copernicus

As Roger has said, this is an exercise in what *could have been*, and I think that atheists have a wider range of speculation than Christians. So, let's speculate. Here is one scenario:

Pliny converses with his learned friend Tacitus on the followers of 'Christus' that he has encountered. After all, Pliny was perplexed enough to write Trajan for advice. Tacitus remembers (or read) about the troublesome 'Christiani'--i.e. Jewish zealots--that Nero had persecuted. He jumps to the conclusion that these followers of 'Christus' must be from the same religious sect. What he said in the Annals was that the 'Christiani' got their name from 'Christus'. That's all. A very speculative scenario, but not unreasonable speculation. After all, we have zero knowledge of Tacitus's source for his information on Christians.

jgibson000

One of the best popular discussions known to me of Tacitus' sources is that of Robert E. Van Voorst on pp. 50-52 of his Jesus Outside The New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Eerdmans, 2000). I reproduce it here, footnotes included.


Jeffrey

What is the source of Tacitus's information about Christ? Historians have proposed different kinds of sources, written and oral, Christian and Roman. To say where he did not get his information is easier than to show where he did. First, Tacitus certainly did not draw, directly or indirectly, on writings that came to form the New Testament. No literary or oral dependence can be demonstrated between his description and the Gospel accounts.[84] The wording is too different; the only commonality is the name Pontius Pilate, and this could easily come from elsewhere. Nor did Tacitus likely draw his information from another Christian document, if his contempt for Christianity is any indication. Second, Tacitus does not seem to have drawn on general hearsay. He would probably indicate this with an expression like dicunt or ferunt,[85] or explicitly call it a rumor, as he does the report that Nero mounted his private stage and accompanied the burning of Rome with a song (15.39), transmuted into the popular idea that "Nero riddled while Rome burned." Moreover, hearsay typically does not produce "documentary precision" about controversial topics like Christ and Christianity.[86] We cannot rule out that Tacitus found this information about Christ in another, now-lost Roman history that he used as a source. However, this cannot be demonstrated either, because Tacitus rarely indicates where he is relying on his sources, much less names them. A more likely source, but still not demonstrable, is a police or magistrate's report made during investigations after the fire, which may have mentioned the genesis of Christianity.

Did Tacitus find a record of Christ in high-level Roman records? These records in Rome were of two types, the Commentarii Principis and the Acta Senatus. The Commentarii Principis was the court journal of the emperors. It contained records like military campaigns, edicts, rescripts, and other legal actions by the emperor. Tacitus reports that it was secret and closed, so he could not consult it. An illustration of its secret nature is recorded in his Histories 4.40, where he reports that the Senate wished to use it for investigation of crimes, but was refused access by the emperor in an ancient claim of executive privilege. Although Tacitus had no access, he complains about the reputed poor state of the archives. (Another indication of the state of these archives is perhaps found in Pliny's letters to Trajan, where whenever Pliny refers to an imperial act, he gives the full text.) The other type of official record is the Acta Senatus, the senate's archive of its own actions and activities. These were open, and Tacitus states that he used them, but a report about Jesus would probably not belong here. It would not be a report from Pilate or, for that matter, any Roman official in Judea, because Judea was an imperial, not senatorial, province, and so its governors would not ordinarily have reported to the Senate. The Senate could have investigated the fire of 64 and made some comment for explanation about Christ that ended up in its archive. But this remains a supposition, since we have no reference to it from any surviving source. Moreover, that Tacitus uses "procurator" anachronistically may indicate that he is not using an official imperial or senatorial document, which would not likely have made such a mistake.

An intriguing, though unlikely, source for Tacitus's information about Christ may be inferred from a few ancient Christian authors. These authors mention that Pontius Pilate w rote a report to Rome immediately following the death of Jesus or once his movement in Judea had grown after his death. Justin Martyr, writing his First Apology to the emperor around 150, states that a record of the trial and punishment of Jesus called the "Acts of Pilate" was sent to Rome that even contained evidence of Jesus' miracles (I Apology 35, 48). Although Tertullian repeats this claim (Against Marcion 4.7, 19; Apology 5, 2 1), it appears on the whole unlikely. No corroboration can be found for it, and we have no indication that Roman governors wrote reports about individual noncitizens whom they put to death. More likely, Justin assumed the existence of this document in his pious imagination to bolster the standing of Christianity in the eyes of the emperor, just as he could claim that the emperor possesses "registers of the census" proving that Jesus was born in Bethlehem! (I Apology 34). Or Justin may have known and regarded as authentic an apocryphal Christian document, as Tertullian seems to have.[87] Pilate is known in the New Testament, Philo, and Josephus as having a reputation among his subjects for being unjust and cruel, and it is almost unthinkable that he would send a report to the emperor detailing what would come to be known as one of his most notable failures. Even if Pilate had drawn up a report of Jesus'trial, a view held today by only a few,[88] it would have gone into the closed imperial archive and not have been available to Tacitus or any other writer. That Pilate is called a procurator rather than a prefect is evidence that Tacitus's information is not based on material from Pilate - Pilate would have gotten his own title correct, and Tacitus would likely have reproduced it faithfully.

