some history....

THE OLDEST SECULAR ACCOUNTS & HISTORICAL EVIDENCE ON THE EXISTANCE OF JESUS OF NAZARETH

1. Cornelius Tacitus (AD55-120) Roman historian: Most acclaimed works are the Annals and the Histories. The Annals cover the period from Augustus Caesar's death in AD14 to the death of the Emperor Nero in AD68, while the Histories begin after Nero's death and proceed to the reign of Domitian in AD96. In the Annals, Tacitus alludes to the death of Christ and to the existence of Christians at Rome. See Annals XV,44: But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also." (The misspelling of Christ as "Christus" was a common error made by pagan writers). It is interesting that Pilate is not mentioned in any other pagan document which has survived. It is an irony of history that the only surviving reference to him in a pagan document mentions him because of the sentence of death he passed on Jesus the Messiah.

2. Suetonius: Roman historian and court official during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Suetonius wrote in his Life of Claudius: "As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." (Life of Claudius 25.4). Chrestus is a misspelling of Christus; the spelling probably assumes that the spelling of Jesus' title "Christos" was the same as ate ChiRho symbol which was also a literary device which indicated a quote worthy of note = the 'chrestus" symbol. Claudius' expulsion of the Christians form Rome is mentioned in Acts 18:2. This event took place in 49AD. In his work Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius also wrote: "Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition." Assuming Jesus was crucified in the early thirties, Suetonius places Christians in the Roman capital less than 20 years later and he reports that they were suffering for their faith and dying for their conviction that Jesus had really lived, died and that He had risen from the dead!

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