The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

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MrMacSon
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by MrMacSon »

There is this letter that Hadrian purportedly wrote in 134CE to Servianus
  • "The Christians among them [the Egyptians] are worshippers of Serapis, and those calling themselves bishops of Christ scruple not to act as the votaries of that God. The truth is, there is no one, whether Ruler of a synagogue, or Samaritan, or Presbyter of the Christians, or mathematician, or astrologer, or magician, that does not do homage to Serapis. The Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is by some compelled to worship Serapis, and by others, Christ."
It is disputed, but is alleged to have been reproduced by the Sicilian writer of the 3rd C Vopiscus (in Vita Saturnini 8), who claimed to have, in turn, taken it from a writer named Phlegon. Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection by DM Murdock/ Acharya S

There is also reference to the letter here - Biblical Repository and Classical Review - which says
All the productions of Hadrian have persished except one letter written to Servianus, which Vopiscus transcribed from the works of Phlegon, a freed man of Hadrian, and inserted in the life of Saturninus (Vita Saturnini 8)
and cites "c. 8. p. 485 of 'the book' cited"; which I presume is "Vita Hadriani. Scriptorium historiae Augustae. ed Lips"
Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Peter Kirby »

MrMacSon wrote:There is this letter that Hadrian purportedly wrote in 134CE to Servianus
  • "The Christians among them [the Egyptians] are worshippers of Serapis, and those calling themselves bishops of Christ scruple not to act as the votaries of that God. The truth is, there is no one, whether Ruler of a synagogue, or Samaritan, or Presbyter of the Christians, or mathematician, or astrologer, or magician, that does not do homage to Serapis. The Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is by some compelled to worship Serapis, and by others, Christ."
It is disputed, but is alleged to have been reproduced by the Sicilian writer of the 3rd C Vopiscus (in Vita Saturnini 8), who claimed to have, in turn, taken it from a writer named Phlegon.
That is interesting. It comes from the Historia Augusta.

Augustan History

There's some kind of edit war about this quote in particular:
A letter of Hadrian written from Egypt to his brother-in-law Servianus is quoted at length (and was accepted as genuine by many authorities well into the 20th century).[citation needed] Servianus is saluted as consul, and Hadrian mentions his (adopted) son Lucius Aelius Caesar: but Hadrian was in Egypt in 130, Servianus's consulship fell in 134, and Hadrian adopted Aelius in 136.[citation needed] The letter is said to have been published by Hadrian's freedman Phlegon (whose existence is mentioned nowhere except in the HA, in another suspect passage).[citation needed] A passage in the letter dealing with the frivolousness of Egyptian religious beliefs refers to the Patriarch, head of the Jewish community in the Empire. This office only came into being after Hadrian put down the Jewish revolt of 132, and the passage is probably meant in mockery of the powerful late 4th-century Patriarch, Gamaliel.[15] Christian theologian Joseph Barber Lightfoot argued for the authenticity of the letter since it doesn't state it was written in Egypt (132) and that an alternative date for the adoption of Aelius was on or before 134.[16]

[15] R. Syme, Emperors and Biography, pp. 21–24.
[16] "The Christian Ministry",Joseph Barber Lightfoot, p70, org pub 1868
And about the quotes in general:
A peculiarity of the work is its inclusion of a large number of purportedly authentic documents such as extracts from Senate proceedings and letters written by imperial personages. Records like these are quite distinct from the rhetorical speeches often inserted by ancient historians – it was accepted practice for the writer to invent these himself – and on the few occasions when historians (such as Sallust in his work on Catiline or Suetonius in his Twelve Caesars) include such documents, they have generally been regarded as genuine; but almost all those found in the Historia Augusta have been rejected as fabrications, partly on stylistic grounds, partly because they refer to military titles or points of administrative organisation which are otherwise unrecorded until long after the purported date, or for other suspicious content. The History moreover cites dozens of otherwise unrecorded historians, biographers, letter-writers, knowledgeable friends of the writers, and so on, most of whom must be regarded as figments of the author's fertile and fraudulent imagination.
Which of course deserve their own pinch of salt, since it's wikipedia...

