Mykytiuk agrees with most scholars that Christian scribes modified portions of the passage but did not insert it wholesale into the text. In chronicling the burning of Rome in 64 A. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius. As a Roman historian, Tacitus did not have any Christian biases in his discussion of the persecution of Christians by Nero, says Ehrman. No one thought he was made up.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald Let's examine this passage. You may have noticed that it refers to someone named "Yeshu.
Actually, "Yeshu" or "Yeshua" is how Jesus' name is pronounced in Hebrew. But what does the passage mean by saying that Jesus "was hanged"?
Doesn't the New Testament say he was crucified? Indeed it does. But the term "hanged" can function as a synonym for "crucified. But what of the cry of the herald that Jesus was to be stoned? This may simply indicate what the Jewish leaders were planning to do. The passage also tells us why Jesus was crucified. It claims He practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy!
Since this accusation comes from a rather hostile source, we should not be too surprised if Jesus is described somewhat differently than in the New Testament. But if we make allowances for this, what might such charges imply about Jesus?
Interestingly, both accusations have close parallels in the canonical gospels. For instance, the charge of sorcery is similar to the Pharisees' accusation that Jesus cast out demons "by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons. Apparently Jesus' miracles were too well attested to deny. The only alternative was to ascribe them to sorcery! Likewise, the charge of enticing Israel to apostasy parallels Luke's account of the Jewish leaders who accused Jesus of misleading the nation with his teaching.
Thus, if read carefully, this passage from the Talmud confirms much of our knowledge about Jesus from the New Testament. Lucian of Samosata was a second century Greek satirist. In one of his works, he wrote of the early Christians as follows:.
The Christians Although Lucian is jesting here at the early Christians, he does make some significant comments about their founder. For instance, he says the Christians worshipped a man , "who introduced their novel rites. Although Lucian does not mention his name, he is clearly referring to Jesus. But what did Jesus teach to arouse such wrath? According to Lucian, he taught that all men are brothers from the moment of their conversion.
That's harmless enough. But what did this conversion involve? It involved denying the Greek gods, worshipping Jesus, and living according to His teachings.
It's not too difficult to imagine someone being killed for teaching that. Though Lucian doesn't say so explicitly, the Christian denial of other gods combined with their worship of Jesus implies the belief that Jesus was more than human. Since they denied other gods in order to worship Him, they apparently thought Jesus a greater God than any that Greece had to offer!
Let's summarize what we've learned about Jesus from this examination of ancient non-Christian sources. First, both Josephus and Lucian indicate that Jesus was regarded as wise. Second, Pliny, the Talmud, and Lucian imply He was a powerful and revered teacher. Third, both Josephus and the Talmud indicate He performed miraculous feats. Tacitus and Josephus say this occurred under Pontius Pilate. And the Talmud declares it happened on the eve of Passover. Fifth, there are possible references to the Christian belief in Jesus' resurrection in both Tacitus and Josephus.
I hope you see how this small selection of ancient non-Christian sources helps corroborate our knowledge of Jesus from the gospels. Of course, there are many ancient Christian sources of information about Jesus as well. But since the historical reliability of the canonical gospels is so well established, I invite you to read those for an authoritative "life of Jesus!
This video examines the historical evidence for the life of Jesus, including discussion of the non-biblical evidence. He concluded that only one, known as et-Tell, had ruins old enough to be biblical Bethsaida. The State of Israel and many scholars accept his identification, though some controversy lingers.
Was it a synagogue? To judge by other finds, Bethsaida was a majority Jewish town. But the rudimentary structure had no benches or other hallmarks of early synagogue architecture. Instead, the archaeologists discovered evidence of pagan worship: bronze incense shovels similar to those found in Roman temples; palm-size votive objects in the shape of boat anchors and grape clusters; terra-cotta figurines of a woman who resembled Livia sometimes known as Julia , the wife of the Roman Emperor Augustus and mother of Tiberius, who succeeded Augustus in the year A.
Arav knew the Romans regarded their rulers as both human and divine, worshiping them as deities. They built no pagan structures in Galilee and kept the faces of rulers off local coins. In the year 30, according to Josephus, Philip dedicated Bethsaida to Livia, who had died the year before. Might he have done so in precisely the period when Jesus was visiting Bethsaida? Its waist-high walls enclose a by foot area, with small porches on either end.
As some scholars see it, the pagan temple may be a key to why so many of the apostles hailed from here—and why, all the same, Jesus winds up cursing the place. Who are we? And yet in the end, the better part of them did not repent. Perhaps, at just that time, a Jewish visionary came along, offering what looked like a clearer path back to the God they loved.
The conventional view is that Jews had split into a small number of competing sects. On my last day at Bethsaida, Savage spent the morning grappling with a more practical question: how to hoist a quarter-ton boulder off the floor of an ancient villa so his team could start in on the stratum beneath.
Dust-caked volunteers lassoed the rock in a canvas sling. A two-hour walk north of Magdala is Capernaum, where the Gospels say Jesus headquartered his ministry. It would have been nearly impossible for Jesus to travel between his boyhood home in Nazareth and the evangelical triangle without passing through Magdala.
But the Gospels reveal almost nothing about it. Was it mere chance that Mary Magdalene lived there? Open to Visitors. I found Father Solana in the kitchen of a small rectory. In , he brought in his own team of archaeologists from Mexico. Working with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Mexican archaeologists, who have been back nearly every year since, found a first-century treasure trove: a full-blown residential district, a marketplace, a fishing harbor, four Jewish ritual baths, and unusual plastered basins where residents appear to have salt-cured fish for export.
The site, it turned out, had been home not just to a synagogue but to a flourishing community, one that was a near match for ancient descriptions of the bustling fishing port of Magdala. Three coins were found at the synagogue, from A. Except for a midth-century stint as a shabby Hawaiian-themed resort, Magdala appears to have lain undisturbed until IAA shovels hit the synagogue wall in , less than a foot-and-a-half beneath the surface. As the Romans descended on the city 2, years ago, the Magdalans seem to have scuttled parts of their own synagogue, piling the rubble into a chest-high roadblock.
The purpose, Zapata-Meza says, was likely twofold: to impede the Roman troops and to protect the synagogue from defilement. Her hunch is that no synagogue so small and so finely decorated would have been built without some kind of charismatic leader.
They wanted more. They needed more. The stone block found in the sanctuary is one-of-a-kind. I visited Talgam in her small campus office a few days later.
On her desk was a stack of plastic-wrapped copies of her new book, Mosaics of Faith , a phonebook-thick study that spans five religions and a thousand years of history.
The IAA has given Talgam exclusive access to the stone, and she is at work on an exhaustive interpretation. On one side of the stone is a menorah, or Jewish candelabrum, whose design matches other likenesses—on coins and graffiti—from before A. On the side opposite the menorah—past reliefs of columned arches, altars and oil lamps—was an engraving that left Talgam dumbstruck: a pair of fire-spitting wheels.
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