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Province of the Roman Empire (6–135 CE)
The label “Palestine” was not invented out of thin air by Rome, but the Roman rebranding of Judaea as Syria Palaestina in the 2nd century CE was a pivotal moment that transformed an older geographic t...
Three Roman-era non‑Christian writers commonly cited as mentioning Jesus are Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger; Tacitus (Annals, c. 116) says “Christus” suffered under Pontius Pilate and that C...
Classical Greek sources use the toponym Παλαιστῑ́νη (Palaistínē) and adjectival forms derived from it (e.g., Palaistinós) to designate a coastal and inland district of Syria between Phoenicia and Egyp...
Pontius Pilate, as the Roman prefect of Judaea (c. 26–36 CE), was the only official with authority to order crucifixion in Roman provinces; multiple modern scholars and reference works say Pilate “gav...
The Roman emperor Hadrian or Roman authorities after the Bar Kokhba revolt reorganized the province of Judaea and used forms of the name Palaestina in the 2nd century CE, a change that has been read b...
Early non-Christian writers—Tacitus and Josephus—provide brief but pointed references that align on key facts about Jesus and the emergent Christian movement (crucifixion under Pilate; growth and orig...
Most mainstream accounts and religious commentators represented in the available reporting describe Jesus as a Jew by birth, upbringing and practice: he was born into a Jewish family, traced to Jewish...