Introduction: Sources / First Century
The classic wisdom is that history is written by the victors.
In the case of The First Century, the victors were Christianity(the ultimate victor) and Rome (the intermediate term victor). As it happens, both were enemies of the Jews.
And these two formidable enemies of the Jews thus controlled the true information locally relating to the First Century. Consequently, bulletproof information on the First Century is an orphan. But the underlying realities are discernible, and, it turns out, unequivocal.
As regards the pursuit of accurate information, over the immediate several centuries, these are some of the issues:
• The Catholic Church does not want it, because it inevitably does
not dovetail with the script.
• The Greek historians had to filter reality through a light anti–
Jewish bias in the popular Greek culture, as Greek culture had
competed with Jewish culture in the Mediterranean area.
• The Roman historians
