Jersey Girl wrote:And they say there is no God. Hello, Aristotle.
Hello.
Jersey Girl wrote:Would you have expected pagan authors to invest time writing about Christ?
No, I would not. As an example of why, take another famous Jew from the 1st century A.D., Philo of Alexandria. He lived in the academic center of the Roman Empire, Alexandria. He is extremely important example of middle Platonism. We know from Josephus that he represented the case of Alexandrian Jews before the emperor Caligula. We have tons of his works on philosophy and biblical exegesis. How much did pagan authors write about him? Zero. Given all of this, why would we expect pagans to take notice of a Jew living in the backwaters of Galilee who probably never talked to a Roman until the day he died?
Jersey Girl wrote:Would you expect that there would birth/death records for Christ?
Where would we find birth/death records for Christ?
External to the Bible: no and nowhere.
This Wikipedia article says that there are 21 birth certificates extant of Roman citizens and 34 from Greek Egypt. Given that I'm sure there were more than 55 people who lived in the Ancient Roman Empire, I'm guessing the odds of finding a birth certificate for a given individual is essentially zero.
Jersey Girl wrote:Where would we find documentation regarding his trial and punishment?
I wouldn't expect to find sources for that. We do have agreement on the manner of his death in the gospels and in Paul, plus corroboration that his death was punishment at the hands of the Romans in Tacitus and Josephus.
That we know anything about a Galilean peasant is astonishing, given the amount of evidence that does survive from antiquity on any given subject.