What does Tacitus say about Jesus and the early Christians?
Tacitus’ Annals is best known for its account of the great A.D. 64 fire in Rome. Nero, looking for scapegoats, capitalized on the growing unpopularity of the Christians and their own expectation of a destruction of the world “by fire,” opening them to the charge of arson. He initiated a local and brief persecution that resulted in the murders of many Christians. Regarding the Christians, Tacitus wrote briefly, “For this purpose he punished, with exquisite torture, a race of men detested for their evil practices, by vulgar appellation commonly called Christians. The name was derived from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius, suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. By that event the sect, of which he was the founder, received a blow, which, for a time, checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigor, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome” (Annals 15:44).
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