Tacitus
Annals 15.44 · about AD 116
A Roman historian, hostile to Christians, writes that Christus was executed under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and that the movement spread from Judea to Rome.
A King James reading
The Record of Jesus
A human look at his life, the King James text beside it, and the prophecy that this same Jesus will come again.
Who he was
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of the first century. The Gospels place his birth in the days of Herod, raised in Galilee, and his crucifixion outside Jerusalem under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, while Tiberius was emperor.
That public death, and a movement that did not stop, is what the outside notices also say. They are not biographies. The life itself is in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This site reads them in the King James Version, and it keeps four things apart so they are not blurred: the human scene, the verse, the outside notice, and the conclusion the text draws.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
How to read a page
- The life
- What a person could have seen. Roads, meals, fear, a public death.
- King James Version
- Quoted, not paraphrased, with a link to the passage.
- Outside the Gospels
- What a Roman or Jewish writer actually says, and where scholars still argue.
- What the text concludes
- The claim the KJV itself makes about who he is, and that he will come again.
A short chronology
The years are the usual historical ranges, not a precision the Gospels claim. The crucifixion is argued as AD 30 or AD 33. This site says so, and then returns to the text.
About 6 to 4 BC
Born at Bethlehem in the days of Herod. Laid in a manger.
Early: BethlehemChildhood
Egypt, then Nazareth. At twelve, found in the temple.
Early: the templeAbout AD 27 to 29
Baptized by John. Luke says about thirty years of age.
Early: the riverThe public years
Galilee, Samaria, Judea. Teaching, meals, the sick, the lost.
The public yearsAD 30 or 33
Crucified under Pontius Pilate. The Gospels say he rose.
The cross and the tombUntil he comes
This same Jesus, promised again. No date is given.
The Return
The four parts
Early
Before the crowds
A borrowed room, a flight, a carpenter’s town, and a river.
Middle
On the road
Tired on the road. Plain about love. Turned toward the sick and the lost.
End
The garden, the cross, the tomb
A night garden, a Roman cross, and a tomb the Gospels say did not hold him.
The Return
This same Jesus
This same Jesus, coming as he left. No hour is given. The book still says, Come.
Outside the Gospels
Three early writers who are not telling a Christian story. Read them in full. The long Josephus paragraph about Jesus is the one most historians think a later hand enlarged.
Josephus
Antiquities 18 and 20 · about AD 93–94
A Jewish historian mentions Jesus twice. The long paragraph in book 18 has very likely been expanded by a later Christian hand. The short notice, that James was the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, is widely accepted as Josephus’s own.
Pliny
Letters 10.96 · about AD 112
A Roman governor tells Trajan that Christians meet before dawn and sing a hymn to Christ as to a god. He is describing the church, not writing a life. He shows what the earliest followers were already saying.