Johann_Kaspar

Forget about xians before 888 auc. In Rome there were Jews and they had problems not once. There was a fire in 817. It would not be surprising at all if the Messianic Jews did it. As simple as a translation from one language to another.
Forget about Saul/Paul. Fictitious. No evidence of its existence. No scapegoats, doers.

Johann_Kaspar

NY is burning: according to some accounts (now considered spurious) he laid the blame on the Muslims and persecuted them.
Doesn't it sound strange?

Ben C Smith

That is a very reasonable approach. Unfortunately, we *may* often be left with only Tacitus as the witness for a given title. Take Annals 4.15, for instance, the only instance of the term procurator before book 11. There Tacitus calls Lucilius Capito the procurator of Asia. Was Lucilius Capito the procurator of Asia? Is there any inscriptional or other archaeological evidence to that effect? I frankly do not know.

Remember, it took the Pilate inscription to prove Tacitus wrong in calling Pilate the procurator of Judea. Do we have such an inscription for every person he sticks with that title? Again, I do not know. Perhaps someone on this thread knows.

Another issue is that it is not simply a matter of procurator after Claudius, prefect before. Procurators and prefects had existed in the provinces since Augustus. They shared similar privileges and prerogatives, such as the right and duty to exercise capital punishment, even on errant soldiers of the Roman army.

Because, unless we are imagining that he accessed official imperial records of the trial of Jesus, he was using sources for his information. Surely he had no firsthand information about the exact titles of officials from half a century and more before his time at the eastern end of the empire.

Stephen Carlson has made the argument that Tacitus did in fact use Josephus as his source for the execution of Jesus. It is indeed notable that just about every detail of his notice is also present in Josephus. But Josephus did not call Pilate a prefect. He used the generic term leader or governor. Ken Olson, perennial opponent of Carlson on these issues, of course does not agree with him on the Tacitean use of Josephus at this point, but does agree that such a vague word used in one of his sources may well account for the Tacitean mistake. (Sorry, the exchange between Olson and Carlson on these matters is somewhere on Crosstalk.)

There is also the matter of methodology. Spin is apparently of the school of thought that quickly jumps to the interpolation explanation at nearly any bump in a text. (You see how very little it took to prompt him to hypothesize an older edition of Romans sans references to Jesus Christ.) I, on the other hand, while certainly willing to countenance interpolations at various junctures, would require considerably more evidence than an oddity or a silence here or there. I like to see a manuscript disturbance; failing that, I like to see a convergence of several layers of evidence. Without such a disturbance or such a convergence, it is a lot more attractive to me to assume Tacitus made a mistake, then go about the business of explaining why he made this particular mistake. Carlson explains the why quite nicely, I think, and, even if his hypothesis that Tacitus used Josephus is wrong, it seems far better to me to then go with Olson and assign the error to some source that spoke of Pilate in vague terms similar to those that Josephus used.

If spin is able to produce a Tacitean reference like what he thought he was offering with the reference to Claudius and the knights, that will be a different story.

Ben.

spin

You need to go further in order to deal with the poor translation into Greek of satis facere.

Yes, it does and it required a specific educated user base to get it to happen. Don't make false analogies.

Yup, a whole bunch of scholarly terms entered English and other European language from the middle of the 19th century at a university level. Great analogy.

Extremely silly analogies can get you anywhere.

I can't track this down, but isn't the source Dio Cassio? I mean aren't we dealing with Latin materials filtered through him?

Worse still, you admit that "Mark had some Latin behind him" and Hrodianoi is found only in his gospel plus one parallel in Matt.

Can you supply a source for the use of "Simonians"?

The first mentions of Carpocratians were from Irenaeus and Tertullian. (And I don't have access to Irenaeus to see his original.)

What it seems like you've supplied are full Latin constructed terms translated into Greek.

(But our major problem in dealing with all this material is dating.)