The text itself (with the context) can be found here:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... t_al*.html
From Hadrian Augustus to Servianus22 the consul, greeting. The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumour. 2 There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. 3 There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. 4 Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, p401by others to worship Christ. 5 They are a folk most seditious, most deceitful, most given to injury; but their city is prosperous, rich, and fruitful, and in it no one is idle. 6 Some are blowers of glass, others makers of paper, all are at least weavers of linen23 or seem to belong to one craft or another; the lame have their occupations, the eunuchs have theirs, the blind have theirs, and not even those whose hands are crippled are idle. 7 Their only god is money, and this the Christians, the Jews, and, in fact, all nations adore. And would that this city had a better character, for indeed it is worthy by reason of its richness and by reason of its size to hold the chief place in the whole of Egypt. 8 I granted it every favour, I restored to it all its ancient rights and bestowed on it new ones besides, so that the people gave thanks to me while I was present among them. Then, no sooner had I departed thence than they said many things against my son Verus,24 and what they said about Antinous25 I believe you have learned. 9 I can only wish for them that they may live on their own chickens, which they breed in a fashion I am ashamed to describe.26 10 I am sending you over some cups, changing colour27 and variegated, presented to me by the priest of a temple and now dedicated particularly to you and my sister. I should like you to use them at banquets on feast-days. Take good care, however, that our dear Africanus28 does not use them too freely."
Which should be more useful than dealing in extracts. For reasons that are not clear, the quote you provide varies (perhaps trivially - but still) from the quote in this translation.

Just off the cuff, the reference to "even the Patriarch himself" may be difficult to reconcile with genuine authorship by Hadrian (not because it is an anachronism - it likely refers to the Jewish nasi of the Sanhedrin - but because of how breezy the whole passage is with familiarity of Jewish and Christian traditions), which explains for Huller why it "never gets its due."
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Stuart »

The passage seems derived from Sulpicius Severus 2.29.1-3, a 5th century work. The first 6 books of Annuls derive from a single manuscript from the mid-9th century. Quoting Roger Pearce's summary http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/tacitus/
This MS was written around 850AD in Germany. The distinctive type of script suggests the event took place in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Fulda, and this is supported by an explicit reference to Tacitus in the Annales Fuldenses for 852 (Cornelius Tacitus, scriptor rerum a Romanis in ea gente gestarum) which seems to show knowledge of Ann. 2,9.
Unfortunately there are similar late Byzantine era Christian interpolations into not only the "neutral witnesses" which read like Christian confessions, but also into many of the earlier works of the Church fathers.
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Roger Pearse
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Roger Pearse »

I read a few pages of Carrier's article and found the argumentation profoundly unpersuasive, and at points rather misleading.
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Peter Kirby »

Roger Pearse wrote:I read a few pages of Carrier's article and found the argumentation profoundly unpersuasive, and at points rather misleading.
I also didn't find it persuasive. Perhaps you can take time out (on your blog if not here?) to mention a point of detail or two.
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Roger Pearse
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Roger Pearse »

I'm actually busy converting all my photocopies from the last 15 years into PDFs at the moment, so I haven't a lot of time! Here are a couple of points (which he would probably regard as incidental, but you asked).

The first bit that caught my eye was the "base rate of interpolation in Christian-controlled literature". The ostensible point of this section is to demonstrate that interpolations can happen in "Christian controlled literature". But since he includes Tacitus in that category, then all ancient literature pretty much is included. Which means that he is demonstrating ... what? That interpolations exist in ancient literature transmitted by copying? Or in literature that mentions Christians?

Candidly, I think I knew this already. For nobody disputes that interpolations exist. The question is whether a particular text has been interpolated. The numbers, valid or not, add nothing to that; in fact they looked somewhat like pseudo-statistics to me. You can't calculate the chance of interpolation in this way.

So what is the purpose of this section? The only purpose that I could see was polemical: to suggest that Christian literature is peculiarly prone to interpolation, or that Christians are prone to interpolate texts that have relevance to them. This is irrelevant to the subject of the paper.

What else struck me?

The section on Pliny the Younger. Pliny has never been present at a trial of Christians - although he knows they are an illegal group - and doesn't know what the procedure is, or what they believe. This, apparently, is evidence that Tacitus probably knew no more; and that this shows that the passage is interpolated? Unfortunately I fail to see the logical connection between these statements, even leaving aside the speculation involved. I think we can take it that a man who wrote a history took more pains in gathering data than a man in a hurry in a court case; but this, also, is speculation. We can speculate indefinitely.

Then onto Pliny the Elder, and this magnificent passage:
Pliny’s history would certainly have included his own account of the burning
of Rome in 64 a.d. and subsequent events. Most likely a resident of Rome
at the time, his information would have been first hand. He would surely have
recorded how it degenerated into the execution of scores if not hundreds of
Christians for the crime of burning the city of Rome, surely the single most
famous event of that or any adjacent year. If that in fact happened. And such
an account would surely have included any necessary digressions on the origins
of Christianity. We know, for example, Pliny believed Nero had started the
fire deliberately, lamenting in his Natural History that it destroyed ancient
trees invaluable to botanical science.

