentiary basis for these beliefs and how strong is that evidence?" Not the least this would be good to do because he will probably find more and more people in his audience who may believe otherwise. The subject may come up again and with more emphasis.
There were Jewish followers of Jesus who stayed faithful after his crucifixion and others joined the faith, but they were not called Christian until much later… probably sometime after the war and fall of the temple.
It may sound odd to some: there's no one on God's Green Earth I envy more than Jack Bull... still a young man, already a brilliant scholar on the biblical field.
For me the most compelling reason to believe Pauline authorship is that besides Romans all the authentic letters don't sound like treatises and sound like half of a conversation. The inauthentic letters look way too much like someone trying to make an argument instead of simply having natural correspondence.
I actually think the opposite. The authentic Pauline letters look an awful lot more like deliberately constructed theological treatises than half a conversation. Only in very limited places do they seem like they are responding to questions. If you read the intros to the Pauline epistles carefully and see who they are addressed to, the idea that they are half of a conversation falls apart. Galatians is written to ALL the churches of god in Christ Jesus in Galatia. How many is that? Only one? Half a dozen? Are they all adopting circumcision at the same time? Similarly Romans is addressed to a large group and not really an individual congregation in conversation with Paul. 1 and 2 Corinthians and Philemon have the best claim to looking like they might be part of a conversation but even there 1 and 2 Corinthians are such long treatises that don’t look like they directly address questions from someone else. They look more like Paul providing a general overview of his own theology wrapped in a thin veil of statements deliberately crafted to make it look like part of a conversation. Although admittedly it’s hard to say. Everything has been heavily redacted, so maybe the elements that would make them seem like part of a correspondence have long since been removed as irrelevant:
Traditional dating on the screen seems grossly improbable. Paul does seem to have been "real" in some way though it's really hard to make an argument that he was "real." I think Dr. Price's hypothesis about Simon Magus (he's never absolutely made the statement, I'm just referencing it was from him I first heard it/read it.) being Paul makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. Marcion's new testament certainly is a puzzle worth back Vinzent for again and again.
If you read Jason BeDuhn’s book The First New Testament, it presents a good overview of the arguments in favor of Marcion being a collector and not an author or refactor. There are a number of reasons for this but one of the key ones is that Marcion’s opponents had no trouble looking at his texts and finding passages that they thought very obviously contradicted Marcion’s theology. Even today most scholars would agree that a decent number of passages in the Evangelion and Apostolikon look like passages that Marcion should have cut out if the apologists of the second century were correct in their assertion that Marcion cut up the scriptures removing everything he didn’t like. Also, Marcion accused his accusers of doing the same thing he was accused of: taking his text and tampering with it to add a bunch of extra material. There is no reason the apologists should be given the benefit of the doubt over the heretic on that point. Also, Marcion’s version are generally shorter which is another reason the suggest they are earlier. Lots of other reasons as well.
All that said, Marcion or his disciples could have written some of the material in the Pauline epistles, but there’s also no direct evidence of it and decent reason to think the epistles were collected into a group even before Marcion. While Marcion was first to make them famous, someone before him probably had a collection already that existed at the time the first gospel of Mark was written.
@@Carelock thanks for your reply. i was asking if the Pauline theology of mark was a good reason for thinking that Paul's letters existed before Marcion
Paul is a piley pole where as Saul was a silly sole , Huqoq elephant mosaic. Pauls moment of defeat compares mythological with Phaeton riding the sun-chariot and then being hit with a lightning ball by upset Zeus, the young son of Appollo then fells from sky to the earth. Astrological it is Ophiuchus (the snake-handler) struck from above by Cygnus (the Swan). By Josephus the scene is present as Albinus and Festus 'blazing' on the road. and no there are issues with traditional dating so much of your positions fall apart .
I'm struggling around 38-39 minutes he speaks about Pro Catholics change Marcion letters. He refers to "they" and as an interested person of the truth I need to know who is "they"? I mean if the letters were changed shouldn't you know who and when??
