The principal non-christian witnesses to Jesus that are frequently cited by people advocating a real live Jesus are the following:

1. Josephus, whose Antiquities of the Jews now mentions Jesus twice.
2. Tacitus, whose Annals now mentions Christ having been crucified under the procurator Pontius Pilate.
3. Suetonius, who talks of a certain Chrestus who stirred up Jews in Rome and who mentions christians in Rome.

There are several other usually later sources which need not interest us, as not being of enough significance to need to consider here. The best is Pliny the Younger whose letters indicate he had dealings with christians in Bythinia in the second century, too late to bother about. (If you want to consider these others, look at Jerome's sticky post here.)

As this material is usually presented without context or critique--as though it were veritable history--, I'll provide some analysis below. I will present the substantive view that none of these passages is veracious, though this is not necessary given the lateness of the data, up to 90 years after the reputed events.

Josephus (AJ 18.63-63, 20.200)
Josephus is known for two passages, one we refer to in AJ 18, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, which was considered at the beginning of the 20th century as a forgery, though these days religious scholars have reclaimed parts of the text, believing it to be genuine. How these scholars can tell that what is left (after removing the admittedly fake material) is genuine seems at best arbitrary and at worst manipulation of the evidence. The other passage briefly talks of the execution of "the brother of Jesus called christ James by name", a grammatically awkward phrase that makes sense best if it were the work of christian scribes. (See the second half of my post here for more background.)

Tacitus (Annals 15.44)
There are several problems with the Tacitus passage:

1. It erroneously calls Pontius Pilate a "procurator" when Tacitus is a major source for the fact that procurators weren't given control of provinces before the time of Claudius.
2. It has Nero's gardens being given over to the burning of christians at night, when the gardens were being used by the people made homeless by the fire while new dwellings were being built.
3. It is a passage about something Nero attempted in order to dispel the rumours that he'd started the fire, after Tacitus stated that none of his efforts could dispel the rumours.
4. The passage is functionally a martyrdom story outlining how awfully the christians were treated--so badly that passers by could feel pity (this is in the city where people went to the amphitheatre to watch people being torn apart by wild animals for entertainment.
5. The style of the passage wildly does not reflect Tacitus's renowned style of reserve and understatement.
6. Tacitus, known as one of the greatest orators of his era, changes topic from the involvement of Nero regarding the fire to the horrors of the persecution of christians (maybe for starting the fire, maybe not) and loses focus in his attack on Nero.

Suetonius (Claudius 25.4, Nero 16.2)
The passage which briefly talks of a certain Chrestus ("As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome") happened in Rome, so is not relevant to our issue of trustworthiness, nor is it relevant for Jesus, being about Chrestus, a common name in Rome and Jews, not christians (and wait for the fudge that christians couldn't be distinguished from Jews, when it was not difficult to recognize them in Nero 16.2). The other passage, Nero 16.2, "Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition" is found in a list of civil actions to maintain public order along with the control of foodstuffs to be sold, the banning of pantomimes and restraint on gladiators, all opportunities for civil disorder. The phrase about punishment in Latin is very similar to that in the Tacitus passage about the execution of Jesus. Perhaps, I'm the only one who sees the elephant in the room here with the difference between maintaining order and executing christians.

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The issue of the trustworthiness of these sources has nothing directly to do with the myther/historicist conflict found in the interminable thread. (I myself am agnostic of the existence of the Jesus behind the gospels. He may or may not have existed.) We are not discussing mythers and historicists, but the reliability of sources. To discuss them here is off topic. So what's your view of their trustworthiness? Can we trust these sources on christianity, when they were maintained by christian scribes?

I have not checked Wikipedia or other sources on Suetonius, but in the case of the documents attributed to Josephus and Tacitus, not all people here may realise that according to Wikipedia (and afaik all other sources), neither of those are actually known as their original documents dating from around 100AD.

Instead according to Wikipedia (for example) both Josephus and Tacitus are each known only as copies dated to the 11th century, ie 1000 years after Jesus was said to have died.

The 11th century copy of Josephus is described in Wikipedia as produced by Christian Monks.

Here are the links to the Wikipedia pages, and the relevant brief quotes -

Re. Tacitus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

The surviving copies of Tacitus' works derive from two principal manuscripts, known as the Medicean manuscripts, which are held in the Laurentian Library, and written in Latin. It is the second Medicean manuscript, 11th century and from Monte Cassino,[6] which is the oldest.


