The Myth of the Jesus Myth: Evidence from Secular History: Tacitus

I would now like to move to the Roman historian Tacitus, who states in his Annals:
“Christus, the founder of the name, suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius” [Tacitus, 15.44]

No scholar and very few skeptics question the authenticity of this passage, because the preceding and following passages go on to insult Christianity, calling it a “disease” and a “pernicious superstition” No Christian would have written those words. Further, the passage is in perfect Tacitean style.

The main objection to the reliability of this passage is that it calls Pilate a procurator, when he was actually a prefect. However, both Philo and Josephus called Pilate a prefect. There are two possibilities here, considering the triple attestation. Either at the time of Pilate there was little difference between the titles, or Pilate was both a procurator and a prefect. Either way, that objection certainly does not hurt the authenticity of Tacitus' reference to Jesus.

Skeptics will sometimes object that this passage is hearsay that Tacitus obtained this information from Christians. This simply ignores the critical capability of Tacitus. He called information that he received from his friend, Pliny the Younger, nonsense. Now, Pliny was his friend. Tacitus considered the Christians his enemies, as implied by the tone of the passage. Are we to believe that he borrowed information uncritically from his enemies, while critically analyzing material he received from his friends?

Tacitus wrote in about 115 AD, and was known as an extremely reliable historian who chose carefully from his sources. [Benario, 87] Adding up these factors, this is a superb attestation to Jesus existence and crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.

Works Cited
Benario, Herbert, An Introduction to Tacitus, University of Georgia Press, 1975
Tacitus, Cornelius, Annals, The Roman Empire, 115 CE