Toto

What makes forgery in Pliny convenient for Price? You are accusing him some sort of bias - I just don't see it.

aa5874

You have already evaluated the claim .

Did you not say "it was convenient for him"?

Did you not say, "I think he is absolutely wrong about Pliny"?

How in the world could you have found the time to make such statements WITHOUT any detailed evaluation?

mountainman

Wait a minute. The basis of most of what I have posted above rests in the claim that the entire contents of Book 10 of Pliny appears to be a very late edition to the books of Pliny. This is the critical claim here. One item of evidence for this claim is that nobody mentions the Pliny-Trajan correspondence when we should expect them to, and this silence includes the silence of Photius. Book 10 suddenly "appears", is immediately incorporated into the Aldine Edition (c.1508) and then, just as suddenly, is "lost".

I therefore don't think that interpolation is the appropriate claim because what we are looking (worst case scenario) is the forgery of the entire contents of Book 10.

Whether or not it is flattering to Christians, Pliny's Book 10 contains references by which it must be inferred that Christians existed at that time and if the reference is authentic, and if Acts is written after Pliny, then it is obvioius that the claim in Acts was wrong.

Namely that the name of Christians was not first given to this movement in Antioch (according to the author of Acts), but in fact was given by Pliny and the Roman Emperor Trajan, in their earlier correspondence. Isn't this a ludicrous situation?

mountainman

But that's just not required. Let me outline once more the ramifications and the modus operandi of the 9th century "Pseudo-Isidore" forgery and demonstrate the sequence of how this Pliny Book 10 could have been forged.

(1) Pseudo-Isidore has before him Tertullian claiming of "official correspondence".

(2) Pseudo-Isidore fabricates the contents of Pliny Book 10 in the 9th century.

(3) Someone tenders this forgery in the 15th century as part of the Pliny corpus, but retrieves the forged manuscript after the Aldine editors have made a copy for their codex.

The point is that the modus operandi of Pseudo-Isidore is to take some small claims that already exist (eg: Tertullian) and then fabricate the material that supports these claims.

NOTE: I am not suggesting that Pliny Book 10 was forged by Pseudo-Isidore (I am using this as an example known forger) but rather that the method of these ecllesiastical forgeries is to embellish and fill out pre-existing details. Therefore they don't need to add anything to Tertullian because they have used and expanded the STUB in Tertullian to fabricate their own material.

Have a look at pseudoisidore.blogspot

Sheshbazzar

Setting aside for the moment the distinct possibility that Book 10 of Pliny may be a late ecclesiastical forgery, The statement that 'the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch' of Acts 10:26 may be authentic and accurate, or possibly a contemporary yet 'ad hoc' explanation for the name.
The statement of Acts 10 does not at all preclude the possibility that others, who were not disciples or believers in 'Jesus' of Nazareth, were also and formerly identified by this name 'Christians' although having no former associations with this newly arrived Jewish based messianic movement.
All Act 10:26 tells us on this matter is that it was early on believed that this is where the term was first applied to these 'Jesus is the Christ' preaching individuals at Antioch.
That says nothing at all about former and other contemporary usages of the term, or who else may likewise have been contemporarily so identified (ie, 'the followers of one Chrestus', or followers of Simon, or Meander, or the general association of 'chrestians', 'the helpful' (ones) evidently a Hellenic self-help social group who simply and humanely provided cooperative social assistance ('chrest') and support to one another and to strangers.

aa5874

Your statement is not logical at all.

There was no need for a "tin-foil hat" layer of conspiracy when the "TF" is found in Church History attributed to Eusebius.

Someone or some had the "foresight" to go "back" and plant the TF in multiple ancient writings--not only Josephus and Eusebius.

Somebody had the "foresight" to forge writings in the very NT Canon.

Somebody had the "foresight" to forge the Paul/Seneca letters.

Certainly you must realize that if the word "Christians" was not found in ancient writings in the 1st-4th century that it could be easily argued that there were NO such cults.

The Bogus history of the Jesus cult of Christians found in Church History required FORGERIES, False attribution and manipulation of ancient writings.

The Pliny letter to Trajan may be part of the evidence of forgeries carried out as Late as the 16th century.

DCHindley

That Sympson fellow appears to be quite a character! Seems Sympson himself is unconvinced that Pliny's 10th Book (100+ Letters between him & Trajan) is forged. Your lead-in summary above suggests the opposite.

He is correct that some mss evidence suggests that the 10th book circulated with some of the other books. I also get his point that forgery of 100+ letters would be an awful lot of work to introduce one letter presenting a rather ho-hum attitude towards Christians who worship a Christ figure "like a god."

Roman emperors on accession did take a pledge to respect the laws of their predecessors (at least they did in the Tetrarchy of Diocletian of a later age, but I assume such an oath was why it was always thought necessary to anathematize unpopular emperors who enacted laws that hurt government).

This must have been a case where someone started pushing for the enforcement of an old and it seems dated law against "Christians," and Trajan seems to think Roman society had progressed beyond that kind of petty anonymous sniping, making this attempt to mis-use the law represented a step backwards, but he recommended that Pliny punish the Christians nonetheless if they did not renounce all that secret association shit and rejoin normal societal norms.

It was not clear to me why Sympson brought up the earlier letter where Trajan decided not to violate Roman laws prohibiting private associations unless they were officially sanctioned on account of their being socially or religiously necessary, and denied to petitioners the right to operate a fire brigade (read, drinking club). If the subject city had possessed an ancient, formally recognized constitution (as a city state or formal colony) which the Romans had at some point chosen to recognize, it could have well gone the other way. Then he is not making an exception but recognizing their right to run their own show (the formal request would then have been made to kiss the emperor's ass and perhaps get an endowment out of him).

Some German authors' prose comes out as rather readable English from Google Translate, but Detering is not one of them.

DCH

mountainman

One may not be able to get the precise details
but one can still "get Detering's drift".


"Adieu, Pliny !!"

Toto

Acts doesn't say exactly when the movement that Paul calls "the Way" was first known as Christians, but since the events are set in the mid first century, you can assume that the author of Acts meant that this name was adopted well before Pliny wrote.

Besides that, it does not appear from the correspondence that either Pliny or Trajan invented the name. They seem to use it as if it refers to a known group of people, even if the exact creed of this group is unfamiliar.

This may be a forgery, but your reasons here make no sense.

Toto

There's no need to shout. You can't get the drift of Detering's argument from the title. Pliny is not a witness to the historical Jesus in any case, so it's not clear why he would even need to construct an argument about these letters.