Pliny and Nero as Pilate and Caiaphas?

[Giuseppe]

Pliny was moved to persecute the Christians against his will, because someone had already decided for him (the Emperor).

Now, if I assume that the Testimonium Taciteum is authentic (it references to Christians even if a HJ didn't exist), then the more simple explanation of the imperial anti-christian edict (the one that moved Pliny to act against his Christians) was the responsability of the Christians behind the Great Fire of Rome.

But the Christians had to be innocent (at least for who wrote the first Gospel), therefore the people was right and Tacitus too: Nero had to be the real culprit.

But Nero was moved to persecute the Christians because moved by his Judaizer mother.

And so Poppea moved Nero to make a precedent against the Christians, followed by the later Emperors, and the one in particular who moved Pliny to persecute Christians in Bythinia.

So the legend was born that behind any anti-Christian persecution had to be there the Jewish conspiracy.

And so too with the death of Jesus (for the first euhemerizer).

[Giuseppe]

Acts is 100% pure fiction and anti-marcionite propaganda, Ok.

But I think that the defamation of the Jews, in Acts, as continually anti-Christian conspirators, is based on a legend already existing among the Christians.


In particular, Pliny's reluctance to persecute the Christians is very much similar to Pilate's reluctance to kill Jesus. I don't think that this sharing of features between Pliny and Pilate is a coincidence.

As it is not a coincidence that both are forced to persecute their victim against their will.

Mark was not written as reaction against the Fall of Jerusalem.

Mark would seem to assume a historical context where the Romans persecuted the Christians and the Jews were already seen as the real instigators of the former against the latter.

Pilate could be introduced in the narrative as example of the fact that, even behind a cruel governor (assumed as such by any reader of Josephus but not so by the evangelist), there was the sinister hand of the Jews against Christ and the Christians.

A Gospel where the Jews - and not the Romans - kill Jesus, could fail to explain why the Romans persecuted often the Christians. Mark gives the more simple explanation: behind the Romans there are the Jews.

Therefore I think that the following facts are very more probable:


1) Claudius expelled really all the Christians from Rome in virtue of the intra-Jewish polemic about the real identity of the Messiah.

2) Nero persecuted really the Christians.

3) Pliny persecuted really the Christians.

[Giuseppe]

Evidence that ''Mark'' (author) had knowledge of the anti-Christian persecution by Pliny is found in Mark 14:26 :

When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

The Christians persecuted by Pliny, also, had sung a hymn to Christo quasi deo. Note the cause-effect in Mark: since the disciples of Jesus did reveal themselves as Christians (by singing an hymn to Jesus), then the scene of the arrest could start, on the Mount of Olives.

Therefore Mark was written probably in a time when the Christians were already persecuted by the Romans.

NOTE ADDED:
Mark was written in Rome after the persecution by Pliny and before that Tacitus talked about the Great Fire of Rome, so allowing the former of being a witness of the mythical Christ and the latter of being a witness of the Gospel (=euhemerized) Jesus and at the same time a recorder of the real facts about the Great Fire of Rome.