EarlDoherty

Well, it's nice if it works. And I think in this case it does work, and it illustrates my point. The text does explicitly say that Nero killed ordinary Christians, but it is a development, as I've said, out of the legend of the martyrdom of Paul. Actually, by the author of the Acts of Paul describing this 'round-up' of other Christians as proceeding out of Nero's contact with Paul, he is showing his ignorance of the round-up of Christians as a result of the Great Fire and Nero's attempt to put the blame on them.

It is things like this (and that includes Tertullian) which illustrate the starting point as legends surrounding Paul's death, leading to the inclusion of other individuals or groups of Christians being brought into the legend as well. It is the latter which can easily explain certain comments by Eusebius which bring in those "others", still leaving him silent and apparently ignorant on the picture created in Tacitus. Thus there is no support or clear evidence for knowledge in the early centuries by Christians about a Neronian persecution which involves a mass slaughter on Nero's part due to him accusing them of burning down the city of Rome. And that in turn places a huge question mark on the reliability of the Tacitus passage, with its reference to "Christus."

You are, of course, free to disagree over the question of whether Eusebius should have known about the fire and the consequent persecution. But you are still confusing the question of whether Eusebius could be expected to know about Tacitus own description of the fire and persecution by reading him, with the question of whether Eusebius could be expected to know about that fire and resulting persecution per se, regardless of his source. The former may be debatable. The latter should not be. If he knew, then we have every reason to expect clear mention of that 'fact', especially when discussing the idea of persecution by Nero. The same applies to Tertullian. We don't get it.

If a number of Japanese historians were to write about the end of the Second World War and talked about the circumstances which led the Japanese emperor to surrender, and they all mentioned the fears he had that an invasion by the American army would lead to too much destruction of the countryside and losses to the Japanese military, but nothing about the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the levelling of those cities, would we be justified in questioning one lone American historian who claimed that such bombs were dropped? I think we would. And I think we would be justified in appealing to a reasonable expectation that such Japanese historians should have mentioned them.

Of course, it would be your prerogative to disagree.

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

You certainly asserted this (said it, to use your word); but I did not find an actual argument to that effect.

The great fire is, and always has been, a red herring in the debate on authenticity.

The fire did happen, as we know from both Tacitus (the passage under scrutiny) and Suetonius (Nero 38). But only Tacitus connects the fire to the Christians.

The persecution of Christians under Nero happened (to whatever extent), as we know from Tertullian, the Acts of Paul, Suetonius (Nero 16.2), Tacitus (the passage under scrutiny again), and hints or indications in various other sources. But only Tacitus connects the fire to the Christians.

Tacitus may be wrong about that connection; he may merely be putting two and two together; or he may have had access to official Roman documents that we no longer have.

Suetonius knows both about the fire and about the persecution of Christians. Yet he does not connect the two. You seem to be requiring of Eusebius what even a Roman historian is not required to do.

Before century IV, Tacitus is our only extant source (AFAIK) for the connection of the fire with the persecution. If someone (say, Eusebius) did not know Tacitus, there is no reason to assume that he would have known about that connection.

And, even if an author did know about the connection with the fire, one would not be required to mention it. As I said before, I reject your expectations of what an ancient author should or should not have written; they have proven quite fallible before.

That is a freedom, a prerogative, that I exercise to its fullest.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

Ben, you puzzle me--although I will not be writing a book called "The Ben Puzzle." I know you exist. It's just that I'm not sure about your reasoning.

The argument is inherent in the demonstration. If the killing of ordinary Christians is part of the story recounted in something like the Acts of Paul, with no other connection in evidence, then it is obvious that the most compelling deduction is that it is an adjunct to the legend of Paul's martyrdom. No other identification for it is ever offered by any Christian writer before the end of the 4th century. You are implicitly suggesting that the author of those Acts, and Eusebius himself, have lifted out a motif attached to a tradition surrounding the great fire, then stuck it into the legend of Paul's martyrdom while completely stripping it away from its supposed traditional association. Do you think that suggestion makes more sense than mine?

Of course the fire happened. But if only Tacitus (as it stands) connects any persecution of Christians under Nero with the fire, then this calls that connection into question, since we have every right to expect Christian writers to make that connection, too--as well as other Roman historians, such as Suetonius and Cassius Dio, who do not. And if we can see in those Christian writers a persecution under Nero only in terms of it being part of the martyrdom of Paul and nothing to do with the fire, then we have no justification for using this to claim that our extant Tacitus, with its connection to the fire, is correct. The only 'justification' for doing so is in the Christian interests of preserving the full authenticity of 15:44 with its reference to Christus as an historical figure.

Well, someone was. But this is something new, Ben. I'm glad to see that you realize that a possible reason why no Christian writer speaks of a persecution by Nero as a result of the fire, is because there was no such persecution. But was it Tacitus who got it wrong? One of the most reliable of Roman historians writing only four decades 'after the fact'? Did he put "two and two together" and come up with five? Where might he have gotten such erroneous information? It certainly wasn't from the Christians, who never breathe a word of it for three centuries.

