ANCIENT AUTHORS ON THE
DEATH OF JESUS

Though this is not a book of apologetics—a defense of the Bible’s historical accuracy and message—it is a book written in the confidence that the crucifixion of Jesus actually occurred. The four gospels provide sufficient evidence of this, but they do not stand alone. Non-Christian writers from near the time of Jesus also mentioned his crucifixion and it is helpful to know what they said. Their words not only give us a window into the Roman world, the world of the Christian Church’s birth, but they also remind us how much biblical truth rests upon biblical claims about history.

It is also helpful to have confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus from writers who were hostile to Christianity. If critics of the faith dismiss those early writers who were sympathetic to Christianity—because they might have distorted facts or been gullible to myth in their eagerness to serve a cause—they cannot dismiss those hostile to Christianity as easily. Enemies of the faith had nothing to gain when they mentioned the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical fact. They were usually stating facts accepted as true in their time and stating these facts by way of prosecuting the early Christians. Their confirmation—that there was a Jesus, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, that a movement in Jesus’ name arose after his death—is valuable and ought to be regarded as weighty evidence by both Christians and non-Christians alike.

The following, then, are the five earliest and most attested references to the crucifixion of Jesus by non-Christian writers. There are many other early references to Jesus in writings from the period represented below, but these have been chosen because they specifically refer to the crucifixion of Jesus.

1. Josephus – Jewish-Roman Historian

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

–Testimonium Flavianum, Antiquities 18.3.3 (94 AD)

2. Cornelius Tacitus – Roman Historian

“But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Therefore, to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.”

–Annals 15.44, Loeb Edition (116 AD)

3. Lucian of Samasota – Satirist

“The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day— the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account . . . You see, these misguided creatures . . . worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws.”

–The Death of Peregrine, 11–13 (170 AD)

4. Mara Bar-Serapion – Philosopher

“What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good; He lived on in the teaching which He had given.”

–British Museum Syriac MS. Addition 14,658
(just after 70 AD)

5. The Talmud