The so-called “silent historians problem” is the question of why REAL historians, who penned REAL accounts of histories of people, such as Seneca the Younger (4BC-65AD), Pliny the Elder (23-79AD), and Plutarch (46-120AD), inclusive of chapters on “resurrection and gods”, are noticeably SILENT on the existence of an historical figure named Jesus Christ, said to have famously existence in their own time?

	Historian		Discussion
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1.	Strabo (c.63BC-24AD)	23AD	Traveled all over the world to make his multi-volume Geography (23AD), in which he published one of the first accurate maps of the world, adjacent, yet is unaware of any "Jesus" of Nazareth (or "Syria" as shown on his map) as reported in the Gospels? “Is it not strange that the principal historians of the first century are silent as to Christians and their faith? Plutarch and Strabo, for instance, who lived and wrote soon after the alleged advent of Christ, are both silent upon the leading events recorded in the Gospels.” — Charles Watts (1896), “Christianity and History” (pg. 35), The Freethinker, 16:1, Jan 19
2.	Livy (59BC-17AD)		Noted Roman historian who makes NO mention (Ѻ) of the birth of any "age 12" (12AD) child prodigy named Jesus, who supposedly impressed all the temple priests with his vast learning.
2.	Ovid (43BC-c.17AD)		Pens a secular Greco-Roman version of "creation myth", narrated exactly as in Genesis, in his Metamorphosis, but is not aware of any baby Jesus.
3.	Seneca the elder (54BC-39AD)		Existed through the reigns of three significant emperors; Augustus (ruled: 27BC-14AD), Tiberius (ruled: 14-37AD), the one in charge when “Jesus” was purported to have been crucified, and Caligula (ruled: 37-41AD); author of an historical work, containing the history of Rome, from the beginning of the civil wars almost down to his own death, which was published by his son Seneca the Younger, who was tutor to emperor Nero (ruled: 54-68AD), whose portrait, of note, is carved on the walls of Dendera Temple worshiping the dying and rising god Osiris (not Jesus); neither him nor his son make mention of an dying and rising Jesus?
4.	Tiberius (42BC-37AD)		Roman emperor who completed Dendera Temple, the place where the "Osiris resurrection" is depicted, in full detail, which is from where the story of the "Jesus resurrection" derives; there is no extant work of his mentioning any "Jesus" dying and rising under his reign?
5.	Philo of Alexandria (20BC-50AD)		In 39AD, he led an embassy from the Jews to the court of Emperor Gaius Caligula; spent time in Jerusalem (On Providence) where he had intimate connections with the royal house of Judaea; he wrote extensive apologetics on the Jewish religion and commentaries on contemporary politics. About thirty manuscripts and at least 850,000 words are extant. He offers commentary on all the major characters of the Pentateuch and, as we might expect, mentions Moses more than a thousand times. Yet, he says NOT a word about Jesus, Christianity, nor any of the events described in the New Testament. In all this work,Philo makes not a single reference to his alleged contemporary "Jesus Christ", the godman who supposedly was perambulating up and down the Levant, exorcising demons, raising the dead and causing earthquake and darkness at his death. (Ѻ) (Ѻ)
	Invented Person? (0-33AD)		NOT a real person (see: Jesus never existed); is retrospect Roman recension 100-300AD invented rescript of the Egyptian god Osiris-Horus (see: Osiris rescripts), the then big "dying and rising god" of Rome (see: Nero worshiping him below).
6.	Seneca the Younger (4BC-65AD)		In c.55AD, penned a 600-page treatise on Morals (Ѻ), but mentions NOTHING of Jesus, the presumed-to-be most moral and righteous person of all, nor of Christians or Christianity? [3]
7.	Hero (c.10-70AD)		In 67AD, this so-called “da Vinci of his day”, made a trick 'water to wine' jug, using hidden compartments and syphons, that he used to fool onlookers into believing he had turned water into wine; in his vast writings, makes NO mention of any Jesus Christ; but his water-to-wine trick is later used in John 2:10 (c.150AD) of the New Testament as having been a miracle purported to have been performed by a fictional Jesus. (Ѻ) [3]
8.	Apollonius of Tyana (c.15-100AD)		Saintly first-century Neopythagorean philosopher, adventurer, and noble paladin; a magic-man of divine birth who cured the sick and blind, cleansed entire cities of plague, foretold the future, and fed the masses; was worshiped as a god and as a son of a god; despite such nonsense claims, he was a real man recorded by reliable sources; he makes no mention of Jesus; later real scholars posit, of note, that he was a model for the later fictional Jesus.
9.	Pliny the Elder (23-79AD)	77AD	In 77AD, penned his Natural History of the World, a 10-volume, 37-book, all-knowledge comprising treatise, wherein he attempts to cover all subjects connected to nature; including: not only “resurrection and gods”, but also astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture, pharmacology, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, painting, and precious stones, among other subjects, but does NOT mention Jesus Christ, the supposed to have existed most famous resurrected god son of all. [3]
10.	Nero (37-68AD)	68AD	Depicted at Dendera Temple (adjacent), on the interior eastern wall of the outer hypostyle hall, completed c.54 to 68AD, placating the gods Osiris and Isis, in the presence of child god Ihy, son of Hathor and Horus; the parents of Horus; the synretism god Osiris-Horus is what later become reformulated into the "Christ" figure. The noted secretary of Nero was Greek-Roman philosopher Epictetus (c.50-135AD), who was born in the Jewish-predominate (Ѻ) town of Hierapolis. The recorded words of both Nero and Epictetus are “silent” about the existence of a famously-said to exist man named “Jesus”, both resurrecting people (e.g. Raising of Lazarus) and himself having been resurrected, after having been crucified by the Romans. This is an example of the so-dubbed silent historians problem: if Jesus Christ existed, why are real historical figures, such as Nero or his secretary Epictetus, silent about him?
