About this time there lived Jesus , a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ .
The Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus and of the religious movement he founded. These religious gospels –the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark , and the Gospel of Luke–recount the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of a Jew named Jesus who spoke Aramaic.
The Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Christ, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written ca. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.
Tacitus believed that Jesus ‘ followers had no morals.
Jesus’ name in Hebrew was “ Yeshua ” which translates to English as Joshua . So how did we get the name “Jesus”?
Mary Magdalene as trusted disciple For its part, the Bible gave no hint that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife . None of the four canonical gospels suggests that sort of relationship, even though they list the women who travel with Jesus and in some cases include their husbands’ names.
Summary of Jesus’ life He was born to Joseph and Mary sometime between 6 bce and shortly before the death of Herod the Great (Matthew 2; Luke 1:5) in 4 bce. According to Matthew and Luke, however, Joseph was only legally his father.
Palestine in the Time of Jesus. Jesus came from the town of Nazareth in Galilee . This northern territory of Palestine was also his most important area of activity. Apart from the larger towns of Sepphoris and Tiberias Galilee was a country area, and agriculture was the main occupation.
To the Romans , Jesus was a troublemaker who had got his just desserts. To the Christians, however, he was a martyr and it was soon clear that the execution had made Judaea even more unstable. Pontius Pilate – the Roman governor of Judaea and the man who ordered the crucifixion – was ordered home in disgrace.
James D.G. Dunn states that most scholars infer that ” Suetonius misheard the name ‘Christus’ (referring to Jesus as Christ ) as ‘Chrestus'” and also misunderstood the report and assumed that the followers of someone called Chrestus were causing disturbances within the Jewish community based on his instigation.
Although it is often claimed that Christians were persecuted for their refusal to worship the emperor, general dislike for Christians likely arose from their refusal to worship the gods or take part in sacrifice, which was expected of those living in the Roman Empire.
Tacitus is considered by modern scholars to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and has a reputation for the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics.