(July 6, 2015 at 11:20 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: He notes in the passage itself that he thinks christians are basically full of shit, so it's possible that he didn't take their beliefs seriously but still outlined them vaguely because he was writing, you know, a history book. Kind of pointless to name a group if you don't say anything else to describe them. Like I said before, though, early christians could have convinced Tacitus' generation of Jesus' historicity even if he wasn't a real guy, and that could be the reason Tacitus didn't blink at mentioning his crucifixion amongst the events of history. Personally, though, I'm leaning toward the idea that he was describing what the christians believed for the sake of briefly describing the cult itself, not for the purpose of claiming that Jesus was really crucified by Pontius Pilate.
Question for you redbeard, what do you think of the possibility that the Teacher of Righteousness may have been one of the people upon which the Jesus character was based?