Not really, all you need to do is compare the manuscripts and use the standards methods of textual criticism to see this. Ignatius' manuscripts are extremely corrupted and interpolated. You don't need to have a name of the scribe to see that they are different in theologically significant ways. Just read the scholarship.
it’s worth pointing out that the scholarly consensus is that we don’t know the names of the authors of any book in the New Testsment except Paul. Every other NT books is either anonymous or pseudepigraphic (written with a false name). Also, we don’t actually know what year a single book in the New Testament was written. Mark was probably written between 70 and 90. Revelations was probably written around 93. As far as I know those are the two books we can date with the most confidence. The New Testament was written over a very long period of time and many of the books were undeniably edited by several major refactors. For example the dominant view is now that the gospel of John is the product of at least 3 authors. The earliest books in the New Testament were written around the year 50 maybe and the latest books were written between 150-200 and some editing took place after the year 200 that undoubtedly made its way into the canonical texts as well.
@@Patristica Okay. It was alway my understanding that Jack was a diminutive of John, but I stand corrected as I so often find myself doing... I loved the presentation BTW. Intellectual integrity is quality to be prized, and not only because of its rarity.
Although I see the logic of the argument Jack Bull is trying to make for late dating, the criteria for detecting reception should be questioned. His perspective strikes me as rather unimaginative and unhelpful in it’s focus on frequency of quotations of a human teacher as the means of detecting reception and interaction with the writings of Paul in the early ecclestiastical tradition. Such an approach will very likely miss what Paul modeled for his converts and associates. The main author of 1 Clement appears to have been viewed as a gospel-teacher in his own right, judging by the internal evidence of his letter to the Corinthians. Clement does claim to know Paul’s life and ethos, and to know life in the Pauline church in Corinth (‘having sojourned among you’), entirely apart from his explicit reference to the schism Paul addressed in 1 Corinthians. Paul’s well known emphasis on the Spirit and scripture as continually active teachers, rather than pedantic repetition of quotations from those that taught oneself needs to be taken into account, if one hopes to make sense of the literary remains from those who claimed to pick up Paul’s mantle. Paul appears to have had little appreciation for pedantic repetitions or words. He desired for his converts and for his representatives to espouse a living faith, witnessing to the ethos of Jesus, rather than quoting teachers. Leading by example was his preferred way of gospel promulgatiom, continually informed by the ethos of Jesus and conformed to his pattern, precisely as he claimed for himself. Jack seems to assume that Clement could not know Paul’s fundamental model of gospel-exposition evident in all of his writings, unless by explicit quotation… this is what I would label as historically unimaginative. 1 Clement is full of references to examplars of faith, including Paul and indeed Jesus himself. If the author of 1 Clement was ‘discipled’ by Paul, he might not have been inclined to quote writings of his teacher directly, but we should expect him to show other signs of being discipled by Paul. I think the supposition that early Church fathers must have used many quotations from Paul’s letters in order for us to detect a deep familiarity with his writings, as reflecting his way of gospel-living is overlooking the example Paul as a gospel-teacher and a pattern for gospel-informed living - which was arguably Paul’s main concern tonteach everyone everywhere - see 1 Corinthians 4 and especially verses 17-21. When I read 1 Clement, it seems to me that Clement presumes that the Corinthians, like himself, were taught by the example of Paul, as much as hos writings, and were familiar with the practical orientation of what Paul preached: by example and by reference to those who had a Christ-like ethos, being conformed to his pattern. If the perspective is shifted in that direction, one may detect Clement’s dependence on Paul - and on his writings.