The most likely source of Tacitus's information about Christ is Tacitus's own dealings with Christians, directly or indirectly. While Tacitus does not speak of any experiences with Christians, in two periods of his life he could well have acquired a knowledge of them. The later period was when Tacitus was governor of the province of Asia. At the same time, his close friend Pliny the Younger was governor of the neighboring province of Pontus-Bithynia and had difficult dealings with Christians. Tacitus could have had similar investigations or trials of Christians, who were present in several cities of Asia, or gained information about Christians from Pliny. An earlier period when Tacitus may have learned of Christians is often overlooked by historians puzzling out Tacitus's sources. In 88 C.E. Tacitus became a member of the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis, the priestly organization charged, among other things, with keeping the Sibylline books and supervising the practice of officially tolerated foreign cults in the city. Tacitus speaks in this chapter about the Sibylline books being consulted and knows the precise ritual measures that followed (15.44), actions he could have learned of while serving some twenty-four years later in the priestly organization. Although Christianity was never an officially tolerated cult, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a priestly college charged with regulating licit religions would know something about the illicit ones. This is made more likely by the growing necessity to distinguish illicit Christianity from licit Judaism. So perhaps information about the proscribed foreign cult of the Christians came to him at this time.


84. Goguel, Life of Jesus, 95, argues that no Christian source is present here because "the leading idea in [Tacitus's] mention of Christianity is the fact that the Christian movement, suppressed by the execution of its founder, did not reawaken until a little before the year 64." Goguel ties this reawakening in Judea to the Jewish revolt of 66-70. Harris, "References to Jesus," 351-52, repeats Goguel's argument. But this presses Tacitus's wording too hard. In praesens relates to the immediate effect of the execution of Christ ("for a time"), as it follows directly after supplicio adfectus erat. It does not mean a continuing effect from Tiberius until 64 ("until this time"). When the next sentence begins with igitur "then, therefore," this is not in a temporal sense that would support a reawakening in the early 60s. Rather, this is a typically Tacitean use of igitur to mark resumption of the main theme, here after the digression on Christ.

85. Goguel, Life of Jesus, 95.

86. Pace Paul Winter, who argues that Tacitus had no direct dealings with Christians and writes from hearsay ("Tacitus and Pliny: The Early Christians," JHistStud I [ 1967-68] 31-40; idem, "Tacitus and Pliny on Christianity," Klio 52 [1970] 497-502).

87. For an apocryphal work known as the Acts of Pilate, see Felix Scheidweiler, "The Gospel of Nicodemus, Acts of Pilate, and Christ's Descent into Hell," in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English trans. ed. R. McL. Wilson (rev. ed.; 2 vols.; Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991) 1:501 36. "The prevailing view today is that Christian Acts of Pilate were first devised and published as a counterblast to pagan Acts [fabricated under the anti-Christian emperor Maximin], and that previously there had been nothing of the sort. Justin's testimony is thereby set aside" (p. 501).

88. E.g., Henri Daniel-Rops, "The Silence of Jesus' Contemporaries," in F. Amiot, J. Danielou, A. Brunot, and H. Daniel-Rops, The Sources for the Life of Christ (London: Burns & Oakes, 1962), 14. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins [Outside the New Testament], 19-20, seems to favor such a report also.

Ben C Smith

I would be intrigued to see your presentation of the evidence for this double interlocked forgery.

Depending on the date of the Acts and 1 Peter, yes, it may be.

If indeed it is, that would be quite consistent with the NT accounts, would it not? They imply that the name was bestowed on the movement from without, not dreamt up from within.

Ben.

jgibson000

What is the basis for the claim that Tacitus relied on Josephus for his [Tacitus'] account of the Jewish War?

Jeffrey

Diogenes the Cynic

It's a reference to Stephen Carlson's hypothesis which was linked upthread by Ben.

Vorkosigan

I am not so much claiming that it is true, but simply pointing out that even if the Tacitus passage relies on Josephus, it does not follow that there is anything historical about one or the other. The forgery hypothesis is not invalidated (and may even be strengthened -- it is a sign of forgery when one passage suspected to be forged looks like another suspected to be forged). Copying is not a sign of anything, except.....copying.

