Non-Christian sources
Non-Christian sources are meagre and contribute nothing to the history of Jesus that is not already known from the Christian tradition. The mention of Jesus' execution in the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus (XV, 44), written about AD 110, is, nevertheless, worthy of note. In his account of the persecution of Christians under the emperor Nero, which was occasioned by the burning of Rome (AD 64), the Emperor, in order to rid himself of suspicion, blamed the fire on the so-called Christians, who were already hated among the people. Tacitus writes in explanation: “The name is derived from Christ, whom the procurator Pontius Pilate had executed in the reign of Tiberius.” The “temporarily suppressed pernicious superstition” to which Jesus had given rise in Judaea soon afterward had spread as far as Rome. Tacitus does not speak of Jesus but, rather, of Christ (originally the religious title “Messiah,” but used very early among Christians outside Palestine as a proper name for Jesus). The passage only affords proof of the ignominious end (crucifixion) of Jesus as the founder of a religious movement and illustrates the common opinion of that movement in Rome. An enquiry of the governor of Asia Minor, Pliny the Younger, in his letter to the emperor Trajan (c. AD 111) about how he should act in regard to the Christians (Epistle 10, 96ff.) comes from the same period. Christians are again described as adherents of a crude superstition, who sang hymns to Christ “as to a god.” Nothing is said of his earthly life, and the factual information in the letter undoubtedly stems from Christians.
Another Roman historian, Suetonius, remarked in his life of the emperor Claudius (Vita Claudii 25:4; after AD 100): “He [Claudius] expelled the Jews, who had on the instigation of Chrestus continually been causing disturbances, from Rome.” This may refer to turmoils occasioned among the Jews of Rome by the intrusion of Christianity into their midst. But the information must have reached the author in a completely garbled form or was understood by him quite wrongly to mean that this “Chrestus” had at that time appeared in Rome as a Jewish agitator. Claudius' edict of expulsion (AD 49) is also mentioned in Acts 18:2.
Josephus, the Jewish historian at the court of Domitian who has depicted the history of his people and the events of the Jewish–Roman war (66–70), only incidentally remarks about the stoning in AD 62 of “James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ . . .” (Antiquities XX, 200). He understandably uses the proper name “Jesus” first (for as a Jew he knows that “Christ” is a translation of “Messiah”), but he adds, though qualified by a derogatory “so-called,” the second name that was familiar in Rome. (Some scholars have suggested, however, that this reference was a later Christian insertion.) Scholars also have questioned the authenticity of a second passage in the same work, known as the “Testimony of Flavius” (XVIII, 63ff.), which is generally thought to contain at least some statements, apparently later insertions, that summarize Christian teaching about Jesus.
In the Talmud, a compendium of Jewish law, lore, and commentary, only a few statements of the rabbis (Jewish religious teachers) of the 1st and 2nd centuries come into consideration. Containing mostly polemics or Jewish apologetics, they reveal an acquaintance with the Christian tradition but include several divergent legendary motifs as well. The picture of Jesus offered in these writings may be summarized as follows: born the (according to some interpretations, illegitimate) son of a man called Panther, Jesus (Hebrew: Yeshu) worked magic, ridiculed the wise, seduced and stirred up the people, gathered five disciples about him, and was hanged (crucified) on the eve of the Passover. The Toledot Yeshu (“Life of Jesus”), an embellished collection of such assertions, circulated among Jews during the Middle Ages in several versions.
These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.
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