First is the senatorial historian Tacitus (58 – 120 AD). Jesus appears in his account of the reign of Emperor Nero, under whom Tacitus was born. Tacitus describes how in the aftermath of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD Nero scapegoated the Christians to draw attention away from himself (many people widely suspected he’d started the fire himself). The Christians, Tacitus informs us, were named after their founder Christ, who was put to death during the reign of Tiberius (14 – 37 AD) by the procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate.
We don’t have any copy of Tacitus’s Annals before the 11th century, so this could have been added later. But it’s unlikely. Firstly the Latin fits Tacitus’s tone perfectly. Secondly, he follows his brief biography of Jesus with a damning indictment of Christianity—not something a later Christian writer would likely have added. Such dislike can be explained in how Christianity’s monotheism was seen as potentially dangerous to the polytheistic (and by this stage emperor-worshipping) Roman Empire. And it was a sentiment shared by Tacitus’s close friend—and our final important Roman writer—Pliny the Younger (61 – 113 AD).
Jesus appears in one of Pliny’s many letters to his powerful pen pal, Emperor Trajan. The letter asks what he should do when it comes to prosecuting and punishing Christians in his province of Bithynia (modern Turkey). He describes how it’s impossible to get Christians to renounce Christ, and talks about how they congregate before dawn on a certain day to chant and pray to Christ as if he were a god. The emperor’s reply was that those suspected should be made to offer sacrifice to statues of the Roman gods and renounce their religion. If they could do that, acquit them. If not, by all means, butcher them.
Pliny had no reason to make any of this up, particularly when writing to the most powerful man in the Roman Empire (and, perhaps, the world). Along with Tacitus, Josephus, and, however problematically, the Gospels, this should be considered as solid evidence for a historical Jesus’s existence. Nevertheless, the last 250-or-so years have had no shortage of people willing to challenge Jesus’s historicity, proponents of what’s called the “Christ myth theory“.
The Christ myth theory has been pretty much completely disregarded by today’s scholars. But it had its heydays, particularly during periods of state-driven secularisation. Among the first to take up the argument were the late 18th century Frenchmen Charles François Dupuis and Constantin-François Volney. Volney in particular, however, was very much influenced by the French Revolution, which between 1793 and 1794 was pushing an agenda of dechristianization, largely to take back vast swathes of land from the Catholic Church.
The theory underwent another renaissance under the Soviet Union. But again this wasn’t because the Russians had any more (or less) evidence for the existence of Jesus than anybody else. It’s largely down to the fact that the research was ideologically driven, intended to lend credence to Marxist-Leninist atheism by undermining Christianity at its foundations—or rather its founder.
That a historical Jesus existed is beyond most reasonable doubt. But in trying to establish his existence maybe we’re asking the wrong question, and the question we should instead be asking instead is in what capacity he was believed to have existed. Was it as a preacher, a prophet, a moral instructor? Was it as the Son of God? Was it even as someone who even intended to found a religion? Questions like these bring us closer to the historical legacy of Jesus. And it’s this legacy—even in spite of the resurrection—that has far outlived his lifespan.
Sources For Further Reading:
The Conversion – The Case for Christ: What’s The Evidence for The Resurrection?
The Guardian – What Is the Historical Evidence That Jesus Christ Lived and Died?
National Geographic Channel – These 12 Men Shaped Christianity—But Were They Real?
PBS – Jesus Many Faces – The Tensions Between Faith and History
Big Think – 3 Pieces of Historical Evidence for The Existence of Jesus Christ
Live Science – Was Jesus a Real Person?
Encyclopedia Britannica – St. Paul’s Contributions to the New Testament