Heretics, Jews, pagans, and Christians all inadvertently confirm the trustworthiness of the Bible by their incidental references to many of the same things to which the Bible refers.
One of the most exhaustive studies of this topic was done by Thomas S. Millington, in his book, The Testimony of the Heathen to the Truths of Holy Writ (London, 1863). Subtitled A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Compiled Almost Exclusively from Greek and Latin Authors of the Classical Ages of Antiquity, this book systematically covers the entire Bible, chapter by chapter, citing all references from ancient writers that support the statements of the Bible.
Another approach that is sometimes taken is to compile all of the references to the New Testament by the earliest extrabiblical sources to demonstrate that it was already in widespread circulation in ancient antiquity. Almost the entire New Testament can be reconstructed from these writings, especially since the early Apostolic Fathers quoted extensively from the New Testament within a few decades of the time it was written.1
Even the earliest enemies of the Christian faith provide abundant evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament by their constant references to it. Moreover, the early opponent of Christianity, Celsus, wrote of the companions of Jesus that they lived just a few years before his time. He also acknowledged the miracles wrought by Jesus Christ, but ascribed them to "the magic art" which, according to him, Christ learned in Egypt.
Another early enemy of Christianity, Lucian, in his account of the death of the philosopher Peregrinus, bears authentic testimony to the major facts and principles of Christianity. In a work entitled Alexander or Pseudomantis, he talks of those who are well known in the world by the name of Christians, and that they are formidable to cheats and impostors.
Even Pontius Pilate sent an account to the emperor Tiberius of Christ's life, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. References to these Acta Pilati (Acts of Pilate) can be found in the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement, and Eusebius.
One must exercise caution in accepting the claims on non- Christian historians about classical references to the Christian faith. For example, Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. II, states that there was a silence of all writers, except the evangelists, on the darkness over the land at Christ's crucifixion, and that Pliny, who devoted a whole chapter to the enumeration of eclipses and strange things, does not mention it, and would surely have done so if it had been true. However, Pliny's "chapter" is only eighteen words in length: "eclipses are sometimes very long, like that after Caesar's death, when the sun was pale almost a year." Pliny does not mention the darkness, but Celsus does, as do Thallus, Phlegon, Origen, Eusebius, Tertullian, and others, some of them Christians and some opponents of Christ. David Nelson commented, "I am sorry you took the word of that author [Gibbon], splendid as were his talents; for he sometimes penned falsehood without scruple, if religion was his topic."2
Some of the early opponents of Christianity were converted to Christ. For example, Aristides was a Greek philosopher at Athens who renounced heathenism and wrote a letter to the emperor describing those who had been healed and restored by the apostles in his day.
There are many allusions of first and second century Roman historians to Christianity. For example, Suetonius wrote, "owing to the tumults which the Jews stirred up at Rome, at the instigation of one Chrestus, Claudius decreed their expulsion from the city."3 In his Life of Nero (xxvi. 2), he wrote, "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men addicted to a novel and mischievous superstition."
In an account of the great fire at Rome in A.D. 64, the great Roman historian Tacitus wrote as follows about the rumor that Nero was responsible for its instigation:
Therefore, to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, from whom they got their name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time, only to break out afresh, not only in Judaea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.4
Elsewhere, Tacitus describes persecution at Rome during which the apostle Paul was put to death, and he called those who were burned "ingens multitudo," a vast crowd.
There are, of course, countless allusions to various historical circumstances common both to the Bible and to other contemporary writings. An overview of some such references appears in a 60-page article by G. F. MacLear, "Historical Illustrations of the New Testament Scriptures," volume VII of the Religious Tract Society's Present Day Tracts (London, 1886). One of the most obvious illustrations is the account by the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities xix. 8, 2) of the sudden death of Herod Agrippa I, which corresponds closely with the account of the same event in Acts 12: 19-23. MacLear concludes his survey as follows:
[The Gospel] Story is in its outline attested by Classical authors of repute, and this attestation remains certain and indisputable, even supposing the New Testament had never been written at all. We must destroy the Annals of Tacitus, the Lives of Suetonius, the Letters of Pliny, if we wish to get rid of their testimony that in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius one called Christ existed; that Judaea was the place of His teaching; that He was put to death at the command of Pontius Pilate; that in spite of His death, His doctrines rapidly spread throughout the Roman world; that they attracted a vast number of converts; that, in consequence, the ancient sacrificial system gradually disappeared; that the Christians worshipped Christ as a God; and for His sake suffered cruel persecution. . . .Is it possible to believe that the narrative of His Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and of the foundation of His Church, which at this moment notoriously exists, could have been described by the writers of the new Testament with a wealth of incidental allusions to the most complicated political and historical facts, attested in many of the minutest particulars alike by classical historians, and by monumental and numismatic inscriptions, and at the same time be untrue? Is this conceivable?5
1 Committee of the Oxford Historical Society of Historical Theology, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905) provides a systematic study of this subject.2 David Nelson, The Cause and Cure of Infidelity (New York: American Tract Society, 1841), p. 79.
3 Suetonius, Life of Claudius xxv. 4.
4 Tacitus, Annals xv. 44.
5 MacLear, pp. 59-60.
