spin

I don't accept this last analysis as meaningful at all, but it isn't central to your complaint.

Romans is dealing with matters so arcane to a gentile (in the sense we understand the term) that it is clear that the readers were steeped in Jewish knowledge. It's not that knowledge of the Jews was common knowledge. Paul tones his pitches to his audience. Romans was pitched to a Jewish audience.

I've had a good look at the Latinisms in the christian testament, partly indicating that GMark was written in a Latin environment down to a very poor translation of the phrase SATIS FACERE (ikanon poihsai 15:15), which won't be explained by the finagling cited above.

The logic of foreign grammatical structures being picked up and used with native terms is highly unlikely. In all those cases of pidgins developing, it is foreign vocabulary being picked up and used in native grammatical structures. When foreign terms get absorbed, those terms are modified to suit the native grammar, as evinced in the examples given by your sources. The contrary seems on the surface ludicrous, so unless productivity of such grammatical items can be displayed, it is simpler and more reasonable to go with the fact that the terms were formed by those whose grammatical structures are preserved.

You have to date Acts before Tacitus to mention it here. That should be interesting.

I didn't quite mean that it was no setting, but that it has nothing to do with any fires. However, I later went on to qualify the Suetonius context.

These are interchangeable here. He shows no knowledge of the sort of juicy stuff that he is so fond of.

Doesn't deserve a grin.

Prime opportunity to mention support for his position and he likes to support his statements, but he doesn't do it here.

Rubbish. Outside of Rome Nero wasn't particularly popular and because he was the Julio-Claudian princeps the patricians were opposed to him, but he was extremely popular amongst the ordinary Romans. You are just accepting the bad press (including from the likes of Suetonius and Tacitus).

Got any real examples of Romans (who ordinarily understood the difference between the two phonemes) hearing them as the same sound?

Rubbish. You seem to ignore the fact that Tacitus knows what he is talking about in that area. and throw up the poor red herring of people writing in Greek. There is simply no way that Tacitus, once he has acknowledged that Claudius was responsible for putting Judea under the control of a procurator (H. Bk 5.9), would make the blunder, especially when the two positions involved different classes. Besides, procuratorship is an imperial position, not a civil one. You are unaccountably minimizing this blunder.

With one special exception (Egypt) prefects did not have control of provinces. This is simple. It is normally a subserviant role under someone else -- here of Syria. Tacitus happily uses the terms prefect and procurator transparently and correctly everywhere else -- and there were various types of prefects which Tacitus usually indicates when he uses the term.

Your "pretty common" mistake is unreasonable conjecture, based on a few non-Greeks writing in Greek about Romans.

Are you likely to forget your own address or name? Are you likely to call JFK a prime minister?

So you imagine some house doorknocking, eh? (Excuse me sir, do you confess to being a christian? Me? Naaaaaa. Well, yes. Right then you're done.)

How did the populace at large, who we are told called them by the name christian, know or recognise these christians?? Do you believe that the populace, once we know how they could recognize these christians, hated them all as we are told? What religion is the person two doors to your left?

And interestingly passive. But yes, I was using a translation for convenience. However, the distinction is irrelevant to the debate. Something was confessed or acknowledged.

This "of course" is certainly not there in the passage. Nero, it is claimed, was trying to blame christians for the fire. The sloppiness of the unspecified confession does not reflect the writing style of Tacitus. The lack of a criminal indictment doesn't reflect Roman law, but then people are happy to flagrantly ignore laws when they don't know about them. And confessing to being christians was not an offense in itself. Being atheists who refused to respect the society was.

Why are you so willing to try to make this passage fit by ignoring so much?

And nothing to do with laying the blame for the fire on them.

Literary criticism is only partially subjective, Ben C. You should read critiques of the literary style of Tacitus.

You are welcome to try. You could try to convince me that the alliteration and assonance were intentional art. But then you'd probably be urinating into the wind.

Perhaps you believe that Tacitus wrote the line about the "multitude" of those who confessed of whatever it was they confessed about. Perhaps you believe that he was exaggerating, just as he made a mistake over the rank and class of Pilate.


spin

spin

This is quite amusing how different are the viewpoints you shift between and yet you expect the point to be considered reasonable.

spin

Mine talks about Abraham, Adam, Zion, Elijah, Jacob, Esau, Isaiah, Benjamin, Sodom and Gomorrah, the law, the Jews, etc. Doesn't sound like a letter to the Corinthians, Does it? What does yours have in it?


spin

Ben C Smith

Yes, I remember that thread. That was the thread on which Peter Kirby said that Philosopher Jay would have fun writing a tract against the historicity of Napolean.

From that thread:

I have always liked that hypothesis.

That, I believe, is true.

The Pauline epistle, as primary evidence, will take precedence over later Christian legends. Those legends are explicable as embellishments of the datum that Peter and Paul were both executed in Rome.

The characterization of this issue as a problem is mystifying.

Two manuscripts, both century IX, omit those geographical phrases; I think Origen knew some manuscripts that omitted them, too. This, at least, is hard evidence. But what argument would you like to make? Do you think these two manuscripts ought to take precedence over all the earlier manuscripts that contain the phrases? Why or why not?

The Chester Beatty papyrus places the doxology of 16.25-27 at the end of chapter 15 and omits 16.24.

I do not think any of this points to the conclusion that Paul never sent this epistle to the Romans.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

Mine has stuff like: "because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Stephen

Roger Pearse

Not that I can see.

