patcleaver

It is a superstition that pilot crucified Christ because its false and its religious mythology.

I never said it came out of Rome - What are you talking about?

Give me a citation to a unbiased translation and I might use it.

The translator has to interpret the Greek before he converts it to English, and if he misinterprets it, then the translation is useless for determining the real meaning. It is likely that whatever translation you choose, it was done by a Christian who is going to interpret the Greek with respect to his Christian point of view. I have no confidence at all in any translations of ancient documents, especially documents related to religion, because translator is likely to have strong biases.

All translations are useless for symantec arguments. It is impossible for us to determine what Tacitus meant by superstition; or whether the pernicious superstition is the claim that Pilot executed Christ or Christianity. It is impossible for us to determine whether his statement that "Christus, was put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate" was intended to be: a definition of what a christian is, or a definition of who a mythical Christus was, or a definition of the pernicious superstition, or an historical fact, or an ironical statement, or a lie for some unknown reason, or just an offhand quip because it was irrelevant for his purposes.

You can not prove that the Christus that he is referring to is Jesus of Nazareth. Any Jewish leader of any group opposing the Roman occupation would likely be called a messiah (Christ).

We can not know whether Tacitus Annals is a forgery, or whether this part of it was interpolated, or whether Tacitus was mistaken, or whether our translations are mistaken, or whether we are reading it wrong based on our point of view.

Paper only lasts 200 years so Annals was copied multiple times. The monks who copied it had both the motivation and opportunity to improve it for christian apologetical purposes.

Tacitus was most likely written as propaganda. His statements that he did not rely on hearsay are self-serving. His self-serving remarks that he is going to be accurate are commonly found in the least reliable propaganda.

You have the burden of proving that this sentence in Annals is reliable evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. You can not possibly meet that burden. The only rational response is the reject Tacitus as evidence.

mens_sana

In which case, you and Bishop Berkeley are in bed together, except that he went to the bathroom.

One of the moderators may remember and be able to post the link to an explanation of why the gospels are considered prima facie evidence for the existence of Jesus — one by a mythicist(?).

patcleaver

Tacitus thinks he needs to tell his audience that the Christians are named after Christ and that Christ was executed by Pilot. It does not make sense that he would presume that his audience would otherwise know what christianity is. The only belief of Christianity that would be relevant was their belief that the Romans killed Christ. It would explain why they hated the Romans, why they might start a fire, and why the Romans hated them.

We need someone who knows Latin well enough to tell us if the Latin text could be interpreted this way.

patcleaver

Oops,
After all the default position is that an entity should not be believed to exist until it is proven likely to exist.
Silly HJr, the movie "Star Wars" is not prima-facie evidence for the existence of an historical Luke Skywalker. The Christian book of fables is not prima-facie evidence of its fictional characters either.

patcleaver

If you have one, can you give me a reference for that besides Anchor Bible Dictionary.

thentian

Maybe this will do?
Cheers!

Umm... why do you mention Anchor Bible Dictionary? I don't think Toto is a christian...

patcleaver

Can you give me a reference for that besides Anchor Bible Dictionary.
I did not mean any disrespect to Toto. I like Toto - I used to be a system analyst - I even like his cat - and he is not a Christian. I just wanted to know where he got his definition because I wanted to check it out.

mens_sana gave me the following definition from Anchor Bible Dictionary:
"Superstitio is an aristocratic term of contempt for forms of religion and piety that Rome’s literate upper classes found excessive, comic, or dangerous."
I did not trust the ABD definition to be unbiased, and I thought it had something to do with fearing the gods.

Toto

Are you thinking of Jeff Lowder's argument that, since the existence of a Jesus who was wandering Jewish teacher is not extraordinary, that the gospels are sufficient evidence to accept his mere existence.

Lowder is not a mythicist, unless Richard Carrier has converted him since he wrote that.

youngalexander

It is startling perhaps to see how few Christians must have been in the first century, and how slowly they grew in numbers, despite a very healthy 3.42% per annum. It is worthwhile playing with these figures to get a 'feel' for this.
I ask your indulgence for a moment:

eg. enter 1.4 into your calculator, press the x^y button and then enter 1 = 1.4 ie. 1400 after 1 decade, assuming 1000 Xians at 40CE.
enter 1.4, press x^y, enter 6 = 7.529536, ie. 7530 at 100CE.

To calc the % just divide by 600, eg. 7.529536/600 = 0.0125%

Notice, that if you do not like 1000 at 40CE, all you have to do is multiply by your preferred starting value. If you do not like 40% per decade just change the 1.4 to 1.5, or 2.8 or whatever.

Now I note that mens_sana says that Stark's Orthodox assumption is but one of a multiplicity of scenarios. True, but it just happens to coincide with Team FFI's approach - at least it seems that way to me. Fathom's last take was that the numbers were pretty much agreeable to him.
Also, as Toto has sed, sometimes we must make some assumptions in order to explore a position. That is what I propose to do.

The Neronian events described by Tacitus took place in Rome in 64CE.
Place our 1.4 in the calc, press x^y, enter 2.4 for 64CE = 2242 & 0.0037%
A total Christian pop of 2242 in 60M. Assuming as Stark does that Rome has 700,000 and 3 times the average Xian pop gives 78 Christians in Rome circa 64CE.

Does this constitute an immense multitude? Depends upon your definition presumably. Perhaps something is amiss? Obviously Stark's model, couldn't possibly be Tacitus. After all, the latter is using Official Roman Records. They must have provided a fairly accurate number of miscreants. Pity Tacitus does not supply them.

So what do we adjust?
Perhaps there were 10,000 Xians in 40CE? That leads to 2.17M in 200CE and only provides 780 for Nero to immolate.
Perhaps they grew at a faster rate, say 80% per decade. That does not quite double Nero's victims but gives us more than 12M by 200CE.
Perhaps they grew real fast initially then ...
Perhaps there were more than 3 times the average in Rome - maybe 50%??

The trouble is that whatever you fiddle in the model, something else goes out of whack! Also, consider the effect upon this small pop of Xians if 'immense multitudes' are executed. Terminating a 1000 would put the pop back to the starting point.

You see Fathom, Stark is a sociologist. He does actually know what he is proposing and the numbers have to fit various constraints. It is not a handwaiving exercise as some might like to assume.

Next Pliny.

Toto

More posts have been split out to calm the waters, and the discussion of the meaning of "quasi" has been split out here