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What do ancient non-Christian sources tell us about the historical Jesus?

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The Annals, by Roman historian Tacitus
The Annals, by Roman historian Tacitus

This article from Biblical Archaeology covers all the non-Christian historical sources that discuss Jesus.

About the author:

Lawrence Mykytiuk is associate professor of library science and the history librarian at Purdue University. He holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Studies and is the author of the book Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200–539 B.C.E. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004).

Here are the major sections:

  • Roman historian Tacitus
  • Jewish historian Josephus
  • Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata
  • Platonist philosopher Celsus
  • Roman governor Pliny the Younger
  • Roman historian Suetonius
  • Roman prisoner Mara bar Serapion

And this useful excerpt captures the broad facts about Jesus that we get from just the first two sources:

We can learn quite a bit about Jesus from Tacitus and Josephus, two famous historians who were not Christian. Almost all the following statements about Jesus, which are asserted in the New Testament, are corroborated or confirmed by the relevant passages in Tacitus and Josephus. These independent historical sources—one a non-Christian Roman and the other Jewish—confirm what we are told in the Gospels:31

1. He existed as a man. The historian Josephus grew up in a priestly family in first-century Palestine and wrote only decades after Jesus’ death. Jesus’ known associates, such as Jesus’ brother James, were his contemporaries. The historical and cultural context was second nature to Josephus. “If any Jewish writer were ever in a position to know about the non-existence of Jesus, it would have been Josephus. His implicit affirmation of the existence of Jesus has been, and still is, the most significant obstacle for those who argue that the extra-Biblical evidence is not probative on this point,” Robert Van Voorst observes.32 And Tacitus was careful enough not to report real executions of nonexistent people.

2. His personal name was Jesus, as Josephus informs us.

3. He was called Christos in Greek, which is a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, both of which mean “anointed” or “(the) anointed one,” as Josephus states and Tacitus implies, unaware, by reporting, as Romans thought, that his name was Christus.

4. He had a brother named James (Jacob), as Josephus reports.

5. He won over both Jews and “Greeks” (i.e., Gentiles of Hellenistic culture), according to Josephus, although it is anachronistic to say that they were “many” at the end of his life. Large growth
in the number of Jesus’ actual followers came only after his death.

6. Jewish leaders of the day expressed unfavorable opinions about him, at least according to some versions of the Testimonium Flavianum.

7. Pilate rendered the decision that he should be executed, as both Tacitus and Josephus state.

8. His execution was specifically by crucifixion, according to Josephus.

9. He was executed during Pontius Pilate’s governorship over Judea (26–36 C.E.), as Josephus implies and Tacitus states, adding that it was during Tiberius’s reign.

Some of Jesus’ followers did not abandon their personal loyalty to him even after his crucifixion but submitted to his teaching. They believed that Jesus later appeared to them alive in accordance with prophecies, most likely those found in the Hebrew Bible. A well-attested link between Jesus and Christians is that Christ, as a term used to identify Jesus, became the basis of the term used to identify his followers: Christians. The Christian movement began in Judea, according to Tacitus. Josephus observes that it continued during the first century. Tacitus deplores the fact that during the second century it had spread as far as Rome.

I remember reading the 1996 book by Gary Habermas entitled “The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ“. This book is a little before the time of most of you young Christian apologists, but back before the time of Lee Strobel and J. Warner Wallace, this is the stuff we all read. Anyway, in the book he makes a list of all that can be known about Jesus from external sources. And fortunately for you, you don’t have to buy the book because you can read chapter 9 of it right on his web site.

From Tacitus he gets this:

From this report we can learn several facts, both explicit and implicit, concerning Christ and the Christians who lived in Rome in the 60s A.D. Chronologically, we may ascertain the following information.

(1) Christians were named for their founder, Christus (from the Latin), (2) who was put to death by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilatus (also Latin), (3) during the reign of emperor Tiberius (14 37 A.D.). (4) His death ended the “superstition” for a short time, (5) but it broke out again, (6) especially in Judaea, where the teaching had its origin.

(7) His followers carried his doctrine to Rome. (8) When the great fire destroyed a large part of the city during the reign of Nero (54 68 A.D.), the emperor placed the blame on the Christians who lived in Rome. (9) Tacitus reports that this group was hated for their abominations. (10) These Christians were arrested after pleading guilty, (11) and many were convicted for “hatred for mankind.” (12) They were mocked and (13) then tortured, including being “nailed to crosses” or burnt to death. (14) Because of these actions, the people had compassion on the Christians. (15) Tacitus therefore concluded that such punishments were not for the public good but were simply “to glut one man’s cruelty.”

And from Josephus he gets this:

(1) Jesus was known as a wise and virtuous man, one recognized for his good conduct. (2) He had many disciples, both Jews and Gentiles. (3) Pilate condemned him to die, (4) with crucifixion explicitly being mentioned as the mode. (5) The disciples reported that Jesus had risen from the dead and (6) that he had appeared to them on the third day after his crucifixion. (7) Consequently, the disciples continued to proclaim his teachings. (8) Perhaps Jesus was the Messiah concerning whom the Old Testament prophets spoke and predicted wonders. We would add here two facts from Josephus’ earlier quotation as well. (9) Jesus was the brother of James and (10) was called the messiah by some.

