Paulus has me intrigued. Does anyone know of contemporary Ad 30-40 Roman writings from Judea?

The silence is deafening!

There are no contemporary Judean Roman records. Call it a lie. Call it a myth. Call it denial.

I am sure a lot of atheists will have checked this out, and know they are lying. Some are too lazy, and believe whatever suits them, and a few are honest enough to admit the truth.

God bless you.

1. There are very many contemporary records. The area was crawling with "historians" who wrote about what they thought were the "important" events of the day and which future generations would want to know.

Heck, when it comes to Pilate, we have many different contemporary historians writing about him:

The Pilate described by Josephus & the Roman historian Tacitus was a strong willed, inflexible military governor who was insensitive to the religious scruples of his Jewish subjects & relentless in suppressing any potential disturbance. This stands in sharp contrast to the impression conveyed in the Christian gospels which, for apologetic reasons, portray him as reluctant to execute Jesus. Pilate's decade long tenure (26-36 CE) testifies to both his relative effectiveness in maintaining order & to the aging emperor's lack of personal attention to administrative affairs. The ruthless slaughter of thousands of Samaritan pilgrims by Pilate's cavalry (ca. 36 CE), however, led to such a strong protest that Pilate was eventually recalled to Rome. Tiberius died before his return; but the new emperor [Caligula] relieved Pilate of his command & exiled him to Gaul [Vienne-on-Rhone].

Historical records tell us that King Agrippa I wrote a letter to Carigula, about Pilate's corruption, his acts of insolence, and his rapine and his habit of insulting people, and his continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity. (See Maccoby, Revolution in Judea: p57-58)

Likewise Philo wrote that Pilate was cruel by nature and utterly lacking in humane compassion and that he was unbending and a "recklessly hard character". Philo wrote that he resorted to robbery and oppression and that he often sent men to death, untried in a court of law, and physically broken by all manner of cruelties. (M.S. Enslin,k Christian Beginnings p. 116).

Solomon Zeitlin in his book Who Crucified Jesus? wrote that Pilate used the money of the temple and when Jews came in large numbers to him in protest he massacred them.

The event that led to Pilate's downfall was the appearance of a Samaritan prophet. The prophet gained a large following. Pilate's method of dispelling the crowd around the prophet was typical of his character: he slaughtered them on their holy mountain. About four thousand Samaritans died in that massacre. When this brutal act was reported to the emperor, Pilate was recalled to Rome in 37 CE. (See Martin, New Testament Foundations I: p67

2. An important issue is not only are there records, but what do they say. For example, I don't doubt that Jesus existed. The issue is who was he and what happened. For example: http://books.google.com/books?id=co_Cxiz%E2%80%A6

It would probably come as a shock to most Christians today that the original followers of Jesus were never called Christians. They were called Nazarenes. [1] ...Initially, the Nazarenes were never considered heretical by the Pharisees. In fact they were so zealous for the law of Moses that the Nazarenes (or Jerusalem "Christians") were considered an ultra-pious group of Jews. [12] ...Despite Paul's attempts to bribe his way back with an offering of cash collection from his Gentile congregations, James and his church never accepted Paul back into the fold.

Nazarenes had a rather dim view of Paul.

'They declare that he was a Greek....He went up to Jerusalem, they say, and when he had spent some time there, he was seized with a passion to marry the daugher of the priest. For this reason he became a proselyte [through the Saducee movement, hence his working for the Temple police] and was circumcised. Then, when he failed to get the girl, he flew into a rage and wrote against cirumcision and against the sabbath and the Law'

- (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30.16-9 as quoted in The Mythmaker by Hyam Maccoby, p 182)

Nazarenes continued to exist until about 400 [CE] declaring to the last that [Jesus/Yehoshua] was the Messiah, that he would soon return, that he was the Son of [G-d] but not divine himself, that the Jewish law had never been abrogated by him, and that Paul was a deceiver who had perverted [Jesus'/Yehoshua's] message.

- (Hyam Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, (p 818)

Maccoby, in the appendix referenced in the footnote to this last quote, states that "[r]eferences to the Nazarenesa dn their beliefs (human status of Jesus, opposition to Paul) can be found in the writings of Justin Martyr, Epiphanius, Jerome, Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Origen" (Ibid, p 218)