Re. Josephus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

As is common with ancient texts, The Antiquities of the Jews survives only in medieval copies. The manuscripts, the oldest of which dates from the 11th century, are all Greek minuscules, and all have been copied by Christian monks

Without evidence that the monks didn't copy these things directly (as possible, barring mistakes) from the original texts over time or did they insert the parts about Jesus I guess one can only be undecided on the issue. Surely a manuscript of either found dating from an earlier time which had the relevant parts omitted would be the only way to be sure?
It's too easy to super-impose modern Christians, like WLC who have no problem claiming that the writings of others support his view and will lie and misrepresent without batting an eyelid, on to earlier Christians and claim they were lying for Jesus for a long time. But it wouldn't surprise me

IanS wrote:I have not checked Wikipedia or other sources on Suetonius,

The earliest manuscript called "Memmianus" is from the 9th century, "probably deriving from the monastery of Fulda in Germany", according to Lietta De Salvo, who wrote the intro to my edition. It's kept today in the National Library of Paris. All other preserved manuscripts are derived from it.

This makes Suetonius the earliest of these maunscripts.

spin wrote:

IanS wrote:I have not checked Wikipedia or other sources on Suetonius,

The earliest manuscript called "Memmianus" is from the 9th century, "probably deriving from the monastery of Fulda in Germany", according to Lietta De Salvo, who wrote the intro to my edition. It's kept today in the National Library of Paris. All other preserved manuscripts are derived from it.

This makes Suetonius the earliest of these maunscripts.

Thank you for that.

OK, so even Suetonius seems to be almost 1000 years after the event too.

Wasn't there records of letters form some Roman general to... someone else, I forget, saying that "Christians should be treated more harshly when caught due to their rebellion"? I don't know, I just read that some where. Also, that the early Christians were predisposed to vandalism.

You know, Nero was actually kind of a nice guy, compared to his pop-cultural depiction...

falconjudge wrote:Wasn't there records of letters form some Roman general to... someone else, I forget, saying that "Christians should be treated more harshly when caught due to their rebellion"? I don't know, I just read that some where. Also, that the early Christians were predisposed to vandalism.

You know, Nero was actually kind of a nice guy, compared to his pop-cultural depiction...

I'm not sure I know which general you were talking about. Perhaps it involves Pliny the Younger who was proconsul of Bythinia and didn't know how he should act toward the confessed christians in his province. He was in his mind lenient toward them, but wrote to Trajan to ask for advice. (See the Wiki article here.)

Why should we "trust" any source? Trust is the language of faith. Sources in history are analyzed and conclusions offered.

Byron wrote:Why should we "trust" any source? Trust is the language of faith. Sources in history are analyzed and conclusions offered.

You frequently trust biblical sources, so you have no problem trusting sources. Your analysis quite often involves comparing with later biblical sources, trusting they are correct and harmonizing. Your statements just hollow phrases.

No, but why are biblical sources automatically chucked out the door when dealing with historical fact? No one has to trust anything. You reach conclusions based on facts gathered. I know that Paul of Tarsus wrote many letters to different cities, we have several of them. I know that there was a Jesus of Nazareth because of the gospels. Did they exaggerate? sure. Did they completely come up with Jesus out of thin fucking air? Most likely not.

Byron point rings true.

willhud9 wrote:No, but why are biblical sources automatically chucked out the door when dealing with historical fact?

You've got things the wrong way around. No literary text is evidence until the case can be made for it. What, say, gives a literary text like Tacitus, that comes to us from the earliest manuscript 12th c. and preserved by christians, any standing? No text is automatically chucked in.

willhud9 wrote:No one has to trust anything. You reach conclusions based on facts gathered.

There was a reason why I wrote the o.p.

willhud9 wrote:I know that Paul of Tarsus wrote many letters to different cities, we have several of them.

Paul never refers to himself as "of Tarsus", but you assume it to be right, because the later text Acts says so.

willhud9 wrote:I know that there was a Jesus of Nazareth because of the gospels.

You know no such thing. You don't know when the gospels were written, or where, or by whom. There is no way to connect the contents of the gospels with the era they talk about other than to trust them without having any cause to do so. This is not the stuff of evidence, but knowing requires evidence, so you'll pardon my rejection of what you claim to know, having a good knowledge of the source materials.

And as to Jesus of Nazareth, the "of Nazareth" is a later tradition. But you use it because the expression has come into our culture as a fait accompli. It is linguistically unlikely that Nazareth comes from the town name נצרת (Notsret), but that won't stop people from believing what they've heard all their lives. An ingrained falsehood is as good as a fact.

willhud9 wrote:Did they exaggerate? sure. Did they completely come up with Jesus out of thin fucking air? Most likely not.

