Thanks for this reply. If you look at the tree of replies to my message you'll see I address several of the issues you raise. In particular, you say,

> He got it wrong, but the way he went about getting it wrong is significant.

I understand your point but I don't give him a bye for having a rediculously small n, since he was well schooled in inductive reasoning. I have further discussion in other comments so I won't bother to summarize her.

The biggest point, really, is his outsize impact on early christianity and later Islam, which I personally can't all consider benign.

Still, at the end of the day, we two don't need to come to an agreement :-) -- even more so that any disagreement is in degree. Some days I feel that the only people who've actually read the classics are people I already know!