historical trajectory

ok.  Suppose all of this is accurate:  Greco-Romans got hold of the LXX, read it as philosophy, transliterated the sentence "the moshiach will save" as the name of someone they should keep an eye out for.  Paul the Pharisee realized that he could teach those Greco-Romans how to make their praxis acceptable to participate in Judean Temple worship. 

Those are hyoptheses.

Simon Bar Cochba decided to lead a rebellion against Hadrian.  Akiva thought bar Cochba was the leader who would restore the sovereignty of the land of Israel, and gave him the name "son of a star" from Numbers, to indicate his belief that this would happen.  Bar Cochba did, indeed, briefly restored the sovereignty of the land of Israel.

This has been documented historically via coinage/archaeology.

Hadrian retaliated and nearly destroyed the Judean people, expelling the survivors from Jerusalem, and changing the names Jerusalem and Judea to Caesarea and Palestine, respectively.

This has been documented historically.

Judeans attempted to commemorate bar Cochba's revolt and incorporate it into the Judean historical canon, and wrote "gospels," attributing two of them to heros of the Maccabeen revolt, one to a leader of the Kitos revolt and the fourth to an uknown, possibly another leader of the Kitos revolt.

That is hypothesis.

Greco-Romans got hold of the "gospels" and decided they were biographies of the hero they had been following since before Paul decided to coach them in making their praxis acceptable to Judean Temple worship (which was now irrelevant since the Temple had been rededicated by Hadrian to Jupiter).

Assuming all that is accurate, how did Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius all write about Jesus before the gospels were written?  The fact that Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius wrote about him proves he existed, and proves all these hypotheses wrong.

Except it doesn't.


Josephus lived from 37-100 Ce (we think). There are approximately 120 extant Greek manuscripts, only 33 of which predate the 14th century. CE. The oldest of these manuscripts are Greek miniscules which were copied by Chritian monks.  There are no surviving extant manuscripts of his works that can be dated before the 11 century CE.  There are about 170 extant Latin translations of Josephus' works, some of which go back to the 6th century.  The fact that they are Latin translations does not mean they were uncorrupted and/or unaltered translations.

Tacitus lived from 56-130 (maybe) CE .  We don't know exactly when Tacitus was born, or where.  We don't know exactly when he died.  We don't know his first name.  It might have been Giaus.  It might have been Publius.  We don't know.

We know he was a Roman Senator and historian.  We know that in 112 or 113 he was appointed governor of the Roman province of Asia, in Anatolia (Turkey).  This means he was governor of the area where Paul coached Greco-Romans in how to make their praxis acceptable to Judean Temple worship.  This tells us that there is no reason to believe he did NOT know about the group of Greco-Romans who misunderstood Judean text, and who read a Hebrew sentence and understood it to be a hero's name. 

We do knot know when Tacitus died, but we do know it was roughly around the time of the bar Cochba revolt, which means that it is probable that he was alive to read or hear of the first of the "gospels" that were constructed to connect bar Cochba with the rest of the Judean historical canon.

Suetonius lived from 69-after 122 CE.  We don't know when he died.  We do know that he was Hadrian's secretary and Hadrian's wife's lover.  He was in place to have information about the bar Cocha revolt, and to hear about the "gospels" that were constructed to connect bar Cochba to the rest of the Judean historical canon.

It is possible that Josephus' "historical" writings were redacted to conform to the "official" Roman sources Tacitus and Suetonius, who were contemporaneous with the bar Cochba revolt and with the earliest "gospels" which recounted the "biography."

We know of Josephus' writings about Jesus from Origen and Eusebius, not from Tacitus or Suetonius.

Origen lived from 184/5-253/4 CE.  He came much later than Tacitus, Suetonius, bar Cochba and the "gospels." By the time Origen wrote, the "gospel" narratives were an acknowledged fact.  Origen was a Christian scholar and theologian who spent much of his adult life in Caesarea in Palestine, as it was called in his time.  In bar Cochba's day, it was called Jerusalem in Judea.  It is possible that Origen assumed Josephus knowledge of events based on the "historical facts" included in the "gospel" narratives, and redacted those facts into Josephus' text.  We do not have any extant texts of Josephus' works that date from the era in which Origen wrote.

Eusebius lived from 263-339 CE.  He was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine.  Eusebius wrote about Origen.  Eusebius is the first to make any reference to the part of Josephus' writings known as Testimonium Flavium--the section in which Josephus writes about the trial and execution of Jesus.  The section is notable because the style, both grammar and vocabulary, differ from the rest of Josephus' narrative.

It has been presumed that both Origen and Eusebius had access to the Greek versions of Josephus' texts.  However, since there are no extant copies, there is no way of verifying this.

It is known that Tacitus and Suetonius were contemporaneous with the bar Cochba revolt.