Christ's birthday

[rjh4 is back]

You would be correct.

However, part of being a skeptic means that one does not automatically trust anything that is written. Therefore, as the author was kind enough to provide citations, I made it a point to check a random sample and found him to be correct.

This site was invaluable for that.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com

At least concerning those early xtian writers who seem to know nothing about any Neronian persecution of xtians. Nero is one of those people in history who we know about only through the writings of his enemies, (Herod the Great and Caligula come to mind as two others.)

Actual Roman records of "persecution" of xtians begins in the mid-3d century

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/persecu...ersecution

and it appears that with xtians cheering the repeated military defeats which the Empire suffered in the East at that time at the hands of the Parthians that they went out of their way to make themselves unpopular.

I only recently found a translation of Severus' Chronica into English (I don't speak Latin) and if you'd like to read it, I'm sure I saved the link somewhere.

Great. Now it seems to me that if the writings of the authors provided in the site are useful as support for the idea that Tacitus was not correct in what he said, their writings can also be used to support other things also. Remember, this whole thing came up when I cited something that indicated that Jesus was not fictional. I then cited the Tacitus quote as support. You now say the writings provided by these various authors rebuts the Tacitus quote. Maybe so. But many of those same authors wrote about Jesus and indicated that he was an historic person. For example 1 Clement, Turtullian, Origen, the writers of the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers, Eusebius, and Augustine. It seems then to me that the writings of these provide sufficient support for the historicity of Jesus. Do you agree that this is enough evidence at least the historicity of Jesus? If not, maybe it is because your own presuppositions against Christianity won't let you and not because there is no evidence.