Chris Weimer

You're welcome - I have a fuller summary of Book X, but I'm preparing that for a blogpost, which would be easier to fully explicate my position without this "tit for tat" petty arguing.

I'm curious why you think I think they thought Christians to be a political association?

krosero

True, I did make that claim. I inferred it from Pliny's report that some of those he interrogated told him that they'd stopped meeting when Pliny issued Trajan's edict against political associations. Now it could be that this was not true, that they did not stop meeting. But if they're telling Pliny that they did, then it must have been something that Pliny wanted to hear. Certainly Pliny reports the breakup of the meetings to Trajan, as if it were a success.

More simply, if the Romans did not consider Christianity to be a political association, the Christians would not have felt the need to stop meeting, or felt the need to tell a Roman administrator that they had stopped meeting.

Chris Weimer

The above example is why it is important to be able to read the texts in their primary language. The text says "hetaerias", from the word "hetaeria" which can mean any assembly, not only political ones.

krosero

Got it, thanks.

krosero

I said earlier that your reply didn't engage the specific points I made, because as you can see, you gave me a short expose on problems with historicism, attacking arguments I never made.

I did not, for instance, say that Jesus was important enough in Roman eyes for an emperor to know about him. I did not say that he did "something to warrant that kind of notice." I'm not sure that any historicist says this, so it would be good to clear up the straw right now.

Pliny's letter tells us that Christians were regarded as a problem -- they were being interrogated and executed. Interrogations were going on before Pliny ever got in on it; he says so. Doherty tells us, IMO with some reasonableness, that the fact of a sect beginning with the execution of a political rebel would have been of interest to Trajan. Let's grant it for the sake of argument.

Such is Doherty's argument when considering whether the HJ model can explain Pliny's letter. Well, then, lay it out step by step. Christ was crucified as a political rebel. Emperors tend to find out what they're interested in; the people around them tend to provide them with the information. If Doherty is considering whether the HJ model is true, then it's granted that Christ's execution was a story known to Roman authorities, who tend to get at least basic information: interrogations are carried out, information about outlawed groups taken away.

Tacitus, as Chris offered, provides a witness to this scenario: he was able to get the story of Christ's crucifixion.

So again I ask, what is your expectation that Pliny, of all people, who is late to the show, would INFORM Trajan about this fact, which the Roman state, having already interrogated Christians, surely already know?

In a letter where Pliny is trying to gather some additional information to clear up what he has heard about Christianity, and he's specifically focusing on the question of what practices there might be to punish, what are the chances that he'll shoot the breeze about the basic definition of Christians as a group that began with the execution of Christ? Why do we treat Pliny as if he should be INFORMING Trajan about this fact, when in the HJ model the Romans would surely already know it?

Doherty, Jesus Puzzle, p. 201:

This certainly sounds as if Doherty is treating Pliny's letter as if it were the first serious interrogation of Christians ever conducted, and as if Pliny would have been the first to discover the #1 basic fact about Christians and would have informed the Emperor about it.

And as I pointed out to you, EVEN in the MJ model this expectation doesn't fly, because Pliny's province was not the first to receive the HJ idea. Even in the MJ model, Christianity has already been targeted, interrogated, defined; and Pliny is late to the show. It's been defined as beginning with Christ, a novel superstitution involving a worthless criminal in Judea. Pliny regards all that as mere superstitio and doesn't even go into, or care to go into it -- though the reason for this is not that this fact was irrelevant or uninteresting to Roman authorities. Rather it was because the focus of his letter is finding present-day, punishable practices. The definition of Christianity, as a sect that began in so-and-so ways, and believed so-and-so things, helps him not at all in that regard; and he regards it all anyway as superstitio.

Pliny is not interested in history or theology; he's an administrator, a man in charge of practical matters, not a historian.

In short, this expectation that Pliny would mention JC, though a reasonable enough thing for any of us to expect, has no real force behind it when examined.

I think part of the problem here may be that you think we're putting Pliny forward as a positive piece of independent evidence of a man who was crucified and who was, moreover, important enough in his own right for Emperors to take notice of and take great interest in. Hardly. Please banish any such thoughts from your mind when considering what we're saying about Pliny.

Kevin

andrewcriddle

The Romans were suspicious on the matter.

In another of the letters Trajan discourages Pliny from setting up a fire-fighting guild, fearing it would become a cover for sedition.

Andrew Criddle

Chris Weimer

Trajan says they would turn into factiones which would leave the civitates vexatae, and no matter what they do with them in a short time become hetaeriae.

