Why must the record be direct? What do you mean by direct anyway?
Someone who actually met Jesus or participated in the event in any way.
It doesn't have to be that, secondary sources are fine for attempting to establish historical accuracy, but it's the difference between an eye witness and hear say.
Why must the author of the record be someone who met Jesus that was not a believer?
Believers have a clear bias, they can be counted upon to advance the narrative where as an opposed voice that confirms believers testimony would be convincing because they have no agenda.
Having two sides tell a story tells you demonstrably more about what actually happened because they will agree on some things and on those things you can be fairly certain.
Are you saying that you cannot conclude that any person recorded to have lived (hereafter referred to as PRTHL) existed unless you have a direct record from a person that met this PRTHL that did not believe in PRTHL stating that the PRTHL existed?
I am not saying that as I think Jesus was a real person. I said specifically that the evidence for Jesus's existence wasn't of very high quality, and explained what I meant by that, which means that people who advance the argument that he did not are not insane based upon the evidence we have.
This criteria seems quite restrictive and very narrow. It seems specifically and intentionally contrived to eliminate Jesus as being a historical figure.
It would be the quality of evidence you would need to conclude that a person referred to in history was almost certainly a real person.
Can your furnish me with any academic texts which list this hyper-restrictive criteria as one which must be fulfilled when attempting to discern whether or not a person existed as a person of history?
I am using the historical method for evaluating testimony, feel free to educate yourself at your leisure.
And again, I don't support the case that Jesus didn't exist, I think at a bare minimum it is reasonable to think he did.
My point of view was that the case that he didn't exist isn't made exclusively by people who are
insane.
Since when did not being agenda driven become a criteria for a record being considered historically reliable in establishing the existence of a person?
It is evidence, just of a lower quality and more doubtful than having both it an opposed point of view.
It seems strange to me to think that an account of a person's life is unreliable just because the biographer had a specific agenda. Every biography I have ever read has had a note from the author at the front of the book which is a statement of their purpose in writing the biography. Every biographer has an agenda. The agenda is whatever they hope to accomplish in writing. Barring some good reason to think the biographer is lying, or unreliable, or intentionally setting out to deceive or is deceived, or is misrepresenting things, we don't conclude they are unreliable.
It seems strange to me that you wouldn't consider someones agenda skeptically when reading their history (which is usually written for a reason).
If historians followed this criteria, they would have to conclude that no biography is historically reliable!
Historical skepticism for me is too high of a price to pay for denying Jesus existed.
It's really not, you are just overreacting to arguments I am not making.
I do advocate historical skepticism but I think Jesus was most probably a real person.
