I think your questions have been answered Gumby they just aren't the answers you wanted. I'll try to break it down into specifics but some of the questions border on circular logic. By the way, JanH is a thousand times better at this type of debate than I am.
1. Jesus WAS a historical figure as writers other than christians testify. Wether he DID THE THINGS the bible said he did, OR WAS who the bible said he was.......is the debate.
Not a question but it is a debate.
2.The 4 Gospels all harmonize even though written by different writers
The Gospels don't actually harmonize, Francois made this point as well. In fact most of the Bible doesn't harmonize.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/inconsistencies.html
3. The jewish TALMUD, though clashing with the gospels in that they argue in the Means by which Jesus performed miracles, do not DENY they happened.
This is like me writing a book on how the world is flat. Then someone else who also agrees the world is flat writes a book about the same thing but disagrees on where the water goes. I can use his book to prove my point and he can use mine to prove his so one of them must be true.
4. Celsus, a philosopher of the second century C.E., denied Jesus as divine in that his ORIGIN was of humble begginings....poor, humble, betrayed, suferred, being put to death. The argument is he believed Jesus existed.....but he used his personal opinion on how he VIEWED him.
As already stated, and I don't have the link anymore, Jesus was not Deified until a few hundred years after he was dead. I can believe that Einstein existed but that doesn't mean that he preformed miracles or was the son of God.
5.Unlike mythical writings, the bible is built on people who REALLY existed, and PLACES that exist to this day.
The Bible is built on Mythical writings. It has already been proven that allot of stories in the Bible are based on Pagan mythology. The easiest example is the story of Noah and the Flood. This is a blatant rip off an earlier Babylonian mythology of the Goddess and the God warned a man about an upcoming flood, his name? Yep, Noah. Even today movies are made with real events as the backdrop and the author takes liberties with the rest. Yes, even back in the day there was artistic liscense. Also, the best way to make a lie believable is to include 80% truth.
6. Luke 3:1,2 names 7 political and religious officials who actually lived in the time Jesus lived. "This can be verified by consulting history books" say's the article on P.67 (thought that was interesting!)
See the last part of the above comment.
7. The writers freely admited their waeknesses. Would writers who are fabricating stories, speak so humbly?
J.R.R Tolken was a humble man as well. Does this mean that the Hobbit is true?
8. Last...the book also mentioed the THEME of the bible running throughout it's pages and say's in affect...."What are the chances of one theme weaving itself throughout the bible over that many years.
See the link above for Biblical consitencies. The stories of the Bible come from the same region and were originally verbal stories. You can take three seperate books/ideologies from China. Confusionism, Taoism, and Buddhism all share a common theme and spawned at different times in different regions of China.
I hope that is a little more of what you're looking for. However, I must say it has been awhile since I've had this debate so I'm a bit rusty.
