For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Were there any other similar pieces of evidence OR were it not for the long Christian history of forgery, interpolation and pseudo-epigraphy, OR were it not for the evidence that the document was tampered with, I might actually consider it compelling.  

I took a look at this. The minor alteration is in the word which is translated as Christians but the word Christos wasn't changed.

Later the same year, it was discovered that under ultraviolet light, an 'e' is clearly visible in the space, meaning that the passage must originally have referred to chrestianos, a Latinized Greek word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning "good, useful", rather than strictly a follower of "Christ".

So the passage originally read ..."Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called by the populace good/useful. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus."

Maybe somebody changed the e into an i because he noticed that the passage didn't make sense for the following reasons -

1: The Romans hated this class for their abominations so would hardly have referred to them as good/useful people unless they meant it in a sarcastic way.

2: Tacitus said that this class was named after someone they referred to as Christus which means the anointed one. If the class was really called chrestianos after the word chrestos meaning good/useful it couldn't have been named after someone referred to as Christus.

The reference was so oblique, it's plausible that he might have just been taking their claims at face value, considering Pilate killed a great many Jews and their leaders.

Which is why I'm talking about what Christians believed. The passage also tells us what Tacitus thought about the Christians' beliefs.

He is talking about Nero blaming the christians for the burning of Rome and them shouting something about a Chrestus as their saviour. That word as been forged by a later hand.

Even if the word chrestianos hadn't been altered the passage would still have referred to a class hated for their abominations and somebody with the title of Christos who'd been executed by Pontius Pilate.

Early xtian writers never mention Tacitus' at all. He is not a factor in what the earliest xtian writers said or thought or wrote.

Exactly - he was reporting what Christians believed at the time. The Christians didn't need to read his book in order to learn what they were supposed to believe.

http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=reledne...jesus.html

All I'm getting is a blank page.

The reason no commentator made reference to this passage before the 15th century is that the entire “Annals” in which it appears was unknown until the purported “discovery” made by Johannes de 1468.

The annals have been dated by scholars along with what must have been the earliest versions of the four canonical gospels. None of them prove that Jesus existed - they only show when people started believing he existed.

with a built in bias in favor of their godboy are perfectly willing to overlook the problems with the Tacitus reference. I am not.

What has that got to do with the subject of this topic? Are you saying that Christianity never got started?

How many times have I got to point out that this topic is not about whether Tacitus's report proves that Jesus existed. Everyone is supposed to take the attitude that Jesus did not exist and suggest how Christianity could have got started without a man to pin the myths and legends on.