#tacitus

"i write without bias" is a wonderful statement. no one can write without bias. least of all Tacitus, who is trying so hard to convince you that he is.

Historians agree that Jesus existed, that there was a religious leader named Yeshua of Nazareth in 1st century Roman Judea who was crucified by the Empire, whether or not he was the son of the Hebrew god. Here's the thing, though; there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus. The Gospels were written 30 or 40 years after the fact and cannot be treated as unbiased historical documents, and the earliest non-Christian source mentioning Jesus is a Roman historian saying "there's this cult making trouble in the east because we crucified their leader almost 100 years ago." There are no records from the time of the crucifixion, only a century later. That's not exactly what I'd call irrefutable evidence. Maybe Jesus did exist, but if all we have to go on is his own book club's word and a handful of Roman footnotes, then what I think really happened is modern historians decided they weren't up for a fight over this. If they said there was no historical evidence Jesus existed then the Christians would shit their pants and throw another holy war hissy fit, dragging the entire world back for centuries, so everyone just agreed to let them have this. Oh yes, your book club's founder was a real person, not mythological like the Greek heroes or Gilgamesh, no doubt about it at all. I'm not saying he definitively did not exist, I'm just saying that there's not enough evidence to justify the scholarly consensus; there's plenty of room for doubt, but denying the historicity of Jesus is a fringe taboo.