DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
Suetonius, a Roman biographer, in his life of the emperor Nero (Nero 16). He wrote around 115 AD. "Novel" here means new: a faith that had not been around long.
Why it’s interesting
The mix-up is easy, because the others reached for the same word. Tacitus calls the faith a "pernicious superstition". Pliny calls it a "depraved superstition".
Scholarly consensus
Learn the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.