Jehanne

Tacitus wrote his Annals in 115 AD and Josephus wrote Antiquities in 93 AD. Did Tacitus ever quote or reference the Antiquities?

Chris Weimer

We discussed this earlier. This thread is where most of the discussion is at about it. And here is the other one. We have not reached a conclusion yet, though.

Ben C Smith

The short answer is that Tacitus never references the Antiquities or Josephus by name (that I am aware of). Whether he copied from Josephus may be a different matter. Chris is correct; nothing is really settled.

Ben.

Chris Weimer

I think the big point for me is that Tacitus seems unaware of the rest of Antiquitates.

Ben C Smith

I admit that troubles me.

My lack of access to certain works I would like to consult is frustrating me a bit. This issue may be up in the air for me for a while.

What if Olson is correct that both Josephus and Tacitus consulted the memoirs of Vespasian and Titus? Could there have been a testimonium of some kind there that both authors used? Just speculation at this point, of course.

It just seems remarkable that virtually every Palestinian detail in Annals 15.44 can be explained on the basis of Josephus. Even the momentary check of the superstition could have come from the three days in Josephus, since the very reason [γαÏ?] for the continuation of the love happened on the third day. The explicit naming detail, the confusion between prefect and procurator, the basic information about the execution, Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Judea... Josephus explains it all. Maybe I am just reading too much into the parallels.

I do think that Olson is at present selectively erasing only parts of the total picture. To try to sever the connection between Tacitus and Josephus does not explain how Luke, Tacitus, and Josephus came to have this particular arrangement of texts, in which Josephus and Tacitus agree on a number of details, and Josephus and Luke agree on even more details, but Tacitus and Luke agree only no details (except Christians in Rome, but that has to be explained with reference to the Neronian persecution anyway, which Luke does not cover).

Ben.

Jehanne

I read the threads given above (which, by the way, were very excellent) and my own opinion is that if Josephus really wrote those passages then there should be some more evidence of this in the historical record. In other words, the early Christian fathers would have cited these passages as proof of Jesus' existence, divinity, etc. As for Tacitus, I don’t that he really "gave a shit" and probably did not bother to research whether Jesus was really a historical person or not, but simply took what his Christian sources were telling him as being true. (Besides, no Roman records about crucified criminals probably existed from that period anyway.) As for Jesus himself, I believe that he was the mythical creation of some early 1st-century epileptic, apocalyptic visionaries who saw the "Son of Man" coming during their own lifetimes (or, shortly thereafter) to destroy the Romans and user in "God's kingdom." Everything that came after that was embellishment by various Christian factions, most of which did not survive into the Middle Ages.