Evidence: The Gathering

[TheRocketSurgeon]

See, that's the problem with the fairy tale.  There are no original sources from the time period that it supposedly happened.  All of the sources are dated from around 700 AD to even the 1600s or later.  Therefore, all of the sources that are supposed to support the fairy tale are pure BS.  The whole thing is a big lie.

In fairness, though our oldest copy of Tacitus dates from the 11th century, and was copied by a Christian monk, there doesn't seem to be any signs of obvious tampering, as with the Josephus accounts. The Latin from Tacitus is correct second century Roman usage, and he doesn't appear to suddenly break from his narrative in tone, so if there's anything not from the original in there, it was very cleverly inserted. I typically take the Tacitus at face value (not that it's worth much in terms of this discussion, other than proving that there were Roman Christians in Nero's time and they thought their Annointed One was killed by Pilate).

Josephus, on the other hand, was so heavily added to and edited by later Christian copyists/defrauders that it's hard to even tell how much to throw out. Some of it is obvious, though. Part of the way we know the interpolated sections of Josephus are frauds are 1) they use Latin in a way the late first-Century Romans did not, and 2) they speak of Jesus in a way that Josephus absolutely would not... the "if it be lawful to call him a man" is my personal favorite bit of fan fiction in all of literature.