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Historical context

Jesus outside the Bible

What history recorded

Non-Christian authors mention Jesus: the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (c. AD 93), who also names His brother James; the Roman Tacitus (c. AD 116), who records His execution by Pontius Pilate; and Pliny the Younger (c. AD 112).

Why so little, and why so much

People who look for Jesus in the Roman historians are sometimes disappointed: they expect whole chapters and find a few lines. But we must remember what interested ancient history: emperors, wars, senators, great cities. A Jewish teacher from Galilee, executed in an outlying province, was not news in Rome. Besides, most of what was written in the first century has been lost; even Tacitus’ Annals reached us with gaps, including much of the years 29 to 31, very close to the crucifixion. Even so, within less than a century of his death, at least four non-Christian authors, one Jewish and three Roman, mention Jesus or his followers, almost always with indifference or hostility. For a craftsman from a Galilean village, that is a lot. None of these sources replaces the Gospels and Paul’s letters, which remain the earliest and most detailed documents. But they offer something valuable: the view of outsiders.

Josephus and the Testimonium

Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem around AD 37 into a priestly family. He commanded Jewish forces in Galilee in the war of 66, surrendered to the Romans and ended up writing in Rome under the patronage of the Flavian emperors. In his Jewish Antiquities, completed around AD 93 or 94, there is a paragraph about Jesus known as the Testimonium Flavianum (book 18, sections 63 and 64). As it has come down to us, it says Jesus was the Christ and appeared alive on the third day, hard to imagine from the pen of a Jew who was not a Christian. Hence three positions. Few consider it entirely authentic; few consider it entirely forged. Most scholars think Josephus wrote a neutral core and that Christian copyists added statements of faith. That core describes Jesus as a wise man, a doer of surprising deeds and a teacher, condemned to the cross by Pilate after an accusation by Jewish leaders, whose followers did not disappear.

James, the brother of Jesus

A second passage in Josephus carries even more weight, because hardly anyone doubts it. In book 20 of the Antiquities he relates that in AD 62, after the death of the governor Festus and before his successor Albinus arrived, the high priest Ananus, son of the Annas of the Gospels, used the power vacuum to convene the Sanhedrin. He brought to trial James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, and some others, and had them stoned. Respected citizens protested, and Ananus lost his office after three months. The phrase is brief, unenthusiastic, and fits Josephus’ narrative, which is interested in the high priest’s abuse, not in James. A Christian copyist would probably have written something more flattering. This mention confirms, through an independent source, what Paul and Mark say: Jesus had a brother named James, a well-known figure in Jerusalem.

Tacitus and the execution under Pilate

Around AD 116, the Roman senator and historian Tacitus wrote in his Annals about the great fire of Rome in AD 64. To quash rumors that he himself had ordered the city set on fire, Nero blamed a group hated by the populace, the Christians. Tacitus explains where the name came from: Christus, executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. The superstition, he says with contempt, was checked for a moment but broke out again, not only in Judea, where it began, but in Rome as well. He then describes the cruel executions Nero ordered. Tacitus has no sympathy at all for Christians, which makes his testimony valuable: it confirms the place, the period, the governor and the manner of death. There is a small anachronism: Pilate was a prefect, as the inscription found at Caesarea shows; procurator was the title used in Tacitus’ own day.

Suetonius and Pliny: a spreading faith

Suetonius, an imperial secretary, wrote his lives of the Caesars around AD 121. In the Life of Claudius he says the emperor expelled from Rome the Jews who were constantly rioting at the instigation of one Chrestus. Many scholars see here a confusion with Christ and a reflection of conflicts in Rome’s synagogues over Christian preaching; Acts mentions the same expulsion, usually dated around AD 49. In the Life of Nero, Suetonius records punishments inflicted on Christians. More detailed is a letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia and Pontus, written to the emperor Trajan around 112. Pliny reports that he interrogated Christians, that they met on a fixed day before dawn, sang hymns to Christ as to a god and bound themselves not to steal, not to commit adultery and not to break their word. He even tortured two slave women called ministrae, that is, servants of the church.

Other voices, with caution

There are also less certain references. A Syriac letter by Mara bar Serapion, written sometime after AD 73, speaks of a wise king of the Jews executed by his own people, without naming him; many think of Jesus, but there is no certainty. Lucian of Samosata, around 165, mocks Christians who worship a crucified sophist. In the Babylonian Talmud, compiled between the fifth and seventh centuries, a passage in tractate Sanhedrin (43a) speaks of a Yeshu hanged on the eve of Passover, accused of sorcery and of leading Israel astray. Here caution must be doubled: the text is very late and polemical, and its relation to Jesus of Nazareth is debated; at most it shows that a later Jewish tradition knew of an execution tied to Passover. These passages were censored in medieval editions and unjustly used in polemics. They are not independent proof, but they show that not even Jesus’ ancient critics claimed he never existed.

What they say and what they don’t

Taken together, these sources confirm the core of the historical picture: Jesus existed, was a Jewish teacher, was executed in Judea under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, had a brother named James, and his movement did not die with him: it reached Rome within a few decades, and by the early second century his followers worshiped him as a god. That is why virtually no specialist historian, Christian or not, doubts Jesus’ existence today. What these sources do not do is confirm the resurrection or the miracles as facts, nor should we expect them to: they are outsiders who record what Christians believed, not what they themselves believed. Christian faith does not depend on Tacitus or Josephus. But they show that the Gospels speak of public events, as Paul said before King Agrippa: none of this was done in a corner.

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Topics: Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny

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