What counts as a historical Jesus?

[eight bits]

maximara

I think we can agree that a date of 50 for Acts is untenable.

As to some of the other points, I have no idea why Eusebius wrote that Philo went to Rome to talk with Peter. He doesn't explain (HE II, 17). In the same section, he discusses Philo's description of what was apparently a Jewish sect in Egypt. Eusebius doesn't say that Philo called them Christians, but rather Eusebius made that inference from the similarities he sees bewteen their practices and the Christian ascetics of his own day.

Epiphanius apparently relies on Eusebius for the doctrine, and Philo for the name of that sect. He construes the name as "Jessean," to his mind a reference to the father of David, and so a great name for a Christian sect (Panarion 29 1,3). Epiphanius seems aware that Philo isn't a source for their being Christian, but rather that that's an inference made by Christian readers (29 5,1).

Epiphanius does have Nasaraeans, but says of them plainly that "The sect of the Nasaraeans was before Christ and did not know Christ" (29 6, 1). He doesn't say much about them, but what he does say is exclusively about Jewish concerns and apparently they were vegetarians. Supposedly the name means "rebels" (section I 19,1). Under the circumstances, I don't see how that points to a "pre-Christian Jesus" (except in the trivial and uncontroversial sense that Jesus wasn't a Christian). Maybe your author has yet another Nas- in mind?

pgwenthold

I've brought this up before in this thread - if you make your requirements so minor, then yeah, you can come up with a "historical Jesus" that fits them, ...

OK, then we should make a wish list of potentially naturalistically verifiable (even if the potential is remote) facts that would distinguish a Jesus of interest from other people, and bridge the gap between him and the churches that today revere him, putting aside their supernatural commitments.

I nominate a few things:

The historical component of the Apostles' and Nicene creedal specifications, so that he is the Jesus identified by churches who today serve billions, all of the following:

(1) That he was an individual man.
(2) That he was born to a Jewish woman.
(3) That he was killed by the authority of Pontius Pilate.

In addition to those, I think most of the following would need to be true for the Gospels to have any useful relevance to this man:

(4) That he was a preacher for at least a few months full time.
(5) That he had some affiliation to John the Baptist (Josephus seems to think John was real).
(6) That he had disciples of his own, or shared some with John the Baptist.
(7) That some of those disciples survived him.
(8) That some of those survivng disciples preached John or Jesus in Judea at mid-century.

In addition to those, for the existing churches to link up with those circumstances,

(9) That at least Galatians and 1 Corinthians are authentic and undeceptive partial recitals of an active early adopter's second-hand understanding of Jesus, the same author for both.
(10) Among Jesus' teachings was a restriction on remarriage after divorce.

Too much? Too little? Just right?

davefoc

Who is "the founder" of Christianity may be uninteresting. If there is no Jesus, then creedal Christianity collapses. That doesn't depend on his being "the founder" of anything.

Swedenborg is not the founder of the church that bears his name. As Jesus supposedly did, Swedenborg died as a member of his native religion, the Lutheran Church. Nevertheless, there is no point whatsoever to a Swedenborg denomination, except that the church's teachers base their doctrine on their understanding of what Swedenborg taught. And, given that that is so, it makes no difference at all that somebody else founded the church after Swedenborg had died.

That is the historically secure relationship between Swedenborg and his church, and it's the historically disputed relationship between Jesus and the Nicene Christian churches. If it could be shown that there was no "HJ," then I don't know what the Christians will do instead, but whatever it is, it will be instead of what they're doing now.

The Vatican would make a hell of an art museum, don't you think?

 

[davefoc]

...


OK, then we should make a wish list of potentially naturalistically verifiable (even if the potential is remote) facts that would distinguish a Jesus of interest from other people, and bridge the gap between him and the churches that today revere him, putting aside their supernatural commitments.

I nominate a few things:

The historical component of the Apostles' and Nicene creedal specifications, so that he is the Jesus identified by churches who today serve billions, all of the following:

(1) That he was an individual man.
(2) That he was born to a Jewish woman.
(3) That he was killed by the authority of Pontius Pilate.

In addition to those, I think most of the following would need to be true for the Gospels to have any useful relevance to this man:

(4) That he was a preacher for at least a few months full time.
(5) That he had some affiliation to John the Baptist (Josephus seems to think John was real).
(6) That he had disciples of his own, or shared some with John the Baptist.
(7) That some of those disciples survived him.
(8) That some of those survivng disciples preached John or Jesus in Judea at mid-century.

