RE: Jesus did not rise from the dead -- My debate opening statement.
December 24, 2016 at 12:55 pm
Quote:He simply noted that Jesus had existed and had been executed by a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Implicit in his silence, Tacitus knew who Jesus was, a religious loon who had been put to death by the Roman authorities, one of many, in fact.
No, he did not. Tacitus, even if the passage is not a much later interpolation, never heard of anyone named "jesus." The passage as it exists now refers to "Christus" ( and more than likely said "Chrestus" originally). Neither Suetonius, Pliny nor Tacitus ever heard of any fucking "jesus." In fact, the first Greco-Roman writer to refer to anyone named "jesus" was Celsus writing 6 decades after Tacitus died.