Excepting factiones, which is lacking in letter 96, I don't see it sedition in the passage. If you take factio to be political faction, then perhaps, but the Christians aren't in factionibus, but merely an hetaeria.

I would say that Trajan fears the collegium of the firefighters would turn factitious, not against the government, but against the city, causing trouble like they did in Rome. But they weren't seditious. Perhaps here that meaning is extended, but I don't think it's certainly to be read into it.

Gregg

It astonishes me how:

A couple of highly disputed references in Josephus, a man who took considerable interest in the would-be Messiahs, rabble-rousers and revolutionaries who he saw as responsible for arousing Rome's wrath against the Jews, and so might be expected to have paid more obvious attention to Jesus;

An inconclusive letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan regarding how to deal with Christians;

And a reference from Tacitus, probably based on information gleaned from a sect of "gospel-believing" Christians or from hearsay about Christian beliefs (there's no reason to suppose pagans would have differentiated among varieties of Christ-belief, i.e. MJ and HJ, and would Tacitus really have any reason to question whether Pilate, a notoriously brutal man, had had somebody crucified?);

can be turned into "The Roman Emperors knew about Jesus and that he was executed by Pilate, probably for sedition, which was a big reason they wanted to keep Christianity in check since it involved the worship of this man. Trajan already knew about the origins of Christian beliefs so there was no need for Pliny the Younger to repeat it and insult the Emperor's intelligence."

Sure, this explanation is not totally beyond the realm of probability and in the presence or absence of other evidence it might pass the test of Occam's razor. But as it is, there is both evidence present and evidence absent that makes it a less likely explanation.

Why were no more Roman (and Jewish) references to Jesus preserved? Why did some Christian feel the need to slip a reference into Josephus? If a brief reference by Pliny and another by Tacitus survived, why nothing else? If the Roman Emperors themselves knew about Jesus' crucifixion by Pilate and feared Christianity partly on that score, why did they not write about this in any other letters or documents?

Once again, you have a situation similar to that in the NT epistles; everybody "knows," yet nobody writes. You can "explain," via a scrap from Tacitus, why Pliny doesn't say anything about Jesus or Pilate in his letter to Trajan and why Trajan doesn't say anything in his response, but you can't explain the general silence beyond these two mentions, other than to say nobody had any reason to write about it, or that everything else written about it was lost, which brings back the question of why the Christians didn't preserve more of it. Or did they actually destroy most of it and this is what they missed? Well, if they were trying to create a certain image of Jesus that wasn't too anti-Roman, I suppose that's possible, but surely there would have been a little more material out there that was more or less neutral and factual that they would have considered worth keeping.

Then on top of this absence of evidence, you have evidence for something else; widespread, diverse belief in the Son, an intermediary between God and man, an outgrowth of Platonism and mystical Judaism, of the Logos and personified Wisdom concepts. You have clear indications that before Mark, nobody talked about a human Jesus, but after Mark, lots of people talk (and WRITE!) about him, and what they know about him comes from Mark and other gospels largely based on Mark, not from a previously existing oral tradition.

It's when all this is taken as a whole that it seems more likely to me that Christianity began with a heavenly Christ and the couple of references by Romans about Christ don't reflect any actual knowledge on their part, derived from intelligence reports perhaps, about a Jewish man who was crucified by Pilate. Perhaps they knew that was what some Christians believed (although Pliny may not). but, of course, this belief on the part of some Christians, according to the MJ thesis, was derived from the gospels, not from an oral tradition about a remembered historical event.

Now, I agree with krosero ... Doherty and JM'ers in general need to take a closer look at, and provide a more fleshed out theory (insofar as that is possible) for, how Christianity transitioned from universal belief in purely "heavenly" Christ to universal belief in a Christ that was on Earth without leaving more obvious signs of conflict. I think in that area, one thing that needs to be considered is that once the gospels were circulating and seen by some as historical, Christianity may have spread at a faster rate among the lower classes since the miracle stories, parables, promises of exaltation of the poor and humbling of the powerful, messages of mercy and forgiveness, and so on would have been powerfully appealing. (I've argued that people would have needed some reason to believe a crucified Jewish man they never heard of was the incarnate Christ; well, the gospels, once they were seen as historical, provided that reason for credulous people. Paul and the epistle writers never do.) By the time HJ Christianity was a noticeable phenomenon, however, MJ Christianity may have already drifted far enough in that direction, and far enough away from its philosophical roots (and MJ Christians, although Felix might be an exception, didn't seem to have a problem with the gospels as allegories) that the "clash" when it occurred, was more Gnostics and docetist Christians vs HJers than MJers vs HJers.