In addition to those, for the existing churches to link up with those circumstances,

(9) That at least Galatians and 1 Corinthians are authentic and undeceptive partial recitals of an active early adopter's second-hand understanding of Jesus, the same author for both.
(10) Among Jesus' teachings was a restriction on remarriage after divorce.

Too much? Too little? Just right?

This seems to be surprisingly similar to a list I made earlier in this thread. I thought there were a few must haves and there should be at least a few other things that line up as well.

Still, partially because I am trying to give my guess that an HJ existed as much chance of being right as possible I am not quite as stringent as you are on the criteria. I am with HM and others that there is just no way to reliably sort fact from fiction in the Gospels and I don't want my guess that an HJ existed to be pinned down by what some first or second century fiction writer dreamed up.

Who is "the founder" of Christianity may be uninteresting. If there is no Jesus, then creedal Christianity collapses. That doesn't depend on his being "the founder" of anything.

Swedenborg is not the founder of the church that bears his name. As Jesus supposedly did, Swedenborg died as a member of his native religion, the Lutheran Church. Nevertheless, there is no point whatsoever to a Swedenborg denomination, except that the church's teachers base their doctrine on their understanding of what Swedenborg taught. And, given that that is so, it makes no difference at all that somebody else founded the church after Swedenborg had died.

That is the historically secure relationship between Swedenborg and his church, and it's the historically disputed relationship between Jesus and the Nicene Christian churches. If it could be shown that there was no "HJ," then I don't know what the Christians will do instead, but whatever it is, it will be instead of what they're doing now.

The Vatican would make a hell of an art museum, don't you think?

I think that it is very likely that it is impossible and will always be impossible to prove the non-existence of an HJ. But if one assumes that such proof or at least strong evidence of the non-existence of the HJ should surface today I don't think it would affect Christianity much. First, it is in the nature of humans to form unfalsifiable beliefs and even if unequivocal proof became available there would still be massive numbers of believers. Secondly, religions can morph and proof of the non-existence of an HJ would cause some shifting of Christian beliefs but I suspect that the impact of the morphed new Christianity would be about the same as the impact of the Christian religion today. So I'd hold off on planning a visit to the secular Vatican art gallery any time soon.

To a degree, I think Christianity has already gone through something like this. When the Messiah didn't show up in a timely way, the leaders just picked some poor guy that happened to live in the right place and time (and who may have been horrifically killed) to use as a basis for changing their religion and creating their mythology. Or perhaps they didn't even need to wait for a guy at the right place and time, they just made him up out of whole cloth.

 

[eight bits]

davefoc

Still, partially because I am trying to give my guess that an HJ existed as much chance of being right as possible I am not quite as stringent as you are on the criteria. I am with HM and others that there is just no way to reliably sort fact from fiction in the Gospels and I don't want my guess that an HJ existed to be pinned down by what some first or second century fiction writer dreamed up.

Of course, I am not even trying to sort out fact from fiction in the Gospels. I offer a proposal for which parts of Gospels-Acts-Paul are naturalistic major features widely believed by Jesus' devotees. If my list were confidently true of somebody, then that somebody would "count" as the historical Jesus, IMO. I don't expect that anything on the list will in fact be verified or refuted with much widespread confidence, but everything there is in principle historical subject matter.

You seemed nostalgic for an earlier time in the life of the thread when it was more on-topic by your reckoning. Back then, you proposed your list. OK, lists are good, and now you have my take on the topic question in that format. I generally agree with the differences in style and emphasis between our lists that you mentioned. Some substantial similarities are inevitable, since we drink from the same well. If there weren't such foreseeable similarities, then that in itself would sink the project of locating a historical Jesus who counts, IMO.

As you probably can guess, already my list has been trimmed based on the progress of the discussion here. Without that recent discussion I would also have proposed

(11) That Jesus' final custody followed soon after the defection of one or more disciples.

So I'd hold off on planning a visit to the secular Vatican art gallery any time soon.

Of course, but I'm holding off because I don't expect to be around for the decisive resolution of the historical Jesus controversy.

Regardless of the kinds of beliefs people are apt to form, the fact remains that one of the few things that unites the two billion plus pracitcing Christians is adherence to the Apostles' or Nicene Creeds. No doubt, anybody who could believe that stuff in the first place will find something equally uncompelling to believe if the creeds ever became undeniably false.

