📜Jesus vs. Rome📜

Now and again, I come across some variation of this question: “If Jesus existed, why wasn’t he mentioned in the Roman records?” After all, just about everything that happened in Rome was written down, right? Well, not really.

Romans were obsessed about record-keeping. The Senate kept an extensive law library. Merchants kept records of their inventory, dealings and expenses. Many wealthy individuals wanted to be remembered, so they would have stelae engraved with their accomplishments and placed in some prominent spot. Emperors and military generals and other important people had secretaries and chroniclers to write their life stories and record their great deeds (that’s why we know so much about them). And of course many famous historians wrote about major events. One of these was the Roman historian and senator Publius Cornelius Tacitus who did refer to Jesus in his final work, Annals, written some 80 or 90 years after the crucifixion.

Jesus is the central figure in Christianity, and Christians tend to assume that he was a major personage in the Roman Empire and that Emperor Tiberius would have been aware that this Jewish guy was walking around preaching and drawing large crowds. But you need to understand how the Roman Empire worked.

As soon as Rome conquered one territory, they would go on to the next. When a territory was conquered, it became a Roman province. A governor would be assigned, and he would bring along an office staff. A Roman fort would be established, and a number of soldiers would be stationed there. Soldiers were necessary because people don’t like being conquered and there would be continual uprisings.

Judea (now called Israel), was a hotbed of rebellions and violence. Jews did not like the their conquerors and they were constantly clashing with soldiers. Riots were common, particularly in Jerusalem during festivals and feast days. And then there were the Zealots.

The Zealots were a terrorist group. Bombs and suicide vests didn’t exist in those days, so the Zealots became masters of assassination. They would blend into a crowd, creep up behind a Roman official, or even another Jew who was a known Roman sympathizer, slice their throat open, then vanish before the people around them knew what happened.

Jesus would not have been particularly noticeable for drawing large crowds. There was a constant stream of leaders drawing large crowds. Some of these people were claiming to be spiritual leaders, and some were rebels stirring up trouble. A few of note were Judas of Gamala, Theudas, Simon of Peraea and Athronges, but there were so many more. One more guy walking around with crowds of people following him was just another nobody.

But the Crucifixion! It was a major event! Not to the Romans. Crucifixion was their preferred method of execution, and they carried out hundreds of them across the Empire every week.

This is the Roman Empire when Jesus walked the Earth, showing where Rome was in relation to Judea. (Click the image to see the full size)

The distance between them was more than 1,400 miles/2,400 kilometers. If Jesus had done anything worth mentioning to the emperor, it could have taken weeks or months for a letter to make it’s way. Rome did have a mail service but it was slow. They also had a kind of Pony Express, but that was reserved for urgent government and military business. A trip for soldiers on foot or merchant caravans would have taken three months or more to travel between those two cities.

The emperor would never have heard of Jesus. The Roman authorities and the military in Judea were busy suppressing uprisings, breaking up riots, and looking over their shoulders for Zealots. Jesus just wasn’t important enough to the Romans to be on their radar.