Is Jesus Historical? What Do The Romans Say About Him?

hey noble ones on this video i'd like to talk about the historical figure of jesus of nazareth as reported by the ancient romans or as his name was probably pronounced in his language [Music] yeshua [Music] some people trying to prove he existed at all costs accepting all evidence a priori others tried to prove he didn't refuting all evidence without even looking into the actual context this is a critical historical investigation so i will try to be as unbiased as possible even though implicit biased unconscious bias is inevitable to a certain extent i'll do my best to be as fair as possible in my evaluation of the ancient sources some of which we will read in the original latin and draw a picture of how solid of a historical figure jesus actually was when examining what the ancients said the video will not be about doctrine or beliefs as i would never use my platform as a way to push my personal beliefs onto my subscribers i respect you and your personal beliefs at the end having examined all evidence fairly i will draw my conclusions but feel free to let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below so what sources are we going to use on this video we'll examine mostly non-christian evidence with just a couple of exceptions publius cornelius takitus one of the greatest roman historians and senator of rome gaius suetonius tranquilos roman historian early imperialera titus flavius josefus romano jewish historian born in jerusalem at the time part of roman judea gallius plinius secundus better known as pliny the younger roman magistrate lawyer and author emperor trajanus emperor adrianus for non-roman authors we're going to read from luciano samosata a syrian satirist and rituation and mara ba serapion stoic philosopher from the roman province of syria now we're going to jump right into the historical mentions and at the end of each mention i will give you a sort of validation so i'll tell you how much validity that mention has but in order to fully understand and appreciate these mentions there are two things that i need to talk about and i'll do that in the second part of the video so make sure to watch until the end because they're very important first the actual historically most plausible date of birth of jesus of nazareth which is now most historians agree that it's not going to be 1ad it's a different date and i'll tell you about it i'll justify it historically and secondly the most probable date of his actual crucifixion and these are important for the following reason usually people who try to disprove the existence of historical jesus use these two points of argument the source materials that we are going to examine are not contemporary to his life if such an important man was to be around roman authorities would have definitely said much more about him both statements are actually very interesting but ultimately hold no water and i'll justify this because of two reasons first is the actual contextualization of when jesus existed which is very important but secondly it's also the real historically accurate perspective of roman central power so again make sure to watch until the end first we're going to use the surviving portions of tactus two major works the analysis and the historia where he speaks about the reigns of several emperors such as tiberius claudius nero basically after the death of the first emperor augustus in 1480 all the way up to 70d which is roughly speaking the date of the first jewish roman war which dates from 66 to 73 it's in his final work and also of imperial rome book 15 chapter 44 that tactus talks about christ he talks about his execution by pontius pilatos who was the fifth governor of judea and the emperor tiberius and the presence and existence of early christians in rome in this book specifically he is chronicling the burning of rome which happened in 64 a.d said non-opera [Music] but all human efforts all the lavish gifts of the emperor and the propitiation of the gods did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an oda ergo abolendo rumor subdivides etc 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 outdoor nominees cristos tibero imperial procurator represents superstition from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of tiberius at the hand of one of our procurators and a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment again broke out not only in judea the first source of the evil but even in rome as a roman historian takitu said no christian bias in fact he had no sympathy for the christians he speaks about their abominations and he speaks of christianity as the origin of evil and when he uses the expression abomination is actually referring specifically to the early christians believing that they were partaking at least some early christians believing that they were partaking of the literal body and blood of christ every time they were taking the sacrament which sounded as an abomination to roman ears so what takitus is telling us here is that jesus was executed by the governor of judea pontius pilate for crimes against the state and a religious movement of his followers sprang up in his wake remember this is not seen by roman authorities as a positive thing it's seen as a negative thing we could in fact refer to this as the first documented confrontation between early christians and roman authorities also please notice that takitus never accused nero of being the one who burnt rome such accusation will come from cassio's deal in the third century but what takitus is saying is that nero in his opinion was using christians as scapegoats from this statement we learn that there were a sizable number of christians in rome at the time that it was possible to distinguish between christians and jews in rome and that at the time pagans made a connection between christianity in rome and its origins in roma judea okay so let's discuss the validity most scholars consider takitu's explanation and mentions of jesus and his execution to be of high historical value and it is generally considered to be an authentic independent roman source to add to that you have to remember that when takitus wrote history if he considered the information that he was presented to be not entirely reliable such as hearsay or something that he hadn't witnessed himself he would normally add indications for the readers no such indication has been added to this specific mention as a negative point however i do need to mention the fact that no original manuscript from takitus is preserved to this day and the majority of what we have are copies we should say later copies some of which were made by christian monks now where the contents of this message changed or altered in any way by the medieval monks that were copying this manuscript into their own abbey well of course we can't know for sure most historians agree that the message is authentic however i do need to point out that a spelling correction did happen some sort of alteration did occur in fact at the time two kinds of spellings and two kinds of words to speak about christians were used cristianos with an i and christianos with an e the medieval version instead will always be cristianos with an eye and we notice that there is a space in one of the two manuscripts between the i used for cree and the stianus and that is because originally probably was written with an e which would have filled the gap but that was removed as a form of correction by monks so yes some alteration happened but most scholars believe that the message is authentic [Music] now let's talk about the very famous testimonial written by joseph who's a very famous romano jewish historian but what do we mean by romano jewish you see josephus was born in jerusalem and he was the leader of the forces in galilee that fought against the romans so initially he was an enemy to rome the thing is that when he faced the legions of westpacianus in 67 he was defeated and captured now the only reason why was pasianos or was paisan didn't kill him is because supposedly josephus had prophesied that westpacianos would become emperor and in fact two years later in 1869 westpacianus does become the emperor of rome and he likes josephus because of this so he keeps him first as a slave then as a translator and eventually when joseph was fully defected to the roman side he is granted roman citizenship which is what we mean by saying that he was romano jewish he even served as the translator when titus was pastiano's son led the siege of jerusalem in a.d 70. he wrote the antiquities of the jews in which he mentions several biblical figures including jesus christ john the baptist