Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [32]
The fact is, that with the exception of this one incongruous forged passage, section 3, the wonder-mongering Josephus makes not the slightest mention of his wonder-working fellow-countryman, Jesus the Christ-though some score of other Joshuas, or Jesuses, are recorded by him, nor does he mention any of his transcendent wonders.... The first mention ever made of this passage, and its text, are in the Church History of that "very dishonest writer," Bishop Eusebius, in the fourth century... CE [Catholic Encyclopedia] admits ... the above cited passage was not known to Origen and the earlier patristic writers.5
Wheless, a lawyer, and Taylor, a minister, agree with many others, including Christian apologists such as Dr. Lardner, that it was Eusebius himself who forged the passage in Josephus. In any case, the Josephus passages are fraudulent, leaving his sizable works devoid of the story of Jesus Christ. Of this absence, Waite asks:
... Why has Josephus made no mention of Jesus, called Christ? ... It is true that Josephus was not contemporary with Jesus if the latter was crucified at the time commonly supposed. But during the administration of Josephus in Galilee, the country must have been full of traditions of the crucified Galilean. But a single generation had passed, and the fame of Jesus being now spread abroad in other lands, could it have been any less in Galilee? Paul was contemporary with Josephus, and in his travels, if the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles can be at all relied upon, he must, more than once, have crossed the track of the Jewish priest and magistrate.6
Thus, Josephus is silent on the subject of Christ and Christianity.
Pliny the Younger (@ 62-113 CE)
One of the pitifully few "references" held up by Christians as evidence of Jesus's existence is the letter to Trajan supposedly written by the Roman historian Pliny the Younger. However, in this letter there is but one word that is applicable, "Christians," and that has been demonstrated to be spurious, as is also suspected of the entire "document." It has been suggested on the basis of Pliny's reportage of the Essenes that, if the letter is genuine, the original word was "Essenes," which was later changed to "Christians" in one of the many "revisions" of the works of ancient authorities by Christian forgers.
Tacitus (@ 55-120 CE)
Like Pliny, the historian Tacitus did not live during the purported time of Jesus but was born two decades after "the Savior's" alleged death; thus, if there were any passages in his work referring to Christ or his immediate followers, they would be secondhand and long after the alleged events. This fact matters not, however, because the purported passage in Tacitus regarding Christians being persecuted under Nero is also an interpolation and forgery, as noted. Zealous defender of the faith Eusebius never mentions the Tacitus passage, nor does anyone else prior to the 1511, century CE. As Taylor says:
This passage, which would have served the purposes of Christian quotation better than any other in all the writings of Tacitus, or of any Pagan writer whatever, is not quoted by any of the Christian fathers. . . . It is not quoted by Tertullian, though he had read and largely quotes the works of Tacitus.... There is no vestige or trace of its existence anywhere in the world before the 15th century.?
Suetonius (@ 69-140 CE)
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