Neither are contemporaries. Josephus was born at least four years after Jesus was already dead. The Testimonium Flavium is widely regarded as being at least partially an interpolation. Our oldest copy of Josephus' works is from the 11th century.
Tacitus was born in 56 CE. He reports about the existence of Christians, not about Jesus himself. And again, we cannot get any further back than an 11th century scribal copy.
Now the question again is, is it important? After all, we have equally poor evidence that Socrates existed. But the difference with Socrates is that it doesn't matter at all whether he was real man or a figment of Plato's imagination. It is his ideas that have survived the ages, and it makes no difference who said them first. If Jesus did not actually exist, however, it doesn't matter whether his ideas were good or bad (in my opinion, the recorded sayings of Jesus are mixed). The whole religion fails. So, not only do we have no original documentary evidence, or even copies of the originals, but medieval copies of copies of copies a thousand years after the original, and those copies were made by people who had both motive and opportunity to do a little embellishing just to burnish the historicity of their religion's central character. I'm not saying that was the case (although textual scholars can certainly point to thousands of errors and interpolations in Scripture alone), but it's certainly worth considering.
Look, let's pick this up on my blog. (http://bill-sheehan.livejournal.com/) I'll write something suitably controversial, and we can communicate without the constrictions of these tiny columns.
Re: Jesus the Bachelor
Tacitus was born in 56 CE. He reports about the existence of Christians, not about Jesus himself. And again, we cannot get any further back than an 11th century scribal copy.
Now the question again is, is it important? After all, we have equally poor evidence that Socrates existed. But the difference with Socrates is that it doesn't matter at all whether he was real man or a figment of Plato's imagination. It is his ideas that have survived the ages, and it makes no difference who said them first. If Jesus did not actually exist, however, it doesn't matter whether his ideas were good or bad (in my opinion, the recorded sayings of Jesus are mixed). The whole religion fails. So, not only do we have no original documentary evidence, or even copies of the originals, but medieval copies of copies of copies a thousand years after the original, and those copies were made by people who had both motive and opportunity to do a little embellishing just to burnish the historicity of their religion's central character. I'm not saying that was the case (although textual scholars can certainly point to thousands of errors and interpolations in Scripture alone), but it's certainly worth considering.
Look, let's pick this up on my blog. (http://bill-sheehan.livejournal.com/) I'll write something suitably controversial, and we can communicate without the constrictions of these tiny columns.