(August 8, 2015 at 12:28 am)Minimalist Wrote:(August 7, 2015 at 12:20 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Do you have a source for the original Tacitus the Roman historian who lived between A.D. 54 and AD. 119 also wrote in his book ‘Annals XV, xliv’ ? Or is this just another golden tablets kind of BS?
There is a single manuscript for each of two parts of Tacitus' work. One is called "The Histories" and the other "The Annales" although truth be told no one knows if Tacitus intended one work or two.
http://www.nndb.com/people/875/000087614/
Quote: The Histories, as originally composed in twelve books, brought the history of the empire from Galba in 69 down to the close of Domitian's reign in 97. The first four books, and a small fragment of the fifth, giving us a very minute account of the eventful year of revolution, 69, and the brief reigns of Galba, Otho and Vitellius, are all that remain to us. In the fragment of the fifth book we have a curious but entirely inaccurate account of the Jewish nation, of their character, customs and religion, from a cultivated Roman's point of view, which we see at once was a strongly prejudiced one.
The Annals -- a title for which there is no ancient authority, and which there is no reason for supposing Tacitus gave distinctively to the work -- record the history of the emperors of the Julian line from Tiberius to Nero, comprising thus a period from AD 14 to 68. Of these, nine books have come down to us entire; of books V, XI, and XVI we have but fragments, and the whole of the reign of Caligula, the first six years of Claudius, and the last three years of Nero are wanting. Out of a period of fifty-four years we thus have the history of forty years.
The problem with such things as Tacitus' supposedly manuscripts is that a person has to suspend critical thinking to believe that they are real.
Think about it. The material was supposedly written around 100 AD. That's 1,900 years ago. The guy wrote a story on some scrolls. He gave the scrolls to someone who kept them in a locked and secure vault that was safe from environmental damage, theft, fire, and degradation. The scrolls survived numerous fires, wars, political upheavals, invasions, etc. And then, presto, some guy in the 20th Century gets his mitts on them. I gotta call major BS. The story is unreasonable and too far-fetched. Now if it had been written on stone there might be a basis for discussion.
