Hello Peter, Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I’m very familiar with Richard Carrier. He is unfortunately popular, for many of the wrong reasons.

Your example demonstrates why he is a bad source to site.

There have been a few feeble attempts to say that the Pilate line was inserted later, but scholars have never agreed with them. The vast majority of scholars agreed that everything in the passage is genuine, including the line about Pilate. There is no archaeological evidence whatsoever that it was added. Every single manuscript we have, going back to the very earliest ones, includes the full passage, along with the Pilate line.

Likewise, the word “Chrestus” is the word Christ. Remember, Romans like Tacitus are not consulting the original Hebrew or Greek. They are writing down what they heard, essentially transliterating. He misspelled it slightly, but it sounds nearly the same as when properly spelled.

Anyway, every detail in the passage corroborates what the Bible says. Which means, if you want to insist that Chrestus is someone other than Christ, you have to claim that he lived an identical life, died at the same time, and raised up an immense number of followers, such that they could spread all the way to Rome at the same time the Christians did.

To say it bluntly, that’s a bit of a stretch.

The far simpler explanation is that Chrestus is Christ, because absolutely everything in the passage correlates perfectly with Christ, and the Romans misspelled His name slightly.

Occam’s Razor, along with common sense, every bit of historical evidence, and every bit of archaeological evidence, confirm that Chrestus is Christ. and the Romans simply misspelled his name.