GakuseiDon

I doubt Tacitus would bother. If he was using official sources, more likely it was a report on banned groups or cults.

The moret interesting thing about Tactitus' account, assuming he wrote it, is the reference to "a most mischievous superstition" that was "checked for the moment" by the death of Christus. That is, whatever was regarded as "mischeivous superstition" by the Romans, was part of Christianity before Christ was killed, suggesting that the "mischeivous superstition" had nothing to do with the worship of a crucified criminal or the Resurrection.

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

Juststeve

Don:

You make an interesting point. My sense is that we don't have enough information to know for sure what the Christian superstition was before the death of Jesus, but to speculate, it might have had to do with Jesus being the Messiah, the rightful ruler of Israel, which would have been enough to get him crucified. Allowing himself to be set up as a king would have been sedition, punishable by death.

From our vantage point it certainly appears that the superstition changed after Jesus died but Tacitus may not have known or cared about that.

It is unlikely in my mind that a Christian interpolator would have used the phrase a most mischievous superstition. Don't you think that odd?

Steve

smeat75

No. Tacitus writes in a very compressed style and I can see where you get your mistaken idea, but that is incorrect. Tacitus is saying that NERO checked the "mischievous superstition" by torturing the Christians, not that Pilate checked it by executing "Christus".

smeat75

Ok sorry, I take that back, I read it again.
Yes it does say that Pilate checked it by executing "Christus" but what it means is that it was started when "Christus" was alive, was checked for the moment by his execution, but started up again after he died.
Yes you were right the first time, I apologise.

smeat75

The full passage is ""Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".


"A class hated for their abominations...a most mischievous superstition..evil..hideous and shameful... convicted ...of hatred against mankind."

Of course that is not a Christian interpolation.

Diogenes the Cynic

To me the word indicates a hypothesis that no real personality existed at the Genesis of the religion founded on the reverence of a putative crucified Jewish Holy man named Yeshua. That this "person" is wholly mythical with no historical reality of any kind - not a person turned into a God, but a person invented from whole cloth.

I'm not sure that's what everybody else means by "mythicism," though.

Diogenes the Cynic

The problem is not one of access to records, but the extreme unlikelihood of any record ever being made and sent to Rome that a nobody was crucified in a backwater province. It's a popular canard that the Romans carefully documented and archived every little thing. Not so, especially not in the provinces where the Roman surrogates were left to their own devices as long as they collected the Emperor's cut. The Emperor did not care about routine executions of insurgents in the provinces, and it would have been a waste of parchment and manpower to send reports of internal minutae to an Emperor who couldn't have possibly read it all, or had any reason to care.

There were no other official Roman records of crucifixions in Judea, so why would there be one for Jesus?

outhouse

False again.

id check your sources and stop using those asap, because they dont follow mainstrean scholarships with credibility


sources please

Tom Sawyer

So, you're saying that if somebody had a position that the Jesus stories in the Bible were based on a real person who was a travelling teacher that pissed off the Romans and got executed for it, but the baptism by John was a fictional event which was added into the tale a few decades later, then that person would have a Mythical Jesus position and not a Historical Jesus position?

smeat75

Official Roman records are all lost, aren't they? Except for inscriptions and the few quotes in the few books that survive? So how do you know they did not record them? I am not quarreling about it, I would really like to know. And it would not have to be that they sent reports directly to the Emperor for his personal attention, possibly some sort of reports were made to other authorities in Rome, maybe the Senate.
This article gives details of where Tacitus consulted original documents:
http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/tacitus.html
Tacitean scholars agree that the historian did indeed access governmental and public records, and did indeed consult original documents:

"Speeches of the emperor are discussed also in (Annals) 1.81, obviously as accessible. Of letters sent to Tiberius and of others attacking Nero and Agrippina he speaks (5.16 and 5.3) as though they might still be consulted. This is certainly true of the one to Tiberius" [Mende.Tac, 204]. In Annals 15.74, Tacitus cites the records of the Roman Senate from Nero's time [ibid., 21] and cites Senate records elsewhere (5.4) [ibid., 212]. The Acta Senatus included letters from emperors, governors of provinces (like Pilate!), allies, and client kings.
Tacitus also probably made use of Rome's public libraries [Dud.Tac, 28].
Tacitus also consulted the Acta Diurna, a daily public gazette (3.3, 12,24, 13.31, 16.22), and private journals and memoirs, which presumably "were preserved in large numbers, especially in the older aristocratic families" [Mende.Tac, 212].
Syme [Sym.Tac, 278] writes: "The straight path of inquiry leads to the archives of the Senate...the first hexad of Annales (which is not where the Jesus passage is) contains an abundance of information patently deriving from the official protocol, and only there to be discovered."
Regarding an incident in Africa: "That Tacitus consulted the Senate archives is proved by the character of the material, by its distribution..." (ibid., 281). Relative to Book 4 of Tacitus' Historiae: "required constant access to the register of the Senate" (ibid.).

Mellor [Mell.Tac, 19-20] says of the Histories that Tacitus "used the records of the Senate for detailed accounts of speeches and debates..." as well as the works of earlier historians. He consulted "reminisces, biographies, autobiographies, letters, and speeches of the time, as well as...the Acts of the Senate." (ibid., 33)
Mellor adds that Tacitus' "archival research is especially notable in the early books of the Annals" (not where the Jesus cite is) and may have been innovative for his time."

Benario [Benar.Tac, 80-7] highlights Tacitus' use of the works of previous historians (including some otherwise unknown to us), private records, the acta senatus, and the acta diurna. He observes that Tacitus, by his own accounting, was "heavily involved in research" and that he "sought out material which others, perhaps, had ignored or of which they were unaware."
Momigliano [Momig.CFou, 110-1] asserts that Tacitus made wide use of Senate records for the period of Domitian, and lesser use of them for the time from Tiberius to Titus; for that era, Momigliano tells us, Tacitus probably used the works of Senate historians more often.
--
Yes, it's from a Christian apologist site! But it is still a fair account of the Tacitus passage in my opinion.
I agree it is extremely unlikely that Pilate made an official report on Jesus' trial and execution which was sent to Rome and Tacitus consulted. But it is not impossible. Where he got that information is simply unknown.