But, I believe that the typical foundation of Christian faith is a confident opinion that the Creator of the Universe incarnated as a man in some roughly specified time and place. There are mighty impediments, including psychological ones, to removiing the historical component of the foundation. If the removal happened, however, then I have more trust in the involuntary character of compliance with the demands of reason than you do.

 

[maximara]

Well, the title of the thread is "What Counts as a Historical Jesus." Notice that the question is NOT "is there a historical Jesus or not" but "what do you need to have a historical Jesus"

Personally, I've found this thread a little frustrating, because it moved very quickly away from the original question.

I've brought this up before in this thread - if you make your requirements so minor, then yeah, you can come up with a "historical Jesus" that fits them, but by the same (low) standards, you'd also be able to identify a "historical Dorothy" from the Wizard of Oz.

I mean, we aren't even talking about comparing to legends here, like Paul Bunyan, Robin Hood, or King Arthur, we are talking about a simple fictional character (at the risk of having my Int Wizard of Oz Club membership revoked). If the huffing and puffing about the Historical Jesus(TM) is all about a place that results in an equally Historical Dorothy, then this is absolutely much-ado-about-nothing.

I actually brought this point up way back in post 185:

The problem is as Biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall explains is that the term "historical Jesus" itself has two meanings: that Jesus existed, rather than being a totally fictional creation like King Lear or Dr. Who, or that the Gospels accounts give a reasonable account of historical events, rather than being unverifiable legends such as those surrounding King Arthur.

Because of this slipperiness in the meaning of "historical Jesus", Marshall states "We shall land in considerable confusion if we embark on an inquiry about the historical Jesus if we do not pause to ask ourselves exactly what we are talking about." (Marshall, Ian Howard. I Believe in the Historical Jesus. Regent College Publishing, 2004, p. 27-29.)

I even pointed to John Remsburg's definition of historical myth:

"a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false. A large portion of ancient history, including the Biblical narratives, is historical myth. The earliest records of all nations and of all religions are more or less mythical."

We have been given the sign post but people don't want to go downt hat road for what ever reason.

 

[maximara]

I did also and I made a futile effort to keep the thread on topic. Eventually I found accepting what I couldn't change as the course to frustration reduction plus this thread has been on average been more civil than some of the other historical Jesus threads which I appreciated.

I have simplified my thoughts about what constitutes an historical Jesus as a result of some of the comments in this thread. For me there are only two criteria that an HJ needs to meet:

1. The HJ was the individual that inspired the creation of the NT stories about Jesus.
2. The HJ would be recognizable as the Jesus character in the NT based on the facts of his life if they were known.

Would Mead's c100 BCE Jesus could fit this criteria. We know that Robin Hood had some time shifting in his stories (the earliest known accounts have him dealing with a "King Edward") and King Arthur has had a candidate suggested that is earlier then the time of the stories by 200 years.

 

[davefoc]

Would Mead's c100 BCE Jesus could fit this criteria. We know that Robin Hood had some time shifting in his stories (the earliest known accounts have him dealing with a "King Edward") and King Arthur has had a candidate suggested that is earlier then the time of the stories by 200 years.

The answer to your question is a bit on no and a bit of yes.

When I use the term historical Jesus, I mean an individual that at least met some of the criteria that eight bits listed above. But in particular I mean an individual that held a prominent position in a Jewish sect that was born about 1 ce. An individual that lived in about 100 bce would not be compliant by what I mean when I use the term historical Jesus and if such an individual turned out to be the inspiration and source for the NT Jesus stories I would consider my guess that an HJ existed as just wrong.

However, I think that exactly what is intended by the term historical Jesus is ambiguous. Therefore if an individual or individuals were identified who had incidents from their lives incorporated into the Jesus mythology that had lived in 100 bce, I think the general usage of the term, historical Jesus, is too vague to say that characterizing those individuals as historical Jesus(s) would be wrong.

But I think it would be a stretch to characterize such an individual as the HJ. I would see such individuals more as people whose lives served as source material for the NT writers than historical Jesuses.

 

[davefoc]

...
But, I believe that the typical foundation of Christian faith is a confident opinion that the Creator of the Universe incarnated as a man in some roughly specified time and place. There are mighty impediments, including psychological ones, to removiing the historical component of the foundation. If the removal happened, however, then I have more trust in the involuntary character of compliance with the demands of reason than you do.