Interesting conversation. I expect that Jack expects some critiques and I am happy to oblige. I will say this as a lead into this Marcion directed popular media is poor and under developed, if Jack is such a fan of Marcion priority he should actually guest host on a video showing the differences between canonical paul and marcion's because most people are simply unaware that such a difference exist. So here is the critique, really not one but a tangential line of philosophy. Yeshu_ of Nazara was a mystic and he trained mystics and Peter was the mystical center of the movement after Yeshu was executed. The resurrection appearances were no big thing, mystics see dead people. Its a big thing to Paul, he's the guy who goes to arabia to practice his mysticism on his own. He returns to Jerusalem but learns nothing from Peter. I take this as he doesnt care what Peters mystic visions are, he has is own, and of course, they are superior. Yacov the pious is the pious center of the Jerusalem movement, he is like a Jewish faith enforcement officer. People coming and going to jerusalem or other pockets of Jews should remain Pious. Paul is an existential threat to the Jerusalem church, as we see what happen in 62-63 Paul essentially paints the Evyon as enemies of the Saducees by his previous actions on the Temple mound. So it stands to reason that the pious elements in the Jesus following are basically within a column of modified Jewish thinking, but also far way from Jewish centers (or sometimes, like Ephesus, in major Jewish communities) that we are going to see the more devious forms of early christian thought. I don't want to paint Paul as the lone wolf, Paul had written, but we know from his letters that there were other followers who believed more extreme ideas. So we have to get back to the mysticism, not as a religion, but a dedicated form of practice and experience. Yeshu created a radiant mystical movement, in that he died early and the basis was not well formulated. While Yacov the pious was deferred to as an authority in Judea, exterior to Judea the product of these ideas are expanding. Looking at the divisions between Paul and other christians, we have to imagine that the major innovators in christian thought have fuzzy barriers between other thinkers, agreeing to disagree when together and promoting and developing there mysticism when apart. So it is not surprising that resurrection plays such a lower priority. But Why. The leaders of the church develope at the major mediterranean port cities, these are the places where Jews would frequent. So major innovations up to ~65 CE would be occurring at some distance. So maybe the "signs gospel" is 50CE more likely 60CE to 70CE in ephesus (or maybe some remote location). I think the rise in gnostism also reflects desparate non-Yeshua Jewish groups, minor sects, some possibly also desert mystics that merge with fringe christian groups after the War. So the chaos create by the post-war period is really a caldron of non-Jewish christian mysticism that no longer has its seatbelts on. Again, in as much as why there in no early resurrection narrative being broadcast, I give the major reason is that James decided the church center would be Jerusalem. Ultimately this doomed the Ebionites. but . . . .Why the resurrection narrative does not appear immediately, Mark has a bridled narrative. Matthew has a narrative that is enveloped in a Jewish (but not pharasetic) context, possibly represents one of the disenfranchised minor sects that took up christianity. The anti-Jewish sentiment in the middle layer of GoJohn is probably reflective of the same period. Jews still upset about the bullying by the major sects and their failure to save the temple. The revolts of early second century I think sheared many Jewish groups away and into messianic christian thinking. The loss of any hope of rebuilding the temple got them to thinking about alternatives and the gospels of Luke and John fit that need. I think both are completed at the last revolt are slightly before. So my model of christianity is this. in the beginning people were exploring the fringes of protochristian thinking under the watchful eye of Jerusalem. It is a occult radiation. After the war christian thought takes a foothold in places like Ephesus and begins to expand and has an extent far beyond our imagination. Just as M and L refactor Q, Mark seems to pick it apart, dismantle it and restyle it. If Q is an example no author is loyal to the text, each is spinning it, some more than others. Ask yourself one question, where is the ending of Q, is it buried in some resurrection narrative or completely forgotten? We dont know. Whatever theology Q had, it was counter to all three synoptic writers. Is Marcion and the canonical Pauline any different. Marcion throws out some crazy ideas im sure Paul does not believe. I would posit whenever you have two genetically related text, about the same age, one should look for derivative variances in both text. Finishing my model just as stars explode and radiated clouds of dust and gas, when those clouds collide with the same, they go onto to form new stars. So what are the stars. 1. Death of a mystic teacher 2. The death of a pious leader 3. The Bar Kophka revolt. As the radiation of disenfranchised spread out from each disappointment they interact in new ways, finally a protoorthodoxy forms. This is why we start seeing in the mid second century so many christianities. Many answers to many failures. From space dust both planets, gas giants and stars form, orthodoxy just happens to be the star. And we forget, another star also formed, Jewish Orthodoxy formed out of the mileau of first century Jewish thought around pharisetic belief (but also with added mystical elements) It all fits well into my hypothesis except one bit. Why Paul. Paul had nothing to do with the mystics at Pella, nor Jesus. Paul without much prompting takes on extraordinary mystical importance in christianity. The three stories in acts half-answer the question, maybe paul had some sort of mania, but then why practice in Arava? It seems somewhat odd is coming up with all of this himself if he is not feeding on some other thoughts or thinking. We have only in Acts that Paul interacted with a mystic healer in Damascus. What happened after, 3 years, did he find a remote Yeshu derived mystic cult and then part ways? We make certain assumptions about Paul that may not be entirely true " I once knew a man" maybe not one man but many. Paul answers many questions, but the answers to the most important questions he dies not answer. 1. Why, if Paul is a pharisee, is he taking up the Herodian cause of chasing christians? 2. Did he really complete his pharisetic schooling, did he become a thug for the herodians because of his failures? 3. Was he looking for a way out, did he reach an accord with the christians to "spirit" him away for a time? Is the falling off the horse just a cover story. 4. Hes not the lone deset mystic, where did he go who did he meet? 5. Why did he finally meet with the Pillars, did someone request this?
