Nuwanda

Here's an open question to test the 'unbias' nature most of us seem to be granting to Roman historians for some unknown reason. Under a government which killed Christians in their colosseums and considered their faith to be a direct attack against Roman authority, why would such a government endorse the recording of any miracles that the leader of this despised people group may have performed?

Not only would they not commission such work but chances are they would do anything they could to destroy whatever records they already had. If we are truly to rely on "unbiased" sources, as Julian and Skeptical have both proposed, why would we look to Rome to supply evidence of Christ's miracles which would condemn their own acts against His followers? Based on this, I vote to strike any record from Rome, positive or negative, concerning miracles performed by Christ.

Skeptical

Bingo, I knew we were heading for the false dichotomy.

I never said anything about anyone being unbiased nor do I think anyone else did. In fact, if you reference my previous posts, I think I was crystal clear that most, perhaps all, ancient historians fail on some of the criteria I listed, one of which is lack of bias.

Additionally, your history is a bit off. By the time Christianity was even noticed by the authorities in Rome, it was far too late for anyone to verify any claims in the gospels, even if they had known them. It is highly unlikely that anyone in the Roman heirarchy knew much specifically at all about the gospel claims until the late 2nd/early 3rd century and even then the claims are hardly the sort that ancient peoples steeped in superstition would care to investigate.

The earliest reports from a non-Christian source are Pliny in around 111 C.E. He refers to Christianity as a "superstition", which to the Roman POV was what it was, similar to other cults, clubs and organizations which could lead to disunity in the empire and were thus not to be tolerated. Most unothodox groups were punished the same as any Christians were, the objections were not theological per se, but social. I highly recommend "The Christians as the Romans Saw them" by Wilken, it covers this is much more detail and is a quick but good read.

You have a vastly overinflated sense of the importance of Christianity to the Roman empire during the first 2 centuries. I don't know where you are getting your history from, but to put it bluntly your picture of what was happening in the Roman empire during the relevant time is not at all accurate.

Put plainly, Christiantiy simply didn't count for much during the first few centuries of its existence to Rome. There were not widescale persecutions, most Romans proably knew little if anything about it and those that did saw it mostly as just another fringe cult or superstition of consequence only because such movements threatened stability in the empire. It was viewed no differently than countless other cults and religious movements, dangerous to the extent that it threatened social homgeneity and control.

Toward the end of the 2nd century non-Christian writers began to take notice, such as Celsus around 180 C.E., but this is far too late to have any bearing on the question of the veracity of what happened in Palestine 150yrs earlier.

Here is a short quote from the book I referenced above that shows why your view is misplaced:

"By the early part of the 2nd century...Christian groups could be found in perhaps forty or fifty cities within the Roman empire. Most of these groups were quite small, some numbering several dozen people...The total number of Christians in the empire was probably less than 50,000, an infinitesimal number in a society comprising 60M. The Jews, by contrast, ...numbered 5M. Most inhabitants of the Roman Empire had never heard of Christianity, and very few had any firsthand contact with Christians. Even among educated people little was known about the Christian movement". pg 31

I have seen other estimates that place the number of Christians at 250K by the END of the 2nd century, which is still less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the population of the Roman Empire.

Nuwanda

You charge that my history is off and then claim that Pliny in 111 AD was the first non-Christian to report anything on the Christians? I'll give you a chance to retract this in your next post before I show your obvious 'bias' in your approach to history.

Then to say that Rome in the "first few centuries" after Christ did not care about Christianity and that persecutions were not prevalent is blatant disregard for history. Even one of the historians you claim is credible, Tacitus who lived between 55-120 AD, wrote of Christians being "commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities" (Annals XV.44). So this tiny group was hated and commonly referred to?

Concerning your claim that they were not persecuted, lets see what your favorite, credible, Roman historian, Tacitus has to say: "...Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians..." (Annals XV.44).

The book you quoted, written by Robert Wilken relies chiefly on the works of five pagan statesmen and intellectuals - Pliny, Galen, Celsus, Porphyry, and the emperor Julian, none of which you claimed to be reliable. Would you like to add them to your collection now so that we can dissect them one at a time?

So far you accusing others of not knowing their history is not reflecting well on you.

Skeptical

If you mean to imply Josephus, my statement still stands. Josephus mentions Yeshua, not "christians" although I suppose you could argue that "those that loved him" is a vague reference to followers.

If you mean Tacitus' reference, my information is that it dates to 115, slightly later than Pliny but feel free to correct me if you have a credible source.

Two points:

1) When someone says "comonly referred to", that doesn't mean that reference to them is common, it means that when they are mentioned that is how they are referred to, two completely differrent things.

2) Just because someone is hated doesn't have any bearing on actual persecutions. Lots of fringe groups were hated, but they weren't hunted down and persecuted either.

Nothing in Tacitus contradicts anything I said. The Christians were not seen as any more or less threatening than any of the other fringe religious cults or associations of the time. Tacitus doesn't say anything to the contrary.

Is this really the basis of your "blatant disregard for history" comment?

Please show where I said Tacitus was my "favorite historian" or that I said he was "credible". Right, you can't, typical apologetic goal post shifting and straw man arguments, but I digress...

And so what? Besides the fact that the source of Tacitus' information is of unknown origin, Tacitus may be right, he may be wrong. Even if true that doesn't mean that the Christians were important, just that they were an easy scapegoat as a fringe religious movement.