You might wish to read Dr. Robin Birley on the Persecutors and Martyrs in Tertullian's Africa, Instiutute of Archaeology Bulletin 1992 in which he takes the view that the passage is being addressed fairly directly by the Apologeticum. Were you aware that the explicit citation of Tacitus in this work is to book 5 of the Histories?

I am also rather unclear why Tertullian, in your view, *has* to quote this passage.

I'm afraid that I do not see this. Which other persons of this name are known to be causing dissention in Jewish circles of that date?

Do you have a reference for this?

The presumption of a mistake -- rather than Tacitus merely using current nomenclature -- and the presumption that we are completely informed as to titulature during a period when it changed all seems rather risky to me.

This sounds like an odd question! They can ask.

I have to ask, tho, what standard is your Latin?

I am not aware of any professional scholar who questions that it is genuine, tho. But of course I am willing to be informed differently.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

Well I see that I have opened a can of worms here. Good info though.

I was asking if 64 would have been the earliest reference to the word "Christians".

I am still perplexed as to how there would have been a significant enough group of people calling themselves "Christians" in Rome by 64 to have been identified and used as a scapegoat by Nero.

Let's assume the Christian scenario of "Jesus" being killed in 33.

We know that in 33, according to this scenario, the term Christians didn't exist yet.

The term "Christians" only appears one time in the Bible:

From what I understand Acts was some time between 80 and 130 (is this correct?)

Now, Acts says that the term "Christians" was used during the time of Paul apparently, but as far as I see, Paul never uses the term himself (is this correct?)

Now, from what I understand Paul was preaching his gospel between let's say 40 and 65.

I'm still confused.

How is it that "Christians", who were identified as "Christians", were in Rome and significant enough in numbers as to be identified as a group worthy of blaming the fires of Rome on?

Are we to believe that in 30 years since "the death of Jesus", and before any known written works of so-called Christianity other than Paul's, that a large group of "Christians", who identifed themselves and were known to the public as "Christians", existed in Rome?

It just doesn't add up.

How could "Christians" have become that infamous in that amount of time, before, as far as we can tell, their teachings hadn't even been formed yet?

Furthermore, if Christains had become that cohesive by that time, and were indeed so moved as to be engaging in social disruptions in the name of a "Christ" who was killed by Pilate, then why is it that our first works of Christianity coem from Paul, who was apparently unfamiliar with their teachings, and not Roman Christians?

Can we really be expected to believe that "Christians" existed in Rome, the most advanced literate place on earth at the time (perhaps Alexandria was more, I'm not sure) and they left no works at all, or even any trace whatsoever?

I'm still confused....

spin

As I said earlier: "It probably demonstrates a text that has been normalized by later writers."

spin

Perhaps you can show me an ancient case of a grammatical structure but not lexeme migrating from one language to another.

Sorry, I can't glean what you are saying here exactly.

No "have to" of course. This is a comment on Tertullian's use of evidence. He doesn't have to stick to it. It's interesting that this nugget of christian belief encapsulated in the Tacitus witness is first brought to light with a mention several centuries later, despite the fact that the fathers had collections of useful classical references.

Chrestus? There is only one mention of this disturbance by Chrestus. Who else do you have mentioned as disturbing Jews in Rome??

I gave it later as H 5.9.

Check out his use of both procurator and prefect.

It is plain that "procurator" is inappropriate when Judea was at the time, as Tacitus indicates, not an imperial province.

Then the populace didn't know who these christians were. You are confounding the text.

Linguistic.

That's interesting.

Roger Pearse

I would certainly be interested to hear about these collections of classical testimonia.

Was there a reason why you didn't write "Histories"? Or link to a source? This sort of thing makes it hard for readers in this forum to engage with your comments, you know. So does tossing terms like 'lexeme' around in a non-technical forum (I couldn't be bothered to read back through your posts and work out what you were trying to say, or rather not to say). Let's all write to be understood, not to attempt to impress.

The Book 5 of the Histories in English is here.

[5.9] Cneius Pompeius was the first of our countrymen to subdue the Jews. Availing himself of the right of conquest, he entered the temple. Thus it became commonly known that the place stood empty with no similitude of gods within, and that the shrine had nothing to reveal. The walls of Jerusalem were destroyed, the temple was left standing. After these provinces had fallen, in the course of our civil wars, into the hands of Marcus Antonius, Pacorus, king of the Parthians, seized Judaea. He was slain by Publius Ventidius, and the Parthians were driven back over the Euphrates. Caius Sosius reduced the Jews to subjection. The royal power, which had been bestowed by Antony on Herod, was augmented by the victorious Augustus. On Herod's death, one Simon, without waiting for the approbation of the Emperor, usurped the title of king. He was punished by Quintilius Varus then governor of Syria, and the nation, with its liberties curtailed, was divided into three provinces under the sons of Herod. Under Tiberius all was quiet. But when the Jews were ordered by Caligula to set up his statue in the temple, they preferred the alternative of war. The death of the Emperor put an end to the disturbance. The kings were either dead, or reduced to insignificance, when Claudius entrusted the province of Judaea to the Roman Knights or to his own freedmen, one of whom, Antonius Felix, indulging in every kind of barbarity and lust, exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave. He had married Drusilla, the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and so was the grandson-in-law, as Claudius was the grandson, of Antony.

[5.10] Yet the endurance of the Jews lasted till Gessius Florus was procurator. In his time the war broke out. ...

This certainly records the change in the appointments system, and is new to me -- thank you. But it doesn't really add anything to the question about what these people were titled.

Rather than have me repeat memories of journal articles, why not have a read of the literature on prefect and procurator for details of how confused it all got around that time.

As with much of your post, I'm afraid that this conveys little to me.

All the best,

Roger Pearse