james the brother of jesus pontius pilate the sadducees the high priests and the pharisees so all of this can be cross-referenced with the gospel at this time there was a wise man who was called jesus and his conduct was so good and it was known to be virtuous and many people from among the jews and other nations became his disciples pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die and those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship they reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive accordingly he was perhaps the messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders now of course this is a very powerful testimony but we are not 100 sure if we can fully trust it most of the testimony has very strong historical validity but a jewish man who had defected into rome calling jesus the messiah and specifically speaking about the resurrection after three days are thought to be maybe christian alterations it is however widely accepted that this testimony originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of jesus by pilate which was then the subject to interpolation now this is a very big discussion and i can't really jump into it in details because just from 1937 to the 1980s 87 articles have been written about the validity of this and there are people taking their stance in all sorts of positions people that say it's completely useless people that say it's 100 correct and people that take a sort of middle ground i take the middle ground i believe that the nucleus the core speaking about jesus and his execution are correct but it is possible that both the resurrection and the mention of the word messiah were added it is also interesting to see that there is another writer a christian writer the very first one to speak about this testimony specifically and its oregon and hear what he says origin said of josephus although not far from the truth he did not believe in jesus as the christ an affirmation that was repeated in his contra calcium because of this i believe that it's highly likely that he didn't actually mention jesus christ and the crucifixion but it didn't mention the other two things otherwise this christian author wouldn't have even have any any reason to complain let's now read the words of magistrate pliny the younger who was the governor of bethenia in asia minor the christians were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light when they sang in alternate versus a hymn to christ as to a god and bound themselves by a solemn health not to any wicked deeds but never to commit any fraud theft or adultery never to falsify their word nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up after which it was their custom to separate and then reassemble to partake of food the food of an ordinary and innocent kind later pliny writes a letter to emperor trajanus and he specifically says that the teachings of the christians were open quotes excessive and contagious superstition close quotes he also says that christians attracted people of all social classes of all genders and of all ages now let's read the reply from emperor trajanos the method you have pursued my diapleni in sifting the cases of those denounced to you as christians is extremely proper it is not possible to lay down any general rule which can be applied as the fixed standard in all cases of this nature no search should be made for these people when they are denounced and found guilty they must be punished with the restriction however that when the party denies himself to be a christian and shall give proof that he he's not that is by adoring our gods he shall be pardoned on the ground of repentance even though he may have formally incurred suspicion informations without the accuser's name subscribed must not be admitted in evidence against anyone as it is introducing a very dangerous precedent and by no means agreeable to the spirit of the age now this is extremely significant first and foremost what does the emperor mean when he says the method you have pursued my diapini in sifting the cases of those denounced to you as christians is extremely proper well you have to understand one thing about both pliny the younger and takitus both of them had the duty of supervising trials of christians which is precisely why they documented it so in this letter emperor trajanus is saying yes very good you're doing well they need to be stopped but even more interesting is what he says about his gods and this really gives us the first perspective as the first part of those two introductory lines that i mentioned at the beginning the perspective of the romans now this is the religious perspective of the romans when people tell you why did the romans do something if there was a man preaching in judea such as jesus why don't we have much more information about it well the answer is as you can read from the letter the words of the emperor himself from the point of view of the romans religious freedom was something that it was always granted in other words the romans didn't care what god you were worshiping in your lands once it became a roman province all they wanted to make sure is that it remained under roman control but a certain degree of religious freedom was always given so we shouldn't imagine that to the romans it really meant much that a preacher was going around preaching some doctrine that they thought was strange to the point of view of the romans you can worship whatever god you want we beat you in battles our gods are more powerful than yours and that's all that matters so why does the situation change now but the reason why the situation changes now is because we're talking about christians in rome so it is only when these followers of christ enter rome and greece so very very close provinces to rome that the roman authorities the central power of rome starts to be actually interested in christians as far as jesus was ministering in judea they did not care even the miracles if you think about it even if miracles were reported to roman emperors of the roman authorities they would have been shrugged off either as superstition as we can see in fact the word is used but even if they were to believe it this is how it would go away kaiser there is a man who is performing miracles in judea a magician in judea what sort of miracles he can raise people from the dead what people who did he raise oh a friend of his by the name of lazarus is that it he raised a man okay good for him the point i'm trying to draw here is the only miracle that could have really interested roman authorities could have been sir this man made an entire legion disappear or sir this man can multiply swords and armor in other words from the perspective of the ancient roman if it doesn't directly threaten roman military control it does not matter from a roman point of view jesus birth means absolutely nothing because judea was considered to be a backwater province in the fringes of the empire and even his ministry which if we are to believe the christian reports was only three years wouldn't have mattered much to the romans which explains why if they heard of him they would have called him either a magician a superstitious wise man which is exactly what we are finding in the letters it only starts mattering for the romans once the followers grow in numbers and enter rome as far as the validity of pliny the youngest testimony it's there it's complete general consensus that it's authentic also because we have the letter of response of emperor trajan which again speaks about the same thing so the two things can be double checked and cross-referenced it's authentic [Music] now let's talk about the words of gaius suetonius tranquilas who was the chief secretary of emperor adrianos he says because the jews of rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of christus claudius expelled them from the city after the great fire of rome during nero's reign punishments were also inflicted on the christians a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief again notice both the negative approach and negative point of view of these mentions towards the christians but most importantly of historical significance the mention of the instigator meaning crestus which is again a different spelling of christos both been a period for the time now the validity of these testimonies at the moment is not questioned in the academia and that is because you have to remember that the romans were particularly meticulous when it came to both records and these are all period [Music] now let's talk about non-roman mentionings and one of the most interesting ones is a letter written by mara bar serapion of syria to give you