How do we know the ancient Romans didn’t destroy most of the evidence for Jesus?

[Peter Kirby]

Question originally spotted on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-know-th ... -for-Jesus

Interesting that this is a question being asked... the answers are pretty much the gamut expected.

[Secret Alias]

They did. To think otherwise is silly

[Peter Kirby]

They did. To think otherwise is silly

When? In the mid-3rd century and early 4th century? Or are you thinking of something earlier?

[Paul the Uncertain]

We don't know, but a lot else has to be true for the hypothesis to be true.

First, obviously, there once had to have been more evidence for Jesus than is extant. The chances of that in turn depend on whether or not there was a historical Jesus.

If those are granted, then most of the evidence needed to be in some archival form, so that it could be destroyed. Otherwise, its disappearance has other possible causes than intentional destruction. For example, maybe most of the evidence was oral testimony, and when the speakers died, the evidence unavoidably disappeared with them. Or, Jesus' receipt for the rental of the upper room at the Cenacle was written on papyrus, and it just rotted away over time.

Grant all that, and you still have the question of intent.

Anecdotal example: When compiling the voting list for the Second Vatican Council, the Secretary of State wished to ensure that the Assyrian Church of the East was not in communion with Rome. "Everybody knows" that this is so, and has been so since the Fifth Century, when the relevant bishops excommunicated each other.

Nevertheless, the Vatican Archives could not locate the paperwork. I don't think anybody destroyed it, I think that it did exist long ago, but it has been lost. (There was an opportunity to scrap it after the defeat of Napoleon, but then that episode was equally a chance simply to lose it.)

And then, of course, you don't need to destroy something to keep it hidden:

The rest of the example story: Sensibly enough, the Vatican Secretary of State asked the Assyrian Church whether they still had their copy. The ACE replied that they did not.

That was a good answer for them, for reasons that need not detain us here. What matters here is that "Yes" may well have been a less good answer for them, and so I am less confident that the relevant document doesn't exist (or didn't exist back in the 1960's anyway; salience isn't always conducive to survival).

Although the Vatican is the perennial favorite subject of "hide the ball" conspiracy theories, the Holy See is hardly the only Christian organization in a position to do that. Recall the fate of the only manuscript copy of Smith's Secret Mark. It's not necessarily gone for good. The last custodian was the Jerusalem Patriarch's library appartus, no toady of Rome.

Bottom line: the destruction hypothesis has many competitively plausible competitors which also explain the lack of available direct evidence for Jesus. That prevents destruction from enjoying high consensus plausibility, IMO. Not that we know, just that the hypothesis isn't distinctively compelling in an impersonal sense. And full disclosure: I am unreasonably fond of the heuristic, Avoid attributing to mischief what can easily be explained by incompetence.

[Jax]

I guess my question would have to be, why?

[Giuseppe]

How do we know the ancient Romans didn’t destroy most of the evidence for Jesus?

Because of the more simple possible explanation:
Disinterest.

[Charles Wilson]

When? In the mid-3rd century and early 4th century? Or are you thinking of something earlier?

PK --

It appears to me that the Romans created the evidence for Jesus:

Josephus, A..., 13, 14, 2:

Now as Alexander fled to the mountains, six thousand of the Jews hereupon came together [from Demetrius] to him out of pity at the change of his fortune; upon which Demetrius was afraid, and retired out of the country; after which the Jews fought against Alexander, and being beaten, were slain in great numbers in the several battles which they had..."
...
he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes. This was indeed by way of revenge for the injuries they had done him

Outrageous absurdity here! Jannaeus gets whupped Big Time by Demetrius and Demetrius is forced to leave the country because the Jewish Mercs felt PITY for Jannaeus!! Why? What did Demetrius do? What happened next?

Mark 13: 14, 17 (RSV):

[14] "But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains...
...
[17] And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days!

Let's quote John once again here:

John 11: 49 - 53 (RSV):

[49] But one of them, Ca'iaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all;
[50] you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish."
[51] He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation,
[52] and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
[53] So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death.

There's the Outline right there in front of you, down to the detail of "getting counsel" as to how to put this tax payin', Roman lovin', Sabbath breakin' King of the Jews to death.

All of this mere decades after the Fall of the Temple. Whatever was done much later (by Eusebius, f'rinstance), the original was started by the Flavian Court, probably by Mucianus et.al. as a Monument to Titus, moved forward by Domitian and completed (First Draft...) after Domitian's Damnatio Memoriae after, say, 110.

CW

[andrewcriddle]

Anecdotal example: When compiling the voting list for the Second Vatican Council, the Secretary of State wished to ensure that the Assyrian Church of the East was not in communion with Rome. "Everybody knows" that this is so, and has been so since the Fifth Century, when the relevant bishops excommunicated each other.

Nevertheless, the Vatican Archives could not locate the paperwork. I don't think anybody destroyed it, I think that it did exist long ago, but it has been lost. (There was an opportunity to scrap it after the defeat of Napoleon, but then that episode was equally a chance simply to lose it.)

And then, of course, you don't need to destroy something to keep it hidden:

The rest of the example story: Sensibly enough, the Vatican Secretary of State asked the Assyrian Church whether they still had their copy. The ACE replied that they did not.

That was a good answer for them, for reasons that need not detain us here. What matters here is that "Yes" may well have been a less good answer for them, and so I am less confident that the relevant document doesn't exist (or didn't exist back in the 1960's anyway; salience isn't always conducive to survival).

FWIW the papacy and the Church of the East appear to have briefly been in communion in the late 13th century.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabban_Bar_Sauma

Andrew Criddle

[Ulan]

Well, there were some wars in Judea. There's not much left of Herodean Jerusalem either. If there was any evidence, I don't think a Jesus figure was important enough to store any potential records anywhere else.

[Paul the Uncertain]

andrew

FWIW the papacy and the Church of the East appear to have briefly been in communion in the late 13th century.

Yes, I think there may have been quite a bit of politics over the centuries. The ACE hasn't been in full communion with the Eastern Orthodox, either. It can be awkward for a small critter to get caught between two wrestling giants.

By the last century, the real problem was the rivalry with the Chaldean church, which is in communion with Rome, and which operates in the same general region as ACE. The recent decades of turmoil in Iraq have reportedly largely quenched that rivalry (much better to work together there, so they do), even as the finer points of academic christology and a eucharist service that doesn't include "this is my body" get hammered out with Rome.