I think trying to trace how HJ belief might have waxed, and MJ belief waned, over time and by geography and social class would be an interesting endeavor.

(Edited to add: Although it's important to understand that MJ belief never really "went away." The Christ's pre-existence and creative role, his descent and "humbling" of himself, his rescue of the righteous from Sheol, his triumph over Satan and his angels, all remained.)

Gregg

Give me a break. David Koresh had 2,000 years of religious history and end-times theology to draw from in making his claims. Christian belief as it has been understood for the past 1500-1600 years, with an incarnate Christ, provided a precedent for him. And in spite of all this he had only a very small group of followers, and even though his "martyrdom" was broadcast live on CNN, you do not find churches based on the worship of David Koresh all over the place.

I think people, even very credulous people, do need reasons or excuses to believe, even if they're bogus and unverifiable reasons. ("Why should I believe David Koresh was the final prophet?" "Well, I saw him heal a kid from cancer once, and he predicted that tornado one time." "OK, that's enough for me.") People who didn't know Koresh personally are less likely to accept claims made about him unless he's built up, unless they're told he performed a miracle or made a prophecy or two that came true. But as has been pointed out elsewhere, we have no evidence that Christians talked about Jesus doing miracles or prophesying the future until 40 years or so after Paul's time, coinciding with the writing of Mark.

Now, while lots of people in the first century were more credulous than people today (although not by much), the people we know got turned into gods generally had accomplished something in their lifetimes, made a name for themselves--emperor, wise philosopher, etc. We have their writings, orders they gave, buildings with their names on them, evidence of their temporal existence and accomplishments. We have no conclusive evidence for Jesus' temporal existence and furthermore we have no other examples of Jews turning rabbis or rebel leaders or whatever Jesus was, crucified or otherwise, into not just prophets, not just Messiahs, but pre-existent divine beings through whom the universe was created.

Anyway, how much clearer can it be made? We don't JUST have a dearth of evidence for Jesus' temporal existence. We don't JUST have a dearth of evidence for a gradual accumulation of myth and legend around a historical person. We also have positive evidence FOR beliefs preceding Christianity and contemporary with Christianity that contained many elements in common with Christianity, including the worship of dying/resurrecting gods, descending divine beings who change form as they pass through increasingly Earth-like heavens, emanations such as the Logos and personified Wisdom through which God creates and imparts spiritual knowledge, and so on. If we didn't have all this, then we probably wouldn't even be here arguing Jesus' historicity. MJers (at least Doherty MJers) wouldn't exist because even with the tiny amount of "evidence" for Jesus' historicity, there wouldn't really be any other rational explanation for where Christianity came from.

But any survey of religious history shows that religions don't just spring up in a vacuum. They grow out of older beliefs, they are influenced by other religions and philosophies. When you look at the environment in which Christianity emerged and the belief systems that preceded it and were contemporary with it, it is simply denying the obvious to say that Christianity couldn't have emerged from various combinations and reinterpretations of existing belief systems, and then incorporated a historical Christ through the gospels. IMO, there is too much evidence for this for a scrap from Tacitus, a letter from Pliny, and a couple of disputed passages in Josephus to overcome.

And sorry, G'Don, Paul's "born of a woman, born under the law" doesn't fit the bill either. I know you think this proves Paul speaks of Jesus as a historical person, but with all the evidence to the contrary, it makes perfect sense to interpret his statement differently.

Gregg

I realize torturing and executing people back then, even women, was just part of the normal course of things. But I think it's reasonable to assume that Pliny regarded the Christians as a genuine threat to public order. Could he keep all emotion and judgment out of his thoughts in regard to them? After all, he also describes their beliefs as "depraved superstition" which sounds pretty judgmental to me.

Anyway, I believe I also suggested another couple of possibilities for his phrasing.

LOL ... an HJer complaining about an "ad hoc" explanation. And after I get an ad hoc explanation with no evidence as to why Pliny and Trajan don't say anything about Jesus or Pilate (a scrap from Tacitus is supposed to prove everybody already knew everything there was to know about Jesus, or at any rate knew what the Christians believed about him).

I also gave other possible explanations, and my original explanation is hardly unreasonable.


Boy, you're just going to keep chewing on this one like a pit bull, aren't you? It was just an offhand observation and was hardly central to my argument. I said he "sounds" like a fundamentalist "here" (meaning the letter), I didn't say he is a fundamentalist. Maybe "fundamentalist" wasn't the best word choice, OK? Perhaps "fervent defender of public order and State religion" is better? Sorry, this term is tossed off so casually these days to describe conservative, orthodoxy-defending, law & order types that I guess I picked up on it. My sincere apologies.