			↓↑ Purported Non-Biblical Mentions by Actual Historians Begins ↓↑
11.	Josephus (c.37-100AD)	94AD	In 94AD, is purported to have said the following about a was man named Jesus: (Ѻ) [3] “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.” — Josephus (94AD), The Antiquities of the Jews (§3.3) (Ѻ) This passage, however, as William Smith, in his The Silence of Josephus and Tacitus (1910), points out, was “unknown to” Origen (c.230AD), who had copies of Josephus, and also unknown to earlier writers, such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, which points to the conclusion that this was “interpolated in” by a later post-Origen Christian hand; it is invented history, so to say. [7]
12.	Plutarch (c.46-120)		In 110AD, penned his Moralia, a 78-essay collection (15 volumes in English) of topics related to “morals” or “matters relating to customs and mores”, wherein he discusses all of the various dying and rising gods and god suns, in the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian world, e.g. Osiris, Dionysus, Horus, etc., but makes NO mention of Jesus Christ. [3]
13.	Epictetus (50-125AD)		Epicetetus, a noted intellectual influence to Origen and Godfrey Higgins, who was a secretary to Nero, from circa 54 to 68AD, is someone who should have known the famed "Jesus", if he had existed, but did not. The main resurrected god of Nero, such as famously depicted at the Dendera Temple (c.68AD), however, was Osiris (not Jesus), on the walls of which Nero is seen placating Osiris and Isis, in the presence of child god Ihy, son of Hathor and Horus. [2] Epictetus doesn’t write about any Jesus Christ or any Jesus or Nazareth; latter commentators, e.g. Elizabeth Carter in her “The Moral Discourses of Epictetus” (1910), argue that much of what we now call the moral philosophy of Jesus was stylize on that of Epictetus; Thomas Jefferson also puts the teaching of Epictetus in the same category of Jesus (who Jefferson thinks was real).
14.	Tacitus (58-120AD)	c.110AD	In 110AD, in his Annals, in reference to the Great Fire of Rome (66AD) (Ѻ), refers to the punishment of "Christians" by Nero and the execution of their founder "Christus" by Pontius Pilate: “But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the Conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.” — Tacitus (c.110AD), Annals (15:44) (Ѻ)(Ѻ)
15.	Pliny the Younger (61-113AD)	c.110AD	In c.110AD, in a letter to Trajan (ruled: 98 to 117AD), comments (Ѻ), supposedly, on what to do about the growing numbers of “Christians”; wherein he reports that some have confessed to him, under the threat of torture and death, that they had been Christians for 25 years, meaning a sect of Jewish-derived "Christians" had existed since 87AD: “It is my practice, my lord, to refer to you all matters concerning which I am in doubt. For who can better give guidance to my hesitation or inform my ignorance? I have never participated in trials of Christians. I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no difference between the very young and the more mature; whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a Christian, it does him no good to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated with the name are to be punished. Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome. Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ—none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do—these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years [c.85AD]. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ. They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition. I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it. It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few purchasers could be found. Hence it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is afforded. — Pliny the Younger (c.112AD), “Letter to Emperor Trajan” (Ѻ), in: Letters 10.96-97 Here, as we see, by this period there were certainly Christian "preachers" and "deaconesses" getting people to sing songs to a "Christ" as god figure. The emperor responded as follows: “You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it--that is, by worshiping our gods--even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.” — Trajan (c.110AD), “Reply Letter to Pliny” Here, as we see, there seems to have been a growing sect of Christians in Roman province.
16.	Suetonius (69-122AD)	c.110AD	In his Life of Nero (c.110AD), he mentions “Christians” as having been involved in a “new and mischievous superstition”. In c.113AD, in his Life of Claudius, says the following, with original Latin shown: “Those Judeans [Iudaeos] impelled by Chrestos [Chresto] to assiduously cause tumult, Claudius expelled out of Rome.” Dorothy Murdock (2007) that these mentions of Chrestos and Christians is not at all clear, in respect to the Biblical “Paul” figure, who is not mentioned by Suetonius.
	Hadrian (76-138AD)	c.128AD	In c.128, as emperor of Rome, reign: 117-138AD, while touring Egypt, he noted Christians were Serapis worshipers; specifically, in a letter (Ѻ) to his brother-in-law Servianus (Ѻ)(Ѻ), he comments on his visit to Alexandria, as follows: “I am now become fully acquainted with that Egypt which you extol so highly. I have found the people vain, fickle, and shifting with every breath of opinion. Those who worship Serapis are in fact Christians; and they who call themselves Christian bishops are actually worshipers of Serapis. There is no chief of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian bishop, who is not an astrologer, a fortune teller and a conjuror. The patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is compelled by one party to worship Serapis, by the other, Christ. It is a rebellious, good-for-nothing, slanderous people. The city is rich in treasures and resources. No one sits idle. There are workers here in glass, there in paper, and there in linen. All these busy men seem to carry on some trade. Even those who are tormented by gout and sciatica find something to do. They have but one God (alluding to their idolatry of lucre)—him Christians, Jews, and Gentiles worship all alike. It is lamentable that this city has a bad character, for its size and importance make it worthy to be the capital of Egypt. I have given these people everything they asked for. I have confirmed all their ancient privileges, and added new, which they could not help acknowledging in my presence. But no sooner had I turned my back than they lavished every kind of insult on my son Verus and my friend Antinous. I wish them no worse than that they should feed on their own chickens, and how foully they hatch them I am ashamed to say. I sent you three colored cups, which the priest of the temple consecrated for me, as special votive offerings for you and my sister. You may drink from them n feast days, but see that our African friend does not use them too much.” Hadrian, however, never mentions any Jesus. (Ѻ)(Ѻ)
