(September 21, 2015 at 11:49 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:(September 21, 2015 at 11:30 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Do you have any original source material to verify your claims about Tactius?
The Annals, book 15, paragraphs 38-44 are the relevant passage. The title is an online link to a full length version of the text. I copied only 15:38-44, and bolded the particular section that talks about the Christians, but included the whole section for context.
There are no originals of Tacitus, but we do have an (11th?) century copy that is considered to be a valid copy, though some think there were interpolations inserted by the Christian monks who copied it. I don't see evidence of it as much in Tacitus as in Josephus, where the "added material" is much more obvious.
Of particular note, but usually overlooked by the Christian apologists who mention this section, is that Tacitus was on a council tasked with recording religious cults, and seems to have been reading the testimonies of condemned Christians, where he says "upon their information". Many apologists posit, without evidence, that when he says Pilate crucified "Christus", he is working from official Roman records of the crucifixion, but I think the context makes plain that he's just talking about what the condemned were claiming.
Also, a useful discussion of the Roman texts which mention Jesus/Christ can be found here.
From the article:
You've raised a number of interesting questions, but they have all been addressed by fellow atheist Tim O'Neill in an article published here. He writes:
Quote:A more common way of dismissing this passage is to claim that all Tacitus is doing is repeating what Christians had told him about their founder and so it is not independent testimony for Jesus at all. This is slightly more feasible, but still fails on several fronts.
Firstly, Tacitus made a point of not using hearsay, of referring to sources or people whose testimony he trusted and of noting mere rumour, gossip or second-hand reports as such when he could. He was explicit in his rejection of history based on hearsay earlier in his work:
Quote:"My object in mentioning and refuting this story is, by a conspicuous example, to put down hearsay, and to request that all those into whose hands my work shall come not to catch eagerly at wild and improbable rumours in preference to genuine history." (Tacitus, Annals, IV.11)
Secondly, if Tacitus were to break his own rule and accept hearsay about the founder of Christianity, then it's highly unlikely that he would do so from Christians themselves (if this aristocrat even had any contact with any), who he regarded with utter contempt. He calls Christianity "a most mischievous superstition...evil...hideous and shameful...(with a) hatred against mankind" - not exactly the words of a man who regarded its followers as reliable sources about their sect's founder.
Furthermore, what he says about Jesus does not show any sign of having its origin in what a Christian would say: it has no hint or mention of Jesus' teaching, or his miracles, or anything about the claim that he rose from the dead. On the other hand, it does contain elements that would have been of note to a Roman or other non-Christian: that this founder was executed, where this happened, when it occurred ("during the reign of Tiberius") and which Roman governor carried out the penalty.
We know from earlier in the same passage that Tacitus consulted several (unnamed) earlier sources when writing his account of the aftermath of the Great Fire (see Annals XV.38), so it may have been one of these that gave him his information about Jesus. But there was someone else in Rome at the time Tacitus wrote who mixed in the same circles, who was also a historian and who would have been the obvious person for Tacitus to ask about obscure Jewish preachers and their sects. None other than Josephus was living and writing in Rome at this time and, like Tacitus, associated with the Imperial court thanks to his patronage first by the emperor Vespasian and then by his son and successor Titus. There is a strong correspondence between the details about Jesus in Annals XV.44 and Antiquities XVIII.3.4, so it is at least plausible that Tacitus simply asked his fellow aristocratic scholar about the origins of this Jewish sect.