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."These sources are all non-Christian.
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.
