#also i feel bad for ben sira/sirach

[aorish]

yeshua is probably the correct name for jesus but I think this (unintentionally) implies something that isn't true; that there are any close-to-contemporary accounts of Jesus in Hebrew.

The oldest sources attesting to the historical existence of Jesus are all in Greek - the oldest gospel is Mark and it dates to around the time of the Roman-Jewish war (70 CE), written by someone with such an abysmal understanding of the local geography that they almost certainly weren't ever in the Levant. And there's also the "Mara Bar-Serapion" letter, written some time after, by a guy who makes some offhand comment about, like "maybe if the Jews hadn't killed that wise king of theirs their temple wouldn't have been destroyed" which, like, isn't even necessarily about Jesus. It's not exactly great documentary evidence beyond "this Jesus guy probably existed."

The "Jews killed Jesus" is a recurring theme in the Gospels though. The narrative even names the guy who betrayed him "Judas." And they have this whole narrative of the roman governor being like "hey I'm going to pardon someone, should I pardon this Jesus guy? Or this horrible criminal" and then the people pick the criminal.

I wonder if the whole "the Jews killed Jesus" thing is an artifact of the center of Christianity being the Roman empire (which actually killed Jesus. Assuming that someone named Jesus was crucified) for a while.