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Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

69CE-122CE

  • Suetonius worked for Pliny the Younger. Pliny helped Suetonius buy property and helped him gain favor with Trajan and Hadrian.
  • Emperor Claudius' reign was around 41CE-54CE. It should be obvious that the reference isn't about Jesus since he wouldn't have been alive during Claudius' reign. It also describes a specific person who was instigating crime.
  • It also mentions Rome, which we have no evidence that Jesus ever visited. So Jesus wouldn't have been instigating trouble there. The closest reference we have is the apocryphal Gospel of Peter mentioning Peter seeing Jesus on the road to Rome as Peter is leaving.
  • The use of "them." While it has been argued that it can mean a single individual, the start of the quote provides the context of plural usage with "the Jews."
  • Suetonius also wrote about Christians and their persecution by Nero, however, he does not connect them to the Great Fire of Rome as Tacitus does. He mentions the laws passed by Nero to maintain public order, in that passage the word translated to mischievous: "maleficus" could also mean magical or magician, possibly associated with black magic. The passage is also nothing more than a reference to an existing group of believers, not to the existence of Jesus. It also demonstrates that Suetonius made a distinction between the Christians in this passage and the Jewish Crestians in the Biography of the Emperor Claudius.
  • He never mentions Jesus.

Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Nero 16

During his reign many abuses were severely punished and put down, and no fewer new laws were made: a limit was set to expenditures; the public banquets were confined to a distribution of food; the sale of any kind of cooked viands in the taverns was forbidden, with the exception of pulse and vegetables, whereas before every sort of dainty was exposed for sale. Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. He put an end to the diversions of the chariot drivers, who from immunity of long standing claimed the right of ranging at large and amusing themselves by cheating and robbing the people. The pantomimic actors and their partisans were banished from the city.

Biography of the Emperor Claudius Divus Claudius 25

Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.