Vorkosigan

Ben C Smith

While I realize that at the moment you are probably just moving your chess pieces around the perimeter in preparation for a later assault, I feel compelled to insist that a hypothesis cannot be invalidated until somebody first makes an attempt to validate it (that is, offer positive evidence in its favor).

Ben.

Vorkosigan

LOL. That was more of looking several moves ahead to see where people might go.

Although if Carlson is right, invalidating the TF automatically smokes Tacitus. A twofer, as it were.

Vorkosigan

k_smith123

It appears that my earlier observation regarding the “silence� suggested by the names Tacitus and Tranquillus needs to be helped along a bit.

Near the beginning of Cratylus Plato had the character Hermogenes introduce the issue of correctness by explaining:

HERMOGENES: I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus
has been arguing about names; he says that they are natural and not
conventional; not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use; but
that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for
Hellenes as for barbarians. (CRATYLUS by Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett)

As the discussion continues Socrates provides further insights into the issue when he remarks:

"…a king will often be the son of a king, the good son or the noble son of a good or noble sire; and similarly the offspring of every kind, in the regular course of nature, is like the parent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the syllables may be disguised until they appear different to the ignorant person, and he may not recognize them, although they are the same, just as any one of us would not recognize the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell, although to the physician, who regards the power of them, they are the same, and he is not put out by the addition; and in like manner the etymologist is not put out by the addition or transposition or subtraction of a letter or two, or indeed by the change of all the letters, for this need not interfere with the meaning. As was just now said, the names of Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, which is tau, and yet they have the same meaning. And how little in common with the letters of their names has Archepolis (ruler of the city)--and yet the meaning is the same. And there are many other names which just mean 'king.' Again, there are several names for a general, as, for example, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war) and Eupolemus (good warrior); and others which denote a physician, as Iatrocles (famous healer) and Acesimbrotus (curer of mortals); and there are many others which might be cited, differing in their syllables and letters, but having the same meaning." (Italics added)

Plato then goes on to give numerous examples of how correctness works. In regard to "demons" Plato has Socrates explain:

"…therefore I (Socrates) have the most entire conviction that he (Hesiod) called them demons, because they were daemones (knowing or wise), and in our older Attic dialect the word itself occurs. Now he and other poets say truly, that when a good man dies he has honour and a mighty portion among the dead, and becomes a demon; which is a name given to him signifying wisdom. And I say too, that every wise man who happens to be a good man is more than human (daimonion) both in life and death, and is rightly called a
demon."

Plato does not provide the slightest indication that he views demons as evil in a literal sense, which seems to suggest that the association between demons and evil was a later development. If Plato’s definition had any merit in the ancient world, then Christ’s casting out of demons would seem to be related to some form of censorship (provided we are willing to accept the Gospels as allegory). This means that the near total “silence� of 1st Century authors in regards to all things Christian may not have been based on ignorance or lack of interest, but instead may have been the product of widespread censorship. [Keep in mind that the Emperor Vespasian supposedly had an extremely close relationship with the Jewish historian Josephus and this could have provided the necessary influence. One can also see a connection in the Mithras “bull� (G. taurus) and the Christian “cross� (G. staurus).]

Some scholars have either wittingly or unwittingly employed correctness when they have suggested that “Iscariot� was a corruption of "sicarii", and “Veronica� was a combination of the Latin word “vera� (true) and the Greek word “ikon� (image). So when “silence� is suggested in the names of two 1st Century historians, shouldn’t we at least examine the possibility that this is not mere coincidence?

And if it is not coincidence? Then a whole new view of the ancient world is possible. For example Plato’s Ion, whose title character is portrayed as a dishonest interpreter of Homer, could serve as a definition for anyone named “John�. This then brings suspicion on the Jewish philosopher Philo whose “friend�ly name could be expressed in Hebrew as “merea’�. (Hmmm…Mary and John associated with the same person—could this be what Da Vinci was getting at?) Judas becomes associated with the Hebrew word “yada� which means “knowledge�. Joseph bar Matthius (a.k.a Josephus) can be understood as Joseph of Arimathea and the “empty tomb� of Christ would be Josephus’ history of the so-called Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE. (See Life of Josephus paragraph 75, then follow the Thecoa reference to 2 Samuel 14. Note also that the Old Testament “tomb� builder Shebna was a scribe.) No, on second thought, this is too fantastic (and too exciting) to consider—let’s just continue to fight on the ground that the Christians have chosen. New battlefields take too much time to prepare.

[Staying inside the box leads only to dead ends.]

Roger Pearse

Parking outside the box gets your car clamped and towed away, however.

All the best,

Roger Pearse