Though this is not a meaningful response. You have the sort of longwinded juice that Suetonius went for being found unaccustomedly in Tacitus, meaning that it is out of place in Tacitus, yet where you should find such stuff it isn't.

At wit.

You tend not to take into account the writers you are dealing with. They are just sources of information to you.

You seem to be sold on this Neronian persecution stuff as though it was a fact. It is based on highly questionable data, most of which seems to be related to a common post-Neronean attack on his memory. You need some perspective on the person and his times, before you ride on the anti-Neronian horse. When do our christian sources for the Neronian persecution??

Before you can mention any of your more substantive offerings, you need to show when they were written. This is something you don't like doing.

Yes, it means that you were talking unsupportable claptrap. You come out with some bollocks about how a few Greek writing Jews got a few titles wrong and miraculously conclude that "Tacitus made a (pretty common) mistake." If you can't see that that is empty rubbish, what are you doing here?

As I have pointed out, Tacitus knew about Roman administration in the Judean situation. Here you are saying that -- despite his knowledge of that situation -- he will go against it and maintain the error.

When did Judea become a province? I rest my case. Nothing further need be said. Tacitus and you know.

And this is uncharacteristically unfootnoted.

As you haven't established that Tacitus wrote the passage, it makes little sense assuming he did -- and no, you don't have to justify every word in the whole text of the Annals, but this particular passage does need support seeing as the veracity of the text is the point at issue.

It is not a change of terminology. It is a change of status of Judea, which is no longer under the auspices of Syria, but an imperial province in its own right. This is what you seem not to connect with. Judea was under the procuratorship of Syria before Claudius changed the situation. It simply could not have had a procurator (under a procurator). The procurator was an official who directly answered to the emperor, not to another procurator. You are arguing about the wrong issue.

Already explained. Judea became a province under Claudius. That's when it got a procurator. Is that clear yet?

Is the problem in this thought clear yet?

Perhaps you could make up your mind: either the crowd knew them and could call them all "christians" or there were informers who could identify these "christians". Well, the text says the populace called them "christians"...

While you are fantasizing a multitude of christians suffering under this phantom Neronian persecution, perhaps you could meaningfully supply some of this myriad. Boh. Don't bother. It was only your rhetoric.

Yes, you want to champion the veracity of this passage. It doesn't paint a picture of a fledgling religious group in Rome in 64 CE at all. We have a multitude of believers who in a few years had made themselves not only known to the Roman populace, but made themselves unpopular to that populace. How does an ordinary Roman of the period distinguish a christian from a Jew? How would that difference be meaningful to the Roman?

I'm impressed! But I'm sure I could find one in your close proximity that you weren't so familiar with.

My god, Ben C. You guess that the confessing was about them being christians, yet the text is unclear. We are after all looking for scapegoats for a fire.

Easy if you think about it. If this was in fact a true report, this being a first persecution, there had been no opportunity for specific laws to be made against christians. Your evidence for other periods is worthless.

Rule of law operated in Rome. The princeps always concocted some accusation which involved the laws.

Let's forget blunders of terminology, let's forget the uncharacteristic exaggerations in a Tacitean text, let's forget the idea that the early christians in 64CE Rome were a small group, let's even forget about what Tacitus was actually writing about. Of course it fits all by itself. Let's not think about it. That's an effort.


spin

Gamera

I think the answer is staring you in the face in the NT itself. Jews were prominent in Rome and other cities throughout the Empire. Their religion was a thorn in the side of the Roman authorities, due to their eschewal of Emperor worship and their general restiveness, including a low grade insurgency that finally erupted into full scale revolt in the mid first century.

So Romans new the Jews well, and anti-Semitism was probably as pronounced in classic times as it is now, given the success and prominence of Jews in the Empire, Josephus being a case in point.

Christians were considered a Jewish sect, to the extent they were considered at all. And like most sectarian differences, they were accute. The Jews despised Christians, and had every motivation to deflect any animosity directed toward them to Christians, doing their best to identify them as separate from Judaism and the real source of threat to the Empire.

