From what source are you quoting these words?
If you have followed
the link provided you would know the answer to that question. Stop being lazy and actually follow the links provided.
Fortunately critical thinkers know that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, nor do serious scholars believe that the section was fabricated let alone the entire book, as you seem to claim.
No True Scotsman fallacy.
Drews' point was NOT that the section was fabricated nor that the entire book forged but that the key part that could have helped confirm the passage was for what ever reason NOT copied by the Christians.
Drews'
The witnesses to the historicity of Jesus states
"a) When Tacitus is assumed to have written, about the year 117, that the founder of the sect, Christus, was put to death by the
procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, Christianity was already an organised religion with a settled tradition. Even the gospels, or at least three of them, are supposed to have then been in existence. Hence Tacitus might have derived his information about Jesus, if not directly from the gospels, at all events indirectly from them by means of oral tradition."
point b) cover the possible forging of this passage. The more relevant part of Drews here is "We have a number of instances in the first centuries of Christian writers who are acquainted with Tacitus, such as Tertullian, Jerome, Orosius, Sidonius Apollinaris,
Sulpicius Severus, and Cassiodorus. It is only in the course of the Middle Ages that this acquaintance with the Roman historian is gradually lost and this not on account of, but in spite of, the passage in Tacitus on the Christians. This testimony of the Roman historian to the supposed first persecution of the Christians would be very valuable to them for many reasons.
As I said a long time ago this is akin to the curious matter of the dog in the night in the story
Silver Blaze. The fact the dog did nothing in the night time eliminated the idea that a strange came in and stole the horse...it had to be someone the dog knew.
Drews goes on "Are there, however, no witnesses to the genuineness of the passages of Tacitus in early Christian literature?
There is the letter of Clement of Rome belonging to the end of the first century." But this letter simply says
there was persecution and give no name of any emperor much less Nero so no help there.
EVERY bit of supporting evidence for a historical Jesus is a Kusche parrot of the 'this passage is true and historical; prove it is not' variety.
