For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

What records? Eusebius seems to have invented the TF out of the air. Origen, writing a mere 75 years earlier makes specific reference to Book XVIII of Antiquities in Contra Celsus, but knows nothing whatsoever about this passage.

If Eusebius invented this passage he must have done it to make people think that some records existed. Kenneth Humphries seems happy to accept that the Tertullian quote is genuine so maybe Tertullian did talk about records which didn't exist.

This idea that there must have been records is a sore spot. There were no records of Pilate writing reports to Tiberius ( or Claudius!) but that did not stop xtian forgers from inventing some.

So the Tacitus passage could have been forged to supply another fake record, then. The question is who did it and when?

Once you lose the idea that there was some reality behind any of this shit it begins to seem possible that it is all just made up and later embellished. The fact is, we can not know what is in the mind of the forger nor his intent.

Why would anyone want to forge a passage in Tacitus about Nero persecuting Chrestians who were members of a gnostic sect, though? Gnosticism was regarded as a heresy. If the whole idea of faking Tacitus was to invent persecution of Christians in Nero's time, the word chrestianos must have been a spelling mistake by a scribe. It doesn't even make sense to say that chrestianos were named after Christus.

Perhaps the person who wrote the original "report" from Pilate was merely indulging his own fantasy? What might Pilate have said in his report had he written one?

I've just been reading it. The opinion seems to be that it was written as a form of pius entertainment.Acts Of Pilate

Though the Acta Pilati purports to be a report by Pontius Pilate containing evidence of Jesus Christ's messiahship and godhead, there is no record in early Christian lore of Pilate's conversion to Christianity. It seems unlikely that the work was ever meant to have been taken seriously by Christians; instead, its purpose was to offer further conjectural details about the life of Christ as a pious entertainment, part of a larger body of Pilate literature.

On the other note, I don't necessarily agree with Humphreys about Severus being the forger. Severus does not include the crap about Pilate and Tiberius. Had it existed in whatever source Severus used I cannot imagine he would have deliberately deleted it.

Severus was writing as a 5th century Christian about Christian persecution in his own work so there was no need to mention what Tacitus supposedly said about Christ being executed by Pilate. Everyone would have known that in the 5th century.

But it sure as hell is in there NOW which is either an embellishment of Severus' work, or, represents a completely unknown documentary history of which we have no inkling whatsoever.

A good forger would have asked himself what Tacitus might have said if he really had written the passage. Tacitus's catty remark which covers both Pilate and Christians before leading into another rant about Rome being a cesspit captures his style of writing.

But if we simply stick with the facts as we have them and disregard the wishful thinking of jesus freaks we are left, at the end of the day, with the simple fact that the Tacitus reference appears in the Middle Ages... and no one prior knows a damn thing about it.

Christians like to think that the Tacitus passage gives proof that Jesus existed but it doesn't. Most scholars these days say it just gives us some idea of what Christians believed at the time the Annals were written. The interesting thing is that the rant attributed to Tacitus doesn't mention crucifixion or Jesus or even give a hint that Peter was one of the Christians who were crucified at the spectacle.

Yeah, their use of Gamliel seems to be contradictory in nature.

It got even sillier when Christian tradition made him a secret Christian. The Eastern Orthodox Church even venerates him as a saint. I'm sure he'd have been thrilled to know that.

I was mistaken, he was the one that came about 125 years earlier. The one I meant to post was Theudus who was killed in the year 46CE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theudas

The other was Judah, Teacher of Righteousness, who was killed around 100BCE. Sorry about that.

Thanks for the help.

Originally, many of the statements just had "Yeshu", the "Notzri" part was obviously later editing additions.

Thanks for the extra information. I've copied it into a document for future reference.