Malachi151

The quote by Tacitus about "Christians" has somewhat perplexed me. The "Great Fire" took place in 64, so the quote, though it comes from 109, would place "Christians" in Rome, as a significant group, by 64, which seems quite odd because its doubtful that much of any of the book of the NT had even been written yet by that point and there had been no evangelisim by Paul yet, of he was just starting.

The quote says this:

Now, from what I understand, if this is correct, it would definately be the earlierst reference to "Christians" (64CE) of ANY source, even pre-dating Christian sources.

Is there some explanation for this, other than the typical Christian one?

Is this the only reference that there is to Nero persecuting the Christians?

Is it possible that a movement called the Christians (Chrestians), who were followers of a guy named Chrestus or Christus, were later adopted into the Jesus story?

Is this quote talking about Chrestus or Christus?

Did Tacitus get Chrestus and Christus confused when he later wrote this down, or was this a later interpolation of Chrestus into Christus?

I dunno, the whole thing doesn't make sense to me. Granted we can conclude that this quote does not provide evidence for Jesus, as many Christians claim that it does, that's not a problem, but I find it odd that it seems to provide evidence for "Christians" at all in 64 CE in Rome in relatively large numbers, before any of the Gospels could even have been written. It just doesn't add up.

Huon

You have here :

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/tacitus/index.htm

a page written by Roger Pearse, which describes the extant manuscripts of Tacitus.
<quote> :
The first 6 books of the Annales survive in a single manuscript, now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, where it is MS. plut. 68.1. Since this is the library of the Medici prince, Lorenzo the Magnificent, it is naturally called the Codex Mediceus, or M for short.

This MS was written around 850 AD in Germany. The distinctive type of script suggests the event took place in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Fulda, and this is supported by an explicit reference to Tacitus in the Annales Fuldenses for 852 (Cornelius Tacitus, scriptor rerum a Romanis in ea gente gestarum) which seems to show knowledge of Ann. 2,9.

Annals, Books 11-16 :
All of the late Italian manuscripts - some 31 at the last count - are copies of a single mediaeval manuscript, also in the Laurentian library, where it is number 68.2. It is referred to as M. II or 'second Medicean', to distinguish it from the unique codex of Annals 1-6. Bound with it are the major works of Apuleius, written slightly later than the Tacitus but at the same place.

.....
This MS is written in the difficult Beneventan hand. It was written at Monte Cassino, perhaps during the abbacy of Richer (1038-1055 AD). It derives from an ancestor in written in Rustic Capitals, as it contains errors of transcription natural to that bookhand. There is some evidence that it was copied only once in about ten centuries, and that this copy was made from an original in rustic capitals of the 5th century or earlier, but other scholars believe that it was copied via at least one intermediate copy written in a minuscule hand.

<end quote>

We do not know what happened between the time of Tacitus (55-120 CE) and the abbacy of Richer (1038-1055 AD). Every hypothesis is possible.

EthnAlln

Since nobody can improve on the manuscript information in that last reply, I won't even try. Anything might have happened, as Huon says.

Paul Kurtz (in "The Transcendental Temptation") suggests that since "christos" simply means "anointed," e.g., "messiah," the reference to "christians" in Rome could have meant any group of people who believed in a messiah. But the reference to Pontius Pilate is quite specific. On the other hand, this passage was written nearly two generations after the events it reports. Using the test often given by a Christian apologist who posts frequently here, we'd have to say that the reporting is not historical; it has picked up the Christian legend that was in circulation by the time of the writing.

robto

Since Paul died around 60 AD his letter to the Romans indicates there were Christains in Rome by this point.

Ben C Smith

The ministry of Paul is usually placed in the forties and fifties. His letter to the Romans in the fifties demonstrates that a Christian community existed in Rome well before Nero.

If you mean that Tacitus is the first author to use the term, that would probably be incorrect, since 1 Peter 4.16 and Acts 11.26; 26.28 use the term, and both are usually considered to have been written near the turn of the century.

