(March 24, 2014 at 6:18 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: So the rumor that Christians were responsible for the great fire in Rome in 64 A.D. was itself a baseless rumor that emerged sometime after the first century?
No one in antiquity, Greco-Roman or Xtian, seems to know anything at all about that passage. Nor, does anyone other than Tacitus - allegedly - attribute any indication that Nero persecuted xtians because of the fire. It is curious.
A watered down variant of it appears in the 5th century work, Chronica, by Sulpicius Severus.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/PII11-5.TXT
Part 2
Quote:CHAPTER XXIX.
Is the meantime, the number of the Christians being now very large, it happened that Rome was destroyed by fire, while Nero was stationed at Antium. But the opinion of all cast the odium of causing the fire upon the emperor, and he was believed in this way to have sought for the glory of building a new city. And in fact, Nero could not by any means 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. In this way, cruelty tint began to be manifested against the Christians. Afterwards, too, their religion was prohibited by laws which were enacted; and by edicts openly set forth it was proclaimed unlawful to be a Christian.
As you can see it does not match fully with what later emerged as Tacitus' Annales but neither does Severus credit Tacitus as his source, either.
