Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was the great comic writer of the second century, a Greek who made fun of everything. Around AD 165 he wrote about a con man named Peregrinus, who fooled a group of Christians for a while.
Lucian explains to his readers who these Christians were. They still worshipped:
"the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world."
And they lived differently because of it. They turned their backs on the old religion:
"by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws."
Sophist was Lucian's word for a teacher. A crucified teacher, from Palestine, worshipped as God by his followers, who lived by his laws. Lucian meant it as a joke. It reads like a summary of the Gospels.
Celsus
Around AD 175, a philosopher named Celsus wrote a book called The True Word. It was a full attack on Christianity, written to turn people away from it.
Celsus's own book is lost. We know what he said because, about seventy years later, the Christian scholar Origen answered him line by line, and quoted him as he went.
The miracles
Celsus didn't claim Jesus did no miracles. He had a better explanation, he thought. He said Jesus had "hired himself out as a servant in Egypt," picked up magic powers there, came home, and with them "proclaimed himself a God" (Against Celsus 1.28).
That is the same move the enemies of Jesus made while he was alive. They saw the miracles, and said the power came from somewhere dark: "This man casteth not out the devils, but by Beelzebub" (Matthew 12:24).
The pierced hands
Celsus knew the resurrection accounts in detail. He knew that the risen Jesus showed the marks of his punishment, and how his hands had been pierced. His answer was to ask who saw it.
Then he answered himself, with a sneer about the first witness:
"A half-frantic woman, as ye state."
That woman is Mary Magdalene. The Gospels put her first at the empty tomb: "on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene cometh in the morning, it being yet dark, to the sepulchre" (John 20:1). She was the first to say, "I have seen the Lord" (John 20:18).
And the hands are the ones Jesus showed his disciples. "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself" (Luke 24:39). Thomas would not believe "unless I shall see in his hands the print of the nails" (John 20:25).
Why this is a big deal
These men were trying to make Christians look ridiculous. To do it, they had to tell their readers what Christians believed.
So a Greek satirist confirms Jesus was crucified in Palestine and worshipped by his followers. And a philosopher who hated the faith confirms the miracles, the pierced hands, and a woman as the first witness of the resurrection. The case against Christianity, written by its first great critic, retells the Gospel.