he Son of God (they believe that He was not) and He humiliated them proving them wrong in their ways on several occasions. So then, who is left? The answer to that question is those who did write about Him. One such person is the Roman Historian Cornelius Tacitus. Tacitus is thought to have been born around 55 A.D. in or near Rome. Today he is hailed as “the greatest historian” (Extra). This historian wrote about Jesus in 115 A.D. therefore removing the New Testament as the only source of Jesus’ existence. Tacitus had this to say:Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus. (Extra 1)Christus, as Tacitus writes, is another name for Christ. This passage even tells about the “extreme penalty” Christ suffered at the hands of Pontius Pilate. “It is believed by some scholars that Tacitus gained his information about Christ from official records, perhaps actual reports written by Pilate” (Martin 2). Another historian, similar to Cornelius Tacitus, is Josephus Flavius. Josephus Flavius was a Jewish historian that was born about the time of Jesus’ death, 37 A.D. Flavius was born of both priestly and royal ancestry (Flavius). He also became a member of the Pharisees, one of three Jewish sects including the Essenes; the Pharisees by far the most influential. The Pharisees are mentioned in the New Testament as one of the groups that persecuted Jesus for claiming to be the Son of God (Pharisees). Flavius became the court historian for Emperor Vespasian and wrote this in Book 18, Chapter 3 of his annals:Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was...
