[Zhavric]

Quote by: Winter wind The key word here is "one account"

Woah, woah, woah... Easy there, killer. You, who believes in Christ based on a handful of accounts, don't have any room to discard accounts. We know Pandira existed from the writings of contemporary individuals. Are you really going to toss out the baby with the bathwater? Really?

"We know today?" I'm not sure that's fair to say Zhavric. Most of the historians in the academic community say other wise.

Thank you for that textbook example of an appeal to authority fallacy.

I would greatly appreciate it if you provided evidence to back this up.

Of what? That Paul was clueless about Jesus? It's self-evident. His writings demonstrate almost no knowledge of the critical (alleged) life events of Jesus. That there wasn't a "Paul" in the way we think there was a Paul? Again, the only way to date those letters is by using what apologists call internal evidence. This requires assuming the letters couldn't have been written much later. It would be like me writing a fragment of a journal entry today that reads...

"Can't wait to get to New York and climb to the top of the World Trade Center. I want to explore both towers."

... and you concluding that it was written prior to 9/11/01.

Also, could you post evidence that Tacticus was lying when he said that Nero persecuted Christians?

Sure:

Christianity has no part in Tacitus's history of the Caesars. Except for one questionable reference in the Annals he records nothing of a cult marginal even in his own day.

Sometime before 117 AD, the Roman historian apparently wrote:

"Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians. Their founder, one Christus, had been put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race."

(Book 15, chapter 44):

As we have seen, the term 'Christian' was not in use during the reign of Nero and there would not have been 'a great crowd' unless we are speaking of Jews, not Christians. 'Jewish/Christians' – being perceived by Roman authorities (and the populace at large) simply as Jews meant that early Christ-followers also got caught up in general attacks upon the Jews.

‘Their effects to dissemble their Jewish origins were detected by the decisive test of circumcision; nor were the Roman magistrates at leisure to enquire into the difference of their religious tenets.’

– Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall)

One consequence of the fire which destroyed much of Rome in 64 AD was a capitation tax levied on the Jews and it was the Jews – throughout the empire – who were required to pay for the city’s rebuilding – a factor which helped to radicalise many Jews in the late 60s AD.

Not for the first time would Christian scribes expropriated the real suffering of a whole people to create an heroic 'origins' fable...

No Christian apologist for centuries ever quoted the passage of Tacitus – not in fact, until it had appeared almost word-for-word in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, in the early fifth century, where it is mixed in with other myths. Sulpicius's contemporaries credited him with a skill in the 'antique' hand. He put it to good use and fantasy was his forte: his Life of St. Martin is replete with numerous 'miracles', including raising of the dead and personal appearances by Jesus and Satan.

His dastardly story of Nero was embellished during the Renaissance into a fantastic fable with Nero 'fiddling while Rome burned'. Nero took advantage of the destruction to build his 'Golden House' though no serious scholar believes anymore that he started the fire (we now know Nero was in his hometown of Antium – Anzio – when the blaze started.) Indeed, Nero opened his palace garden for temporary shelter to those made homeless.

In short, the passage in Tacitus is a fraud and adds no evidence for a historic Jesus.