Bret Devereaux

...and thus potential primary-source usefulness of the New Testament is *really* out of step with the scholarship. The synoptic gospels all probably date from the first century (the only real first century authorship question is John). And of the Pauline epistles...

...seven are generally accepted as written *by Paul* (or more correctly, written by a single author who, Occam's razor, ought to be identified as Paul). To be clear, I'm not saying this is the religious tradition, but rather the secular scholarly position.

So as a matter of just simple Roman history, you're dealing with primary sources to the Roman Empire. Of course, all sources to be read critically, but in terms of the question "what is it like to live in the Roman Empire" the New Testament is fairly reliable...

...as the accounts of people who did, in fact, live in the Roman Empire, relating their experiences (or recent accounts of the experiences of others) of living in the Roman Empire. Historians use them as such - there is little hesitation in using daily-life facts from the NT...

...If the New Testament narratives about Roman rule and Roman power differ from other accounts, it is more because the NT represents a narrative from the perspective of the imperial subjects, rather than the imperial rulers (and unlike figures like Josephus....

...ones that have no particular need or reason to flatter the Roman authorities). The British India of the G-G and Viceroy's dispatches was probably rather different than the one that Indians wrote about. Both were quite real (although the latter certainly effected more people)

I'm not claiming that the source material is fake. I'm claiming that Biblical Rome is to Rome as Joyce's Dublin is to Dublin. We can't rely only on knowledge of the latter to explain the central event of the former. (If we could, we would have figured out the Wake by now.)

When you're referring to the Crucifixion especially (as here), and asking any sort of why question, the source material isn't particularly helpful. The specific political reasons the real Christ was executed for simply don't map to the spiritual/literary reasons.