RE: For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus
February 19, 2013 at 1:49 pm
(This post was last modified: February 19, 2013 at 2:44 pm by Minimalist.)
Quote: There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine, particularly then when after subduing all the east, he exercised his cruelty against all at Rome3
1- This is a "lost work" of Tertullian ( convenient? ) and even worse was found by Eusebius who also ( coincidence? ) discovered the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus which no one had heard of before, either. Call that a red flag but consider the second part of that sentence. When did Nero "subdue" all the east? He had been dead for two years before Titus even finished putting down the Great Revolt? And then "he exercised his cruelty against ALL at Rome?" That's not what any of the Greco-Roman writers say.
Again, Candida Moss' book is about the manufacture of the xtian persecution myth after xtianity attained political power in the 4th century. Eusebius fits right in with the idea.
Quote:My PS to Minimalist was me wondering why he didn't believe what Tacitus said about Christ being executed by Pilate and it turned out that he doesn't think the passage about Christians being persecuted is authentic.
Primarily because the passage is unknown to other writers in antiquity - even xtian writers. There is no getting around this. I also think that the idea that Severus edited Tacitus is weak. Had he done so he would not have left out the bit about Pilate and Christus which does not appear in Chronica.
No, it looks much more likely to me that someone knew of the Chronica passage but when the manuscript of Annales was produced in Western Europe the passage was beefed up a bit and passed off as Tacitus' work which is a type of pseudoepigraphy well known from the non-"authentic" epistles of Paul.
So to answer your question it is highly problematic that Tacitus said anything about xtians let alone the phrase that has been attributed to him. We have evidence in a single 11th century manuscript of scribal alteration and when to quote the adage "one lie is detected a thousand are suspected." Suetonius refers to Chrestus - apparently so did Tacitus. Were Chrestus and Christus the same person? It seems impossible since the xtians insist their boy was dead before 37 and Chrestus is named by Suetonius in Rome during the 50's AD.