Thus it's the relations between Christians and Jews that gives rise to Nero's persecution of Christians, with one scapegoated group scapegoating another.

Gamera

This problem is solved by injecting the Jewish/Christian negative dynamic. Jews were well known to Roman, and not well liked. Christians were well known to Jews in Rome, and not well liked.

The Jews would have every motivation to direct the scapegoating building against them to the Christians, explaining to the Roman authorities that they were loyal Romans, while this new perverse sect was causing all the trouble. The Jewish authorities would be in a position to identify the Christian community since many of them would be former synagogue members. Informants and rabble rousers and agent provocateurs would do the rest.

spin

Cutting through the presupposition, is there any way for a Roman to tell the difference between one believer in the Jewish god and another such believer? In short, no.

spin

What I like about you Ben C. is when you make a blunder, you like to rub it in.


spin

Malachi151

I still have a hard time buying this.

I was hoping for some kind of empircal data, like other references to Christains from before or around this same time, or other accounts of the persecuations.

From what I have seen the other accounts of the persecutions of "Christians" by Nero are either too vauge and can't really be called persecutions of "Christians", or they seem to be based on the Tacitus account.

The whole thing doesn't add up to me.

I was looking for more evidence of something, one way or the other.

Rome had over 600 different mystery religions in the 1st century, and dozens of other traditional religions. I just find it very hard to believe that in a matter of 30 years "Christianity" had entered this frey and distinguished itself to the extent of infamy to be THE scapegoat for such an event.

Ben C Smith

Are you saying that you think Mark was originally written in Latin and then translated into Greek? That would interest me a great deal, since Ephraem the Syrian says that Mark wrote in Latin.

In contrast, it would not require a very educated user base to use -ianoi by analogy with the Latin way of doing things. But see below.

Surely it is possible to critique the analogy without resorting to this kind of thing.

No, sorry about the lack of reference. The source is Strabo, Geographica 11.2.11.

Again, sorry about the lack of reference. My source is Hegesippus according to Eusebius, History of the Church 4.22.5:

Αρχεται δ ο Θεβουθις δια το μη γενεσθαι αυτον επισκοπον υποφθειρειν. απο των επτα αιρεσεων και αυτος ην εν τω λαω, αφ ων Σιμων, οθεν οι Σιμωνιανοι, και Κλεοβιος, οθεν Κλεοβιηνοι, και Δοσιθεος, οθεν Δοσιθιανοι, και Γορθαιος, οθεν Γορθηωνοι, και Μασβωθεος, οθεν Μασβωθαιοι. απο τουτων Μενανδριανισται, και Μαρκιωνισται, και Καρποκρατιανοι, και Ουαλεντινιανοι, και Βασιλειδιανοι, και Σατορνιλιανοι, εκαστος ιδιως και ετερως ιδιαν δοξαν παρεισηγαγησαν.

But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it. He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon, from whom came the Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came the Cleobians, and Dositheus, from whom came the Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, from whom came the Goratheni, and Masbotheus, from whom came the Masbothaeans. From them sprang the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians. Each introduced privately and separately his own peculiar opinion.

See the quote from Hegesippus above for the Carpocratians.

You may be right. The problem I am seeing here is that a lot of the terms will be difficult if not impossible to trace back to either Greek or Latin for certain. You can claim that each term was actually translated from Latin rather than coined in Greek, but evidence will be lacking in many cases. The issue may have to remain up in the air.

Only if you regard spotting an interpolating as a matter of postdating that interpolation relative to the rest of the document. I myself would not see that as a matter of dating so much as a matter of textual integrity, though of course one would like to then date the interpolation once it has been identified, and sometimes an anachronism will peek through that of course has to do with dating.

I am sorry to have conveyed that impression. Suetonius I can take or leave, I admit, but Tacitus I like for his own sake.

