LOL! It is as I thought.
The Gemera, Josephus, Seneca, Tacticus, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, and many others... All are not credible? Their silence on the matter of the highly structured Papist faith speaks volumes.
Ah, my error in having primarily the Church Fathers in mind, since it's from them that I draw most of my proof for the existence of the Catholic church because they were the most interested in writing about it.
Indeed some the above wrote about Christianity but why would they be interested in giving a detailed account about it? I.e. Josephus who was writing about the history of the Jews, Seneca, a Stoic philosopher...
You wrote:
“The Gemera, Josephus, Seneca, Tacticus, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, and many others... All are not credible? Their silence on the matter of the highly structured Papist faith speaks volumes.”
No, it doesn’t. If you look, you’ll see more than you might think. Pliny, for instance, makes reference to deaconesses and apparently to the sacrament of the altar (without realizing it). Many people today forget that Acts itself speaks of bishops (Apostles), presbyters (priests) and deacons. That in itself implies a highly structured church on the episcopal level. Also, Pliny makes clear that even after more than 70 years the Romans still did not understand what Christianity was about, who was involved or how it worked on the ground (maybe “underground” should be the word used there). Christians were often secretive. The Romans couldn’t write about what they didn’t know.