There is one manuscript for Tacitus' Annales Books 1-6 and one manuscript for Books 11-16. 1-6 dates to the 9th century BC and the one that gets xtians' knickers in a twist is an 11th century copy. This is the one that a scribe tried to "correct" by changing the "e" in chrestianos to an "i."
Of course, by definition, we have no way of knowing how many times these books had been recopied between the second century when Tacitus wrote them and the 11th century when we have evidence of tampering.
All we know for certain is that:
1 - some scribe tried to make a correction changing chrestianos to christianos in the 11th century, and
2- no xtian writer in antiquity makes reference to Nero's supposed persecution of xtians for the Great Fire of 64 until Sulpicius Severus in the early 5th century.
But "chrestus" keeps showing up in the record and it is pretty easy to see how xtians, with their eye on marketing, would have preferred Jesus the Good to Jesus the Oily.
Of course, by definition, we have no way of knowing how many times these books had been recopied between the second century when Tacitus wrote them and the 11th century when we have evidence of tampering.
All we know for certain is that:
1 - some scribe tried to make a correction changing chrestianos to christianos in the 11th century, and
2- no xtian writer in antiquity makes reference to Nero's supposed persecution of xtians for the Great Fire of 64 until Sulpicius Severus in the early 5th century.
But "chrestus" keeps showing up in the record and it is pretty easy to see how xtians, with their eye on marketing, would have preferred Jesus the Good to Jesus the Oily.
