@Cmdr:
You may want to look at Josephus (sp?) as he is a historian who also documented many of the facts that are also documented in the recorded history of the Israelites and Romans. Just to give you one, very famous, name.
I dug this up:
Titus Flavius Josephus was a first century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. His works give an important insight into first-century Judaism.
There are two extant references in Josephus on Jesus, the one directly concerning Jesus has come to be known as the Testimonium Flavianum. These passages appear in The Antiquities of the Jews, written in the year 93 by the Jewish historian Josephus. All extant copies of this work, which all derive from Christian sources, even the recently recovered Arabic version, contain the two passages about Jesus. The authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum has been disputed since the 17th century, and by the mid 18th century the consensus view was that it was a forgery. This conclusion was questioned in the 20th century and the intellectual controversy will probably never be resolved. The other passage simply mentions Jesus as the brother of James, also known as James the Just.
His most famous work Antiquities of the Jews is mainly about Hebrew history over 1000 years after it occurred. Now explain to me how anything Josephus says could be considered concrete proof for anything the bible says.
@Cmdr:
Rome has records of Jesus being crucified and records of some of his disciples being imprisoned.
Source?
@Cmdr:
Egypt has records of the fleeing of the Israeli slaves.
Really? Egyptian records specifically mention, by name, the Exodus of the Hebrews? So then you can tell me, with 100% certainty, exactly which Pharoah was in power at that time. Please do so. I’m curious.
@Cmdr:
Ancient texts from the Germanic tribes and from Gaul show requests to King Solomon for loans.
Oooooh, I love this one. Aside from the fact that Solomon is another disputed historical figure, Gaul is the ROMAN name for that region, not the Hebrew one, if they even had a Hebrew name for it. I want you to provide me with solid evidence that King Solomon, if he did actually exist, had contact with people in southern France let alone was loaning them money.