Ben, you have quietly slipped over to the other side of the room. You now seem to be openly arguing that no such event such as Tacitus describes took place. No accusation by Nero that Christians had set fire to the city and his slaughter of them on that account. This is quite the opposite to your previous stance, that all those unspecific references in Tertullian and Eusebius and Acts of Paul to 'other ordinary Christians' martyred along with Paul really echoed the classic Neronian persecution as described by Tacitus. Now you are saying that the silence in the Christian writers is supported by the silence in Suetonius, both of which attest to "Tacitus getting it wrong." That's quite a switch. But at least it's progress.

You're right that Suetonius does not connect the two. He talks about the fire in one place, with no involvement of Christians. And he talks about a "punishment inflicted upon the Christians" in another, with no mention of the fire. (This is distinct, of course, from his more famous "Jews and Chrestus" passage.) You're right in suggesting that the latter may indicate (if it is genuine to Suetonius, though there is some grounds to question this), supported by hints in Tertullian, Eusebius--and Melito--that some "persecution of Christians under Nero happened (to whatever extent)," and in fact I deal with this possibility myself in the chapter on Tacitus, though I regard it as buried behind those Christian 'hints' since they have been influenced more immediately by Pauline martyrdom legends. But that 'something' happening under Nero, even if not the gore-fest envisioned in Tacitus, or even by Tertullian and Eusebius, is very possible and quite acceptable.

What is not acceptable is really the bottom line of this whole discussion: claiming that the passage in Tacitus is still somehow reliable enough (even though he got its basic element wrong) to preserve the reference to Christ as coming from him and as evidence from a Roman historian for an historical figure. Once you admit that fundamental element of the chapter as erroneous, you open up a can of worms, releasing a bunch of little critters that eat away at any basis we might have had to regard Tacitus as a witness to the historical Jesus.

Welcome to my club.

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

The reason for this is clarified later in your post; you are assuming things about my position that are not so.

This is not at all obvious to me. I think the tradition is just as capable of transmitting Nero killed Paul and others as it is Nero killed Paul.

In fact, in Suetonius we find Nero killed Christians, with no mention of Paul.

That is not at all what I am suggesting! How can I be suggesting that anybody lifted a motif out of a tradition surrounding the great fire, when I am not even sure that anybody (except Tacitus) knew of a tradition that explicitly included the great fire?

Yes, it is at least open to debate, as I explicitly stated.

As I demonstrated before, the persecution of Christians is not part of the martyrdom of Paul in Tertullian or in Eusebius; rather, the reverse; the martyrdom of Paul is part of the persecution of Christians both in Tertullian (at that time, the time of the persecution, Nero killed Paul) and in Eusebius (having persecuted Christians as Tertullian says, Nero turned around and killed Paul and Peter).

Again, I already stated that Tacitus may be wrong about the connection to the fire. This is why the fire is a red herring. He could be completely wrong about the reason for the persecution and completely right about the fact of the persecution itself.

This is something new, all right. This is you stripping away one of your errant assumptions about my position. Where have I ever said that Tacitus had to be right about the fire?

You got that right. He did not get that information from the Christians. (Makes one wonder what else he might not have gotten from the Christians in that passage.)

No! I am ambivalent as to the connection with the fire. Completely ambivalent. Not that I do not care; rather, I have little way of knowing other than simply taking Tacitus at his word.

That is still my stance. I am not following you. Hopefully this will clear it up for you:

1. Tacitus wrote that Nero persecuted Christians.
2. Suetonius wrote that Nero persecuted Christians.
3. Tertullian wrote that Nero persecuted Christians, and also that Nero killed Paul.
4. Eusebius quoted Tertullian to the effect that Nero persecuted Christians, and then adds that he also killed Paul.
5. The author of the Acts of Paul wrote that Nero persecuted Christians, and also that Nero killed Paul.

Do you see the common thread here? All agree, whether Christian or pagan, that Nero persecuted Christians. The Christian authors also affirm that Nero killed Paul.

That is my position, that Nero persecuted Christians and killed Paul. That has always been my position. I have also been arguing against your position:

That is what I am arguing against.

Again, no. (I find it hard to believe that my prose is really this difficult to understand, but perhaps it is.)

I am saying, and have been saying, that Suetonius, Tacitus, and the Christian writers agree that Nero persecuted Christians.

I pointed up Suetonius not linking this persecution to the fire because of your apparent expectation that Eusebius should have (A) known about the fire and (B) therefore connected it to the Christian persecution. I am saying nonsense. Eusebius (A) may well not have known about the fire (Tacitus being the only one who mentions it and Eusebius being rather thin on Latin sources) and (B) may well not have written about it had he known about it (witness Suetonius).

This has been my point all along. Christians other than Peter and Paul were persecuted under Nero.

This is fundamentally in error. Just because Tacitus may be wrong about something only he reports, he must also be wrong about something that many others support him in?

We have seen that Tacitus may be wrong about the motive for the persecution. But we have also seen that Tacitus was right about the fact of the fire itself (being supported by Suetonius) and that Tacitus was right about the persecution of Christians, at least in general (being supported by Suetonius and by various Christian authors).

