For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

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.

Even if Eusebius (AD 263 – 339) did invent that quote there's still the question of which records were being referred to. Kenneth Humphries on Jesus Never Existed com says that the Tacitus passage was forged by Sulpicius Severus (c. 363 – c. 425). Did this supposed mention of records give Severus the idea to the forging? (I did a search to see if KH was suspicious of Eusebius quoting from a Tertullian work which is now lost but couldn't find anything on his site.)

I was also pointing out that, according to this lost work, Domitian just had a share in Nero's cruelty even though Domitian was as bad as Nero. I thought it was a biased point of view because Domitian was recorded as persecuting two Christians. Looks like everyone else he murdered didn't count.

Anyway, back to Sulpicious Severus on Jesus Never Existed com.

Quite simply, the reference is a Christian forgery, added to Suetonius to backup the work of the 5th century forger Sulpicius Severus, who heavily doctored the work of another Roman historian – Tacitus – with a lurid tale of brutal persecution ('torched Christian martyrs') which immortalized Nero as the first Antichrist in the eyes of the Christian church (the second Antichrist being the reformist Luther).

He then adds

No Christian apologist for centuries ever quoted the passage of Tacitus – not in fact, until it had appeared almost word-for-word in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, in the early fifth century,

He provided the quote -

The "Tacitus" passage is found in Chronica 2.29..

"Nero could not by any means that he tried escape from the charge that the fire had been caused by his orders. He therefore turned the accusation against the Christians, and the most cruel tortures were accordingly inflicted upon the innocent.

Nay, even new kinds of death were invented, so that, being covered in the skins of wild beasts, they perished by being devoured by dogs, while many were crucified or slain by fire, and not a few were set apart for this purpose, that, when the day came to a close, they should be consumed to serve for light during the night."

The Tacitus passage says nothing about Nero inventing new kinds of death.

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

If Severus forged the Tacitus passage why did he write mockery instead of saying that new kinds of death were invented?

The next Greco-Roman writer to mention xtians is Lucian of Samosata c 160 and HE does not mention "jesus" although he does refer to a crucified man in Palestine which indicates that the story was beginning to be fleshed out around then. It is not until Celsus, writing c 180 that we hear of "Jesus."

Eusebius says that Saint Peter was crucified under Nero and early Christian tradition suggests 64 AD.

A forger would have to add a catty remark to the Tacitus passage to make it sound like Tacitus but this led me to ask myself another question about Severus.

a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. 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,

So, after Severus decided to describe a gruesome spectacle which never happened he must have thought "I'd better not mention anything that Christians weren't saying in 109 AD. People might smell a rat." You'd think that somebody in the 5th century would have jumped at the chance to write crucified instead of executed, mention the name Jesus and hint that the Christians' leader (Peter) had been rounded up with them.

The problem I have with Kenneth Humphries is that, after insisting that Severus forged the Tacitus passage, he ends the page with -

11th century monk corrects Tacitus: "Goodies" to read "Christians"!

Ultraviolet photo of a critical word from the earliest known extant manuscript of Tacitus (second Medicean, Laurentian library, Italy).

The photograph reveals that the word purportedly used by Tacitus in Annals 15.44, chrestianos ("the good"), has been overwritten as christianos ("the Christians") by a later hand, a deceit which explains the excessive space between the letters and the exaggerated "dot" (dash) above the new "i". The entire "torched Christians" passage of Tacitus is not only fake, it has been repeatedly "worked over" by fraudsters to improve its value as evidence for the Jesus myth.

The truth may be that there was an original gnostic cult following a personified virtue, "Jesus Chrestos" (Jesus the Good). Consequently, they were called Chrestians,

As I said in an earlier post, why would Severus want to say that members of a gnostic sect had been persecuted by Nero when forging the Tacitus passage when he specifically mentions Christians in his Chronica 2.29?

The passage still might be forged but maybe it was done by somebody before Severus's time.