Interesting. I've done a fair bit of musing about the nature of belief formation. I don't think I've come up with anything unique or anything of particular value either. But over the last ten years or so my view of the role that reason plays in belief formation and in the sustenance of belief has decreased significantly.

I would suggest a few data points to support my view:
1. Noah's ark - You talked about the hypothetical surfacing of proof that an HJ didn't exist. We've got proof beyond anything imaginable about an HJ that the biblical Noah stories are bogus, but that hasn't done anything to keep a large portion of the population from believing them.

2. The conspiracy threads on this forum - Have you checked out any of those? It is hard to imagine anything that is more certain in this life than that the WTC buildings were not brought down with explosives or thermite but there are still WTC conspiracy theorists who hold on bizarrely to strong beliefs about this.

3. Difference of opinions in this forum in the political sections - Obviously this forum is frequented by people who have a skeptical outlook, especially with regards to supernatural and paranormal phenomena. But when it comes to the political threads how many of those people seriously examine their own beliefs? Beliefs in the political section of this forum are driven by the same kind of thing that drives the beliefs of normal people: confirmation biases, group identification biases and self interest biases. And if people that are more introspective than the norm and more willing to change beliefs than the norm form beliefs so strongly it seems very likely to me that even unequivocal evidence about their religious beliefs is not going to effect the religious beliefs of true believers very much.

 

[eight bits]

davefoc

My trust in the involuntary demands of reason doesn't extend to the instant extinction of differences of opinion. An interval of time would elapse. We see this in the notorious "N-rays" incident. Scholarly consensus change can drag on until the last adherent of the old beliefs dies.

Why does an interval elapse, and why isn't it so much shorter? An answer congenial to reason was provided by Duhem. Suppose a heuristic argument is offered contrary to a logically possible but factually false proposition, P. The argument will include assumptions, A, about how some accepted facts bear on P.

The actual inescapable conclusion of the argument, then, will not be "P is false," but rather "P is false or A is false." Beliefs persist, and should persist, so long as it seriously possible that something is wrong with the assumptions linking P to its defeating facts.

It follows that some beliefs are predictably more robust than others. Conspiracy theories are robust because they typically include a defeater of rebuttal. One aim of the proposed conspiracy is to accomplish a deception. Of course A is false, A is what they want you to think.

"Mkay, but I saw the second plane fly into the tower on live TV." The success of the conspiracy depends on sheeple being just that gullible. Gawd, what else do you believe from the MSM?

Nicene Christianity, however, is kind enough to commit to both P and A, the woo and what history has to do with the woo. We are not arguing whether the supernatural stuff could be true if the historical stuff is false. The religious doctrine is that both the supernatural stuff and the historical stuff are true. The loss of the historical stuff would be fatal to the religion.

It does not follow that the former Nicene Christian must accept Richard Dawkins as her Lord and Savior. Suppose the refutation occurred by showing that there was no person who both died under the authority of Pontius Pilate (my #3) and also satisfied the rest of my requirements.

Islam denies my (3) and only my (3). Islam has a different historical Jesus from the one who "counts" in a Nicene Christian culture, according to my list. I also suspect Mormonism might survive despite their current acceptance of a King James Version Passion. Mormons have institutionalized continuing revelation, which includes frank reversal of mistakes.

The Catholic Church, not so much. Bible believing Protestantism, even less so.

Maybe the Vatican would become a combination art museum and genealogical research facility. A mosque would be a nice interfaith gesture, good PR for the LDS.

 

[Stone]

Well, in fact it's actually a little bit more supportable than turning the other cheek, because, as I was saying, the sermon on the mount only appears in Matthew, while this is one of the rare cases that's (in various variants) in all four gospels.

WRONG! Try getting your own facts straight first. The sermon appears in _two_ texts, not one: Matthew and Luke. Everyone who aims at an intelligent discussion on all this should know that. Where have you been?

Stone

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Err, no. Luke has the MUCH shorter Sermon On The Plain. It contains a few common themes, but as I was saying it's much shorter. It's only half a page, namely Luke 6:17-49, so most of the material from the sermon on the mount is actually missing.

E.g., Luke has only 4 beatitudes instead of Matthew's 9, missing some of the most nonsensical ones. Also two of the four common ones contain extra words in Matthew that seriously change the meaning. E.g., in Luke's version it's "blessed are you who are poor", missing the "in spirit" twist of Matthew, which is really saying something different. E.g., in Luke's version it's really "Blessed are you who are hungry now", instead of "hungry and thirsty for justice" in Matthew, which again, is quite the different thing. Once you account for such differences, there actually is rather little that is common between the two accounts. One is talking about spiritual matters, the other about filling your belly, for example.

