Chapter 31
Historical Record

What about non-Biblical historical support?

Since the authorship of the books of the Bible is highly suspect, perhaps we can help establish the Bible as the word of God by verifying some facts based on the historical record which was kept around the times of interest. Maybe not.

31.1 Did Jesus really exist? There are no first-hand historical accounts of him. The gospels were neither written during his lifetime nor by anyone who knew him personally. Not one passage exists which was written about Jesus within the first fifty years of the Christian era. The writings of the apostles contained no historical personality of Jesus, and they contained nothing which can be checked with facts. Even though Judea was a Roman province (under strict administrators known for detailed record-keeping), there were no records of Jesus: his birth, life, works, trial, or execution.
There were no first-hand accounts of Jesus in any other historical documents either. Only the handful of highly suspect passages below refer to any Christ, Jesus, or anything similar.

Suetonius

31.2 Suetonius referred to disturbances by some Jews lead by Chrestus, a common name among freedmen at the time. Chrestus was also a name for the Egyptian god Serapis (Osiris), who had a large following in Rome among the commoners. Even if Chrestus was a variant spelling of Christus, Christus was a Greek-Latin translation of Messiah and need not have referred to any specific Messiah, i.e. Jesus. (Suetonius [CE 75-150], The Deified Claudius, sec 25)

Tacitus

31.3 Tacitus referred to Nero’s actions after the great fire in Rome in 64 CE. Nero blamed the fire on Christians, followers of Christus, who was supposedly executed by Pontius Pilate under Tiberius. He then described the peoples’ ill-will towards these followers of Christus and their special punishment by fire (and their use as human torches), by animals, and by crucifixion. However, there are a number of problems with the text. (Tacitus [CE 55-120] Annals, vol. 15, page 44 in McKinsey, 103-104)

- Followers of Serapis (Osiris) were also called Christians.
- Christ and Christians didn’t appear anywhere else in the text.
- This Christ could apply to many other so-called Christs executed in Judea.
- There were no Roman records of Christ’s execution.
- There was no trace of this passage before the 15th century.
- The execution of Jesus would have been insignificant to the Romans, so it would probably not have shown up in a report by Tacitus.
- There was no corresponding archive mentioning the darkening of the sun or the earthquake on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.
- Scholars agree that Tacitus’ works were not reliably preserved.
- The text said that the Christians confessed (referring to the great fire), thereby placing the executions in the category of routine police actions against saboteurs, not religious persecutions.
- Execution by fire was not a Roman punishment at the time, and the reference to human torches and other tortures were undoubtedly inspired by later stories of Christian martyrs.
- The Christian sect at that time was far too insignificant to prompt special punishment by the Romans or the ill-feeling of the people. They could have had no idea what would follow.
- Tacitus would likely have passed along rumors and oral traditions of Jesus from Christians or intermediates.
- The passage was not quoted by the Church Fathers, although thatt would have been very useful to them.
- The passage was not quoted by Tertullian who often quoted Tacitus.
- In the 4th c. CE, Eusebius cited all the known evidence of Christianity, but he didn’t mention Tacitus.
- Even if it was genuine, it was written a hundred years after the fact, so it was still hearsay.

Josephus

31.4 A famous passage from Josephus referred to Jesus was clearly inserted later by a Christian. (Josephus, The Jewish Antiquities, bk. 18, ch. 3, sec 3)

- It was spurious in context, it interrupted the flow of another narrative, it was uncharacteristically brief, its content would have been blasphemous to Josephus, a devout Jew, and it did not appear in any early editions. (McKinsey, 104)
- This passage first appeared in 320 CE in a book by a thoroughly dishonest historian, Eusebius. The passage was not quoted in the 2nd and 3rd c. CE by the church fathers. (Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius)
- Eusebius also wrote, "I have repeated whatever may rebound to the glory, and suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of our religion." (Eusebius, Praeparation Evangelica, ch. 31, bk. 12)
- Origen said Josephus mentioned John the Baptist but did not say Jesus was the Messiah. (Origen, Contra Celsum, vol. 1, p. 47)
- Photius said Josephus took no notice of Christ.
- Many theologians and Gibbon (The Fall of the Roman Empire) considered the passage a forgery.

31.5 Another Josephus passage which referred to Jesus was considered by many Christian scholars (e.g. Karl Credner, Emil Schurer, Bernard G. Weiss, and Adolf Julicher) to be a later interpolation. (Josephus, The Jewish Antiquities, bk. 18, ch. 9, sec 1)

Pliny the Younger

31.6 Pliny the Younger (Proconsul in Bithynia), in 113 CE, explained how he handled a Christian sect who sold the flesh of their sacrificial victims. (Pliny the Younger, Letter to Emperor Trajan, 113 CE)

- Nothing referred to Jesus as the Christ, only that there were Christians.
- He implied that Trajan was not acquainted with Christian beliefs, although there were many Christians in Rome at the time.
- This particular letter was found in only one ancient copy of Pliny the Younger.
- The passage was first quoted by Tertullian just after an era famous for Christian forgeries.
- It was considered spurious by experts at the time of its first publication in the 16th century.