Actually, no. Paul was around and writing shortly after the crucifixion...A few years in fact. All we know of Alexander the Great was written much further in the future than the accounts of Christ's teachings.

Well, "shortly" in this case means about...around 60 AD? Plus, Paul didn't mention in any of his writings actually meeting or seeing Jesus, right? So he may have written "shortly after the crucifixion", but he wasn't there and never actually saw Jesus. Is that right?

Mike

Maybe I confused the issue a bit, so let me clarify. Individual books of the Bible were written over a span of 6000-10000 years, depending on who you believe. Some of Paul's various letters were the last, and they were indeed written after Christ's death. These individual books were not assembled into one collective volume, The Bible, until much later. There is also some dissagreement as to which books belong in the Bible, with the Catholic version having more books than the Protestant version. In other words, all of the books of the Bible existed as stand-alone works until some one got the bright idea to collect them all and call it "The Bible".

So is the Catholic version, or the Protestant version, the actual word of God?

I’m curious about the other stand-alone works of the same time period that did not make it into the collection called the bible. “The gospel of Mary” and “The gospel of Thomas” come to mind. There are others. From a Christian standpoint, they don’t carry the weight of the works that made it into the bible, but historically speaking, I would think they would be just as valid. As I understand it, they contain some ideas contrary to the general ideas that Christianity presents. Perhaps they are substantially factually similar, but present Jesus in a different light. The facts that do differ must be pretty interesting. I must admit I know almost nothing about them. From my point of view, the bible was created by man, and the men that did it had substantial power over the rest of the people at that time. They could have easily suppressed any knowledge about these contrary books.

One example would be the Koran, which was written in the same period. As I understand it, there is a verse in the Koran that claims it wasn’t Jesus that got crucified, but some other guy. There was some sort of misunderstanding that resulted in the confusion. As I do not subscribe to either religion, and without more information, from my point of view there is a 50/50 chance that Jesus actually got crucified.

Everything that is in the Protestant version is in the Catholic version. The Catholics simple recognize more books as "the inspired word of God" than the Protestants, and thus include them.

The Koran was written entirely by one man, hundreds of years after we suspect all the books of the Bible were assembled as such. It recognizes Jesus as one of the prophets, of the same stature as Moses, Abraham, and others. It actually includes much of the Old Testament in stories adapted by Mohamad. He claims the true lineage of God's people is through Esau, Jacob's brother. Jacob was renamed "Israel" and became the father of that nation, and the line the Bible follows. Esau is apparently the Edomites, Philistines, and others. The Bible predicts, in its very first book, the age old enmity between these two "nations". Modern Israel and the Arab nations. It coninues, of cours, to this very day. Imagine that.