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Even Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish scholar, knows nothing of Jesus-- Philo, who left to posterity a voluminous bulk of works, who was a great expert on the Bible and the Jewish sects and who also mentions Pilate. The report about Christ in 'The Antiquities of the Jews' by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, born shortly after Jesus's crucifixion, is very likely and interpolation from the third century. "The New Testament is the only source of information about Jesus," writes Romano Guardini. To the cultivated Roman of the second century, Christianity was an obscure Jewish sect, a "corrupt superstitious belief," ;and "evil," as Tacitus calls it; only a small part of the population, the Christians themselves, believed in the triumphant progress of this religion. It certainly seemed much more probable that the future belonged to any other of the many religious movements, for instance the mystery cults, some of which were quite eminent. We can see the same process taking place in the history of other great religions: every faith in its early period has had to experience first ignorance, then derision and persecution. At no time have contemporary non-believers visualized a great future for the new-born religion.
(9:3)
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