spin

I was partly complaining about the unhelpful retrojection of "terrorism".

The apologist has the ability to cite all that is necessary. It's not that ordinary people usually read the source texts, just the christian works, going by the wealth of christian citations as against the paucity of other citations. It seems more likely that when christian fathers referred to citations it was not from the original texts but through citation collections. Josephus on John the Baptist and some form of the James passage were available to Origen, but nothing else. Arguing that the original text might be misconstrued by readers doesn't seem to be dealing with christian use of sources: they knew how to quote and set a quotation.

Our passage is more elaborate than that of Sulpicius, who simply paints the issue as trumped up charges. A 15.44 makes it clear that everyone knew that they were trumped up charges and that it was sufficient to be christian. I guess Sulpicius wasn't up to the subtlety.


spin

andrewcriddle

If one goes back up the thread we were originally discussing the claim that the Sulpicius Severus account (which you hold to be original) is a typical Martyr story. SS has no account of anyone confessing to anything.

On the point of the lurid details. Christian Martyr stories do relish lurid details but not usually for their own sake, they illustrate the continuing resistance of the martyr under torture. There is nothing of this here
Dio Cassius has a narrative extending well into the 3rd century CE. IMO the absence of any mention of Christians in the latter part of his narrative (assuming it is not a result of fragmentary survival of his text) does seem to indicate a deliberate decision.
My point is that if the passage in SS is the original then the interpolator in Tacitus went to much much more effort to write like Tacitus than was necessary in order to change the SS passage into something Tacitus might arguably have said.

The passage in Sulpicius reads like something Sulpicius might say, the passage in Tacitus reads (at least at first sight) like something Tacitus might say. The problem is in having a Christian copyist rewrite the Sulpicius passage to correspond to the Tacitaean passage he believed/imagined/pretended might be the source for Sulpicius and end up with what we now have in Tacitus.

The other way in which SS has our text of Tacitus before him and rewrites it to produce our text of SS does not have these problems.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Lactantius does not link the persecution with the fire but he certainly regards Nero as a persecutor

From On The Deaths of the Persecutors


http://www.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Cou.../lactpers.html

Andrew Criddle

spin

Christians confessed their faith. It's not a strange addition to the Sulpicius story.

They are a sign of suffering that inaugurated the process of christian martyrdom. Sign of things to come... umm, weren't they?

Wishful opinion, wouldn't you say?

Tacitus was at least later considered to be the epitome of good Latin.

I agree with the first part. You can't be serious about the second. Far too many problems of information, style and narrative cohesion.

As I said, Tacitus was perceived as the Latin writer. I'm sure the scribe learnt something from him.

Sulpicius was the source. Not strange. The scribe tarted up his source -- happened a lot, didn't it? -- to be inserted in Tacitus. No big deal.

The other way is that Tacitus didn't know something he did know, the official position of Pontius Pilate. He injected a widespread religion into Rome at a time when only apologists see a real multitude. The writer seems to have thought that Nero's men would be able to recognize christians some how, tell them apart from Jews. He injected a nugget of christian witness and made the hated christians into figures deserving of sympathy. He wrote some terrible tasteless prose. He even screwed up his -- up to this point artisticly nasty -- attack on Nero. In short in this one paragraph your Tacitus made a complete and utter botch up of his efforts, just to render service to christians. Not compelling, Andrew, is it?


spin

Ben C Smith

At least one Latin dictionary (Cassell) says so:

Esp. (I) to inform against, give evidence about.

That is correct. The interrogated Christians disclosed the identities or names of other Christians whose identities or names had until that point not been known to the interrogators.

Exactly.

:huh:

Ben.

Chris Weimer

The word etymologically means "to speak against" in + dico, formed from index, "the pointer", used as "an informer", "that which discloses, betrays, reveals". (Chambers Murray w/ citations)

Ben C Smith

What I am puzzled about is how spin can practically define the word as informing against (he says that it involves Christians disclosing other Christians under interrogation) and yet say that informing against is shaping the data.

Perhaps he is reading something like intentionally or premeditatively into a translation such as inform against, but I do not see it that way at all. I can inform against my mates deliberately, or I can inform against my mates under heavy interrogation; either way, I would be called an informer.

Ben.

spin

It's a stylistic concern. "Inform against" contains a sense of betrayal of some trust. That is only one of the possible collocations of the word. As the generic meaning of the word OLD gives "disclosure, information, intelligence". Its second meaning is "disclosure of something intended to be secret; {esp., usu. leg.} information or evidence given against a person".

Was being christian "intended to be secret"? What would make you think that the text wants you to read it as "information against a person", rather than a "disclosure [of (obviously) previously unknown fact]"? I think your conclusions shape your interpretation.


spin

Amaleq13

Your concern is that the former assumes or requires that being a Christian was, itself, illegal without sufficient evidence, correct?

IOW, it is the difference between revealing a secret criminal activity and revealing a secret(?) religious association?

spin

Our concern is the attitude of the writer to the reported event. Ben C, by choosing a specific meaning of the word indicium with negative connotations, he wishes to exclude a christian writer. It's one thing to talk the talk of hatred of humanity, but to say that christians betrayed christians starts to give some difficulty for a christian having written the comment. To read betrayal into the passage would require some tangible sign, otherwise we should read the phrase as neutral. Not being deceitful was a burden to christians in real times of persecution.

If this were really the first persecution, then would saying who other christians were be seen as anything wrong? Ingenuousness is what got Dodos extinct.


spin