Flavius Josephus and His Testimony Concerning the Historical Jesus

The earliest references to Christianity and Christians in non-partisan non-Christian sources were made by the Roman historians Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56 C.E.-ca 117 C.E.) and Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (ca 69 C.E.-ca 140 C.E.) who criticized Christianity as an oriental superstition and a degraded cult that disrupted the social fabric and security of the state. Tacitus wrote in The Annals of the Imperial Rome published ca 115 C.E.: "To suppress this rumor, Nero fabricated scapegoats – and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius‟ reign by the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate. But in spite of the temporary setback the deadly superstition had broken out afresh, not only in Judea (where the mischief had started) but even in Rome. All degraded and shameful practices collect and flourish in the capital. First Nero had the self-acknowledged Christians arrested. Then on their information, large numbers of others were condemned – not so much for incendiarism as for their anti-social tendencies." 1 Suetonius reported ca 120 C.E. in The Lives of Twelve Caesars that the Christians were considered Jews who produced political unrest in the imperium and for that reason were expelled from Rome by Claudius. 2 In another place he described them as spreading new and evil superstition: "... afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis nouae ac maleficae..." 3 These are relatively late documents and the references to Christ and Pontius Pilate reflect therefore information provided by Christians themselves via the Gospel stories which were already written. The documents concerning Jesus outside the canonical Gospels are not abundant and recently were reviewed by R. Joseph Hoffmann in a succinct scholarly outline. 4 The most interesting are the Jewish sources found in two collections: 1. The Talmud, comprising oral teachings called Mishnah and the discussions on the Mishnah, called Gemara. They were formulated during the fifth century C.E.; 2. The Midrash, i.e., a scriptural exegesis composed itself of edifying sermons, Haggadah, and of legally binding theological decisions, Halakha. It originated in the fourth century B.C.E., but the earliest collections date from the second century C.E. though it contains some older material. The Talmud rarely refers to events of the second Temple (between 168 B.C.E and 70 C.E.). Jesus is represented there with an anti-Christian twist, thus these documents are not reliable. Most of that material is of a legendary nature, therefore useless for historical evaluation. Moreover, the Talmud and Midrash underwent papal censorship over the centuries. The material that survived in various manuscripts was restored by Gustav Dalman in 1900. 5