His Story is History and History is His Story

Posted on November 5, 2011 
Filed under History

“Tacitus the great historian of First Century Rome leaves us in no doubt about the main historical outlines of the New Testament. Tacitus, a leading politician and a provincial governor, reports that the ‘Christians’ took their name from a person called ‘Christ’ who was executed by Pontius Pilate in Judea in the era of Tiberius Caesar.

Tacitus expected the movement to die with its founder but instead it spread to Rome where, by the time of the great fire in AD 64, it had become ‘immense’.

Tacitus’s history tell us (a) Jesus was known as ‘Christ’, (b) that he was therefore a genuine figure of history, (c) when and where he was executed, and (d) that in spite of his death as a disgraced felon within thirty years his movement spread from Palestine on the edge of the empire to its heart, Rome…”

– Read it all – at Dr Paul Barnett’s blog.