One of the more common arguments among online supporters of the Jesus Myth thesis is an argument from silence: “There are no contemporary references to Jesus, therefore he did not exist”. Like most Mythicist arguments, the idea that the lack of contemporary references to Jesus should make us at least somewhat suspicious about his historicity has a long pedigree. He follows this with a further 14 near contemporary writers or works whose silence on Jesus he also finds suspicious. Yet not only do we have no contemporary references to the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, we actually have no direct references to the cities by name at all. For all Fitzgerald’s bombastic claims, the idea that Philo somehow “should” have mentioned Jesus collapses on multiple fronts.