Were there historians alive at the time of Jesus? If so did they talk about him

by kennyc5576
Double_Cookie

First of all, we need to be careful with the term 'historian' here. Most (if not all) historians - or people who were called historians - during that time, would not qualify as historians in the modern sense. They often lack objectivity when dealing with their material, and generally don't list sources for their claims, so it is almost always impossible to validate them (even if they cite a source, the chances that we, today, still have access to that source material is quite slim).

That being said, the first time that Jesus was mentioned outside a religious text would be from Flavius Josephus, a Romano-Jewish historian who lived in the 1st century AD, in his work "Antiquities of the Jews" (around 93-94 AD). He mentions Jesus twice, with one the references being rejected by modern historians as it outright calls Jesus "the Christ" (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, chapter 3.) Most modern historians agree that this passage of the text has been changed by Christian authors.

The second mention of Jesus in Josephus' Texts is not considered suspicious. It mentions the Apostle James as the brother of "Jesus who was called Christ" (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, chapter 9.)

The next mention from another source comes around 116AD in the "Annals" by Tacitus. He talks about the persecution of the Christians under Neros reign and mentions that "Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus" (Annals, Book 15, chapter 44.)

That brings us around to the answer to your original question: We have no mentions from 'historians' from the time that Jesus was alleged to have lived, only from several decades later. And even those sources are usually not considered all that reliable. Furthermore, it is of course possible that there were in fact 'historians' who wrote about Jesus at the time he was supposed to have lived, but that their writings simply have not survived until today.