Miracles must be dismissed from the domain of fact and relegated to the realm of fiction. A miracle, I repeat, is impossible. Above all this chief of miracles, The Christ, is impossible, and does not, and never did, exist.
CHAPTER II.
Silence of Contemporary Writers.
Another proof that the Christ of Christianity is a fabulous and not a historical character is the silence of the writers who lived during and immediately following the time he is said to have existed.
That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed—have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him.
The following is a list of writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time, that Christ is said to have lived and performed his wonderful works:
- Josephus,
- Philo-Judaeus,
- Seneca,
- Pliny the Elder,
- Arrian,
- Petronius,
- Dion Pruseus,
- Paterculus,
- Suetonius,
- Juvenal,
- Martial,
- Persius,
- Plutarch,
- Justus of Tiberius,
- Apollonius,
- Pliny the Younger,
- Tacitus,
- Quintilian,
- Lucanus,
- Epictetus,
- Silius Italicus,
- Statius,
- Ptolemy,
- Hermogones,
- Valerius Maximus,
- Appian,
- Theon of Smyrna,
- Phlegon,
- Pompon Mela,
- Quintius Curtius
- Lucian,
- Pausanias,
- Valerius Flaccus,
- Florus Lucius,
- Favorinus,
- Phaedrus,
- Damis,
- Aulus Gellius,
- Columella,
- Dio Chrysostom,
- Lysias,
- Appion of Alexandria.