> We know Pilate was the prefect of Judea -- it's in the Bible.
For the sake of illustration, consider for a moment this hypothetical: "The New Testament stories of Jesus were works of fiction intended to trick people into a new religion."
Now, even though this was written 30 years after the fact, if you wanted to convince people that your story was for real, you'd have to use *real* and commonly known figures. Just as if I were to try to create a new religion today based on the mystical exploits of Zander P. Whifflebottom thirty years ago... if one of those exploits was meeting with the President of the United States, I'd better not say that he met with President Stimpson J. Cat in the Rhombus Room of the Gray House in the US capital city, New Megalopolis, East Illinois.
That's the theory I was going on when I read the New Testament for the first time.
If you were going to trick someone into a new religion, would you tell them their founder was executed with theives? That they should expect the same persecution as their founder? Would you tell men, that women were their equal? Masters that slaves were their equal? Slaves to love their masters? How would you account for the leaders refusal to acquire wealth and power, but embrace torment? A happy afterlife? Rome promised that by honoring their civic gods? Judiasm promised that by following the Torah? Why didn't they triumph?
The only explanation for the success of Christianity is that it's true.