I am really out of it because I didn’t even know this was going on until I read the post in the reformation21 blog. In Italy a priest has to appear in court to prove the existence of Jesus!
Hey Susan, I bet you wish it were you!
Update: I found another article dated 1-27-06. The priest stated his case in court and is awaiting the verdict. And here is yet another article that lays out the priest’s defense.
Here is the “money quote:”
A passage of Josephus’ “Jewish Antiquities,” completed in A.D. 93, cites the execution in A.D. 62 of “the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, James by name.”
Righi also cited Pliny the Younger, who in the early second century described a policy of executing Christians who refused to curse Christ, and Tacitus, another writer of the same time who wrote that Jesus was executed by the sentence of Pontius Pilate.
These sources are all non-Christian.