Evidence: The Gathering

[Randy Carson]

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.

What is the basis for this claim, abaris? Do you have any evidence or scholarship supporting your statement?

Did Tacitus reveal his source in any of his writings? As Tim O'Neill pointed out in the article to which I have linked many times, Tacitus despised Christianity, and there is little reason to believe that he would have talked to them personally...especially in light of the fact that he would not have trusted them to be reliable in their testimony.

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.

In the absence of any support for your bald assertion that Tacitus interviewed Christians, we cannot just assume that he did so.

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.

Again, please provide some scholarship to support these assertions. Links to articles written by real PhD's and not people like Acharya S who have no academic standing.

Thanks.