17.	Basilides (c.80-145AD)	138AD	In 138AD, published Exegetica, a two-dozen volume treatise, supposedly, on the Christian gospels; in his “Acts of John” (5th century Armenian edition), produced by his followers, the Basilidians, Christ is described (Ѻ) as follows: “Christ appeared, to his followers, in many different guises, NOT especially a human one.” This account of things, together with the above accounts, e.g. emperor Nero depicted (68AD) as the divine son of Osiris and Isis, Josephus (94AD) speaking about a “wise man named Jesus, if it be lawful to call him a man, who was the Christ”, and Pliny the Younger (c.110AD) reporting that a new rebellion sect was flourishing that no longer wanted to worship the “emperor as Christ” along with the roman gods, but only this newly reformed “Christ as god” in semi-human form, would seem to indicate that a group of rebellion theologians had recast Horus, grafted with attributes of his father Osiris, renamed in Hebrew as Jesus or “god Horus” (e.g. Joseph = god Geb, in decoded Hebrew); the “not especially human guise” meaning many followers, at that time, viewed this new Jesus/Horus as half man half hawk, in the ancient Egyptian artistic visual sense of things (similar to how in c.800BC, Greek theologians rescripted the animal-human form Egyptian pantheon into a human-form Greek pantheon; both of which being reduced further in the Judeo-Christian pantheon). The works of Basilides, later deemed heretical, were all burned during the 400 to 800AD pagan purge (all heterodox or heretic Christian gospels where purged in this period).
	Ptolemaeus (c.100-155AD)	150AD	Believed Christ or Jesus to be an "animal man" or to have an "animal body" (Hippolytus, 225AD)
18.	Peregrinus (c.95-165AD)	165AD	Was a Greek cynic philosopher, cited by Baron d'Holbach (1770), who, according to Lucian, who attended his suicide by immolation (165AD), “became a Christian so that he could gain wealth”. (Ѻ)
19.	Marcus Aurelius (121-180)	175AD	In his Thoughts (c.175AD), he discusses (Ѻ) how he thinks that “gods” and the “soul” exists, based on the “experience” of their power, but does not mention and god-man named Jesus; was later purported by Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History (300AD), that there was an alleged persecution (Ѻ) of a “Christian” at Lyon in Gaul (177AD) during his reign; this purported persecution, however, is debatable (Ѻ), e.g. it is not mentioned in Irenaeus 5-volume Adversus Haereses (180AD), and it is out his Stoic character. [3]
	Heracleon (c.130-c.180AD)	c.175AD	Believed Christ or Jesus to be an "animal man" or to have an "animal body" (Hippolytus, 225AD)
20.	Apuleius (c.124-170AD)		Roman-ruled Numidian Latin author (Ѻ), in his Metamorphosis (aka The Golden Ass), described how the Egyptian parade ceremonies, with Osiris, Isis, and Anubis, were performed in Rome publicly; is cited, along with Homer, Aesop, and Apollonius, as authors upon which later Jesus stories were possibly based (Ѻ); cited (pg. 266) by Budge, Volume Two (1904).
21.	Lucian (c.120-190AD)	c.170AD	In c.170AD, in his Passing of Peregrinus, gave one of the first secular, i.e. real person, accounts of the existence of Christians as a distinct actual faith common to a group of people who considered each other brothers; the gist of which is as follows: [8] “The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. … You see, these misguided [deluded] creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property.” Lucian goes on to say that “anyone who knows the world can get rich tricking these simple souls.” [9]
22.	Celsus (c.125-185AD)	c.175AD	His Reason of Truth: The True Word (Λόγος Ἀληθής, Logos Alēthēs), various translated as The True Word (Ѻ) or The True Doctrine (Hoffmann, 1987), attempted to refute the validity of the newly forming sect of Christianity; “You may see weavers, tailors, fullers, and the most illiterate and rustic fellows, who dare not speak a word before wise men, when they can get a company of children and silly women together, set up to teach strange paradoxes among them. This is one of their [Christian] rules: Let no man that is learned, wise, or prudent come among us: but if they be unlearned, or a child, or an idiot, let him freely come. So they openly declare that none but the ignorant, and those devoid of understanding, slaves, women, and children, are fit disciples for the god they worship.” — Celsus (c.175AD), The True Word; cited by DeRobigne Bennett (1876) in The World’s Leading Sages (1876) this work was refuted, in an apologetic manner, by Origen (c.230AD).
23.	Hippolytus (170-235 ACM)	c.225	His Refutation of All Heresies, summarized all the then prevalent non-orthodox Christian views; one of which was the following: “The body of Jesus was an animal one. On account of this, at his baptism the holy spirit as a dove came down – that is, the logos of the mother above, i.e. Sophia – and became a voice to the animal man, and raised him from the dead.” — Hippolytus (c.225), Refutation of All Heresies (§6.30) (pg. 237); summary of the views of the Italians Heracleon (c.175AD) and Ptolemaeus (add)
24.	Plotinus (205-270)		[3]
25.	Arius (256-336)		Held heterodox Egyptian mythology like views on the "trinity" model.

