Lilyofthevalley

I'm inclined to think that Pliny said the Christians worshipped Christ as 'a god'.

But a Christian says, No, Pliny said they worshipped Christ as 'God'.

I would appreciate any clarification from anyone who has read what Pliny actually said - in Latin, where, I hope, it may clear things up but where I think it may be ambiguous, which is what the Christian is basing his argument on.

DCHindley

Lily,

There was a rather detailed discussion on this about a year back:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=246799

DCH

mountainman

How old (which century) is the oldest manuscript of this Pliny letter?

lpetrich

In the original Latin, it is

christo quasi deo

to Christ as if a god
to Christ as if god
to Christ as if the god

Latin lacked articles (a/an and the), so one may need additional context to translate it unambiguously.

Doug Shaver

This is pretty dated, but I didn't immediately find any references to any more-recent discoveries.

* Charles Upson Clark
* Reviewed work(s): A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger: A Study of Six Leaves of an Uncial Manuscript Preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York by E. A. Lowe; E. K. Rand
* The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 45, No. 1 (1924), pp. 88-90
(review consists of 3 pages)
* Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

http://www.jstor.org/pss/289226

Roger Pearse

The text makes no distinction; "quasi deo" could equally mean "as (if) a god" or "as (if) god". Latin has no indefinite article, or indeed definite article; it could also mean "as (if) the god".

I have no idea why this should be controversial, nor why we should try to derive things from it.

Pliny was a pagan, and the ambiguity can only mean that he shows no sign of interest in whether the people he was executing were monotheists or not. If he had been interested, he could easily have found another form of words to make his meaning clear, after all.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

It is unlikely that Pliny was a country bumpkin!