a little bit of context at this time the writer was in prison and he was re writing this letter to his son he says what advantage did the athenians gain from putting socrates to death feminine plague came upon them as a judgement for their crime what advantage did men of samos gain from burying pythagoras in a moment their land was covered with sand what advantage did the jews gain from executing their wise king it was just after that that their kingdom was abolished god justly avenged these three wise men the athenians died of hunger the samyans were overwhelmed by the sea the jews ruined and driven from their land live in complete dispersion but socrates did not die for good he lived on in the teachings of plato pythagoras did not die for good he lived on in the statue of hera nor did the wise king die for good he lived on in the teaching which he had given now even though on this letter there is no mention of the word christos or the name christos or should we say title messiah it is still interesting because he does call him the king of the jews which we know was not only an expression that was not used by the christians but it was an expression that is linked to what was written on top of the cross of jesus with the letters in re which translate jesus nazarenus rex judae jesus of nazareth king of the jews [Music] but again beyond rome we have got the satirist tuition of samosata in his writing is actually mocking the christians then here is what he says the christians you know worship a man to this day the distinguished personage who introduced the novel right and was crucified on that account you see these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them and then it was impressed on them by their original law giver that they are all brothers from the moment they are converted and deny the gods of greece and worship the crucified sage and live after his laws all this they take white on faith with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike regarding them merely as common property now again this is one of those non-roman mentions that do not use the term christ specifically but they do mention the crucifixion they call him a sage and a law giver and also further on in his writing lucian mentions that the christians were using sacred writings but we still have more in the jewish talmud we have a mention of the crucifixion of christ which is again a non-christian mention it reads on the eve of the passover yeshu was hanged for 40 days before the execution took place a herald went forth and cried he's going force to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed israel to apostasy anyone who can say anything in his favor let him come forward and plead on his behalf but since nothing was brought forward in its favor he was hanged on the eve of the passover this was written between 70 and 200 a.d we already know that the majority of historians scholars and biblists all understand and agree that one ad the traditionally accepted date of birth of jesus is incorrect and it's because of a calculation error made during the creation of the gregorian calendar that is also strengthened by the testimonies that we have on the gospels themselves both luke and matthew associate jesus's birth with the time of herod the great now notice the time of herod the great not his son herod the great who was the king of the jews now head of the great historically and that's a historically proven date dies in 4 bc so already we can see that the date of birth of christ cannot be 81 but it has to be sometime before 4 bc i know it sounds strange to say that christ's birth was sometime before christ but now another important event that can help us understand when exactly that happened is a roman census because it is mentioned again in the gospels and in other accounts but what is a roman census in ancient rome a census was the act of counting the people and evaluating their property for taxation in a given province now roman census happened all the time so a number of censuses were most likely performed throughout the roman world under sentius saturninus we know that an important census happened in ad6 but then again that one is no use for us but we also know that another very important sense has happened exactly in that area in 8 bc now this helps us because then we understand that jesus's birth most likely occurred between 8 bc and 4 bc given the information of the murder of the innocents that again we have at the hand of king harold so obviously before he's dead when he wanted every child born between age 0 and age 2 to be killed and that does happen around the time i believe that the most historically probable date would be 6 bc now that's significant because if jesus was born in 6 bc then what age was he actually crucified another event in jesus's life that can help us pinpoint the date of the crucifixion is something that happened before and it's very very important that is the baptism of jesus and at the same time of the baptism something else happens that is the famous event gospel event whereby jesus literally rebukes the merchants at the temple because they were selling animals and he didn't like that it's a very famous gospel event that event happened very closely to his baptism the accounts tell us that that incident at the temple happened after 46 years from the building of said temple let now cross this gospel reference and jewish reference with again josephus flavius the roman historian he tells us that again this specific temple was built in 20 bc which means 20 bc plus 46 years we are in 26 a.d which would be the year of the actual baptism of christ now connecting this with the previously explained information of christ's actual date of birth being 6 bc that would mean that his baptism occurred at age 32. this already creates a completely different story because it also tells us that most likely he didn't actually die at age 33 but he died older than that and it is very possible that his death or crucifixion even though i can't really give you a specific date would have happened sometime before 37 a.d which is the death of emperor tiberius this is interesting because it pushes everything a bit forward it tells us that he was alive longer than we thought it tells us that he was born before that we thought and it also means that if you look at these two dates now the historian josephus flavius that we are reading today was born specifically in 1837 which means he would have been born sort of immediately after jesus crucifixion so he would have been basically contemporary and publius cornelius takitus himself who was born in 55 it would have been very close to the very end of jesus's life and then the beginning of the ministry of his followers all of this is interesting because it means that the majority not all of them but the majority of the accounts that we have read today would have happened within approximately 40 50 years from jesus's death which is extremely close and we could say basically contemporary from a historical standpoint i mean when we talk about a lot of the information that we say about alexander the great well some of the things are actually 400 years after not everything but some of the things are 400 years after and they're still considered valid so i would say that these events and the testimonials that we have read the majority are relatively contemporary so with all being said in conclusion what is my conclusion about the historical figure of jesus or yeshua we have enough historical information to state confidently that jesus of nazareth existed and was a historically proven figure his appeal extended beyond the jews and included greeks jewish leaders of the day had an unfavorable opinion of him he was mostly ignored by roman authorities until his followers started preaching which justifies the reason why we don't have more information about him while he was still alive he was then crucified when pontius pilate was prefect of judea and that concludes our journey historical journey into the life of jesus as far as his historical figure is concerned if you liked this video please thumbs up and if you want me to continue this and make it into a series we could discuss for example what it would have probably looked like and sort of examine early art and modern art and see what gets closer to a more historically probable appearance and look and many other interesting topics so let me know what you think in the comments below thank you so much for all of you have watched up to this point because i mean this is a very long video thank you so much and remember the metatron has spread his wings goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Metatron