Is it seriously your contention that one instance of some Christians being persecuted would qualify to make a claim of widescale persecution? What kind of logic is that? Do you dispute the number of 50K Christians in the Roman empire at the end of the 1st century? If so, what is your source?

The point of the book is not that these authors are reliable, it is what their POV is. Hence the title "the Christians as the Romans SAW THEM". It's an attempt to understand the POV of the Romans. And bottom line, it's all we have, it's that or nothing, we have to take their writings for what they're worth. Since most of the writings referenced are not attempts at recording history per se but letters and notes about personal views and opinions, they are helpful for the limited purpose of understanding these particular Romans' POV toward Christianity. If you had read the book you would know that.

And yes, well, the writers would be ROMANS wouldn't they, since that is the focus of the book?

And again, what part of "sliding scale" do you not understand? There is no such thing as a writer who is completely unreliable and one who is completely reliable. Saying a writer is "reliable" or "not reliable" is meaningless without comparison to other writers. It also depends a lot on the subjects involved. I explained this in detail earlier and I'm not going to repeat myself. If your worldview doesn't permit a gray scale approach, that's your problem, reality does not fit nicely into black and white.

Your entitled to your opinion, for what it's worth.

Nuwanda

Okay. Every post and counter post creates hundreds of new avenues of debate so lets take a moment to recap to see if I'm missing anything:

There are no Roman historians who recorded miracles performed by Jesus; even if there were they must be discounted because miracles don't exist; all credible historians must adhere to Skeptics 6 rules; all credible historians must adhere to the rules of the 6 rules (the 6th is preferred, all the others are semi-serious); Christians population count was low in the first few centuries, and this is important because... because... I'm not sure; persecution by torture is fine so long as it's not widescale (nevermind the assumption that their population was low which would make any persecution widescale in relation).

Am I missing anything?

Skeptical

Let me first make a correction to my last post, I didn't remember the testimonium flavinium saying the word "christians", which it does. So, my error. Josephus writing around 93 CE would clearly be earlier than Pliny in 111 CE, my err.

As far as I know, no, unless you count Josephus. (at least none in the late 1st/early 2nd)

I didn't say that. What I said was whether or not "miracles" exist, we need more than evidence of an ancient writer for believing one occured. That is not the same thing at all.

Your statement should read "even if there were, such claims would be discounted because such claims standing alone fall short of the evidence required to believe a miracle has occurred"

I didn't say that either. You asked why some ancient writers would be believed over others, I posited 6 criteria that I thought were reasonable, you can feel free to disagree or add or subtract if those criteria don't seem reasonable. Assuming you agree those criteria are reasonable, I also didn't say any credible historian must adhere to all of them. I said each of the criteria lend credence to the writers credibility, although most, perhaps all ancient writers fail on some of them.

Not exactly what I said, although I do think it is reasonable to say if an author is unknown and there is no way to corroborate what they have written from other source, it is very difficult to see how what they have written could be considered credible. I don't consider the other criteria to be "semi-serious", I said knowing who an author is sheds light on the other criteria. That doesn't mean the other criteria aren't important.

Because it means they were a fringe group, a small obscure religious movement that was a tiny part of the Roman empire and would barely have been noticed. The group would not have been seen as being very different from other fringe groups around this time and their specific claims and ideas would hardly have been investigated in any systematic way. This is important because _YOU_ said that the reason there weren't any Romans writing about Yeshua's miracles is because Christianity was a threat to the Roman empire and the writings would have been supressed.

Obviously, for this to be true then the Christian movement would have to have been of a size to be noticed by the Roman authorities and deemed a threat severe enough to need supression. Additionally, the specific ideas of the movement would have to have been known by the Roman authorities in order for those ideas to need supression. If the movement was very small in the 1st and 2nd centuries, which it was, and if specific ideas about Yeshua were nearly unknown in the Roman community at large until the late 2nd century, which they were, then this undermines your entire argument as to why the Roman writers didn't write about the supposed miracles.

Is this clear now?

Of course not, don't be so melodramatic. Torturing and killing people is never "fine", but the fact of the matter is it was extraordinarily common for Romans to do this to any group who posed the slightest challenge to Roman law and order. Any "association" or group that looked like it had any non-state sponsored ideas was seen as a potential threat and if encountered would be dealt with harshly. (this is covered nicely in the book I refed earlier) The Christians were no better nor worse off in the Roman eyes in this regard.

I need not recount the horrors of the Jewish wars and the acts taken by the Romans against the Jews or any other subject peoples. They were thugs, they killed and tortured will impunity and if there were Christians in Rome around the time of Nero then he certainly may have used them as scapegoats and had them tortured and killed since they would have exactly the kind of fringe group that would be easily dealt with. Happy now?

Now, if you are now saying that by "widescale" you mean "large percentage of existing Christians", then ok, I won't quibble. If your pop is only 50K and 1K are killed , then _percentage_ wise that would be a large number. In fact if Nero did kill some Christians the pop was proably much lower in 65 CE, probably half the 50K number of less, so percentage wise it would be worse.

However, killing what for the Romans would be a small number in an isolated incident is not what most people would mean when they say "widescale". Doesn't mean its "fine", it means its not widescale. The romans killed hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Jewish war. That is widescale.

And it's not an assumption as in guess. It's a number based on sources which appear to be scholarly and reliable. If you have an argument with the number feel free to post a contradictory reference.

Yes, see above

mens_sana

While the argument from silence is seldom decisive, there are instances where the "silence" is deafening.