All of your questions and your view of early Christianity are based on reading far too much into the New Testament. Galatians is the only document potentially written by Paul that describes his own life; and it radically contradicts Acts. Acts is actually one of the latest books in the New Testament written about 100 years after Paul died, and Acts is extremely close to 100% pure fiction. Mark was the first gospel and the signs gospel had to post date Mark which had to post date 70. The only honest thing to say about the Christian pillars in Jerusalem is that we really know extremely little about them apart from what we get in Galatians 2 which was written by Paul who had a theological agenda similar to but notably at odds with theirs. The depictions of them in the gospels and Acts are too mythologized to be of any historical value. Bottom line is we know very little about earliest Christianity that we can say confidence. Even the Q document is now looking like it will fall into the dustbin of previously accepted ideas that were widely held that have turned out to be wrong. Critical scholarship is now split close to 50/50 on the existence of Q whereas it used to be nearly universally accepted half a century ago.
@@jonathansobieski9047 Most of the top rank secular scholars still up hold Q. McDonald has expanded it abit. So it seems to me a bit like you want Q source to disappear so that you only need to wrestle Paul. But even if we lose Paul we still have a limited Heresiology of the Ebionites and Nazareans, and the Epistle of James, which although some sort of interpolated greek translation still provides a stong polemic against Paul. With these three elements and Pauls Seven letters, we have to remember that Paul is in a core struggle and then side struggles. His core struggle is to gain acceptance by the pillars. I think that the scholarship on this pretty much paints them as the Evyon (What others call then) of Jerusalem, but as diaspora by the early christians as Ebionites. The epistle of James seems to flow out of this. This does not give Q a home, for it is written in greek and has adopted a minute number of greek story telling motifs. So somewhere between the Evyon someone, probably a greek Jew, wants to get the story out about Jesus. BTW I dont have a view on christianity, I have many views of it depending on what the text is trying to say and the worldview of judeochristianity at the time. My view is that christianity can only be considered formalized in the 5th century and only west of Jerusalem, it differs markedly with christianity in the east which still has elcasites, manicheans, indian christians, etc. But my core questions about Paul pertain to the way he practiced, these are esoteric but very necessary. If Paul is a pharisee as he says, then he is a very occult mystic of the pharisetic tradition. If we ran into a person, say a baptist, and he was starting a cult based on his mystic vision, we might ask what drugs was he smoking, who was he reading, was he learning mysticism from some type of advanced teacher, was he practicing magick, was there sex involved. These are all valid questions we might ask before we see something like the Jonestown Massacre unfold (From which we get the term "Holy Koolaid").
This is a terrific hypothesis and aligns with a lot of my own research. There's a lot I'd like to discuss but I'll begin with one questions: What do you think the mysticism of Yeshu was like / do any of the Gospel narratives reflect that earliest mysticism?
Counterpoint to the claim that Paul couldn't use prophesy to mention the Jewish wars. A later author pretending to be Paul could simply have had Paul speak of Jesus's supposed prophesies of the destruction of Jerusalem.
A lot of people really make and contrive a lot of issues of the New testament. They even seem to try to make a new New Testament. These contrivances won't work. Jesus died on the cross to take away our sins and rose from the dead and everybody should believe and repent and listen to him. And that's the real truth
Jack Bull mentions the 9th year of Tiberius being in Marion's gospel. That would make the start of thJ's career at 23 CE and his crucifixion at 24 CE with some confusion over whether it's on Passover (Last Supper) or Yom Kippur (Pilate's offer to hang Jesus Barabbas instead of Jesus called Christ - thJ as opposed to Jesus Christ - this is plagiarised off the YK ceremony of the two goats).
I am totally not a scholar of Early Christianity (or of anything really) but I have studied psychology and one thing about Paul (and Peter) has always bothered me. Historically speaking Peter should be primary. After all, Peter actually rubbed Jesus's feet after a hard day and broke bread with Him after the resurrection. You would think that's pretty compelling. Paul comes along and says (basically), "I know Jesus better than you do, I just talked to him yesterday (in a vision.) By today's standards this makes no sense whatsoever. Which makes me wonder if Peter (and James) were also preaching they also saw Jesus in a vision or even if they just were preaching his teaching with no mention of an actual resurrection. Perhaps the gospel resurrection was added on later as an answer to Paul? Like I said it makes no sense to me that the guy who said, "I saw Jesus in a vision" seems to have been taken much more seriously than "FFS people, Jesus was my brother! I know what happened to him!" Perhaps Marcion is the key to all this.