It's still debated whether it's the same sermon or not, though some do take it as the same sermon, and of course you're free to do so if you wish.

Nevertheless, even if they were the same, then it's from Q, and Matthew just embellishes on the Q version. So, you know, it still comes from a single document.

Still, mea culpa, turning the other cheek does appear in Luke's version too. I had forgotten about that one. Thanks for setting things straight.

 

[pakeha]

Err, no. Luke has the MUCH shorter Sermon On The Plain. It contains a few common themes, but as I was saying it's much shorter. It's only half a page, namely Luke 6:17-49, so most of the material from the sermon on the mount is actually missing.

E.g., Luke has only 4 beatitudes instead of Matthew's 9, missing some of the most nonsensical ones. Also two of the four common ones contain extra words in Matthew that seriously change the meaning. E.g., in Luke's version it's "blessed are you who are poor", missing the "in spirit" twist of Matthew, which is really saying something different. E.g., in Luke's version it's really "Blessed are you who are hungry now", instead of "hungry and thirsty for justice" in Matthew, which again, is quite the different thing. Once you account for such differences, there actually is rather little that is common between the two accounts. One is talking about spiritual matters, the other about filling your belly, for example.

It's still debated whether it's the same sermon or not, though some do take it as the same sermon, and of course you're free to do so if you wish.

Nevertheless, even if they were the same, then it's from Q, and Matthew just embellishes on the Q version. So, you know, it still comes from a single document.

Still, mea culpa, turning the other cheek does appear in Luke's version too. I had forgotten about that one. Thanks for setting things straight.

Thanks for taking the time for that analysis, HM!
"Luke has the MUCH shorter Sermon On The Plain"

 

[mijopaalmc]

What counts as a hysterical Jesus?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Thanks for taking the time for that analysis, HM!
"Luke has the MUCH shorter Sermon On The Plain"

Well, it is half a chapter vs three chapters, so I'll say it's shorter all right.

And I still wouldn't take even that less embellished version as particularly representative of Jesus's actual views. Closer to the version in Q, maybe, but it's still a text that would be made up after a speech.

And we even have a clue to that in its structure. The whole thing doesn't read like a particularly coherent speech about one theme, but like a collection of sayings of Jesus strung together, sometimes just jumping between topics with no rhyme or reason. In Matthew's version we even see nonsensical groupings like glueing together the interdiction to look at women with lust in your heart, with the part about it being better to pluck your eye out if it offends. The latter part reads much more like it was a metaphorical encouragement to get rid of members of the early church that don't behave. Whereas if it is really part about the same topic of eyeballing women, then it's literally inciting at self-mutilation for having biological impulses, which just makes Jesus a moron.

At any rate, there is a distinct possibility that this comes from some collection of sayings attributed to Jesus -- and the genre existed, see the gospel of Thomas -- and not from any actual sermon in any particular place, be it mountain, plain, or whatever. The setting and sermon structure may well be a later structure imposed upon that collection by someone who wasn't Jesus.

 

[mijopaalmc]

How can you be sure that the longer passages represent "additions" to the original Q source by later individual belief communities?

Q is a hypothetical and reconstructed oral tradition based on synopsis among the Gospels. The different belief communities could have just as easily excluded passages from Q that didn't fit their particular theology.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, the clue is in just that: Q is a hypothetical and reconstructed thing, so it's a vague enough thing for it to not actually matter all that much whether a source adds or another one subtracts from Q.

Plus it's pretty much a matter of definition that Q is taken to be pretty much the intersection of Luke and Matthew, minus Mark. So it makes little sense to talk about something that was in Q but isn't in Luke or isn't in Matthew. Those are filed under the (equally hypothetical) M and L sources.

Also for various reasons, although chiefly because Luke is better at preserving the order from Mark and stuff, it is assumed that he also copied relatively faithfully from Q. Hence basically the "reconstructed" Q is really the Luke version of that common material.

That goes to the extent that when someone tells you a chapter and verse number from Q, it's really the chapter and verse number from Luke. Like, if I were to tell you that Q 6:27 says to love your enemy, it's actually Luke 6:27.

