Jesus Christ - Son of God or a Madman

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=554629
"Jesus IS the Son of God, or he WAS a madman."

So said CS Lewis, a reasonable Brit.

I am a product of the Bible Belt. I am not reasonable. I am sick of guys in backward collars making a living saying Christ was a social philosopher they can sell at the Country Club.

Screw philosophy.

At the verry least Jesus Christ was a "mere" man who DEMANDED the unimaginable agony of the cross.

Or He IS the Son of God.

The well-paid backwards collar type tries to make a reasonable compromise of Him.

Tomorrow I celebrate the birth of Jesus, who did not compromise.

>>9
Only the most ignorant of Christian apologists assert that this passage has anything to do with Jesus Christ. You'd be slightly better off if you had instead quoted Tacitus and his Annals, seeing as Tacitus actually is talking about Jesus, but even then he is merely repeating rumor long after the supposed events took place, which is not evidence.

Anyway, this event is often confused with the expulsion of 19 CE, but Claudius didn't become Emperor until 41 CE. Context puts this event at 49-52 CE, about 20 years after the supposed death of Jesus Christ in 30-34 CE. Instead, the vast majority of historians, even conservative Christians, agree that what Suetonius is actually describing are the early Christian riots, in response to persecution by the Romans, which also resulted in expulsion. This event is even mentioned breifly in the Bible in Acts 18:2:
2 And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them.

Regardless, Gaius Suetonius Tranquilius was born in 69-71 CE. The book in question, De vita Caesarum (On the Life of the Caesars or The Twelve Caesars), was written in 121 CE. The book is not a primary source, rather it is almost entirely based on gossip, scandal, and his own subjective musings. This passage in particular is simply a brief and vague mention of events that happened 70 years earlier and 20 years before he was born.

If you'd like the details of the events in question, I would recommend a book called "Impulsore Chresto: Opposition to Christianity in the Roman Empire c.50-250 AD (Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity)" by Jakob Engberg (ISBN-10: 3631567782, ISBN-13: 978-3631567784).