Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 09-15-2013, 08:30 PM

I am listening to he latest Bible Geek (Sept 8) and at one point Price makes a side comment that the famous letter from Pliny the Younger is clearly a later invention.

Price's reasons sounded credible, but I was surprised that I hadn't heard any scholarly comment to that effect.

Any references? Possibly some class notes from Darrel Doughty?

ETA: Peter Kirby links to Doughty's archived Pliny's Questions concerning Treatment of Christians and Trajan's Reply

mountainman · 09-15-2013, 09:36 PM

The manuscript of Pliny containing the Pliny to Trajan correspondence was suddenly found in the 14th or 15th century and then was just as suddenly "lost". Before it was suddenly "lost" it was assailed as a forgery. We don't have the manuscript. There are older threads on this.

In The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus by Arthur Drews, in the section "The Roman Witnesses".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drews

1. Pliny and Suetonius

Of the younger Pliny it is hardly necessary to speak further in this connection. He was dragged into the discussion of the “Christ-myth” at a late stage, merely to enlarge the list of witnesses to the historicity of Jesus. No one seriously believes that any such evidence is found in Pliny.

But that wont stop all those people who are stuck fast to the glittering web of the Christian forgery mill from subscribing to a conditioned and uncritical belief in its advertised authenticity.

Quote:

I am listening to he latest Bible Geek (Sept 8) and at one point Price makes a side comment that the famous letter from Pliny the Younger is clearly a later invention

The WIKI article appears to have been altered substantially. There was previously a reference to the manuscript tradition of the book that purportedly preserved this Letters exchange, but it has been removed.

How many later (literary) inventions have already been identified as products of the long-running Christian forgery mill? Well done Price. Thanks Toto. I hope someone invents a donation to both of you.

Quote:

ETA: Peter Kirby links to Doughty's archived Pliny's Questions concerning Treatment of Christians and Trajan's Reply

Quote:

Originally Posted by LINK

Radice observes (32) that for Book 10 "there is a very fragmentary MS. authority."

Toto · 09-15-2013, 09:48 PM

Price says - (rough summary) - this is a work by a later Christian, because the picture of Christians is too positive, Pliny doesn't know what they did wrong but he's not going to say not to persecute them because he's playing the role of the evil Roman - part of a genre where Tertullian tells us that there were edicts passed by the Roman Senate not to persecute Christians, which don't exist.

The idea that Christians are so successful that there is excess meat in the markets because people don't sacrifice - is absurd.

Toto · 09-15-2013, 09:52 PM

On the quote from Drews, mythicists have usually not bothered to attack the authenticity of Pliny because there is no mention there of a historical Jesus, and the text is compatible with either a historical or mythical Jesus.

Toto · 09-15-2013, 09:58 PM

You can see the history of edits to the wikipedia article on the Talk Page.

e.g:

Quote:

I am hesitant to remove material that cites sources I am unable to check but I agree that Sheriwn-White is used too much. I have a new book by Notre Dame university NT professor Candida Moss "The Myth of Persecution" (or via: amazon.co.uk) which discusses this Pliny/Trajan correspondence thoroughly, I quoted it twice already, I am tempted to remove a lot of the sources quoted and use that instead. Are you able to check the reference to the St. Croix, G.E.M (Nov 1963) article "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?" cited? It is behind a very expensive paywall. It is used to cite the statement " the persecution of Christians was not a systematic empire-wide pogrom ordered by any emperor prior to Emperor Domitian". I feel this must be a mistake, Domitian was Emperor from 81 -96. Moss says "prior to 250 there was no legislation in place that required Christians to do anything that might lead them to die" and this is in reference to a decree of the Emperor Decius, not Domitian. Thanks.Smeat75 (talk) 17:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I would be interested in what Candida Moss says about the evidence.

ETA, from the Amazon link, Moss accepts the letter as genuine - it doesn't make any really outrageous claims about Christians.

aa5874 · 09-15-2013, 11:08 PM

The mention of the word "Christians" cannot be presumed to refer to the Jesus cult.

Any serious person who has read writings attributed to the Jesus cult will know that the very cult writers complained that there were FAKE Christians.