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Keywords: Metatron, Armor, Combat, History, Military, Knights, Greeks, Spartans, Romans, Helmet, Beastplate, Sword, Spear, D&D, Role Playing Game, Defense, Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Middle Ages, Castle, Tower, Legend, Gods, long sword, war hammer, lance, battle, siege, short sword, shield, bow, crossbow, arrows, dart, helm, bronze age, iron age, spear, full plate armor, axe, greatsword, scimitar, warrior, barbarian, mounted, strategy, army, jousting, two-handed weapons, arena, impossible, brigandine, Jesus, Christ, Religion

Id: A41Tm5FDKns

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/brojangles]

All none of it?

[u/Homeythecircledrawer]

Interesting video. However, he lapsed on a few things or maybe I mis heard.

Does he really accept the slaughter of the innocents?

Luke's Census

He talked about the Romans doing censuses, but left out key problems in Luke's census: The census was only necessary in preparation for direct Roman rule. The Romans may have done censuses throught the empire, but they didn't conduct censuses at whim. Prior to Archelaus being deposed, there was no reason for a Roman census since both he and his father, Herod the Great, paid tribute and would have collected the taxes themselves. Further, Mary and Joseph lived in Galilee and would not have been required to be assessed. They lived under Antipas who, also paid tribute and would have collected taxes.