Diogenes the Cynic

Stephen Carlson once wrote a piece arguing that Tacitus was using Josephus.

Solo

And then again maybe not a poor peasant, not a healer, and not baptized by John, but an apocalyptic preacher who ticked off the temple-going Jews more than the Roman occupiers who it appears werre administering Judea from Caesarea Maritima rather than Jerusalem.

Best,
Jiri

Duvduv

Well, if Josephus can get interpolations later on, why couldn't the Annals of Tacitus also get its share of interpolations? What's the big deal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus...t#cite_note-35
Anyway, Jesus was "Jesus Christ" known that way and if he was so famous that Tacitus had heard of him and some obscure procurator prefect named Pontius, he would have included the name Jesus, not Chrestus which is not Xristos or Christus and not Iesous. Plus the passage doesn't say that Pontius was in Judea, so how would the reader know that that was the place of origin of "Chrestus" UNLESS the writer/interpolator did a poor job because he expected the reader to know all about Pontius Pilate and that he was a procurator in Judea and not in Guatemala.

"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".

outhouse

not a shred of evidence for that at all.


the man died a roman death, not a jewish one

maryhelena

Interesting - thanks for the link.

I might just have to make some adjustments to my earlier chart re the TF......

smeat75

mountainman wrote:

"Grant is a two edged sword smeat75. The central and only source of so-called Christian history is Eusebius. Unlike the "Biblical Historians", Grant presents liberal doses of negative evidence against Eusebius."

Grant was indeed an unbiased classical historian who examined the evidence and came his conclusions about Jesus using the same criteria as he did in his other investigations into ancient history. His conclusion was that there is as good evidence for the existence of Jesus as there is for many pagan figures whose existence is never questioned.
Your comment about Grant being a "two-edged sword" because he rejects the reliability of Eusebius is very revealing and shows just why this "mythicist" position annoys me. The assumption is that since I accept the bare fact of there having been such a person as Jesus, I must be a believer in the Christian religion and that is far, far from true. I would like to see belief in the literal truth of the Bible die out through everyone learning how ridiculous such a belief is.
There is ONLY ONE THING that all "mainstream" scholars agree on, and that is that there was such a person as Jesus who was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate. Of the whole farrago of nonsense, lies and superstition in the NT, that is the ONLY THING that is so established as to be considered as close to proof as anything in history can be. And that is what people choose to challenge Christian belief on, the ONLY thing that they can all unanimously reject!
I know there is no point in trying to change any "mythicist" minds here, it is like talking to "Oxfordians" who think Shakespeare's works were written by the Earl of Oxford, they will find a quibble and an answer for everything. But I have a teensy little hope that maybe I can convince one or two people to turn their energies away from the "mythicist" vs "historicist" argument to something more productive.

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't see the camps being necessarily opposed in every respect. Clearly there was a lot of pagan, mythic overlay (the eucharist unquestionably comes from mystery cult practices), but that doesn't preclude Paul taking his inspiration from a genuine, embryonic personality cult and simply adding his special sauce. I think he took some kind of vague and primitive "appearance" claims about Jesus, and made up the resurrection and the eucharist based on his own "visions," inferences from scripture and his knowledge of pagan religious themes.

Paul was, allegedly, originally from Tarsus. That was a city which had a local deity ostensibly worshiped as Herakles, but was really a hybrid based on an earlier vegetation God. This Herakles was burned annually in effigy, descended to "Hades" and re-emerged as the "first fruits" of the wheat harvest.

Paul repeatedly calls Jesus the "first fruit," and my reading of paul (especially 1 Corinthians) is that this is his essential view of Jesus. Jesus was killed, descended, and then had "appeared" to people (including Paul himself), indicating that he had ascended to Heaven. This indicated to Paul that Jesus was the "first fruit" offering (which happened two days after Passover), and that the final "harvest," the raising and judging of the dead, would soon follow.

Under this scenario, you would arguably have both a historical and a mythical Jesus, with the latter inspired by the former.

Godfrey

Interesting article.

It's hard to imagine that the Josephus passage we have today is what he actually wrote; it's just so out of character for him. But even if Tacitus used him as a source, it doesn't prove the interpolation didn't happen; it's possible the interpolation still did happen later, and that the unaltered Josephus passage from which Tacitus drew his (nearly identical) information had the same basic structure and information as the surviving Josephus passage but didn't have the adulatory language.

In which case... Tacitus becomes less relevant (a copy), but Josephus' passage gains credibility (at least as far as the substance of information it contains).

Fascinating stuff. But again, it only really confirms the existence of Christians, and this isn't doubted by anyone. I'd still like to find a Mother's Day card with "love jesus" scrawled at the bottom.

Godfrey

You're new here, so you don't know this, but only mythicists are allowed to type in ALL CAPS.

aa5874

Tell us what you IMAGINE.