However, it is unlikely Pliny mentioned Christians in his account of the fire.
Because his nephew and adopted son Pliny the Younger was an avid admirer
and reader of his uncle’s works and thus would surely have read his account of
the burning of Rome, and therefore would surely have known everything about
Christians that Pliny the Elder recorded. Yet in his correspondence with Trajan,
Pliny indicates a complete lack of knowledge, making no mention of his uncle
having said anything about them, or about their connection in any way to the
burning of Rome (and yet, whether believed to be a false charge or not, that
would surely be pertinent to Pliny’s inquest, in many respects). Corroborating
this conclusion is the fact that no one else ever mentions, cites, or quotes Pliny
the Elder providing any testimony to Christ or Christians (as likely Christians
or their critics would have done, if such an invaluably early reference existed).
Can you count the number of "would have", "unlikely", and so forth, in this lengthy piece of speculation on the habits of two people dead 2,000 years?

If I felt so inclined, it would be fairly trivial to write an equally imaginary story, "explaining" exactly why Pliny the Younger never read whatever Pliny the Elder might have written; or that he did not in fact bother to mention, or whatever. We can all write fairy-stories around data.

Unfortunately I don't see the value of either fairy-story. Data is good; speculation is not.

I was mildly amused at the suggestion that Pliny the Younger read all that Pliny the Elder wrote. I doubt that this was humanly possible, considering what the former tells us about them. Likewise that he "must" have read his history. And we know this how?

But ... in the end, all this stuff amounts to construction work preparatory to an argument from silence. And my response to that is... no thank you.

Just my thoughts, of course, and it may be that I am missing the point. But I didn't see that any of this took the argument anywhere.

All the best,

Roger Pearse
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Peter Kirby
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Peter Kirby »

Roger Pearse wrote:I'm actually busy converting all my photocopies from the last 15 years into PDFs at the moment, so I haven't a lot of time! Here are a couple of points (which he would probably regard as incidental, but you asked).
Roger Pearse wrote:Just my thoughts, of course, and it may be that I am missing the point. But I didn't see that any of this took the argument anywhere.
Thank you I appreciate it. Good stuff.
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Roger Pearse »

Rereading the first section of his paper, I realise that he might feel that I have mischaracterised his point.

In the first section he tries to calculate what percentage of all non-Christian references to Christ / Christians are interpolations, based on various claims (including his own) as to whether various writers did or did not actually mention Jesus. (The subjective nature of all this is apparent, of course). In the second he gives a percentage figure by verse for interpolations in the New Testament, on the basis that this is a "Christian book", and therefore might reasonably be supposed to be interpolated by the Christians also (? again, he doesn't quite make his argument explicit). From these two he concludes that the percentage probability that Tacitus is also an interpolation is within these figures.

But all ancient texts, if you want to say so, could be considered "Christian books" - if Tacitus, and Suetonius, and Josephus are, then what is not? -, as every one was copied by monks.

I don't quite see what all of this demonstrates, except that ancient texts get interpolated. Indeed they do, and for a variety of reasons, dates, and purposes.

I have difficulty in seeing how any of these numbers are meaningful. Is it supposed that scribes worked mechanically to some form of quota? That the scriptorium would stop when it reached 0.5% and say, "Hey chaps, it's time for an interpolation"? That interpolations, in Christian books - but not in non-Christian books? - , all have a common origin, motive, date or purpose? If not, what do these statistics, dubious as they look on the face of it (for the first lot are based on tiny numbers), demonstrate? The idea that one could predict an interpolation (or show that it can't be one) statistically seems a bit odd. Dr C. would need to demonstrate the validity of his method first, before using it.

But as I say, I probably misunderstand the force of his argument.
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Bertie »

I can explain the bit about the "base rate of interpolation in Christian-controlled literature".

Carrier's submitted his paper with an argument using Bayes Theorem (as in his On the Historicity of Jesus book). The base rate of interpolation section was Carrier's effort to establish a prior odds to plug into the theorem. The editors made him remove his use of Bayes Theorem, which does seem to leave the base rate of interpolation section dangling in the paper as the journal printed it.

Carrier published the paper along with the removed Bayes Theorem section and a note explaining its removal in his Hitler Homer Bible Christ book.
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Re: The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus

Post by Peter Kirby »

That seems to be the best explanation... Carrier's philosophy of history practically leaves him obligated to try to compute prior odds.
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