I'd rather see footage of Cleo Rocos to be honest, Doc!
JB
I'm the first person to mention Annals by Tacitus, not you. The Romans kept written records. Yes he could have known and apparently did, and he is a credible source. Christian stories are irrelevant, they sell him as a messiah. Tacitus showed nothing but contempt for Christians. It's interesting that little else about his writings is contested except this one little tidbit about Christus.
My point is that the Annals were written in the 2nd century (about 116CE - so some 80 odd years after Jesus' death). That's not a contemporary reference.
Tacitus had access to contemporary documents. He doesn't have to be contemporary, that's your agenda talking.
I honestly don't have an agenda. As I said, I believe that Jesus existed. But from a scholarly perspective (I work in the library at a Christian theological college) it's not enough to show that Tacitus had access to contemporary documents. To be scholarly rigourous you'd need to demonstrate that the information about Jesus came from those contemporary documents. And you can't. It's certainly possible that he got his information about Jesus from contemporary documents. But it's equally possible (and far more likely) that he's using information from later sources (such as Christian writings) to fill in the gaps. The likelihood of Jesus being mentioned by name in contemporary documents is small, given that he was fairly insignificant in his own lifetime (by contemporary standards). He was an intinerant Jewish rabbi with a small following, who was killed early in his ministry. It was only as his followers began spreading the word that people's understanding of Jesus' importance grew. There are certainly things that can be extrapolated from Tacitus' writings about Jesus. It provides a 2nd century source confirming what Christians at the time believed, and it confirms that Christians were well established in Rome at the time of Nero and distinguishable enough to be successfully blamed for the Great Fire. The fact that a noticable percentage of the population believed in Jesus around 30 years after his death can be taken as supporting the likelihood of his existance. To create a religion around a totally fictional character would likely take a longer gap between his supposed existance and the establishment of the religion.
Not necessarily, if I may play Devil's advocate. As a former Christian, now atheist, I can buy into the idea that there was a figure head who's legend grew into what became Christianity. As we know just from reading the gospels, Jesus wasn't out to start a new religion, but to break away from centuries old dogma (which people took to mean "start a whole new religion with all new dogma). I also know that in the time and place, there were more individuals being posited as messiahs than just Christ. He was just the one who had more people buy into the legend of. So I can, as it were, accept that there was a rabbi with a ragtag group of followers who looked to reinvigorate the peoples' spirituality, but I don't have to accept that he was a demigod. Same as I can accept that there may have been historical figure upon whom Perseus was based, but I don't have to accept that he was sired by Zeus.
It's certainly possible to believe in a historical Jesus that's different to the religious Jesus. In fact throughout most of the 20th century scholars tried a variety of approaches to try to identify some historical facts about Jesus from the writings about him. These days most scholars acknowledge that, while there almost certainly is a historical Jesus, it's not possible to confirm anything specific about him because the writings are based on a theological understanding rather than attempting to provide a history.
So you believe in a man and simultaneously believe there is zero evidence to support this existence. You keep changing your story to try and be right, but Tacitus' writings on Christus are accepted as credible by historians. People who are experts in the field, on both sides (believers and non), accept Tacitus writings. Your argument is straight from amatuer atheist blogs that attempt to discredit Tacitus and downplay Christ in order to discredit Christianity. And you have nothing, nothing but conjecture. Lots of people work at libraries, it means nothing. I once worked at a hospital, it doesn't make me a doctor. The man who started a religious revolution and inspired one of the world's leading religions would have been noted in his time. You don't inspire that sort of following by being insignificant. Also, Christ being a real person, his credited teachings, and Christianity are three different things that have no bearing on one another.
The church was never especially tolerant, as I recall. The church I grew up in was pretty bad. Nowadays people in general are pretty irreverent about everything, including religion. I for one welcome this new attitude.