(This incidentally may make it sound a lot more "reconstructed" than it really is to the casual audience. It makes it sound like we already know the exact page and verse number from Q, or that it actually had that many chapters. But actually we don't know how much other stuff was in it, or where exactly in it were those parts, and the reconstructed parts are actually a lot smaller than the chapter and verse numbers would mislead one to believe.)

So really as its original name Quelle (hence, Q) indicated, it's really a hypothesized source rather than a certain document.

And, as I was saying, incidentally it's defined in such a way that Luke is the authoritative version for it. So discussing the parts that Luke removed from Q is not very meaningful.

Of course, that all is a hypothesis, and it's very unsupported that Luke reproduced it better than Matthew. We don't really know what Q might have looked like, or even if it's one document, or a collection of documents that were making the rounds, or a purely oral tradition, or what. We can speculate that it's more believable in one way or another (with all the caveats about "believable" that I've ranted and raved about), but yes, nobody claims to know exactly what that document was like.

But as a reconstructed and hypothetical concept, Q is pretty much defined as being the way it's in Luke.

 

[pakeha]

You're on a roll, HM!
I finally understand just what the Quelle source is, thanks to you.

 

[maximara]

Well, the title of the thread is "What Counts as a Historical Jesus." Notice that the question is NOT "is there a historical Jesus or not" but "what do you need to have a historical Jesus"

Personally, I've found this thread a little frustrating, because it moved very quickly away from the original question.

I've brought this up before in this thread - if you make your requirements so minor, then yeah, you can come up with a "historical Jesus" that fits them, but by the same (low) standards, you'd also be able to identify a "historical Dorothy" from the Wizard of Oz.

I mean, we aren't even talking about comparing to legends here, like Paul Bunyan, Robin Hood, or King Arthur, we are talking about a simple fictional character (at the risk of having my Int Wizard of Oz Club membership revoked). If the huffing and puffing about the Historical Jesus(TM) is all about a place that results in an equally Historical Dorothy, then this is absolutely much-ado-about-nothing.

As I said before the main problem goes back to how the Christ myth theory ie non-historical theory is defined.

As I have demonstrated before what that seems to vary with people who held to some form of Jesus existing in the 1st century (Frazer, Robertson, post-Jesus Myth Wells, etc) rightly or wrongly getting the label slapped on them.

It certainly doesn't help that some definitions have the Christ myth theory being the story of the man rather than the man himself being a fiction or that there was this pre-existing Jesus Myth that "reports of an obscure Jewish Holy man bearing this name" were added later.

This IMHO is why the definition of a "historical Jesus" is all over the map--the definition of its opposite is a shambles.

 

[maximara]

I would also like ot point out some in the Historical Jesus camp marginalize Jesus to the point that nearly anyone with the name Jesus who preached something in Galilee in the 1st century and ticked off the Romans enough to get himself crucified would fit the bill.

Then you have the other end of the Historical Jesus camp who try to take the Gospels as historical fact and in the process reduce things to absurdity.

 

[SlackerBabbath]

Well, no event in the NT can be supported as having any kernel of truth.

To be fair... and I'm speaking as an atheist here (who's also new to the site and hasn't read the entire thread and so doesn't know if this has been mentioned so far) the first century Roman historian Tacitus claims that Christianity was named after a person that the Romans executed.

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

Tacitus was famously anti-Christian, so surely we can certainly consider him as an unbiased 'supporting' source for the crucifixion event?

 

[Craig B]

To be fair... and I'm speaking as an atheist here (who's also new to the site and hasn't read the entire thread and so doesn't know if this has been mentioned so far) the first century Roman historian Tacitus claims that Christianity was named after a person that the Romans executed.

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

Tacitus was famously anti-Christian, so surely we can certainly consider him as an unbiased 'supporting' source for the crucifixion event?

It was written about 80 years after Jesus' death, and in all probability his source of information was the Christian community which is known to have existed by that time. It also refers to Pilate as a "procurator". That was the rank and title of the governor of Judaea in Tacitus' day, but not in Pilate's day. He was a "prefect", and an inscription from his own day describing him as such may be seen here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilate_Stone.

[DIS AUGUSTI]S TIBERIÉUM
[...PO]NTIUS PILATUS
[...PRAEF]ECTUS IUDA[EA]E
[...FECIT D]E[DICAVIT]

This indicates that Tacitus did NOT consult primary sources when composing his passage about the Neronian persecution of Christians.