I think it is a fact, yes, but the context in which you threw this back at me did not require it to be a fact. I said only that Tertullian did not need Tacitus to write about the Neronian persecution. And that is true. Plenty of Christians wrote about it; even if it was a fabricated event (which I doubt), they wrote about it.

Are you kidding me? I love (making an attempt at) dating ancient texts. I did not think it necessary to try to prove to you that any one or more of the Christian texts that I listed (Ascension of Isaiah, 1 Peter, Revelation, Acts of Paul) predate Tertullian. Which of those texts do you place in century III or later?

This is not either/or. The crowd in general knew they were Christians. Some (many or even most?) in the crowd were willing to inform to that effect.

Supply some of the myriad with what?

The Christians would be the ones annoying everybody with their incessant talk of Christ. The Jews would not be talking about Christ (at least not nearly so much).

Probably, but you would be much harder pressed to find someone in my proximity that no one around here knew about.

We will see in a moment how much he knew about the Judean situation....

I am afraid I do not have the time at the moment to either confirm or disconfirm the statement in Syme, who says (to recall the point at issue) that both prefects and procurators could be of equestrian rank. If you can disconfirm this statement, please feel free to do so. I think I can, if necessary, show that procurators could be of equestrian rank, and there were so many different kinds of prefects that it is hard to imagine every one of them being of senatorial rank. But, again, I really do not have the time right now. That was why I turned to Syme in the first place.

According to Josephus, Antiquities 17.13.5 §355, Judea was annexed into the province of Syria at the banishment of Archelaus (6 AD). So I suppose Judea was not its own province at that time, right? Rather, it was an annex of Syria, which is why Quirinius, governor of Syria, subjected Judea to the census.

So presumably Judea became its own province only after the brief period in the forties when Agrippa restored autonomous rule to the Jews.

Not so fast, my friend.

Remember that the issue is, not what really transpired in the Judean situation in century I, but rather what Tacitus thought transpired.

Your picture of Judea in century I appears to match that of Josephus. Let me quote Antiquities 17.13.5 §355 here for convenience:

But the country of Archelaus was made into a tributary of Syria, and Quirinius, a man who had been made consul, was sent by [Augustus] Caesar to take a census in Syria and sell away the house of Archelaus.

So far so good. Judea is not, I think you will agree, an independent province of its own at this point. It is subject to Syria.

You argue, then, that Judea could not have had its own procurator.

You further argue that Tacitus knew the Judean situation well enough to know that Judea could not have had its own procurator during that time. Your own words:

Finally, you argue that, since Tacitus knew the Judean situation, namely that it was not its own province but rather a subsidiary or tributary (of Syria), and therefore knew that Judea could not have had its own procurator at that time, the mistake in Annals 15.44 on that very issue (calling the Judean ruler Pilate a procurator) cannot be laid to his account. In your opinion my mistake is as follows:

Thus, you argue, we are reading something not quite Tacitean in 15.44; it is an interpolation.

But what if I could show you that Tacitus did not know the Judean situation all that well? What if I could show you that Tacitus, far from realizing that Judea was subject to Syria, thought Judea was its own province as of the banishment of Archelaus in 6 AD?

I give you Annals 2.42:

His kingdom [that of Archelaus] was reduced into a province [regnum in provinciam redactum est]....

...and the provinces [provinciae] of Syria and Judea, exhausted by their burdens, implored a reduction of tribute.

Note that Tacitus regards Judea and Syria as provinces (plural), not as a single province. Note that he thinks that the kingdom of Archelaus was transformed cleanly into a province, no mention of a Syrian annexation.

That, on your terms, could well be the cause of the Tacitean mistake in Annals 15.44. He was not as versed as, say, Josephus on the Judean situation. If he thought that Judea was its own province, and if (as you yourself have asserted) procurators ruled only over full-fledged provinces, then no wonder he called the ruler of Judea a procurator.

Ben.