If you mean that this is the earliest chronological time to which use of the term is assigned, that would likewise be incorrect, since Acts 11.26 says that the brethren were first called Christians very early in Antioch, and 26.28 has Agrippa using the term with Paul in the early sixties.

Furthermore, Pliny uses the term in his letter to Trajan, 10.96.

No. Suetonius mentions the Neronian persecution in Nero 16.2. Acts of Paul 10 also mentions it. Ascension of Isaiah 4.2-3 also refers to it (Beliar is a codename for Nero in that passage). Tertullian writes of it in Apology . And 1 Peter 4.12-17 indicates a persecution of Christians. Even if we take 1 Peter as pseudonymous, that would be evidence of a belief that Christians were persecuted in the days of Peter, which would be compatible with the Neronian persecution.

About Christus, according to the manuscripts. The confusion in Latin between the vowels i and e is well known. Tacitus appears to be acknowledging that the crowd (incorrectly) used the pronunciation Chrestus and Chrestians, but informing his readers that the founder of the cult was, in fact, not Chrestus but Christus.

Tacitus appears to have understood correctly; but many of his contemporaries and near contemporaries got it wrong.

Ben.

spin

Paul was writing to Jews in Rome as evinced in the totally Jewish flavour of the work. No, the letter to the Romans doesn't demonstrate the existence of a christian community in Rome. It probably demonstrates a text that has been normalized by later writers.

One thing is certain, the term was not developed in a Greek speaking community. It is formed through the addition of a Latin affix.

When was the book of Acts written? There is very little substance in this line of thought. You cannot use Acts as though it were assuredly historical.

Yup.

But then, the Suetonius mention of the Neronian persecution is given unprefixed and uncontextualised.

And thought Tertullian is well aware of Tacitus in his Apology he gives no inkling of the Tacitus testimony.

Chrestus is a common name in Rome. You'll find an inscription using it of a public figure at the museum at the tomb of Caecilia Metella. There is nothing strange in the notion of someone called Chrestus. The reference to Chrestus in Suetonius's life of Claudius is irrelevant to the current discussion.

The Tacitus passage is probably a fake. He knows when the administration of Judea changed, mentioning it elsewhere, but the current passage erroneously calls Pilate a procurator, which of course he couldn't have been and Tacitus would have known that he couldn't, as the passage dates Pilate to the time of Tiberius, yet Tacitus rightly tells us of the change during the reign of Claudius. Pilate was a prefect.

This passage also claims that both the crowd and the Neronean henchmen knew of and could distinguish these christians. This is excellent finesse. How could they tell them from Jews? This dates the passage much later than context time, making the passage bogus, so no, Tacitus wasn't using recent information, for it is part of the texture of the passage that people could distinguish these christians.

The passage is so incoherent, inelegant and generally poorly written that he must have had an exceptionally bad day when he wrote it because it certainly doesn't match his usual standards. The incoherence is displayed in: "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." Pleaded guilty of what? Then, what does hatred of mankind have to do with the passage's claim that Nero was trying to pass the buck onto the christians? Inelegance of the Latin has been discussed here and deals with the ugly assonances that come out in certain phrases. The generally poor level of the writing is the prolix nature of the passage for a writer who was few with words, a writer who tended to say less but say it more effectively.

Worst however, is that the subtlety of Tacitus's attack on Nero was waylayed into an incoherent raving about christianity which took the reader's interest away from Nero being tarred with the fire to christians crackling out into the night. We go from a masterful sentence, "But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order." to "Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed." How off topic can one get?

The whole passage is an embarrassment and people who believe in its veracity show little interest in the person who is supposed to have written it.


spin.

S.C.Carlson

I'm not familiar with this "letter to the Romans" that "doesn't demonstrate the existence of a christian community in Rome" as you describe it. What manuscript is it found in? Or, if it's some unevidenced hypothetical document, what scholar has argued for it?

Stephen

Ben C Smith

Romans 11.13a:

But I am speaking to you who are gentiles.

