The evidence. Several non-Christian writers of the first two centuries mention Jesus, his followers, or the world of the Gospels. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (writing c. AD 93) refers to Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum ([Josephus, Antiquities 18.3.3]), to John the Baptist and his execution by Herod Antipas ([Antiquities 18.5.2]), and to James, "the brother of Jesus who was called Christ" ([Antiquities 20.9.1]), his works are held here complete. The Roman historian Tacitus (Annals 15.44, c. AD 116) records that "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"; Pliny the Younger (Letters 10.96, c. AD 112) describes Christians in Bithynia who "met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity"; Suetonius (Claudius 25) notes that Claudius "banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus." All three passages are held here verbatim, in public-domain translations (Church and Brodribb 1876; Melmoth 1746 revised Bosanquet 1873; Thomson 1796 revised Forester 1855), with each writer's lens declared and the disputed points, the authenticity of Tacitus's sentence, who "Chrestus" was, stated each side.
The counter-case. These notices are real but limited, and honesty requires flagging each. The Josephus Testimonium is the most debated text in the file: most scholars judge its wording was edited or embellished by later Christian copyists, so it is read as a partly-altered passage, not as Josephus's own confession, the surrounding, un-doctrinal references (John, James) are more widely accepted as authentic. The Roman sources are later (Tacitus writes ~80 years after the crucifixion) and, crucially, they confirm that Christians existed and what they believed, that a "Christus" was executed under Pilate and that his followers worshipped him, not the truth of those beliefs. So the outside witnesses establish a historical Jesus and an early, spreading movement; they are not, and do not claim to be, evidence for the resurrection or the divine claims. That distinction, attestation of the movement versus verification of its message, is the honest line.
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