If one seeks Jesus, one has to understand what was going on before the said arrival of this man who was the 'Supposed' last of the Davidic line. One also has to realise the history of the Jews and the goddess they worshiped, long before the Edomite, Herod, was given the right to govern Judea by the Roman Empire.
Here are a few hints for you...
It is a fact the Jews, before Christianity came, worshipped a Female deity called 'Mary'.
This earth goddess had temples which were guarded by female priests, called 'Vestal Virgings'... Getting my drift?
Joseph was the leader of the 'Macabi' tribe, one of the twelve tribes of Israel; in fact the chief tribe. 'Macabi', translated from the Greek, means 'Bradawl', a carpenters tool. In fact the twelve tribes of Israel are all named after a carpenter's tool...And guess who was a Carpenter!
It has also to be remembered that 'Christus', from the Greek again, means...'Simple folk' those who used the sign of the 'Fish', the Pisces symbol.

In the Jewish religion, the Mother takes precedence... I should know; my Father was Jewish, my mother Scots/Irish...If my mother had been Jewish, then I, too, would have been Jewish!... It has to be understood that, at the times of the Romans, religion was undergoing change, from a Matriarchal society to a Patriarchal society. There was a need for a Male God...So 'The Virgin Mary' gave birth to a boy, the 'New Son' of a male diety, Jehovah...

i may be mistaken here but didn't Pontius pilate himself provide a written account about JC, even as far giving a physical description of him!

there are also reports from Josephus, Pliny, and various others.

even the Talmud makes mention of JC, but not in a positive light!

Why does everyone need proof to believe that God's son walked the earth. He came and suffered for you so you can question him. Question and doubt is work of the devil.

If you can name ONE contemporaneous historian... one... I would be amazed

Why does everyone need proof to believe that God's son walked the earth. He came and suffered for you so you can question him. Question and doubt is work of the devil.

BTW ...Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) was almost an exact contemporary of Julius Caesar as a result probably didn't write much about Jesus...at least without a ouija board...unless it was Zombie Cicero!

I'm just curious fiddler. I know my own passion. I am an educated,sober, father of one and I can asure you that not long ago I had as much reason to doubt as anyone, and Jesus chose to stop me shortly after I had been casting doubt toward someone, my own family even, and made me aware as I am now of the truth. That's the basics of it for me. But what could be yours? Even as I doubted I revered those who had faith, the same way I encouraged my son to believe in Santa when he was younger, because that sort of belief fosters a beautiful, more selfless and imaginative mind. What fuels you to speak out so vehimently against those of us who have chosen to believe?

I do not doubt that Yeshua lived in Nazareth and became an awesome symbol of hope.

Question and doubt is work of the devil.

"To dispel the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and treated with the most extreme punishments, some people, popularly known as Christians, whose disgraceful activities were notorious. The originator of that name, Christus, had been executed when Tiberius was Emperor, by order of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. But the deadly cult, though checked for a time, was now breaking out again not only in Judea, the birthplace of this evil, but even throughout Rome, where all the nasty and disgusting ideas from all over the world pour in and find a ready following."

Caius Suetonius (c.69–140 AD)
Nowhere in any of Suetonius's writings does he mention 'Jesus of Nazareth.'

Suetonius did write a biography called Twelve Caesars around the year 112 AD and of Emperor Claudius he says:

'As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.'
Jesus in Rome in 54 AD? Of course not. But the unwary can be misled by this reference.

'Chrestus' does not equate to 'Christ' in English but to 'The Good' in Greek, It was a name used by both slaves and freemen and is attested more than eighty times in Latin inscriptions. Clearly, Suetonius was explaining why the Jews (not Christians) were expelled from Rome and is referring to a Jewish agitator in the 50s – not to a Galilean pacifist of the 30s.


It is also said that Suetonius, in his Life of Nero, described Nero's persecution of the Christians:

'Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief ...' (16.2)

We have moved from 'rebellious Jews' to 'mischievous Christians'.



BUT WAIT A MINUTE:
Christians in Rome during the reign of Nero (54-68 AD) ?

Would (could) Nero have made such a fine sectarian distinction – particularly since there was no identifying faith document (not a single gospel had been written) – so just what would 'Christians' have believed? Even St Paul himself makes not a single reference to 'Christians' in any of his writings.