“Osiris, who the Greeks conclude to have been the same person with their Dionysus [Greek] or Bacchus [Roman], was accompanied, after his death, without his phallus, by Isis [Stella Maris], and in consequence hereof to have brought froth Harpocrates [Horus].”

“Several learned men have testified their surprise at not finding in the historian, Flavius Josephus, any mention of Jesus Christ; for all men of true learning are now agreed that the short passage relative to him in that history has been interpolated. The father of Flavius Josephus must, however, have been witness to all the miracles of Jesus. Josephus was of the sacerdotal race and akin to Herod’s wife, Mariamne. He gives us long details of all that prince’s actions, yet says not a word of the life or death of Jesus; nor does this historian, who disguises none of Herod’s cruelties, say one word of the general massacre of the infants ordered by him on hearing that there was born a king of the Jews. The Greek calendar estimates the number of children murdered on this occasion at fourteen thousand. This is, of all actions of all tyrants, the most horrible. There is no example of it in the history of the whole world. Yet the best writer the Jews have ever had, the only one esteemed by the Greeks and Romans, makes no mention of an event so singular and so frightful. He says nothing of the appearance of a new star in the east after the birth of our Savior — a brilliant phenomenon, which could not escape the knowledge of a historian so enlightened as Josephus. He is also silent respecting the darkness which, on our Savior’s death, covered the whole earth for three hours at midday — the great number of graves that opened at that moment, and the multitude of the just that rose again.”

