What do historical documents other than the Bible tell us about Jesus? The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down. A. Whitney Brown Most of what we know about Jesus comes from Christian writings. This should be no surprise, since it was Christians who were most interested in telling his story and preserving his memory. But how do these Christian writings compare with what other historians were saying about Jesus at the time? Scholars have been engaged in what’s been called the “quest for the historical Jesus” since the late 1700s. Yet many of us still want to know if there is credible historical evidence that corroborates what the Bible says about Jesus. So how does the Christ of the Christian faith square with the Jesus of history? Roman and Jewish Accounts Roman classical writings contain several references to Christ and the movement he started. Around 112 CE, Pliny the Younger wrote to Emperor Trajan, detailing how he...