Bible is one book written by the same cult not independent sources. Its equivalent of an echo chamber that self references itself and tries to pass of as history. No other records from independent non religious sources affirm the magical stories. They are exclusively within that one book.
Tacitus and Josephus do not confirm jesus resurrected from the dead, they do not confirm that there was a flood with Noah and his son's as a restart to the human race, they do not acknowledge talking snakes in a magical garden either. All they reference is there are some Christian cultists around who suffered a penalty nothing else (which no one contests). Tacitus was born some 25 years after the supposed jesus all he can do is recite secondhand information (hearsay) at best, hardly credible.
I was born after Ron Hubbard died I saw a southpark episode about scientology. According to your logic whomever reads my post 2000 years into the future can use that as evidence for scientology being real both the people and the content of their religion :wacko:
You’re still misrepresenting the evidence. The Bible isn’t ‘one book by one cult’—it’s a collection of multiple documents written over time by different authors.
The Dead Sea Scrolls—found in caves near Qumran in 1947—contain Old Testament texts over 2,000 years old. When compared to later manuscripts, they show the text has been preserved with remarkable consistency.
As for sources, historians like Tacitus and Josephus don’t confirm every miracle—that’s not their purpose. They confirm that Jesus Christ existed and that early Christians believed these things. That’s exactly how independent historical references work.
Dismissing them as ‘hearsay’ would also wipe out most of ancient history. By that standard, nearly everything we know about figures like Julius Caesar would also be questionable, since much of it comes from later sources and written accounts.
Your Scientology example doesn’t work either—because we already know where L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology come from in real time. That’s completely different from evaluating ancient sources using historical methods.
You’re not actually applying a consistent standard—you’re just dismissing anything that doesn’t fit your conclusion.