Evidence: The Gathering

[abaris]

I don't think the evidence of Jesus from Tacitus and Josephus (even if you include everything that isn't clearly interpolation) is so clear as you're making it out to be, or as Christian theologians like to make it out to be, but I do accept that there likely was an historical Yeshua ben Yosef, son of a carpenter who became a traveling rabbi, though I'm much less certain about the crucifixion narrative.

What Tacitus does say is, christians are followers of Jesus, who got crucified in the times of Pilate. That's what he says and he says that after hearing or talking to christians. And here we are at the fundamental Randy failure to understand that they didn't check and recheck back then. History and oral accounts were taken at face value. So, Tacitus says, christians are followers or Christus of Chrestus, because they told him so or because he heard it say. Not because he himself had any evidence of it.

We were over this about a million times. It just didn't sink in. Same goes for Josephus, by the way. The passages that aren't later forgeries.

Both authors are what we call secondary sources. They retell what others were telling. They weren't there to watch and observe, like Pliny the Younger with Mount Vesuvius. But as opposed to Tacitus and Josephus, we can verify Pliny's account with geology, vulcanology and archeological findings. He's a primary source.