So when you are reading the New Testament, these facts are the framework that you read within. It’s a good starting point when dealing with people who have never looked into who Jesus was and what he taught and what his followers believed about him, right from the start.

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Is there evidence of systemic racism in the United States?

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ANNOUNCEMENT: I explained my answer to this question on an episode the Free Thinking Ministries podcast, with host Tim Stratton. We discussed Black Lives Matter, Christianity and more. And I explained my plan to achieve the American Dream as a person of color and legal immigrant to America. Live stream link here.

Systemic racism is the idea that people can’t lift themselves out of poverty by making good decisions, because powerful groups in society that hold the poor down, regardless of their decisions. Do you think that America is a place where no matter what choices you make, you’ll never be able to be more properous? That’s what the leaders of Black Lives Matter think.

Here’s what Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, says in the New York Times (a former newspaper):

To summarize, none of the actions we are told black people must take if they want to “lift themselves” out of poverty and gain financial stability — not marrying, not getting educated, not saving more, not owning a home — can mitigate 400 years of racialized plundering.

Got that? It doesn’t matter what individual choices a non-white person takes in America, they’re going to be poor. The “systemic racism” of the powerful whites will always keep them down. Single motherhood doesn’t make people poor, and marriage doesn’t make people wealthier. Dropping out of high school doesn’t make you poor, and getting a Masters degree in computer science won’t make you wealthier.

But let’s take a look at the data from the 2018 Census, and see the evidence.

White people are doing a bad job of keeping non-whites downWhite people are doing a bad job of keeping non-whites down

Well, it looks like at least SOME people of color are able to do well in America despite all the “systemic racism” that keeps non-whites down. And do you know what those non-white groups at the top have in common? They’ve made good decisions, they’ve worked hard, they haven’t blamed other people when they fail, and they’ve saved their money instead of spending it on shiny junk.

Let’s look at some decisions that the non-whites who are prosperous have made, that those further down have not.

Asians marry before they have children, so the kids have two parentsAsians marry before they have children, so the kids have two parents

Education and marriage

This article is written by the far-left radical Nicholas Kristof, writing in the radically-leftist New York Times (a former newspaper).

Excerpt:

A new scholarly book, “The Asian American Achievement Paradox,” by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, notes that Asian-American immigrants in recent decades have started with one advantage: They are highly educated, more so even than the average American. These immigrants are disproportionately doctors, research scientists and other highly educated professionals.

It’s not surprising that the children of Asian-American doctors would flourish in the United States. But Lee and Zhou note that kids of working-class Asian-Americans often also thrive, showing remarkable upward mobility.

[…]There’s also evidence that Americans believe that A’s go to smart kids, while Asians are more likely to think that they go to hard workers… Asian-American kids are allowed no excuse for getting B’s — or even an A-. The joke is that an A- is an “Asian F.”

One reason Asians students do so well is because their parents are usually married:

Strong two-parent families are a factor, too. Divorce rates are much lower for many Asian-American communities than for Americans as a whole, and there’s evidence that two-parent households are less likely to sink into poverty and also have better outcomes for boys in particular.

American blacks have a 73% out-of-wedlock birth rate. A huge difference compared to Asians.

So, when Nikole Hannah-Jones tells you that education and marriage don’t matter, she’s just wrong.

Compound interest

Education and marriage are important, but so is saving your money. The wealthiest people in America are typically the ones who are experts at saving money early, and investing it. They know about the law of compound interest. If you invest money early and leave it alone, then it will grow into a fortune by the time you are read to stop working.

This graph explains compound interest:

Don't trust people with non-STEM degrees to tell you how to get richInvesting $24,000 from age 21 to 41 vs investing $24000 from age 47 to 67

What does Nikole Hannah-Jones say when she looks at that graph? She doesn’t think that saving money makes a difference to having more or less wealth. She thinks skin color determines whether saving money makes you wealthy or not. The graph clearly shows what we should be recommending to young people of color. They need to stop spending money and start saving it, and the earlier the better. It doesn’t matter what your skin color is, saving money early JUST WORKS.

Similarly, when she says that home ownership doesn’t make you more wealthy, this is just terrible advice. It’s always better to pay down your own mortgage (at least when interest rates are low like they are now) than to pay someone else rent. You have to live somewhere, and paying for your own home is better because it costs about the same as rent, and then you get to keep the home when you’re done paying for it.

Communism

Nikole Hannah-Jones does have a “solution” to disparities in wealth. Her solution is communism. She wants to transfer money from those who earn, to those who don’t. But we already have tried that in the 20st century and it resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people. That’s not my opinion, that’s all documented in a book published by Harvard University Press.

