On the Shortness of Life was a surprisingly one of the best books I ' ve read this year . I ' m amazed at how relevant the lessons are considering it ' s age and the eloquence in which it was written . It truly is a timeless book . <| sep |> Hello and sorry about the late response . Still need to set up mobile notifications Anyways , I would like to point out that you have changed your criterion for the word Contemporaneous as shown hereThis was over 100 years after the supposed life of jesus and is not contemporaneousAnd hereIs a source written at the time of the subjects lifeIn the first , the only condition you mentioned for a source to be contemporaneous was that it had to be within one hundred years of the actual even unfolding , but later changed this to mean that the source must be made at the time of the events unfolding . By having changed your definition of contemporaneous , you have committed the fallacy of the moving goal post . One another note , in regards to Tacitus and his writings , Tacitus was only writing something he was told not something he knows to be true . To this I ask , how else would an ancient historian such as Tacitus record history ? In a time without the modern luxury of communication that allows us to share information mere seconds after an event , the only sources an ancient historian could call upon is what he has heard or read as it is unreasonable to expect a historian to be present at every event he means to record . Anyways , I ' m afraid response time is going to again be dreadfully slow as I ' ll be busy with festivities for tomorrow . So , should I not be able to respond to a reply tomorrow , happy holidays . Or have a nice day if you live outside the U . S .