Tacitus, Roman historian, Annals

Writing around AD 116, the Roman historian Tacitus reported that Christus was executed under Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, saying he “suffered the extreme penalty.” This is a hostile Roman source, not a Christian one. The Jewish historian Josephus also refers to Pilate condemning Jesus, though that passage was later edited by Christian copyists, so it should be used with care and never leaned on by itself.