There are names recorded, that’s a fact, go and check for yourself.
If it was independently corroborated by a reliable source, if the claim didn’t offend reason, and deny scientific facts, if the original source were both known and reliable, if the original source could be demonstrated to be a contemporary account, and so on and so on, or to put it exactly as people have been trying to explain to you, if it satisfied any of the criteria of the historical method.
What constitutes a reliable source for information written down two thousand years ago?
Your own reason might be offended but that’s all due to your subjective interpretation of the matter.
What “scientific fact” is denied? Science doesn’t help us with “facts” it is based on inductive reasoning, not deductive.
If the original source is not known then how can you presume it to be not reliable?
There are contemporary accounts, there are four canonical gospels and rather a lot more non canonical.
No, that’s not true. The written account does exist, it is evidence of something. You might interpret as evidence of radical religious zealotry but that’s nothing more than an interpretation. You have to do that too because you cannot reconcile this with your atheist world view.
Good.
You are assuming, of course you are, you even said above “deny scientific facts” betraying a naïve understanding of science, an assumption that it deals with facts! You can’t ask for a “shred of objective evidence” because you have no way of recognizing it, we’ve been over this in the other thread.
It is not a fact that they are anonymous hearsay, it’s a belief you hold, so there are no facts that contradict the view they possess historicity.
And I say again, all evidence is interpreted in such a way that it can be reconciled with some existing belief system.
But back to Spartacus:
But they (Plutarch et-al) were based wholly on prior sources, already existing material, they were not eye witnesses. For example the Histories of Salust was a source and here’s what’s said about this (emphases mine)
Although they (Salust’s writings) have not survived intact, about five hundred fragments have been preserved in excerpts or quotations by later writers
But there’s more bad news for you, the oldest fragments we have today from Salust are:
The most ancient scrolls which survive are the Codex Parisinus 16024 and Codex Parisinus 16025 , known as “P” and “A” respectively. They were created in the ninth century, and both belong to the mutili group. The oldest integri scrolls were created in the eleventh century AD.
But there’s one more remaining detail I’d like to bring to your attention:
Several fragments of Sallust’s works survived in papyri of the second to fourth centuries AD. Many ancient authors cited Sallust, and sometimes their citations of Histories are the only source for reconstruction of this work.
Now consider the Rylands papyrus P52 a fragment of the book of John:
Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, aiming to generate consistent revised date estimates for all New Testament papyri written before the mid-4th century, has proposed a date for 𝔓52 of 125–175 CE.
Based the interval between the purported events and our earliest surviving reference to it, it seems to me that the accounts of Jesus are on somewhat stronger ground than the accounts of Spartacus
There’s therefore a very reasonable case here for asking Is Spartacus made up? what do you think?