Tacitus calls Pilate a procurator, but the Pilate Stone shows he was a prefect. Doesn’t that mistake suggest Tacitus was just repeating what Christians said?

The title slip is real and worth conceding. But procurator had become the standard title for governors of Judea by Tacitus’s own day, and Roman writers routinely used current titles for earlier officials; Josephus does the same. The slip shows Tacitus writing from a second-century vantage point, not copying Christians, whom he openly despised and was unlikely to trust without checking. Even on the most skeptical reading, a hostile Roman senator around AD 116 treated the execution of Christ under Pilate as a plain fact, which is all this exhibit needs.