spin

Umm, at the end of this, you'll find the following:

[t2]Étymol. et Hist. 1. a) 842 adj. christian « qui professe la religion de Jésus-Christ » (Serments de Strasbourg, 1, 1 ds Henry Chrestomathie t. 1, p. 2); subst. ca 1050 cristïens (Vie de Saint-Alexis, éd. C. Storey, vers 340); b) 1174-87 subst. masc. fém. crestïen, crestïene « homme, femme » (Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, éd. W. Roach, 2978); 2. ca 881 adj. christiien « propre aux chrétiens » (Séquence de Sainte-Eulalie, 2, 14 ds Henry, op. cit., p. 3). Adaptation du lat. chrét. christianus, subst. « chrétien » (dès 64 sous Néron, Tacite ds TLL Onom., 414, 8, s.v. Christus) adj. (Tertullien, ibid., 413, 32), dér. irrégulier de Christus « Christ » (Tacite, ibid., 409, 54), empr. au gr. Χ ρ ι σ τ ο ́ ς « oint; qui a reçu l'onction sainte; l'Oint du Seigneur, Jésus-Christ ».[/t2]
Around 1180: "crestïen, crestïene" (masc. & fem.), 1050:"cristïens", suggesting the "e" change was post 1050.

aa5874

Bart Ehrman is GUESSING so his opinion is really irrelevant.

The FACTS are:

1. No known Church writer of antiquity used Tacitus Annals with Christus.

2. 200 years after Annals, in Sacred History attributed to Severus there is NO mention of Christus in a passage that is similar to Annals 15.44.

3. The earliest copy of Annals show signs of manipulation.

4. Annals 15.44 did NOT mention Jesus.

5. Even in the NT, there was ANOTHER person who was called CHRIST during the time of Jesus--See Mark 9

6. The sources that mentioned Jesus of the NT described him as a PHANTOM.

Tacitus Annals with Christus is a Blatant forgery and it cannot be assumed to be in reference to Jesus.

spin

Based on a lot of script related and religio-political evidence this book suggests a date for Medicean II during the period when Desiderius was abbot of Monte Cassino (1058 - 1087), but before 1073.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

Good points, thanks.

Pinkvoy was arguing that the change of letter was just a scribal accident. The scribe just mistook one letter for another. I was showing that this was extremely unlikely.

Your argument is that the scribe was deliberately making the text resemble the French pronunciation of the time and therefore was not an accident. It was done deliberately on purpose. If we have other documents of this time period with the word spelled this way than the case for this would be quite strong.

The fact that "Christ" is spelled with an iota and and word "Christian" with an Epsilon makes this passage very problematical. The word Christian according to the online ethymological dictionary derives from Christ:

The fact that we have a iota in "Christ" and an epsilon in "Christian" seems to puncture this connection between the words. Could "Christian" have been spelled "Chrestian" and "Christ" have been spelled "Christ" at the time the manuscript was copied? This would seem to sever the ancient connection of the meaning that Christians were followers of Christ. It seems unlikely.

If the copyist had spelled both Christ and Christians with an epsilon, this different spelling at the time idea would be a good hypothesis.

My hypothesis is that the scribe saw Chrestians and Chrestus written in the manuscript he was copying. He wrote the word he saw without perhaps understand that it was a reference to Christians. When he got to the word "Chrestus" he realized that the passage was talking about Christ and Christians and corrected the word "Christians"

If the word "Chrestus" and "Chrestianos" were used, then we are faced with the exact same problem using Tacitus to prove the existence of Christ as we have using Suetonius to prove the existence of Christ. Neil Godfrey examines that Suetonius problem here

Basically, it says that from Suetonius' pronouncement, of a Chrestus instituting Jewish riots during the time of Claudius in Rome, there is no way to get to a Christ preaching in the time of Tiberius in Jerusalem.

Now that we have discovered the word "Chrestus" in the work of Tacitus, we have the identical problem.

The remark about the manuscript "Sinaiticus" and the three mentions in Acts 11:26, 26:28, & 1 Peter 4:16.compounds the problem.



Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Toto

I think it's eta, not epsilon. Chrestos with eta would have been pronounced the same as Christos with iota at some time in the evolution of the language.

DCHindley

Has anyone noticed that Latin does not have etas (Η/η) and epsilons (Ε/ε).

DCH

spin

No, I did not say that it was deliberate. It is the fact that it was unconscious that I was trying to point to. The change from "christian" to "crestien" was an automatic one, a lapse of concentration. Most scribal errors are just that. Lines get jumped, letters get reordered, more familiar words get substituted.

We are dealing with an original Latin source in Tacitus, not Greek. If the French conjecture is correct then it is a simple sound shift that happened before the scribe learnt his French.

The exemplar is "christien" in 1050, which soon changes to "crestien". That shows that there is no link in the French to the ancient "chrestus".

Again, "epsilon" is Greek. The simple tradition is the maintenance of "christian" until about 1050. Despite "chrestus" being in use in the early centuries, there is absolutely no sign that "chrestus" in the Latin tradition led to the French. The evidence counters this.

Incidentally, you can find the change from /i/ to /e/ in words that English borrowed from French, such as "empire" (from Latin "imperium"), "vengeance" (from the Latin verb "vindicare"), entente ("triple entente" from WWI, same as intent, but through French)... I'm sure I can get a few more.

It seems not to be based on any evidence from the era whatsoever.

What do you do with the interim from the conjecture that this Chrestus in Suetonius is actually meant to be Jesus to the time of the copying of Medicean II circa 1060, when the evidence is totally "christus"???

This simply doesn't reflect any reality. A.15.44 only has Christus, so there is no discovery of any Chrestus in the text.

No, it doesn't. It shows that your earlier conjecture is baseless. There is no problem in some scribes using "chrestianos" while other use "christianos". There is no spelling mistake as you attempted to argue. Spellings depend on what people say, not your conjectures of what they should think and say.

spin

Doesn't seem so.