rlogan

Sorry I'm a bit late for the PhilospherJay party.

That was a provocative reconstruction and had quite a bit of support. One thing I felt uneasy about though was what I thought to be a treatment of Judaism as a recent "superstition":

Isn't it odd to say that it "broke out" in Judea? It would have been the dominant paradigm there from time immemorial, would it not? Even to say that it "again" broke out in the place of its first source diminishes the status of Judaism as the ancient and pervasive belief system for the region.

Lucretius

Jay I have to be honest and say that I have not read a great deal of Tertullian ,certainly not to the extent of Silver Age Latin, having studied Latin from a linguisitic and stylistic perspective as it was taught when I was at University ,Tertullian wasn't really covered that much,as his style is a bit basic at times (I am relying solely on what I remember being taught a long time ago on this )
From what I remember Terullian along with other later authors was only taught as examples of the way Latin prose became simplified leading to medieval Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin and modern Romance language styles such as Italian ,Spanish and to a lesser extent French.
If I have time I will try and have a look but as I said before I have several other projects on the go at the moment.

Lucretius

The phrase "broke out again" could be interpreted as meaning some sort of outbreak of trouble caused by Messianic Jews or Zealots as opposed to the general apathy ,which may have been the norm in Judea.
There was after all a 30 year gap between Tiberius' expulsion of the Jews and Claudius' and again a gap of roughly 20 years until the Jewish wars ,so I think we can see spells of peace/apathy in the region interspersed with trouble

rlogan

I think the probelm with this view is that it would have been easy for Tacitus to state so. Elsewhere we have a Tacitus citation referring to Judaism as "ancient" - so there would need to be a more specific reference in this passage to delineate the zealots or whatever they were from the more ancient practice. This is where the Christian hypothesis fares well in terms of being an "outbreak". I do favor the idea of a solid block of interpolation here, though.

This latter observation is utilized to buttress the notion of the outbreak referring to "trouble" as opposed to a religious sect per se. I'm still of the opinion that if this passage is as P.J. contstructs it then it must be speaking to a sect.

Thank you for the response nevertheless.

One thing I really do support is the notion of Eusebius as the "hub" in the wheel of forgery. He even intimates to us his belief in the propriety of the practice. The "noble lie", as it were.

PhilosopherJay

Hi rlogan,

I think we assume that Romans would know that Judaism was an ancient religion based on our knowledge of Josephus. But we should remember that Josephus has to argue to prove that Judaism was an ancient religion. To Romans, Jews would probably be something they first heard about seriously for the first time in the late 60's-early 70's. We may take that as a starting date for Roman consciousness about Jews in the world, or at least the consciousness that Tacitus would be addressing in his works circa 115 C.E.. They would hardly consider it an old and venerable religion, but a fierce, dangerous, exotic, faraway current enemy defeated in a recent major war.

Please note that Tacitus twice refers to Judaism as a "national superstition" in this passage from his history (book 5) where he informs his readers of the history of the region:
However, your point and Tacitus's elementary discussions of Jewish origins in his History, does have me thinking that Tacitus would need to give an explanation of the name "Jews." in his Annals. I may have been hasty in throwing out the phrase "Christus, from whom the name had its origin" It may be that the interpolator found a similar phrase in the text: "Judea from where the name had its origin."

This was my original reconstruction:
We may correct it to this:

Thanks.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Bede

Accoring to Keith Hopkins in A World Full of Gods, the Jews made up about 10% of the population and had sizable groups in every major city. On that basis, I think we may assume that every urban Roman knew something of them and were certainly 'conscious' of their existence.

No more than the leader writer of the NY Times needs to explain the words Moslem or Hindu.

Tertullian wrote difficult (as I expect Luc will vouch) highly rhetorical Latin that firmly reflects his legal training. Eusebius wrote nothiong of the kind - instead he wrote not especially fancy Greek from over a century later. It is doubtful he could even read Latin (which is why for instance, he never quotes Tacitus and probably used Tertullian in translation.) It is a long stretch to say he interpolated a passage in a language he could hardly read when the rest of the work is in a highly stylised fashion. Such a thing would stick out like a sore thumb.

