Continuing with references to Josephus’ “The Antiquities”, Josephus writes, “He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James,
the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of haveing transgressed the law and delievered them up to be stoned.”
Compare this with John 7:5 and 1Cor 15:7 to corroborate the fact that some people considered Jesus to be the Christ.
Jesephus’ “Testimonium Flavianum” has already been mentioned but despite the probable interpolations it is solid historical proof of Jesus’ existence.
Let’s not forget Tacitus in A.D. 115 explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in A.D. 64.
“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called
Christians by the populace.
Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstitution, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the fist source of the evil, but even in Rome… Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.”
Pliny the Youger, governor of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey wrote around A.D. 111,
“I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished… They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this:
they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery… This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.”
Julius Africanus in about A.D. 221 quoted a historian named Thallus who in A.D. 52 wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world since the Trogan War. It was concerning the total darkness that is written of in the gospels.
“Thallus, in the third book of his histories,
explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun–unreasonably, as it seems to me.”
Here is a quote by Professor M. Wilcox concerning Jewish references of Jesus,
"The Jewish traditional literature, although it mentions Jesus only quite sparingly (and must in any case be used with caution), supports the gospel claim that he was a
healer and** miracle-worker**, even though it ascribes these activites to sorcery. In addition, it preserves the recollection that he was a
teacher, and that he **had disciples ** (five of them), and that at least in the earlier Rabbinic period not all of the sages had finally made up their minds that he was a “heretic” or a “deceiver.”
I hope this helps.
