[anjbe]

> > What is agreed upon by near universal scholarly consensus is instead that Jesus was baptized and crucified.

> You're going to need an awful lot of citations there.

> Firstly, define the scholars you're referring to.

Not being OP, I’ll list at least John Dominic Crossan and James Dunn, who has said that the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus “command almost universal assent.”

Of course, I got those names from five minutes speed reading Wikipedia. But that’s two more scholars’ opinions of the scholarly consensus than you’ve provided.

> Also, what sources are they working from?

Surely this is the very definition of moving the goalposts. OP stated the scholarly consensus is that Jesus’s baptism and crucifixion are true (this, incidentally, was my existing impression of the scholarly consensus). Now you’re no longer just arguing that OP was wrong about that, but have moved on to claiming that any scholars and historians who believe in Jesus’s baptism are wrong because they have no reliable sources.

I have to admit, I’m not inclined to throw out my understanding of the scholarly consensus or which sources are reliable to argue the historicity of Jesus based on an unsourced Hacker News comment.

[EdwardDiego]

I chose sources that are either non-Christian, or their subsequent Christian modifications are well identified (i.e., Josephus' Antiquities), because if you're wanting to make a case for the historical Jesus, then it's best to avoid as much bias as is possible.

And I'm very interested indeed in Crossan and Dunn's sources, sadly Wikipedia doesn't yield any light on this.

The historical sources I mentioned can be found in more detail on newadvent.org, whatever else you think of the Catholics, they compile a humdinger of a wiki, and are probably the experts on Christology and the historical Jesus.