Romans 1.6:

...among whom you also are the called ones of Jesus Christ.

Romans 15.20, 22:

And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on the foundation of another man.... For this reason I have often been prevented from coming to you.

Paul aspires to break new ground, and has thus been prevented from coming to Rome. Rome, therefore, is not new ground. Christ has already been named there.

Make your case.

A Latin suffix which had been Graecized. From Carl Conrad on the b-greek list:

You might like to look at the discussion of Latinisms in the GNT at BDF#5 with special reference to (2): "Certain Latin suffixes also became current in Greek and were added to Greek words"--and note 3 on -ANOI and -IANOI.

(BDF is Blass-Debrunner-Funk; I have not looked up this reference, so feel free to correct as you see fit.)

Also, from B. D. Joseph:

Other loanwords entered in Classical period, mostly cultural loans from languages such as Persian (e.g. satrapeia 'satrapy'), but it was in the later Hellenistic period that large numbers of loan words from Latin made their way into Greek. In addition, derivational suffixes from these words came to have a wider use within Greek. Some examples include magistor 'master' (Latin magister), denarion 'small coin' (Latin denarius), and titlos 'title' (Latin titulus), as well as the adjectival suffix -ianos, the agent noun suffix -arios, and the instrumental noun suffix -arion.

I am not using it in that way. Malachi thought that Tacitus was either the first to use the word Christians or the author who places the first usage earliest chronologically (I could not tell which from his comment); I was pointing out that Acts knocks out number 2. Number 1 is probably (and I did use that word) knocked out by either Acts or 1 Peter.

Suetonius, unlike Tacitus, gives it no setting at all. Is that what you meant? The reference in Nero 16.2 appears in a nonchronological list of the ostensibly good measures taken by Nero. None of the items on the list is given any setting.

You mean says nothing. It is impossible to tell exactly how much he knows when he has reduced it to one brief sentence in a barebones list.

That is correct. It is just a list of measures taken by Nero.

What is your point here? That the ancients should have always given references and footnotes in the modern manner? I for one wish they had....

At any rate, judging by the depth and breadth of the references to the Neronian persecution, Tertullian hardly needed to rely on Tacitus. The Christians themselves apparently had a vivid collective memory of the time.

Yes, it was.

That is correct. There was nothing strange about ancient pagans hearing Christus and thinking it was Chrestus. It would have been an easy mistake to make.

I agree. Who said otherwise?

Yes, Pilate was a prefect. Calling him a procurator was a mistake. As Stephen Carlson points out, Tacitus was not the only ancient author to make the mistake of calling Pilate a procurator:

Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 299, also [got] Pilate's title wrong too, calling him an EPITROPOS of Judea, the Greek equivalent to procurator. (The Greek equivalent of praefectus was EPARCOS.)

I would add that Josephus similarly elides the titles in War 2.8.1 §117, where he has Coponius taking over the prefecture of Judea, but as a procurator.

So Tacitus made a (pretty common) mistake. How you get from mistake to forgery is unclear to me. Is Tacitus supposed to be infallible?

Jews would not confess undying allegiance to Jesus Christ. Christians would (at least those who did not mind being martyred).

The word Tacitus uses is fatebantur, confessed (third person plural imperfect). They confessed to being Christians, of course, followers of Christ.

It was a pretext and a slander.

The rest of your post delves into matters of a fairly subjective nature. Perhaps I can persuade you at another time that what Tacitus wrote about the Christians was, in fact, high poetry.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I failed to notice the following tension the first time through, but let me point it out now:

So the gulf between Jews and Christians is so wide that you can overturn clear indicators within the epistle to the Romans and tag it as exclusively Jewish, not Christian.

So the gulf between Jews and Christians is so narrow that Roman officials should not even be able to tell the difference.

Ben.

Toto

There are all sorts of problems with the Epistle to the Romans that were touched on here. It's not clear that it was actually written to any Roman church, that such a church existed at the time, etc.