Minimalist

I'd seen that before, Zeichman, but there is another point that is overlooked.

Tacitus was writing in the first decade of the second century. In 112 or so, Pliny wrote to Trajan about christians basically asking "what do I do with these people." Trajan responded in a fairly mild manner.

Now both Trajan and Pliny (Pliny admittedly only 1) were alive when the Tacitus comment claims that christians were held responsible for burning down 2/3 of the city of Rome. As Roman aristocrats it would seem that both Pliny and Trajan would be a little more worked up about this sect of crazed arsonists living in their midst.

So, on the one hand we are asked to believe that these stories were rampant when Tacitus was writing the Annales at the same general time as Pliny was governor or Asia Minor, but on the other hand, Pliny and Trajan seem oblivious to the danger in their midst? Something does not compute.

Minimalist

Sorry. I realize I should have posted a link to the Pliny/Trajan correspondence so people wouldn't have to hunt for it.

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html

Zeichman

Right, but scholars cannot be expected to refute ideas that haven't been argued without appearing to be dogmatists or being paranoid (do we find articles against the idea that Jesus' body was stolen from the tomb by aliens?). Given the rather great diversity of even the small group of Jesus-Mythicists, it is hard to imagine arguments that would cross all of them, aside from establishing the reliability of the Testamonium and similar things (Acharya S doesn't accept any previously-existing model of the Synoptic problem, for example). My experience has been that, before the Flemming movie, the JM hypothesis was not really known outside of specific sectors on the internet, with a few exceptions. I would have to imagine most scholars would rather do things other than spend time addressing marginal hypotheses with non-academics. I think there is still hope that Carrier or Price might publish something in a journal, and I would also like to see a revised version of Doherty's interpretation of Paul get published. I think there's potential, but they need the input of the guild to get a conclusive assessment either way. I think it's conceivable that MJ advocates might be afraid of effective refutations of their work, if it were published in a journal. Personally, I think that the assumptions of the a historical Jesus go so deep in scholarship that it is problematic for someone like Price or Doherty (not so much Wells) to try to work within this paradigm.

Toto

I sincerely doubt that. Doherty spent a lot of time trying to get someone to try to refute him.

And you don't find people arguing against the idea that Jesus' body was stolen by aliens - but no one in the academy has every proposed that. Scholars have proposed that the Jesus of the church was a myth, but the reaction has not been to refute the idea, but to brush them off somehow. Has anyone written a peer reviewed article demonstrating that Wells' thesis is wrong? He does have a PhD, but it's in linguistics. Doherty has a degree in classics, but not a PhD, and has a day job.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Andrew,

We should expect that Tacitus would have referred back to any previous reference when he brings up the group. We should expect him to say, "...
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, as I reported in more detail in my previous book on the reign of Tiberius." The fact that he does not refer readers back to any text indicates that he did not report it.

Now, the other noteworthy thing is the hatred he expresses for Christians in the passage. Since Christians had done nothing against any Greek or Roman up to the time of Tacitus, it seems bizarre that he should be so passionate in his hatred for them.

However, it is evident from other passages in his work that he does passionately hate the Jews. He is very careful to explain the reason for his hatred of the Jews. Also, he consistently labels it a superstition.

So we have to ask why Tacitus would carefully explain his reasons for hating the Jews and calling it a superstition, but not explain his reason for hating the Christians and calling their religion a superstition?

If we assume that Tacitus wrote the passage about the Jews and it was interpolated by Christians to be about Christians, we do not need to explain this missing motive. There is no missing motive. This becomes just another of a series of passages in Tacitus attacking Jews.

Now, I realize that we cannot demand consistency from writers in every case. A writer may give a long list of reasons why he hates "X" and then express hatred of "Y" without giving any reason. However, when a passage is being presented as the only evidence in a case such as this, and the possibility certainly exists that the passage has been changed by someone else, we may ask if the passage presents stylistic consistency on the part of the author. If it does not, the passage becomes highly problematic and cannot be securely used as evidence.

If there is a passage in Tacitus where he expresses equivalent hatred for a group and does not explain why, I would be pleased to hear about it.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Chris Weimer

Jim Deardorff is a research professor emeritus at Oregon State University - if I recall correctly, his PhD was in meterology. He's argued for years now that aliens came down and gave the true gospel - the Talmud Jmmanuel.

Have fun.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Huon,

Thanks for the response.

I had not considered that it is as odd for the interpolater as it would be for Tacitus to put in this passage in the time of Nero as opposed to putting some reference in during the time of Tiberius. My guess would be that since the passage already referred to Jews, it was a simple matter to change the word "Jews" to "Christians" and add a one sentence reference to Christ and Pilate. On the other hand, assuming the books of the time of Tiberius were still in existence, it would have been far more difficult to insert elements of the Jesus Christ story into the text of that period without disrupting the flow of Tacitus' writing. An interpolator would naturally add the minimal amount of text needed to make his point in order to avoid discovery.

As to your second point, I agree it is possible that Tacitus did not know about the events that took place during the time of Tiberius regarding Jesus the Christ, but did know about a persecution during the time of Nero.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Gooch's dad

What is your evidence for this rather bold claim?

Gooch's dad

I don't recall referring to "magazines" at all. If I did, please point this out to me. I don't expect scholarly peer-reviewed articles to be published in Cosmo or GQ, or whatever magazines "wealthy church-going people" read.

Oh, that would be Playboy. Nope, none there either.

GakuseiDon

Toto, do you really think that most scholars are "hiding behind" those reasons as excuses to avoid investigation? I.e. they suspect that the mythicist position may be correct, but it is too controversial to look into so they ignore evidence for it?