GaryP

A poster on another site laid this bombshell on me;

A census taker in ancient Rome recorded him as existing and being a noted healer. I find that encouraging to dispelling the argument that he never existed or performed miracles.

Has anybody here ever heard of this?

VoxRat

color me "skeptical"

Huon

What are the sources of the "poster on another site" ?

GaryP

She said that she could not remember but that it wasn't a religious type of source.. she referred to it as an "historical" source.. She said she would try to find it and get back to me..

I googled and could find nothing but the usual nativity census issue

Gooch's dad

Gary, I've heard fundamentalists make this claim before too. It's always "something I read once", but is more likely "something my pastor told me" and they're just too gullible to doubt it.

There is no such historical record. AFAIK, we have no census at all from Judea from the first century. If there were such records, they were long ago lost to history.

Amaleq13

It is simply false. No such record has been discovered.

DCHindley

The closest to this kind of thing I can think of is Tertullian (ca 180-200 CE), who asserts (without citing his authority) that proof of Jesus' *execution* could be found in the official "Acta" (official recordings of procedings) of Pilate. He (T) apparently assumed it must have existed (and if it was a historical event, surely did exist), and spoke as if it could be found by anyone who wished to research them, which is questionable on account of time evolved from the event. Like everywhere, official records are kept only so long, and less important stuff like legal proceedings of a Prefect in Judea gets pitched a lot sooner than the official edicts of the emperors. The fact is, if it was possible to do, no Christian ever did so.

In later times, one of the co-emperors with Constantine did publish what he claimed were the official Acta of Pilate, placing Jesus' trial and execution in the 20's CE, although few today take them seriously - rightly or wrongly.

BTW, I believe that fragments of actual census reports from Egypt around the 1st and 2nd century CE do exist, but nothing for any other region has survived. Egypt was the personal possession of he emperor, and was governed a little differently from other provinces, even imperial ones. The censuses there were apparently conducted every 14 years, but it is belived that the regularity of them elsewhere was more hit and miss, or may have used different periods based on the age that children had to reach to be subject to tribute tax, and thus counted in a census.

DCH

purple_kathryn

I know my friend has asserted that there are records of a Jesus at that time so I think this one of those common assumptions among xians

Wolfie

Back in the days when I was a Christian - but starting to have doubts - when asking the obvious question on the historical records of Jesus's existence - I was told that there was "historical evidence of Jesus's birth and his life after age 29".

I was never actually told where this evidence was to be found - I suspect that the root 'evidence' was the Babble.

-Jay-

Let's allow for a moment that there was a census in ancient Rome that recorded a Jesus and listed him as a healer. Jesus wasn't a unique name, so this claim is fairly mundane - it's about as exciting as a census containing a doctor named Bob.

Even if true, the claim doesn't contain enough specificity to be interesting, let alone to be proof of the historicity of the Biblical Jesus.

regards,

NinJay