I agree about how suspect Paul's teaching should be, but I also wonder if Peter and the other earliest Christians of his Jerusalem Church actually changed/added a lot to the teachings/ways of Jesus - a simple spiritual leader could have a whole cult/religion grow due to his followers, trying to make it all more grand and doctrinal than it originally was.
You don’t have to attest it. If I talk about a known subject with a friend or colleague some things are just assumed and don’t need chapter and verse. Dr. Bull is interesting and very intelligent but I don’t believe he’s made some new discovery and he seems to imply.
Clement does not talk about the Ressurection of Jesus alot because its not the focus of his letter. He mentions the ressurection of the saints more because the purpose of his epistle is to defend the wrongfully deposed elders/"saints" in the Corinthian Church
13:10 That doesn't seem accurate at all: "The letters date themselves roughly 20 years after the death of Jesus (Gal 1-2; Cor 15) The 'authentic' letters date themselves relatively soon after post-resurrection appearances, they never put death and resurrection itself at any specific time. On the contrary, they say that the appearances were a series of distinct events which happened at different times, so the first one could have happened just after the resurrection, just as well as not so soon - they don't say. So, the D&R could be believed to have happened just one year, or twenty or 'long ages' before, or as common for mythical events like resurrection, they just could not care about precise time - "long time ago in a galaxy far away". So no the letters don't place themselves in any time in relation to JC's death - it's an import from the gospels.
You’re mostly right that dating of the Pauline epistles is circularly dependent on the gospels. Richard Carrier had an excellent article on dating the Pauline letters which basically says exactly that. However the letters internally indicate that Paul had a list of the people that Jesus appeared to after his resurrection, and Paul claims he met them apparently while they were in their prime and respected as pillars of the movement, and Paul was the last apostle Jesus appeared to. That puts Paul’s first revelation from Jesus at most 1 human lifetime after the first resurrection appearance but more realistically it seems like Paul is saying that his revelation came after but not too long after the first people. There is also the mention of Aretas in 2 Corinthians which adds additional confusion but if correct would suggest that Paul is implying his revelation that caused him to go into Arabia came before the year 40.
@@jonathansobieski9047 If we read the epistles on their own terms, Aretas4 makes no sense, but Aretas3 fits like a glove, which would suggest that happened no later than the 60s BC. Another interesting feature of the list, if 'more than 500 brethren' is correct, that suggests Paul believed that at the time the sect was large enough for hundreds of members gather at more or less same place, which suggests that the revelation of JC's resurrection happened in already established, sizable sectarian structure. That would make the hypotheses that put one Jesus as the originator of the movement quite moot.
1:11:40 "If there's anything that we do know, is Jesus died under Pilate". I call BS guys, unless someone is able to demonstrate such strong certainty is somehow justifiable. That he died under Pilate is a claim from the gospels, and as such is just as trustworthy as any other gospel claim. I wonder what Jack thinks about that - he just shook his head in response in a way I can't interpret.
I agree that it is a dubious claim, but it seems pretty legitimate based on the evidence that we have to claim that hypothetically if there was indeed a historical Jesus, he definitely died; and all evidence suggests it was a few decades before the Jewish was of 66-70 and Pilate was governor of Judea from 26-36 and is credited with crucifying Jesus in all literature of the first century that we know of. That doesn’t make it 100% certain but it makes it probably the single most likely claim you could make about the historical Jesus.
41:00 this argument does not make as much sense as it sounds like it should make. After all, to complain about why something is not attested to, when there are almost no opportunities for it to be attested to is a circular argument. But we see Polycarp referring to many of them as though they were common knowledge -- and that was roughly 110 to 120. Sure, its 60 years after the fact, but Jack Bull is trying to say another 20 years is a big deal -- without much justification. And when, prior to AD 110 or 120, do we have a chance to see attestation? Clement? He quotes ICor at least twice. Ignatius? Well, he is writing under duress, not from the comfort of a place where he has his books, so he should not be expected to quote from books not at hand. Other than these two guys -- who should we look to for attestation? To complain about a dearth of reports on one subject, when there is a dearth of reports on ALL subjects is a bit silly.