The idea that a nascent ‘Christianity’ immediately faced persecution from a cruel and bloodthirsty pagan Rome is an utter nonsense. For one thing, it is only in the last third of the 1st century AD, that Christ-followers emerged as a separate faction from mainstream Judaism. Until then they remained protected under Roman law as Jews. The irritation they caused to their more orthodox brethren meant nothing to the pagan magistrates. Says Gibbon:


‘The innocence of the first Christians was protected by ignorance and contempt; and the tribunal of the Pagan magistrate often proved the most assured refuge against the fury of the synagogue.’

Early Christ-followers called themselves 'saints', 'brethren', 'Brothers of the Lord' and their critics used various names: Nazoreans, Ebionites, 'God fearers', atheists. The Jewish association remained strong throughout the first century and when Christian sects got going in Rome in the second century they were identified by their rival leaders – Valentinians, Basilidians, Marcionites, etc.

So little were christ-worshippers known in the Roman world that as late as the 90s Dio Cassio refers to 'atheists' and 'those adopting Jewish manners'. Christians as a distinct group from the Jews appear only late in the 1st century, not long before the Jewish curse on heretics at the council of Jamnia (around 85 AD). The label 'Christian' itself only appears with the 2nd century Acts – with the story that the term 'began in Antioch' (11.26).

Equally odd, is that Suetonius's isolated sentence appears in a section on Nero's 'good points.'

It should also be noted that Suetonius does not associate punishment of the Christians with the fire that swept Rome, a crucial part of the later myth.

Quite simply, the reference is a Christian forgery, added to Suetonius to backup the work of the 5th century forger Sulpicius Severus, who heavily doctored the work of another Roman historian – Tacitus – with a lurid tale of brutal persecution ('torched Christian martyrs') which immortalized Nero as the first Antichrist in the eyes of the Christian church. (The second Antichrist being the reformist Luther.)





Cornelius Tacitus (c.55-117 AD)
Christianity has no part in Tacitus's history of the Caesars. Except for one questionable reference in the Annals he records nothing of a cult marginal even in his own day.

Sometime before 117 AD, the Roman historian apparently wrote:

"Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians. Their founder, one Christus, had been put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race."

(Book 15, chapter 44):
Yet Cassius Dio gives a more convincing report of the same "expulsion":

"As for the Jews, who had again increased so greatly that by reason of their multitude it would have been hard without raising a tumult to bar them from the city, he did not drive them out, but ordered them, while continuing their traditional mode of life, not to hold meetings." – Roman History, 60.6.


As we have seen, the term 'Christian' was not in use during the reign of Nero and there would not have been 'a great crowd' unless we are speaking of Jews, not Christians. 'Jewish/Christians' – being perceived by Roman authorities (and the populace at large) simply as Jews meant that early Christ-followers also got caught up in general attacks upon the Jews.


‘Their effects to dissemble their Jewish origins were detected by the decisive test of circumcision; nor were the Roman magistrates at leisure to enquire into the difference of their religious tenets.’

– Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall)
One consequence of the fire which destroyed much of Rome in 64 AD was a capitation tax levied on the Jews and it was the Jews – throughout the empire – who were required to pay for the city’s rebuilding – a factor which helped to radicalise many Jews in the late 60s AD.

Not for the first time would Christian scribes expropriated the real suffering of a whole people to create an heroic 'origins' fable...

No Christian apologist for centuries ever quoted the passage of Tacitus – not in fact, until it had appeared almost word-for-word in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, in the early fifth century, where it is mixed in with other myths. Sulpicius's contemporaries credited him with a skill in the 'antique' hand. He put it to good use and fantasy was his forte: his Life of St. Martin is replete with numerous 'miracles', including raising of the dead and personal appearances by Jesus and Satan.

His dastardly story of Nero was embellished during the Renaissance into a fantastic fable with Nero 'fiddling while Rome burned'. Nero took advantage of the destruction to build his 'Golden House' though no serious scholar believes anymore that he started the fire (we now know Nero was in his hometown of Antium – Anzio – when the blaze started.) Indeed, Nero opened his palace garden for temporary shelter to those made homeless.

In short, the passage in Tacitus is a fraud and adds no evidence for a historic Jesus.

The author of the book and the website "Jesus Never Existed" deals with this issue very succinctly.