Fake News: Martyrdom of Peter and Paul

[Charles Wilson]

Jay Raskin, Christs and Christianities, ISBN-13: 978-1413497915, p. 99+
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Christ ... 1413497918

"What is most interesting is the context of these two passages. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius refers to Christians before or after this point in their works...
...
"There are numerous reasons to suspect that the passage in Tacitus is a forgery. It goes unmentioned in antiquity until Sculpitius Severus apparently quotes from it in his Sacred History circa 425 C.E...
...
"Nobody, including Eusebius and Tertullian, quotes the passage before 425 C.E. because there was no reference to Christians in it...
...
"Fourthly, and most importantly, we find that Tacitus (Histories, Book 5) later refers to Judaism repeatedly as a superstition...
...
"We may conclude from this that reference in the original to a superstitious people from Judea was to Jews and not to Christians."

[Peter Kirby]

There may be a few good arguments to be made, but these aren't them.

What is most interesting is the context of these two passages. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius refers to Christians before or after this point in their works...

Christians can still be mentioned in passing and hardly mentioned again. Just like any other sect.

That kind of thinking is that of a conclusion in search of an argument.

It goes unmentioned in antiquity until Sculpitius Severus apparently quotes from it in his Sacred History circa 425 C.E...

And there's scant evidence Tacitus was (a) read and (b) thought quoteworthy by the same unmentioning persons. Give a specific example, then explain how it's known that they (a) read the book in Tacitus and (b) would have quoted it.

The Suetonius reference has even less juice to it and is hardly worth citing in most contexts -- again, assuming it was even read. The transmission of texts wasn't as even as it is in modern times. You could be ignorant of wide swaths of literature, even if you would have wanted to cite it.

we find that Tacitus (Histories, Book 5) later refers to Judaism repeatedly as a superstition

We may conclude from this that reference in the original to a superstitious people from Judea was to Jews

Not really. Nope.

[neilgodfrey]

I assume Andrew is referring to the "Nero reference" in Suetonius.

My mind had gone awol -- it was thinking of the expulsion of Jews from Rome under Claudius.

[Stuart]

The reports and purported evidence for Hitler's suicide also come to us via his bitterest enemies.

Actually this was only true in the initial, that the Soviets reported it. However several survivors from the bunker gave first hand accounts in the months and years after the War. There stories conflict somewhat, but that is normal in a true account.

Not wishing to cause a debate (Hitler is definitely dead ... yeah!), just pointing out you chose a poor example here, where the Soviets were not the actual source of the story, rather Hitler's fellow Nazi loyalists in the bunker with him.

[neilgodfrey]

The reports and purported evidence for Hitler's suicide also come to us via his bitterest enemies.

Actually this was only true in the initial, that the Soviets reported it. However several survivors from the bunker gave first hand accounts in the months and years after the War. There stories conflict somewhat, but that is normal in a true account.

Not wishing to cause a debate (Hitler is definitely dead ... yeah!), just pointing out you chose a poor example here, where the Soviets were not the actual source of the story, rather Hitler's fellow Nazi loyalists in the bunker with him.

I understood we were informed of this, including these accounts, through Soviet sources.

If it was a poor example it was a poor example. (It naturally came to mind because I have been reading Ullrich's new biography of Hitler.)

My point though is that the hostile bias per se of the source does not of itself give rise to doubts so much as a late appearance of evidence. Why should a hostile source be any more doubted, in purely abstract terms, than a sympathetic source? If motivations can be rationalised for either, then the hostile or sympathetic provenance of the information cannot be decisive.

The significant point is that the principle factor for raising suspicions is necessarily the lateness of the appearance of the information. That would be just as true if the provenance were an apparently sympathetic source -- the many arguments re embarrassment trying to make themselves look as strong as reinforced concrete notwithstanding.

[andrewcriddle]

My point though is that the hostile bias per se of the source does not of itself give rise to doubts so much as a late appearance of evidence. Why should a hostile source be any more doubted, in purely abstract terms, than a sympathetic source? If motivations can be rationalised for either, then the hostile or sympathetic provenance of the information cannot be decisive.

The significant point is that the principle factor for raising suspicions is necessarily the lateness of the appearance of the information. That would be just as true if the provenance were an apparently sympathetic source -- the many arguments re embarrassment trying to make themselves look as strong as reinforced concrete notwithstanding.

I agree that hostility in itself is not in general a reason for suspicion. (In extreme cases it may be. Some Roman Catholic writing about Protestants is so extremely hostile as to undermine credibility as is some Protestant writing about say the Spanish Inquisition.) However where a story obviously supports a hostile agenda one does become dubious. Stories supporting a favourable agenda can also be suspicious but IMVHO usually somewhat less so.

