BTW it is also extremely arrogant to claim that people every bit as smart about historical and textual issues as Newton, Sandage, and Vilenkin are about scientific issues can't tell historical validity from textual integrity. DR White, N. T. Wright and hundreds just like them have forgotten more about history and textual studies than we will ever know. I think they know the difference.
Of course I don't think that, I know it for a fact.
The primary text on Caesar was written by Caesar and is well known to have been written for propaganda purposes. Not that we even have a single early copy for his Gallic wars. The oldest copy we have is from 900 years later and we have a grand total of two I think. His Civil wars is in far worse shape. It does not even appear on extant ancient works lists. I have never found another authoritative work on Caesar in ancient history. Even if you through in a few more (like some of the plays about Caesar) the bible still has better attestation for Christ by factors of hundreds of times over.
Since you seem to be unfair with the texts on either person here is a link to a comparison.
Manuscript Attestation For The New Testament
You need to first demonstrate you have the slightest experience in the fields you discuss before you should make these instructions concerning who should read what. My bible was worked on by over 100 NT scholars. They came to agree on every single author traditionally credited with authorship. The only book there was any serious disagreement on is Hebrews, which just so happens to be the most accurate book. I can find you a hundred sites that state the historical reasons to credit authorship with the traditional authors. In fact the earliest sources are also the most emphatic on that issue. I can reconstruct 95% on the NT and derive every single author from early church writings alone. No bible I have even heard of states up front that no one knows who wrote the NT books. Some do point out the less that perfect information authorship is based on but for a 2000 year old text that is better than expected. It simply appears you have almost no experience in these matters. Nothing you have said is even close to fact. The consensus among NT historians, Textual critics, accepted commentaries, almost all early church fathers, and 200 years of church scrutiny grant traditional authorship.
Says a random poster in a forum who apparently knows little of these matters about a tomb sealed by contemporary Romans for life and death readings plus Joseph who buried Christ, plus every apostle, and every early church authority through Constantine's mother. This is also a historical conclusion granted by most NT historians. I guess you got vision and the rest of the world is wearing blinders (including every single person who was there). Do you know what a revisionist is? You ought to, you are one.
I have no expectation of finding a Roman record for one of thousands of criminals executed in a minor Roman backwater 2000 years ago. In fact I should expect to have no record from anyone. Yet I have independent eyewitness testimony and independent testimony gained from eye witnesses of it, and the evidence is so strong for it, it has changed the world more than any other event. But don't take my word for it.
Sir Edward Clarke, K. C. to the Rev. E. L. Macassey:
"As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate."
Professor Thomas Arnold, cited by Wilbur Smith, was for 14 years the famous headmaster of Rugby, author of a famous three-volume
History of Rome, appointed to the char of Modern History at Oxford, and certainly a man well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts. This great scholar said: "The evidence for our LORD's life and death and resurrection may be, and often has been, shown to be satisfactory; it is good according to the common rules for distinguishing good evidence from bad.
Wilbur Smith writes of a great legal authority of the last century. He refers to
John Singleton Copley, better known as Lord Lyndhurst (1772-1863), recognized as one of the greatest legal minds in British history "I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you, such evidence as that for the Resurrection has never broken down yet."
Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), English scholar who was appointed regius professor at Cambridge in 1870, said: "Indeed, taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of if."
Clifford Herschel Moore, professor at Harvard University, well said, "Christianity knew its savior and redeemer not as some god whose history was contained in a mythical faith, with rude, primitive, and even offensive elements...Jesus was a historical not a mythical being. No remote or foul myth obtruded itself of the Christian believer; his faith was founded on positive, historical, and acceptable facts."
Since obviously legal scholars like these or Greenleaf who literally created legal standards had no idea what evidence or testimony was how about some scientists. Were Newton, Galileo, Maxwell, Da Vinci, Faraday, Bacon, Kepler, Descartes, Gascendi or the rest of the Christians which won almost 80% of the Nobel's in history who also believed the gospels in need of you to straighten them out?
However if science and law is not enough just pick a relevant discipline to be wrong about and I will show in their words just how wrong. How about forensic coroners, archeology, or even philosophy and cosmology?
