judge

How interesting if this standard were applied in every possible instance.

Jaybees

"Inscription proves the Neronian persecution of Christians?"

I'm not sure what difference it makes whether or not this inscription "proves" the Neronian persecution of Christians, since few if any modern scholars on that period (believers and non-believers alike) have disagreed with the premiss that there was such a persecution.

The argument among them is whether it was directed against Christians because of their beliefs, or because they were handy scapegoats to blame the burning of Rome on--being a small minority and mostly slaves or members of the lower classes.

mountainman

Its selective reading. In retrospect, severe questions about the "historicity" of the purported Neronian Christian persecutions were raised at least as early as the beginning of the 20th century with Arthur Drews The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus.

OAO

Here is a quick response to Doughty's interpolation view. But I'm not going to defend it any further. I just wanted to point how far outside the mainstream denying the Neronian persecution seems to be.

Jaybees

Do you know of any "current" scholars who deny the Neronian massacre of Christians?

The site you mention challenges the existence of an historical Jesus. That's quite different from claiming that there weren't Christians around to be burnt by Nero. Marcion, incidentally, was a Christian labeled a heretic by those Christians who finally won the battle of the sects. It very well could be that the Christians who became the target of Nero's soldiery were mainly Marcionites.

Also, forgeries, overwritings, erasures, etc. abound in handwritten documents. Early Christians seemed to be especially adept at this. But the context usually exposes them, as for example in the editing of the Josephus manuscripts.

mountainman

In The Evolution of Christs And Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Jay Raskin (2006), pages 98-103, the author suggests a reconstruction of the Tacitus Christian reference where it is the "Jews" who are mentioned as the subjects of the Neronian persecution.

Doug Shaver

If staying in the mainstream were all that mattered, we'd all be Christians. At least, those of us who live in the United States.

stephan huller

That reference should have the support of at least one other person at this forum besides Pete

David Deas

I think mostly German scholars who's work you would need to translate, because some of them argue that "Chrestianos", which was what was originally written by Tacitus, should have obviously caused the derivative "Chrestus" to be written by Tacitus. But since we find "Christos", which would have required "Christianos", we have to regard the thing as at least a partial forgery. Otherwise, for whatever reason Tacitus says that the "Chrestianos" derived their name from "Christos", which isn't supposed to make good sense.

I think Erik Zara has contended that the Christianos/Christus thing in Tacitus is at least a partial interpolation as well.

DCHindley

Jaybees,

Based on the exploded photo cited by mm,



couldn't it be just as likely that the copyist started to misspell "christianos" as "chrit", caught himself, marks the spot with a little accent mark above the line knowing the "t" will have to be erased, then completing the word with "stianos'. The errant "t" along with the mark above the letter is erased by scraping, but in the process he gets a bit of the preceding "i" as well. The "i" is retouched (and BTW, there are several examples of "i" written exactly this way in the same document). The result is "chri stianos". No need for "chrestianos" with two retouchings involving hyphens and all that. The marginal "Christiani" is for reference to the passage.

The entire page, so you can compare examples of "i", "t" & "e", is here:



DCH (on lunch break, boss)