Historical Testimony outside the scriptures

1. The testimony of Flavius Josephus (Jewish historian writing for a Roman audience in 93 A.D.) which attests to Jesus’ miraculous power and His sentencing and crucifixion (see Unit II-F, Section I.):

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles…And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross…And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
.2. The testimony of the Babylonian Talmud (written between 70 to 200 A.D. in which Jesus is mentioned under four different names, several time).

One of the passages states that Jesus was accused of “witchcraft,” indicating that Jesus was known to have some kind of extraordinary and other-worldly power.^[2] (see Unit II-F, Section I.).

3. The testimony of Cornelius Tacitus (a Roman historian writing in the early second century – approximately 120 A.D.) who makes explicit reference to the crucifixion of Jesus in the Annals (15.44) when speaking about Nero’s blaming the Christians for the burning of Rome:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, 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 superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.^[3] (see Unit II-M, Section I., for an explanation).