Tacitus makes a very brief, insignificant mention of Jesus, but Seneca and Pliny the Elder do not even mention the crucifixion. This is evidence that it did not occur.
Question:
Tacticus wrote almost nothing about Jesus – just one small passage. Tacitus only said that Christians in Rome believed such a thing. It does not prove that Jesus was crucified. Further, we do not find any mention of Jesus in Seneca’s (4 BCE – 65 CE) writings and the historian Pliny the Elder (23 CE – 79 CE). If, indeed, the crucifixion was such a well known event, as the gospels allege, don’t you think it’s reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of ONE of these men? As a champion of evidence, you should consider it also, rather than blindly believe.
Response:
It is true that in all of his writings, Tacitus devotes a miniscule portion to Jesus and the Christians. But then again, his is only one of a rather large range of evidence for both the reality of Jesus as a person, and for his death in Jerusalem by crucifixion and for the fact that it was claimed he resurrected by his followers. I will agree that the single reference in Tacitus does not prove anything, except that Christianity (and belief in the resurrection) existed in Rome in the late first century, but it is one piece in a tapestry of evidence which does indeed prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a real person Jesus of Nazareth, and that he was executed by the Romans in Jerusalem by crucifixion. The evidence is so strong that it amounts to as close to “proof” of this event as nearly any event in ancient history.
The fact that individuals do not mention Jesus of Nazareth are not evidence that he did not exist. If you read all of the thousands of pages I have written at my web site, you will not find a single reference to Bill Clinton. Go ahead, do your own search. Neither will you find a single reference to Joe Biden nor to Donald Trump. All of that will change, by the way, when I post this article! Does this prove that Clinton, Trump or Biden were not real people? The reason I have not mentioned these men is that I had no reason to, given the subjects I have spoken on. Such is apparently the case with Seneca and Pliny the Elder. By the way, his son, Pliny the Younger, does mention the Christians. Why? Because they impacted what he did as a local ruler. This lack of evidence is not evidence against the crucifixion at all. This is a logical fallacy. Unless one can prove that Seneca OUGHT to have mentioned Jesus due to the context of what he wrote, this is a vacuous argument. Did the fame of Jesus reach these men? Surely it did! Did the fame of Clinton or Trump or Biden reach my ears? Yes they did. How does this prove that these three men are not historical figures? Really, this is not a good argument at all.
John Oakes
