yalla

From Pliny re Christians:
"...whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated with the name are to be punished.."

Asking for advice as to whether merely being Christian is sufficient for punishment seems to contradict the conclusion of Ben C Smith, based on a later section of Pliny:
"Merely confessing to be a Christian is enough for Pliny."

I find it strange that a person with the wide career accomplishments of Pliny, having been involved in justice and religious positions of importance for many years prior to his famous letter, in Rome [?] and abroad inc Syria, should profess ignorance of the Christians. His public career in law and religion begins less than 2 decades after the time of Nero and thus I would have expected knowledge of Christians and their legal standing if such was a current topic of concern as is suggested.
Yet Pliny says "I have never participated in the trials of Christians" and although ambiguous [it does not state no such occurred] it still seems to imply a lack of knowledge at odds with his public roles during that time.
A strange document.

Vorkosigan

But Josephus did. Note that I referred to both Josephus and Philo.

Vorkosigan

rlogan

Very good sleight of hand in changing the subject of my post - which was that Josephus wrote a chapter on the "Sects" of the Jews.

Perhaps you would care to address the point.


Again, I guess the idea is to invent things as opposed to addressing that a person writing about "Sects of Jews" might - uh, write about a sect of Jews.



If you were actually addressing my point, then you wouldn't look quite so silly making up straw men like this.

I just wrote yesterday on the expulsion under Claudius in a discussion of Suetonius. I am not sure how I stand on that, and it is an interesting discussion.

But how it relates to Josephus writing a specific chapter dedicated to "Sects of the Jews" that does not include Christians is beyond me.

maybe you'd care to start a thread on that then?

Ben C Smith

But now you have to contend with the references in Josephus being a pious Pharisaical forgery, right? After all, Philo fails to mention them, so something must be wrong.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Please explain how. I argued quite specifically that his default position was to prosecute for the name alone; the letter supports my argument in spades(emphasis mine):

In the meanwhile, the method I have observed towards those who have been denounced to me as Christians is as follows. I interrogated them whether they were Christians; if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed. For, whatever the nature of their creed might be, I could at least feel no doubt that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy deserved chastisement.

Do you see anything at stake in those procedures besides either admitting or denying the name of Christian? Those were, according to the letter, the actual procedures that Pliny employed, pending a response from Trajan (who ended up supporting Pliny glowingly).

He does not profess ignorance of the Christians. He professes lack of experience at their trials:

Having never been present at any trials of the Christians, I am unacquainted with the method and limits to be observed either in examining or punishing them.

That is a lot more specific than ignorance of Christians.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

The too pat measure would seem problematic in the hands of someone who has, like several on this thread, argued against authenticity because of tensions between a given passage and other relevant texts. The margin between Scylla and Charybdis on this board often appears too narrow to me: If the passage does not fit the others perfectly, it is a forgery; if it does fit perfectly, it is too pat, and therefore a forgery.

Ben.

Edited to add: I phrased my statement here more broadly than I usually prefer; my apologies. I do not mean to accuse anyone in particular, let alone everybody in general, of holding inconsistent criteria.

Ecrasez L'infame

Picking up on a few loose "threads" from earlier in this thread:

1) Poppaea (Nero's wife) was, according to Josephus, a "worshipper of God" - probably a God-fearer, or gentile that accepted Jewish monotheism but didn't insist on the dietary laws, circumcision for males, worshipping in the Jerusalem Temple, etc. (Bit like Pauline Christianity, in fact! Is there a new topic there?). She and Josephus were close friends and possibly more. Nero (personally!) kicked her to death in AD 65, perhaps because she was, or he thought she was, pregnant by another man. IIUC, this was BETWEEN the fire and the persecutions - if so, then I feel it would have been impossible for Nero to have put his late wife out of his mind as he made the decision to torture and execute her co-religionists.

In support of this, Tacitus (later in 15.44) says the people soon felt compassion for the victims of the persecutions, since "it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."

2) As I see it, the Annals couldn't have used Pliny the Younger as the source. Pliny, writing from Bithynia to Trajan in 112, admits he knows nothing about Christians, and is only just finding out about them. He concludes the religion is "a perverse and extravagant superstition" and its practitioners "obstinate" (=they won't curse Christ on demand), but are otherwise fairly harmless. He even seems to be wondering whether they should be illegal at all. If Tacitus' main source was Pliny, and if you date Annals to after this (as they certainly should be - see http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Coll...lty/index.html), then why is Tacitus so hostile to the Christians? - "hated for their abominations", "deadly superstition", "evil", "hideous and shameful", "convicted... of [their] hatred of the human race." Pliny's Christians, by contrast, take oaths not to steal, lie, welch on a deal, or sleep around. Hmm.

BTW - if on the other hand Tacitus' source was Christians he knew - then doesn't that mean that his invective is true?

3) I'm still puzzled about procurator and prefect. I understand that procurator is a financial title (like modern CFO?), and prefect a general term for governor. I accept that when Tacitus says Jesus was executed by a procurator, he may have been being catty - a "mere procurator", if you like. But I thought that procurator as a title for one who runs a province - as opposed to the normal everyday sense of someone who handles financial affairs - dates from after Claudius... and that the source for this is Tacitus himself (Ann 12:60)!

(IIUC - The praetors were judges in high crimes; so, in the provinces, the equestrian class, from whom the prefects were drawn, had full and autonomous judicial power; and, from that date on, procurators were to have the same.)

4) On this subject, Infidels should remember that the NT itself refers to Pilate as neither "prefect" nor "procurator", but as "hegemon".

Regards

Robert

Vorkosigan

There is no Scylla and Charbydis here because the "measure of fit" and "too pat" look at different things. A good example is the Tel Dan stele, which I suspect of being a forgery. Its "patness" lies in its appeal to historicist yearnings among Christians. Its "not-fitness" lies in what Garabini identified as its linguistic anomalies. These two criteria cover different aspects of the same object. (Note that I am not actually saying Garabini is right -- I am simply illustrating why the tension you say exists actually does not.)

"Too pat" usually refers to the way the object appeals to established political and social agendas (the way forged Ching Shan diary of the Boxer Rebellion appealed to certain academic views of the rebellion) while "not fit" refers to the expected literary and linguistic qualities of the document (the way the Hitler Diary didn't fit Hitler's known hatred of writing things down).

I hope that is clear.

Michael

Vorkosigan

LOL.

Ben C Smith

Well put, Michael. Assuming I understand you correctly, I think I can run that mile with you.

Ben.