I submit that Tacitus was probably also right about Christ having been crucified under Pilate (being supported by 1 Timothy, many gospels both canonical and noncanonical, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and less direct references in many, many other texts).

Ben.

spamandham

Of course he could be wrong about the reason for the persecution, and yet right about the the fact of it, but a more reasonable stance to take, is that if he is wrong about the reason for it he could just as easily be wrong about the fact of it, since he is either shooting from the hip, making things up, simply repeating something he heard, or otherwise basing the blurb on something equally unreliable.

So now we have to look for external corroboration.

Simonmagus

There could be many things, but just because things are possible does in no way indicate they are plausible. Occam's Razor slices much of your position away.

spamandham

Are you suggesting that it's implausible that Tacitus knew of persecutions but got the facts wrong as to why they were happening, or are you saying it's implausible that Tacitus was wrong about the persecutions altogether?

Welcome to IIDB, by the way.

Ben C Smith

Did you read the rest of my post? I wrote:

Ben.

spamandham

Everyone on this list post dates Tacitus, and even the writings of the earliest from this list, Seutonius', post date Nero by at least 50 years. I don't see how these are relevant to corroborating Tacitus.

EarlDoherty

Ben, you have still not demonstrated that either Tertullian or Eusebius refers to a distinctly separate and large-scale Neronian persecution of Christians in general, rather than to legends about Peter and Paul’s martyrdom under Nero which may have envisioned a few others being martyred along with them. “Hints” will not do, because if those hints were about a persecution on the scale of that described by Tacitus (and that is my point) they would have been more than hints. Let’s look at each of the passages.

Tertullian, Apology 5:
“…Consult your histories; you will there find that Nero was the first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect, making progress then especially at Rome.”

No mention of the fire, nothing resembling the gory scenes described by Tacitus which, even if Tertullian had not read Tacitus, should have been familiar to him in some form simply through Christian tradition. What then is “assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect”? Basically, it could be the martyrdom of Peter and Paul and whatever followers attached to them which legendary tradition and Tertullian’s own imagination may have conjured up. This is supported by the next two passages from Tertullian I quoted…

Tertullian, Scorpiace 15:
“At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith. Then is Peter girt by another, when he is made fast to the cross. Then does Paul…ennobled by martyrdom…nor does it signify to me which I follow as teachers of martyrdom, whether the declarations or the deaths of the apostles…”

Nothing there refers to any other martyrs besides Peter and Paul. (And you already acknowledged the business of “tunc”.) In fact, the last quoted line limits the martyrdom specifically to “the apostles.” Trying to tease out something further from this passage is wholly unjustified.

Tertullian, De Praescriptione 36:
As I said, in eulogizing the heritage of Rome’s martyred blood, he says: “How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood! Where Peter endures a passion like his Lord’s! Where Paul wins his crown in a death like John’s!” Where are the additional remarks about other ordinary Christians being martyred as well, especially on a scale like that in Tacitus?

Eusebius, HE 2,25:
After detailing Nero’s personal crimes against his family, etc., he speaks of one more “crime” to be added. What is it? “He was the first of the emperors to be the declared enemy of the worship of Almighty God.” His source? Tertullian’s Apology passage above. Which he seems, by the way, to have made a free paraphrase of, because his ‘quote’ of it shows notable differences:

“Study your records: there you will find that Nero was the first to persecute this teaching when, after subjugating the entire East, in Rome especially he treated everyone with savagery.”

If we can’t find any clear indication of a major Neronian persecution in Tertullian’s comment, we are hardly entitled to find it in Eusebius’ alleged quote of that comment.

When he goes on to speak for himself, what does he say? “So it came about that this man, the first to be heralded as a conspicuous fighter against God, was led on to murder the apostles.” And he goes on to describe their martyrdoms, also quoting from two earlier Christian writers who speak solely of those martyrdoms. That could be Nero being a conspicuous fighter. That could be his being “declared enemy of the worship of Almighty God.” We can’t read any more into such comments than that, because that is all the Eusebius gives us. Anything more is wishful thinking. And there is no “Nero persecuted Christians, and then also killed Paul and Peter.” That is you forcing a meaning into things which it does not obviously have, since the former can be seen as described by the latter.

The same goes for the Acts of Paul. You say: “The author of the Acts of Paul wrote that Nero persecuted Christians, and also that Nero killed Paul.” That is totally misleading. The whole episode begins with Nero questioning Paul, becoming alarmed at Paul’s bravado that Christ will destroy all the kingdoms, including Nero’s Rome, and then because of this threat Nero rounds up all the Christians he can find and after further provocation from Paul declares that everyone must be executed. The rounding up of the other Christians grows out of the legend of Paul’s martyrdom, as I said.

However, all that being said, I have taken some cognizance of those supposed ‘hints’ in the above passages which you seem to want to blow up into a full-scale persecution. This is not meeting you half-way, however. My purpose all along has been to discredit the passage in Tacitus. I’m quite willing to accept that some Christian writers may suggest the possibility of some situation under Nero, although I can’t say whether they are just deriving it solely from legends of apostolic martyrdom, or from something else. Anyway, here is that passage in my draft chapter:

Earl Doherty