Too many suppositions here to be credible. According to Roger Peirce's excellent website, Ad nationes is an unrevised draft that was adapted later in the same year into the Apology. Thus points made in Ad nationes are repeated in the Apology but in a more developed way. The fact that Nero's persecution appears in both shows the relevant passage in the Apology is unlikely to be an interpolation. More than that, it explains why it doesn't contain quotes from the Annals - all the Tacitus quotes come from the Histories which is presumably what Tertuallian had at hand at the time. Besides, the passage in Ad nationes does show a physical persecution:

"Principe Augusto nomen hoc ortum est, Tiberio disciplina eius inluxit, Nerone damnatio inualuit, ut iam hinc de persona persecutoris ponderetis;"

"The name was born under the rule of Augustus, its teaching shown forth under Tibrius, under Nero's condemnation it was attacked hard, so you may now weigh it from the character of its persecutor".

The words 'damnatio invaluit' certainly mean getting rough.

Enough for now.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Bede

No he does not. We have been through this a dozen times and every time we find that the only way to accept this interpretation is if Eusebius thinks there are lies in the Bible. What he says is that the bible uses figurative language or parables to explain things. It is absurd to suggest that he means that lying is OK. The legend that he did comes from a misquote by the old villian Edward Gibbon.

Yours

Bede

Amaleq13

Eusebius clearly does think there are falsehoods in the Hebrew Bible.

He says that "it is necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a medicine for those who need such an approach." and goes on to observe that one can find falsehoods like this in the Hebrew Bible whenever God is depicted as "being jealous or falling asleep or getting angry or being subject to some other human passions".

Bede

This a mis-translation. The word falsehood should be translated 'parable' or 'non-literal or figurative language.' We know this because the fact Eusebius does think there were falsehoods in the bible is absurd. Do you really think they would have made him a bishop in those days if he thought that?!? (I do appreciate such views are no bar to the Anglical Episcopalate today though ).

Yours

Bede

PhilosopherJay

Hi Bede,


Where is Hopkins getting his statistics? It seems inflated to me. Can we name a single major city with a population of 100,000 that Jews controlled outside of Jerusalem? Even in Alexandria where they were numerous, they were restricted to one of five districts. I believe it was Philo, who, growing up in a Jewish neighborhood, thought that everybody in the world was Jewish. While the population is hard to know, It is easier to guess that Roman historians devote less than 1% of their reports to Jewish events.

Consciousness of the existence of people is different from a specific consciousness of people. For example the consciousness of the American people regarding Iraq is shaped primarily by the wars the United States has fought in Iraq in 1990 and over the last couple of years. Probably 99% of Americans do not know anything of the history of Iraq before this time. So it is correct to say that the recent wars has shaped the American people's consciousness of the people of Iraq. It would be incorrect to suppose that the American people have any real understanding of the history of Iraq.
In the same way, the Roman audience of Tacitus's time would have their understanding of Jews shaped by the recent war 67-73 as opposed to an understanding derived from Josephus, which is where our understanding of Judaism of the period comes from.

And yet both Suetonius and Tacitus feel the need to explain it. And both suggest that the Jews worshipped Saturn, apparently a common understanding among Romans in those days.

Which Lucretius has argued it does. But it is absurd to believe that his personal lack of knowledge of Latin would stop the man who sat at the right hand of the Emperor Constantine for the Council of Nicea (if I'm recalling the conference correctly) from changing a couple of sentences in a Latin text.

Are you making the argument that he read the Histories of Tactitus but not the Annals?




Thanks for the translation. This is actually more favorable to me than the one I was using. The passage is talking about attacking the "name" hard. It says nothing about any physical persecution of Christians.

We actually need to distinguish between three different attacks by Nero.

In Ad nationes, the attack seems to be verbal. In Apology/Eusebian's History, Scorpion the main point is that Nero executed Peter and Paul. Only in Tacitus are ordinary Christians attacked by Nero.

Warmly

Jay