How would we know? Paul didn't need a flesh and blood Jesus to develop his theology of the need for salvation from sin requiring a worthy scapegoat sacrifice, ie necessarily a never-sinning human willing to die for others. It is sufficient that such a seed be planted for a life of Jesus to grow. We see a small example of a life growing from a literary seed when Tertullian began arguing against Ebion the eponymous founder of the Ebionite movement, though Ebion never existed, though by the time of Jerome, he had a home town, had conflicts with a John and traveled the Mediterranean. It matters not that Jesus's story may have developed from believers, while Ebion's developed from non-believers. The only major difference is the willingness of believers to want more information. Jesus could easily have come out of thin air. But then again that's just a theory.

willhud9 wrote:Byron point rings true.

What's brown and sounds like a bell? D-U-N-G!

spin wrote:You frequently trust biblical sources, so you have no problem trusting sources. Your analysis quite often involves comparing with later biblical sources, trusting they are correct and harmonizing. Your statements just hollow phrases.

Where's the "trust"? I don't "trust" that sources harmonize: the texts either do, or they don't. Neither do I "trust" that they're correct (if by that you mean transmission from the autographs). If there's no textual evidence of tampering, and no obvious reason to suspect it, then it's a reasonable inference.

By contrast, your arguments seem to trust complex and unlikely readings.

By contrast, your arguments seem to trust complex and unlikely readings

Hang on! What precisely is complex and unlikely?

A collection of writings that was put together with a clear agenda over centuries, with unknown provenance - Gospel of Mark may have been written in Alexandria and may be a cover version of Homer.

It might help if we agree the complexity and unlikeliness is already there - born of a virgin, rising from the dead?

For example, what about this bit of complexity? Is the son equal to the father?

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
one in Being with the Father.

Text and reading are separate things. You can make a plain reading of a complex text. Provenance and authorship don't change that (though knowledge of both can of course aid the reading).

What the Nicene/Apostles creeds have to do with it, I'm not sure!

Umm, a translated text, from an ancient alien world, with vastly different assumptions and cultural norms and understandings.

Plain reading? Really?

And the Nicene creed is precisely to the point - actually the huge theological debate about father's and sons - lovely bath - our understanding now is directly influenced by the views and arguments of people in between.

This is very like studying fossils - we must be very careful about all assumptions - nothing is plain and obvious.

Byron wrote:

spin wrote:You frequently trust biblical sources, so you have no problem trusting sources. Your analysis quite often involves comparing with later biblical sources, trusting they are correct and harmonizing. Your statements just hollow phrases.

Where's the "trust"? I don't "trust" that sources harmonize: the texts either do, or they don't. Neither do I "trust" that they're correct (if by that you mean transmission from the autographs). If there's no textual evidence of tampering, and no obvious reason to suspect it, then it's a reasonable inference.

By contrast, your arguments seem to trust complex and unlikely readings.

You trust the later sources over the former and make the former fit the later.

I referenced Homer. The Library of Alexandria and the Greek and Roman world spent centuries studying Homer and rewriting him in various forms for the "modern" (ie the time of the person studying Homer) time. It was the basis of the education system. Gospel of Mark looks like another attempt at this. "Plain reading" disappears completely if this background is introduced.

On autographs, there seem to be another set of assumptions there. Even if we did have the originals, a whole series of questions arise. Which version do we have? An early rough draft, a highly finessed and edited one? what was the purpose of the writing? What assumptions did the author, authors or editors have? who had instructed them to write it? Why?

Yet as magnificent and accessible as the Odyssey is, the Iliad is the greater poem, the more difficult and important challenge to teachers of Greek, who, if they be teachers or Greek at all, must teach the Iliad and teach it frequently. Most subsequent Greek ideas  learning comes through pain, reason is checked by fate, men are social creatures, the truth only emerges through dissent and open criticism, human life is tragically short and therefore comes with obligations, characters is a matter of matching words with deeds, the most dangerous animal is the natural beast within us, religion is separate from and subordinate to political authority, private property should be immune from government coercion, even aristocratic leaders ignore the will of the assembly at their peril

From Amazon review of Who killed Homer?

Clive Durdle wrote:Umm, a translated text, from an ancient alien world, with vastly different assumptions and cultural norms and understandings.

Plain reading? Really?

And the Nicene creed is precisely to the point - actually the huge theological debate about father's and sons - lovely bath - our understanding now is directly influenced by the views and arguments of people in between.

This is very like studying fossils - we must be very careful about all assumptions - nothing is plain and obvious.

A plain reading can factor in all that. Watchwords are not shoe-horning texts into later doctrines, and proceeding only as justified by the texts/contemporary context. The Christian creeds are so obviously anachronistic that screening them out isn't a serious problem in biblical studies (bar the bankrupt evangelical/fundamentalist type).