It is precisely for the abundance of FAKE Christians why there are writings called "Against Heresies" attributed to Irenaeus, Prescription Against the Heretics attributed to Tertullian, Refutation Against All Heretics attributed to Hippolytus, and the writings of Justin Martyr.

According to the Jesus cult writers the Marcionites were FAKE Christians in the 2nd century.

Origen in "Against Celsus" admitted there were FAKE Christians in the 2nd century.

The Pliny letter to Trajan did NOT identify any cult associated with Jesus of Nazareth and Pliny did NOT know what the Christians believed and had to TORTURE some which indicates that they were NOT Christians associated with Jesus of Nazareth whose cult should have been known and well established in the Roman Empire for at least 80 years with Bishops and Churches all over the Empire.

Pliny's letter to Trajan is EVIDENCE AGAINST the Jesus cult.

The Jesus cult of Christians was UNKNOWN in the time of Pliny the younger based on the contents of the letter itself.

Pliny's letter to Trajan

Quote:

... Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

Up to at least 110 CE, there was NO known Jesus cult and story in Rome and Bithynia.

Pliny the younger seem not to have read or known of the FOUR Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Clement of Rome, the Pauline Corpus and the Apocalypse of John. Paul supposedly preached Jesus crucified and resurrected since 37-41 CE.

Toto · 09-15-2013, 11:23 PM

This block of text, or something similar, arguing for inauthenticity is reprinted around the internet - it seems to go back to the old Rational Responders or to this site. But it seems to be a collection of notes, and I can't track down all the footnotes. Some of it traces back to Doughty's class notes posted above. But it is not clear who wrote the "Conclusion on the forgery issue" at the end - probably Rook Hawkins, although the Rational Response Squad forum misattributes it to Keresztes. I don't know if Tom Verenna would still endorse this definite a conclusion

Quote:

IN REGARDS TO THE LETTERS (Both Pliny's and Trajan's) AUTHENTICITY:

o Sherwin-White observes, "Modern scholars have taken no very coherent line about this. Some regard the letters as entirely fictitious, written for the books in which they appear... Others speak of the letters being written up for publication from simpler originals..." (11) With regard to the letters concerning Christians (10.96-97), for S-White "it is hardly necessary to defend the genuine character of these two letters," since the letters were known to Tertullian (691) and "this type of theory, like the notion that Tacitus' account of the Neronian affair is a forgery, raises greater difficulties than it solves..." (692). Keresztes observes that "the genuineness of the correspondence on the Christians, especially that of Pliny's letter, has been questioned, or even completely rejected by many scholars."

[but note that this is quoted from Doughty - the full quotes reads "Keresztes observes that "the genuineness of the correspondence on the Christians, especially that of Pliny's letter, has been questioned, or even completely rejected by many scholars," but that "the complete authenticity of these letters has always had staunch and convincing defenders" (274f) - which seems to settle the matter for him."]

o Further, assuming the letters to be authentic, there is no agreement among scholars regarding when the various books of letters were compiled, or when they were published, or whether they were published separately, one by one, or in groups, or some separately and some in groups, or all at once. According to S-White, for example, "the evidence points to three or four separate publications: I-II together or separately, III-VI or VII together, VII or VIII-IX together." (52)

o The only thing scholars must agree about is that the collection of letters from Pliny's time in Bithynia and Pontus could not have been compiled by Pliny (since he died there), although no one knows who collected and published them, or when (or why).

o Wilken writes of Pliny, "No mention is made of Christians in any of his other letters" (Wilken, 16)

o According to S-White (80f.), Pliny arrived in Bithynia in September 109 and died sometime between January and September 111. Radice (15) places his mission in Bithynia-Pontus between 111 and 113 (also Wilken). It is generally thought that Pliny spent the first year in Bithynia, and traveled further east to Pontus only after September 110. Pliny's itinerary in Pontus is puzzling: he seems have gone first to Sinope, then east to Amisus, and back- either by sea, or by passing through Sinope again-to Amastris, before returning to Bithynia. His letter to Trajan concerning Christians must have been written sometime between September 110 and January 111 (when he ceased writing letters), and stands between a letter written from Amisus (on the eastern border of Pontus) and another written from Amastris, about 100 miles west of Amisus, on the way back to Bithynia. But we are not told where Pliny was when he wrote the letter.

