(my bold)Most historical figures from the ancient are known to us today because they were literate or prominent people or they did things during their lives that had an impact on their literate or prominent contemporaries. It was the impact of their lives that caused information about them to be preserved. Information about Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, was preserved because some person or persons claimed to have encountered him after he was dead. Had it not been for a belief that arose in supernatural events occurring after his death, we cannot be certain that Jesus would have left any mark in the historical record that would be discernible two thousand years later.
http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.it/2 ... icism.html
To think well, also John the Baptist was remembered by Josephus because some person (Josephus and/or his source) claimed that God punished Herod to vindicate the death of John.
If Herod was not defeated in battle, then we would have not mention of John in the historical record and therefore we would be John-Mythicists. No reason at all for Josephus to remember the historical John the Baptist.
(Obviously, to say that God punished Herod because of John means to say that God vindicated/resurrected John).
Could Josephus
and Mark 6:16[18.116] Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist.
be describing the same Herod's reaction to the news about a resurrected/vindicated John the Baptist ?But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.
Surely, to assume that Herod listened - or thought to have listened - two news about John the Baptist
1) the first time, described by Josephus and relative to the war,
2) the second time, described by Mark and relative to the preaching of a historical Jesus
...is an impossible coincidence. Even assuming that Mark invented the episode of a Herod being worried about the news of Jesus, the image of a worried Herod about the re-apparition post-mortem - as a risen person or a vindicated person (there is not so much difference) - of someone cannot occur in two independent sources without the presence of a some link between these two sources.
Therefore ''Mark'' was aware, via Josephus or via another source, that historically Herod was alarmed by listening about the revenge (or resurrection) of John the Baptist against him.
Therefore the next question is : why didn't ''Mark'' refer the truth about the reaction of Herod to the news of a vindicated (by God) John ? Why did Mark write that the true cause of the Herod's reaction was the news about a living Galilean preacher named Jesus, and not the popular voices about the revenge post-mortem of John ?
An answer may be that that was the way, for Mark, to make John a ''realized'' Jesus insofar John, if only he was survived to his death, could become surely the more great apostle of Jesus (greater than Paul himself even, being John the seed thrown on the way and eaten by the birds).
But another answer may be that Mark could sell only this episode as the his ''proof'' of a historical Jesus lived under Herod and Pilate: the popular news about a vindicated John were really the news of a living historical Jesus, but only the readers of Mark could know this fact because only they had the ''truth''.