Ancient Historians and Jesus

[quoting]

Alot of non-believers I come across dont believe because their arent enough conclusive documents outside the Bible about Jesus. Now if you give them the documents of Lucian of Samosta, Celsus, Thallus, Emporer Hadrian, Suetonius, Caesar Hadrian, Caesar Hadrian, Tacitus, and Josephus they say either their Christians forgeries or they dont mention Christ just mention Christians. They say that if Jesus was going around all the different cities doing all the miracles and exorcisms he done you think somebody would have wrote something down somewhere. Sometimes I think the same way. What do yall think?

 

[BrendanMark]

Most of the Emperors of Rome did not have as much written material about them in circulation as Jesus did within a few decades of his death. It was only later that the Canon of Scripture was formed from this material, so it is not invalid as historical for this reason, IMHO.

 

[pimorton]

It has been noted by scholars (sorry I can not remember the one I read it in off the top of my head) that ancient Israel left almost nothing in the way of visual arts because of the prohibition in the Law against making images of any created thing. I would imagine the lack of biographical writing about an itinerate rabbi, however miraculous his ministry, would be for a similar reason: That God alone is worthy of praise. Even the biographical information we have in the Old Testament is used to demonstrate God's dealings with mankind.

 

[HumbleUnderdog]

I heard Paul Maier (ancienty history professor) on a christian talk show mention that Tacitus gave a report to Emp Nero saying something like "Christians are known for a type of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth who was killed not too long ago by one of our governors, Pontius Pilate."

As far as stuff outside the bible goes, that argument isn't that strong, because each book is separate and exterior to every other book. So the Gospel of Matthew is exterior to the Gospel of Luke.

 

[NewToLife]

Excluding Christian sources for Christ is akin to excluding Roman sources for Julius Caeser, it's a nonsense position.

 

[Robinsegg]

While writing was known and did occur, most people of the day related current events orally (eg there was no newspaper). Things spread by word of mouth very quickly in such societies and most people in Judea would have been familiar with the existence and basic actions of Jesus of Nazareth.

That said, there are people who didn't believe lots of things in the OT, until they found mention of it in Assyrian, Babylonian, or other documents. Does that mean that the events didn't occur until they were "proved" by archaeology? Of course not. It just means that there was only one reference to the event until another was uncovered.

We have documents on Christ closer to His lifetime than we do for many other historical persons. However, of those, Jesus is the only one doubted. I wonder why that is?

Rachel