o We do not know, therefore, where the letter was written, nor do we know whether the problem Pliny encountered arose in Amisus, Amastris, or somewhere else. "The city where the trouble first arose cannot be determined" (S-White, 693; cf. Wilken, 15). Wilken tells us (15) that Pliny no doubt assumed "that Trajan would know where he was." But how would Trajan have known this? And even if he knew where the letter was written from, how would he have known in what city the problem arose? - which might not be unimportant, since Amisus was a self-governing city with significant freedom to determine its own way of life (Wilken, 14). In any case, it is strange that, particularly in a letter of such length and detail, dealing with such an important subject (as he emphasizes in his letter), Pliny makes no mention of where the trouble arose.

o Nor does Pliny explain how the trouble arose. The nature of the actual charges brought against the Christians is obscure.

Quote:

Wilken:
"What precisely the complaint (against the Christians) was we do not know (15)... No doubt some trouble had arisen between Christians and others in the city. This was unusual. In most areas of the Roman Empire Christians lived quietly and peacably among their neighbors, conducting their affairs without disturbance... What specifically caused the hostility in Pontus, however, Pliny does not say." (16)

Keresztes states:
"Our problem, however, is serious, and it is this: What was the juridicial basis for Pliny's unhesitating decision to have the faithful confessors put to death?" (278)

This is the crucial question, since the real issue has to do with whether we are dealing here with Christian legend or with historical facts. The plausibility of all the persecution and martyrdom stories depends on answering this question. And it is not surprising, therefore, that Christian historians have devoted so much energy to answering this question -- and that so many answers have been proposed. It has been proposed that they were executed because they engaged in indecent and immoral practices (flagitia), or because they refused to worship the Emperor, or make sacrifice to the gods of the State, or because they pursued an illegal "superstition" (de Ste. Croix) or because they constituted illegal colloqium or hetaeria (cf. Frend, 221), or simply because (as Pliny says) they were stubborn and obstinate. And for every one of these proposals it is easy to find several scholarly refutations.

This information was written up rather thoroughly by Darrell J. Doughty, Professor of New Testament; Drew University, Madison, NJ.

Conclusions on the forgery issue:

The utter silence of Pliny in the details of the reasoning behind the execution, the actual laws broken, the orders in which they were sentenced and the utter failure by him to explain the reasoning behind the disturbances speak to it being written by a hand other then Pliny, and most likely written by Tertullian or somebody prior to him.

The fact that nowhere else in his entire collection of 121 letters do we see a single mention of Christians is defeating to the non-forgery case. It's only seen in this one letter, and the letter itself appears only, it seems, for the Christians when they needed it and not before.

mountainman · 09-15-2013, 11:32 PM

Here's an article about the Pliny Book X (containing the Pliny-Trajan correspondence) that argues it appears no earlier than the 5th century

The Origin of the Ten-Book Family of Pliny Manuscripts [1]
Author(s): S. E. Stout
Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Jul., 1958), pp. 171-173
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/265876 .

[1] 1. Manuscripts of the Epistulae fall into three families:
the nine-book (X), the eight-book (Y), and the ten-book (Z)

Quote:

p.172-173

If a ten-book edition of the Letters had been published
in Pliny's lifetime or soon after his death, it, and not
the nine-book corpus, would have become the standard edition
and have been passed on down to posterity. But when in the
third or fourth ceintury the parent manuscript of the X and Y
families was produced, it was made from a nine-book manuscript.

Clearly no ten-book manuscript was known in that part of the
Roman world at that time. I have shown elsewhere5 that the
Letters of Pliny were not available to scholars and teachers
from about A.D. 150 to 450 and that his very name and existence
had been forgotten. When a manuscript of the Epistulae was dug
up somewhere, proba- bly around Rome, by Sidonius Apollinaris
about 450, it was a nine-book manuscript that he found. He knew
nothing, even at the time of his death about 484, of the
correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.

