Having looked at non-Christians sources that “should” have mentioned Jesus, R.G. Price shifts to those non-Christian sources that do mention Jesus. Price, in his Case Against Historical Jesus, makes the common Mythicist claim that the evidence we have is not authentic.
All of the non-Christian references to Jesus can be shown to have either been introduced later by Christian scribes or were originally based on Christian claims
Many Christian apologists will point to Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Josephus as important witnesses to the historical Jesus. Price is not convinced.
Before getting into the details, notice the emphasis in his subtitle. The first part is that they “have … been introduced later by Christian scribes.” In fact, that is only relevant to Josephus.
Three out of the four writers fall into the second category of “based on Christian claims.” However, the claims of Christian interpolation help rhetorically with the conspiracy theory nature of the Jesus Myth.
I’m of the mind that the Roman writers are not the strongest parts of our evidence for Jesus. They are helpful but they basically just tell us that by that time that there were Christians who believed in a Christ.
I do want to respond to his accusation that these are not helpful because they are “hearsay.” Why is this a problem? Is that not a part of what historians do, especially ancient historians? Most historians have not experienced all of the events that they are reporting on. The nature of the discipline is to find out what other people are saying.
What about Josephus? Price is correct that the possible interpretations of the Testamonium Flavianum are: 1) It is accurate the way it is, 2) Josephus wrote something but a Christian later added to it, and 3) Josephus never mentioned Jesus and a Christian completely added the passage.
Price argues for the third option. The truth is we cannot know for sure unless we find the original (or very early) manuscripts, which is unlikely. Our earliest manuscripts are from the 10th century.
I will say that by far the majority of scholars believe that Josephus wrote something about Jesus and that a Christian later added to it. I’m not talking about just evangelical scholars but skeptical scholars such as John Dominic Crossan and Bart Ehrman.
The truth is that if you begin with the assumption that Jesus never existed, then all evidence for his existence must be inauthentic. Unfortunately for Mythicists, that is not how you do history.