You don’t even have to read the book to know the truth – just look at countries that score low on the Index of Economic Freedom, and compare their GDP per capita to countries that score high on the Index of Economic Freedom. The more communist a nation goes, the less wealth there is for the citizens. That’s why people in Venezuela are eating zoo animals and selling their bodies in prostitution in order to get food to eat and water to drink. Nikole Hannah-Jones wants to reduce economic freedom, but we know by looking at other countries that this reduces per-capita GDP over time.

There’s a lot more than could be said here, but the point is that we need to be telling American blacks to make decisions that match the decisions of other successful non-white communities in America. We need to start teaching young people basic economics so they don’t fall prey to charlatans.

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Will the secular left Democrats allow you to earn money if you disagree with them?

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If you're trying to help the rioters escape justice, you're pro-rioting
If you’re trying to help the rioters escape justice, you’re pro-rioting

I looked at a lot of different articles on Monday, and felt more and more sad about the direction that America is going. We should not be going forward with the inauguration until we find out why there were so many voting issues in certain states controlled by far-left Democrats.

I read a lot of articles about the 7-month-long campaign of violence, arson, and murder conducted by far left rioters, and I was going to write about how the media and Democrats encouraged that. But the article that really touched on what I was feeling was by Joy Pullman, writing for The Federalist:

The purge wasn’t at all limited to Trump himself. It’s also pursuing his supporters. YouTube banned all videos discussing voter fraud. Reddit shut down its Donald Trump subreddit. On Jan. 8, Facebook shut down the Walkaway campaign that shared the stories of people who left the Democratic Party to vote for Trump, and banned every one of the group’s owners from using Facebook. The publisher of a forthcoming book by Sen. Josh Hawley cut ties with him over his support for proving to the American people that our elections are free and fair.

‘You’re not entitled your book contract,’ can quickly become ‘United doesn’t have to let you onto its planes’ ‘Marriott doesn’t have to let you stay at its hotels,’ or ‘Visa doesn’t have to let you use its cards.’

And maybe that’s the point.

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) January 8, 2021

The National Association of Realtors “has revised its professional ethics code to ban ‘hate speech and harassing speech’ by its 1.4 million members,” both on the job and off. To them, hate speech includes basic conservative ideas, not at all actually racist or otherwise indefensible words. “The sweeping prohibition applies to association members 24/7, covering all communication, private and professional, written and spoken, online and off. Punishment could top out at a maximum fine of $15,000 and expulsion from the organization.”

Police departments across the country have opened “probes” into whether any of their employees attended the Trump protest on Jan. 6. They’re not at all alone. Employers have begun firing people who merely attended the rally of hundreds of thousands, out of which a minority broke the law.
The label of an indie musician terminated their relationship because he posted that he had “peacefully” attended the Trump protest. A Wall Street Journal article documents the firing of a lawyer for an insurance company who posted on Instagram that he had attended “peacefully.”

[…]The notorious Never Trump group The Lincoln Project is launching a pressure campaign to ensure more such firings to purge leftists’ political opponents from all aspects of public and private life, in the name of “America.”

[…]Well-funded groups like The Lincoln Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, and other leftist pressure campaigns are dedicated to earning money and status by destroying the lives of anyone who disagrees with their politics. It’s excellent business. Schmidt has released tweets outlining many of his group’s planned actions, a terrifying blueprint of the cultural revolution mindset ascendant among America’s political left, who just seized control of every branch of the federal government…

This part was unnerving:

Already this creepy lust for punishment has Reddit users revealing their plans to turn family members into the FBI for attending the Jan. 6 protest, regardless of whether these family members committed any crimes or merely, like the vast majority of attendees, walked peacefully in D.C. streets.

She has an example where someone was recognized at a rally, his employer was contacted, and he was publicly denounced and placed on leave of absence. How will he feed his family without a job? But that’s the problem with the communist mob – they put their philosophy above the rights and lives of ordinary people who have a right to exercise their freedoms peacefully (which almost all of the people at the DC rally did). I would never take away the job of someone just because they disagreed with me.

I really recommend that you READ and SHARE the article, so that everyone will understand clearly what is happening. It’s important for people to understand that people on the secular left are fascists and they want to take away the ability of people to disagree with them by using power, e.g. – lawsuits, doxing, getting people fired.

And now, a personal reflection.

I’m concerned about how marriage-minded men will be impacted by the witch-hunting leftists. Men who marry and lead families don’t do this because it is a good deal for men. Marriage is a terrible deal for men. But it’s tolerable if men get to keep their own money, lead their families, educate their children in a way that respects God and good values, etc. When the government gets so big that men have to deal with leftists in the schools, government, hospitals, workplace, etc. men just opt out of marriage. Young, unmarried women may think that they can make a happy marriage with a pro-abortion, pro-LGBT secular leftist, but it’s very unlikely. These are people who sacrifice children for adult selfishness, and that isn’t a good qualification for marriage, which requires self-sacrificial love and self-control. There will be many victims to the rolling back of human rights and moral standards planned by the secular left.