Historical record of Jesus the Christ in literature

I was recently challenged by someone I met at the foreshore as to the historical validity of the person of Jesus, who is known as the Christ. Here then is some comment and reference to Flavius Josephus, a renowned Roman hostorian who wrote a history of the Hebrews.

Steve B
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Josephus' Account of Jesus in
the Testimonium Flavianum
by G  J Goldberg

Do the Christian gospels record actual events during the first century or are they the ecstatic visions of a small religious group? There are no surviving Roman records of the first century that refer to, nor are there any Jewish records that support the accounts in the Christian gospels - except one.

In Rome, in the year 93, Josephus published his lengthy history of the Jews. While discussing the period in which the Jews of Judea were governed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, Josephus included the following account:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63.)