All of this seems to justify the assumption that the ten-book
family, Z, of Pliny manuscripts originated between A.D. 480 and 500.
The enthusiastic admiration of the Epistulae by Sidonius and the
fact that after being lost for 300 years they had again come to
light may be assumed to have aroused interest in them among scholars
and teachers in the late fifth century. The indexes which are
found in the Z manuscripts may well have been made in this period.

mountainman · 09-16-2013, 12:00 AM

The Younger Pliny and Jerome - C. P. Jones

Extremely brief half page article observing that in the late 4th century Jerome shows some knowledge of some letters of Pliny.
But does Jerome mention Pliny's Book 10 or the Trajan correspondence and the so-called "historical" reference to Christians?
AFAIK the answer is no.

Another treatment of the manuscript tradition of Pliny Book 10:

The Basis of the Text in Book X of Pliny's Letters
Author(s): S. E. Stout
Source: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 86 (1955), pp. 233-249
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283620 .

Quote:

Some time between 1499 and 1506, probably not before 1502, the Italian scholar Fra Giacondo of Verona discovered in or near Paris a minuscule manuscript of the ten books of Pliny's Letters, which had descended from Z. This manuscript is now referred to as P.

It had only a brief history of a half-dozen years after it was discovered, but made important contribution to our knowledge of the text of the Letters. Giacondo first made a complete copy of P, to which I shall refer as I. He intended to use I in preparing his pro- jected edition of the Letters, but upon his return to Italy in 1506 his attention was required by other pressing matters and he turned Manuscript I over to his friend Aldus Manutius, the publisher, who used it in preparing the text of his edition of the Letters which was published at Venice in November 1508, the earliest printed edition that contained ten books. This edition is now referred to as a.

Manuscript I disappeared after a was published. Manuscript P itself, having been secured by the Venetian Senator Mocenicus, who was ambassador from Venice at the court of Louis XII at this time, was taken to Venice by him in 1508 and given to Aldus some time before a was published.

It was perhaps used to some extent by Aldus in the last stage of the preparation of the text for his edition.
No trace of P has ever come to light since the publication of the edition of Aldus. Fortunately a direct copy of portions of P or I, made by Giacondo for the French scholar Bude before 1506, is still preserved in a volume in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.

Clivedurdle · 09-16-2013, 02:33 AM

Quote:

The idea that Christians are so successful that there is excess meat in the markets because people don't sacrifice - is absurd.

The Iliad is very clear that sacrifices are ways to feed the people, the gods get some smoke and even in Judaism - burnt offerings.

Has anyone written in detail about sacrifice and how the food is distributed?

I propose, best bits to the priests, but there aren't that many priests so plenty left over for temple followers, smoke and rubbish for the gods with possibly a ceremonial best bit.

Just about impossible to upset trading relationships, as possibly merchants gave animals regularly to their temples, so no monetary transactions involved.

09-15-2013, 08:30 PM	#1
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Pliny's letter on Christians I am listening to he latest Bible Geek (Sept 8) and at one point Price makes a side comment that the famous letter from Pliny the Younger is clearly a later invention. Price's reasons sounded credible, but I was surprised that I hadn't heard any scholarly comment to that effect. Any references? Possibly some class notes from Darrel Doughty? ETA: Peter Kirby links to Doughty's archived Pliny's Questions concerning Treatment of Christians and Trajan's Reply

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09-15-2013, 09:48 PM	#3
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Price says - (rough summary) - this is a work by a later Christian, because the picture of Christians is too positive, Pliny doesn't know what they did wrong but he's not going to say not to persecute them because he's playing the role of the evil Roman - part of a genre where Tertullian tells us that there were edicts passed by the Roman Senate not to persecute Christians, which don't exist. The idea that Christians are so successful that there is excess meat in the markets because people don't sacrifice - is absurd.

09-15-2013, 09:52 PM	#4
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	On the quote from Drews, mythicists have usually not bothered to attack the authenticity of Pliny because there is no mention there of a historical Jesus, and the text is compatible with either a historical or mythical Jesus.

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