Tacitus on historicity of Jesus - reliable source or not?

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Also, you keep mentioning Josephus, but his reference is not being questioned here

That’s because you’re obviously purposely attempting to ignore corroboration, by examining each witness in a vacuum, to avoid dealing with the preponderance of evidence.

No, what I'm questioning is whether Tacitus would have bothered corroborating it at all. We know that he was not always the most reliable of historians, even if he was one of the better of his day, and didn't always base his work on reliable sources. I mean seriously, do you think it completely implausible that a man who had the intellectual dishonesty to make up an entire speech and record it as a historical account could have just gone "meh, sound's plausible enough" and just wrote down some basic information he knew from an incomplete source?

…lousy attempt to ignore the fact Tacitus spent much of his career in Rome…what’s more, he was a Roman Senator….he had access to scores of elders who would have know if Rome denied any knowledge of Jesus’ execution at the hands of Pilate, who governed Judea for 10-11 years, and  was summoned back to Rome in 37AD. Also, Herod Antipas, ruled Galilee for 35 years…both Pilate and Antipas would have had many many previous subordinates who later returned to Rome, thus there would have been no need to write any letters of inquiry in order to establish whether or not Jesus was crucified under order from Pilate

1. Part of your argument here relies on the idea that these "scores of elders" would have cared enough about the Jesus issue to look into it. Nobody is saying that there was a concerted effort to deny it, but the fact is that to Rome as a whole it was a minor issue most wouldn't have known about and among those who did and weren't Christians wouldn't have cared much about.

2. Pilate and any of his or Antipas's subordinates who had returned to Rome would have more than likely been dead for decades by the time Tacitus had begun writing Annals - seeing as I don't think you believe they rose from the dead, I think even you would have had a hard time arguing that they were available for a visit.

Aside from the trial of Jesus…the mere trial of Roman citizens who converted to Christianity, and the Jewish petitions to Rome against Christians, throughout the Mediterranean, would have brought attention to the historical claims of Christianity.  Just in the case of Paul, his case was heard before Felix, Festus, Agrippa the Great, and then later tried in Rome after he appealed to Caesar.

Christian historical claims of public secular events would have been widely known in Rome.

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The reconciliation is the fact that the position got renamed twice. It was procurator before AD 6 and after AD 44, the latter period being when NT, Josephus, and Tacitus were written. It was prefect between those dates. There's no conflict.

but Tacitus did use the title prefect to refer to others...so he did know the difference between the titles...so I am not so sure it is that simple.

...heck, for all we know, it might be as simple as the stone inscription calling him prefect was a mistake that was discarded immediately after it was chiseled and reused as the underside of the step in the theatre where it was found in 1961.

There are just too many unknowns…but what is known is that we are nearly 2000 years separated from three corroborative histories from three renowned 1 Century historians from three completely different backgrounds. 

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

The reconciliation is the fact that the position got renamed twice. It was procurator before AD 6 and after AD 44, the latter period being when NT, Josephus, and Tacitus were written. It was prefect between those dates. There's no conflict.

but Tacitus did use the title prefect to refer to others...so he did know the difference between the titles...so I am not so sure it is that simple.

...heck, for all we know, it might be as simple as the stone inscription calling him prefect was a mistake that was discarded immediately after it was chiseled and reused as the underside of the step in the theatre where it was found in 1961.

There are just too many unknowns…but what is known is that we are nearly 2000 years separated from three corroborative histories from three renowned 1 Century historians from three completely different backgrounds. 

Maybe the other people whom he referred to as prefects had held offices that still had that title during his writing period. Maybe the Pilate stone was indeed in error. It's probably not worth bothering ourselves about; we'll almost certainly never know in this life.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Reliable in what sense?  It's not an eyewitness account. It may have been based largely on hearsay, as 'historian' in that time does not mean the same as it does today.  But as part of a larger body of evidence, it provides another source of confirmation of Jesus' existence and his death.  I don't see a plausible alternative to Jesus' existence.  What this passage demonstrates most of all is the response of at least some Romans to the claims made by Christians about Jesus, and that at Tacitus' time, there was not much question as to the outlines Tacitus presents.