Apollonius, Appian, Arrian, Aulus Gellius, Columella, Damis, Dio Chrysostom, Dion Pruseus, Epictetus, Favorinus Ptolemy, Flavius Josephus, Florus Lucius, Hermogones, Josephus Seneca, Justus of Tiberius, Juvenal, Lucanus, Lucian Tacitus, Lysias Theon of Smyran, Martial Valerius Flaccus, Paterculus, Persius, Petronius, Phaedrus, Philo-Judaeus, Phlegon, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Pompon Mela, Quintilian, Quintius Curtius, Silius Italicus, Statius, Suetonius, and Valerius Maximus

Left: a depiction of “Horus” at Dendera Temple, completed by order of Roman Emperor Tiberius [reign:14-37AD]; with added depictions of emperor Nero [reign: 54-68AD]. Right: a depiction of “Jesus” at Saint Catherine’s Monastery, built by order of Roman Emperor Justinian I (reigned: 527-565). The gist of the silent historian's problem: prior to 200AD, no one spoke or wrote about anyone named "Jesus", but they did write about the god Horus; whereas, in the years to follow, scholars began to write more about a man named "Jesus", and less and less about a god named Horus, son of Osiris.

“No sculptures, no drawings, no markings in stone, nothing written in his [Jesus] own hand; and no letters, no commentaries, indeed no authentic documents written by his Jewish and Gentile contemporaries, Justice of Tiberius, Philo, Josephus, Seneca, Petronius Arbiter, Pliny the Elder, et al., to lend credence to his historicity.”

— Nicholas Carter (1993), The Christ Myth (Ѻ)

“Claims of Mary’s authenticity would never stand up in a court of law because, apart from what is written in the Bible, there is little evidence of the existence of either Mary or Jesus Christ. Historians such as Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, who are near-contemporaries of Mary and Jesus, are largely silent on the subject.”

— Michael Jordan (2001), The Historical Mary (xv)

“In the entire Christian century [0-100AD], Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religious scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!”

— Bart Ehrman (c.2012)

“History, Joseph Campbell argued, is completely silent on Jesus Christ. The only sources on Jesus are the Pauline Epistles and the Four Gospels of the New Testament. Having eliminated them as having no historical or evidential value, all that remained were alleged references to Jesus by Jewish and pagan writers, upon whom "religious apologists" rely to make their case for the historical Jesus. They are from the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, and from the three Roman writers Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius. None, he argued, could withstand critical testing.”

— Bryan Beau (2005), The Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair (pg. 213)

“Perhaps none of these [‘silent’] writers is more fascinating than Apollonius of Tyana [c.15-100AD] (Ѻ), saintly first-century adventurer and noble paladin. Apollonius was a magic-man of divine birth who cured the sick and blind, cleansed entire cities of plague, foretold the future, and fed the masses. He was worshiped as a god and as a son of a god. Despite such nonsense claims, Apollonius was a real man recorded by reliable sources.”

— Michael Paulkovich (2013), “The Fable of the Christ”