About lateness, we would agree that extreme lateness (centuries) is a strong ground for suspicion. A delay of up to say 50 years is less clear. One issue is whether we definitely know that this story was not generally known until decades after (suspicious) or whether it is just that we have no evidence of the story being mentioned until decades after. It is quite possible that it was widely known in late 1st century Rome that Nero had taken anti-Christian measures but this was first written down in surviving works in the early 2nd century.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

About lateness, we would agree that extreme lateness (centuries) is a strong ground for suspicion. A delay of up to say 50 years is less clear. One issue is whether we definitely know that this story was not generally known until decades after (suspicious) or whether it is just that we have no evidence of the story being mentioned until decades after. It is quite possible that it was widely known in late 1st century Rome that Nero had taken anti-Christian measures but this was first written down in surviving works in the early 2nd century.

Andrew Criddle

It is somewhere in here that I see what I think is an unjustifiable difference in standards between most historians of biblical topics and the historians of most other areas.

Richard John Evans, historian of modern Germany, is one of my more recent readings (there are quite a few others) who writes of the basics of historical method:

They had to stick to ‘primary sources’, eyewitness reports and what Ranke called the ‘purest, most immediate documents’ which could be shown to have originated at the time under investigation, and avoid reliance on ‘secondary sources’ such as memoirs or histories generated after the event. Moreover, they had to investigate and subject to the critical method all the sources relating to the events in which they were interested. -- In Defence of History (2004)

Primary sources; from the time in question. [Strictly speaking, physically literally from the time in question -- that was the original meaning of primary sources. Copies of manuscripts are not primary sources by that standard.]

That excludes as secondary (with all that 'secondary' entails) anything that comes after the time in question.

But for sake of argument let's take surviving manuscripts of Josephus . . . .

Even when we look at the testimony of persons who are recollecting events they were personally involved in twenty years earlier we arguably find tendentious changes in memory. Josephus is a classic example since we can compare what he wrote in the immediate aftermath of the war with how his memory had been changed by life-circumstances/interests and pressures twenty years later.

I see no justification for lowering justified methodology when dealing with topics for which our evidence is relatively sparse. The sparseness of the evidence obliges us to ask questions that are limited to the ability of the nature of the evidence to answer.

[spin]

My point though is that the hostile bias per se of the source does not of itself give rise to doubts so much as a late appearance of evidence.

Hostility regarding sources does in itself raise doubt. It provides an epistemological quandary that requires resolution before one can use the material. Is the hostile witness manifesting their bias in the material they present? This can be answered in many cases when the material itself bears no tendentious views. Tertullian is hostile to Marcion, though most of what he provides from his source does not evince significant problems. Hostile mediation can have adverse effects on the passed on material through selection, leaving out things that perhaps is difficult to respond to or favorable to the source's cause or even just lacking interest to the hostile tradent. None of this necessarily reflects on the transmitted material, but there is no way of knowing, while the text remains overtly liable to hostile intervention, intervention not suggested with a non-hostile tradent.

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

Your remarks about Father Garraghan were discussable, and maybe we'll return to those, but the situation of Josephus is remarkable, too.

I would estimate that Josephus had a few interests in the immediate aftermath of the Jewish War that could have shaped his testimony at that time. Furthermore, when he wrote his later works, he had the benefit of his earlier written testimony to "refresh his recollection."

I agree that prompt recall is potentially more accurate than much later independent recall through unaided personal long-term memory. The case of Josephus, however, seems to caution us that a later date doesn't necessarily mean uniformly lower reliability.

[iskander]

Richard John Evans :

To history , Ranke, wrote in the preface of one of his works, has been assigned the office of judging the past , of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire : it wants only to show " Wie es eigentlich gewesen" ( how it essentially was). For Ranke meant not that he just wanted to collect facts , but that he sought to understand the inner being of the past.

In pursuit of this task, said Ranke, the historian had to recognize ' that every epoch is immediate to God'. That is , the past could not be judged by the standard of the present.
Ranke was a profoundly conservative figure, who equated the actual and the ideal and regarded the European states of his day as ' spiritual substances... thoughts of God'

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Ranke introduced into the study of modern history the methods that had recently been developed by philologists in the study of ancient medieval literature to determine whether a text was true or corrupted by later interpolations. They had to stick to primary saurces ...

They had to stick to ‘primary sources’, eyewitness reports and what Ranke called the ‘purest, most immediate documents’ which could be shown to have originated at the time under investigation, and avoid reliance on ‘secondary sources’ such as memoirs or histories generated after the event. Moreover, they had to investigate and subject to the critical method all the sources relating to the events in which they were interested. -- In Defence of History (2004)