ynquirer

Because it altogether destroyed the original records?

Other references? Tacitus and the other historians, writing summaries of the summaries, are our references. Do you really think that Tacitus would have been the sound source on Roman history we think he is had he written based only on “common knowledge”?

I said Romans were pragmatic people. They paid no importance to the records but for political reasons. Only the historians made use of them for a different purpose than helping take decisions in difficult matters. When records ceased to be useful, Romans destroyed them to leave room for new ones. They thought the works of the historians, consisting of summaries of summaries, to be enough for posterity.

Tacitus, in particular, never mentions his sources.

About a fact ignored by Suetonius, for instance?

Not an archive of executions, but a series summaries of remarkable facts happened in the far province of Judaea, say, from Augustus onward, stored just a few shelves away from the summary of the events in 64, in the same room of Jewish Trouble.

We can be more confident in that records from Judaea were kept for longer than usually, because the province remained a troubled land since 26 – crisis of the standards – to 135 CE. In other cases, records were probably destroyed sooner, after twenty or thirty years, which explains why Roman historians committed mistakes, even blunders in dealing with important details of their history.

You mean a Christian source, surely? Someone that told him the false story of an inexistent Jew that was believed by ignorant people to have been crucified under the rule of procurator Pilate, isn’t it? And Tacitus, usually very careful in the data he gave credibility, this time was totally careless and took the story at face value, without checking just one detail, not even whether Pilate actually was a procurator. For had he checked the records of Pilate’s term, he would have disclosed both that there was no such a story and that Pilate was a prefect instead of a procurator.

As a routine, serious historians with especial care double check info from unreliable sources. And Christians, of whom Tacitus says they committed “enormities,” were the utmost unreliable to a Roman noble like him. He would not have spoken of Pilate, his fellow equites, having the Christians as a sole source.

Tacitus never mentions his sources.

jakejonesiv

Thank you!
All these claims about Tacitus' alleged sources are pure whimsy.
Speculation has its place, but speculation paraded as fact is egregious and useless bombast.

Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

Thanks for pointing out my errors! I really appreciate the correction.
:blush:


Jake Jones IV

andrewcriddle

Ben already pointed out that this interesting article is about Titus and the Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem not Nero and the Persecution of the Christians at Rome.

Sulpicius Severus cannot here be borrowing from Orosius because Sulpicius Severus seems to have been the earlier writer (c 405 for his history and c 415 for that of Orosius).

Richard Carrier may well be right that they are both here using a common source but IMO it is possible that Orosius is rewriting Sulpicius Severus. Some scholars have claimed on other grounds that Orosius made use of Sulpicius Severus as a source for his history.

Andrew Criddle

caleb_a_c

So after all the preceding posts, my question to you is: after seeing all the evidence before you, do you think Jesus existed or not?

ynquirer

Zero verification in terms of evidence, yes. But it is the same for your hypothesis that Tacitus read “some documentation on a minor cult” (see below). Verification of evidence for such documentation is exactly the same as mine, namely, zero.

Although you have exactly the same zero verification in favor of your hypothesis as I have, and despite of your assuming it and calling it the most likely explanation, I am not going for the time being to charge you with intellectual dishonesty, as you do me here.

A sole objection: the collective reputation of the equestrian order was somehow at the stake by Pilate’s performance as a governor of Judea, especially in occasion of Jesus’ death. Many equites might greet Pilate’s putting Jesus to death, but the senatorial order quite probably criticized Pilate - and by way of implication the political skills of the equestrian order - on account of lack of wisdom conducive, in the ultimate analysis, to the present trouble. Both orders were always quarreling and conspiring before the emperor in relation to their respective privileges - and procuratorship was a privilege of the equites. In all likelihood, there were voices among the equites that urged Tacitus to have clear his sources, and Christian sources were no use in such a delicate issue.

I still find zero verification of evidence for both. Parsimony is said of the comparative merits of both explanations in terms of reasonability. And it seems to me only too natural that the Roman governors of Judea were requested to write reports so as for Rome to keep in touch with a province that was increasingly quarrelsome, and that Rome kept such reports in safe place until peace was definitively restored after 135 CE. It seems only too natural that Rome did this.

Let’s see your documentation about a minor cult. Which documentation - a gospel? Why would Tacitus believe a word of a text full of extraordinary claims? Or else do you mean an account of pure facts without extraordinary claims? And the authors were Christians? Who else if not Christians?

Ockham’s razor cuts off such a vague, possibly self-contradicting supposition easier than political reports on a troubling province.

As important as Avril Levigne’s wedding? Naïve comparison, and in sheer ignorance of the competition for power between senators and equites under the High Empire. I have shown that Pilate’s performance as a governor of Judea bore some import as to the domestic balance of power between the aristocracy of blood and the aristocracy of money.

You have sources be serviceable to your prior belief - Tacitus’ story is false as based on “less stringent,” unreliable sources. I, instead, assume sources be serviceable to the governance of the empire. See the difference?

To begin with, the more parsimonious hypothesis is that a movement led by one Chrestus, conducive in 49 to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, and another inspired in one Christus, conducive to a deadly persecution of Christians in 64, are one and the same movement. You say that in 20 years everything might change. I don’t think so, out of inductive inference, for these were the two first links of a chain of persecutions that lasted not for 20 but for more than 200 years.

The question why Suetonius failed to check the same records as Tacitus is interesting - the only interesting one you have raised so far. In my opinion Suetonius failed to check the records because he did not think he had to, being misled as he was in his belief that Chrestus was still alive and possibly in Rome in 49; Suetonius says that Chrestus “instigated” the Jews, and this was done more easily from within than from without. Why should he dive in the Judean records, and looking for what?

Tacitus, instead, somehow caught word that Christus had never been in Rome and guessed that Jesus’ whereabouts must be sought in Judea (and/or Roman records about Judea). He just outdid Suetonius as a historian, in this particular issue. It happens everyday in professional competition.

Johann_Kaspar

Quotation
Which quotation
Please, can you point where Sulpicius Severus is quoting Tacitus about Pontius Pilatus crucifying someone?

Johann_Kaspar

What a meaningless hypothesis!
To use "the more parsimonious hypothesis" means that it is too complicated for you. You are simplifying and are ready to arrange things according to your prejudices.

Johann_Kaspar

This question is not important.
The important question is : did Saul/Paulus exist? And the answer is : no.
"all the evidence"... Sorry, it is too late to ask the question to Pilatus: did you crucify a man who wanted to be King of Israel?

caleb_a_c

Did I ask you? I'm asking the person who asked the original question. Are you telling him that his question isn't important? I think that's being unfairly presumptuous.