Does anyone have On the Historicity of Jesus yet?

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

Your argument comes across as hair-splitting sophistry. Have you consulted or checked your interpretation with any scholars who are more familiar with Greek than just having read a basic introductory grammar?

Hair-splitting sophistry! How did you deduce that? I could be wrong but I do not practice sophistry.
I consulted Paul, who, to indicate familial relationship (spiritual, human or mixed), used X of Y, with Y being in the genitive case.
I do not have (or I cannot afford) a Greek expert.
Cordially, Bernard

[neilgodfrey]

I do not have (or I cannot afford) a Greek expert.

I thought you might have attempted to check your maverick interpretation with scholars online/email. I'm surprised at your dogmatism in the meantime. You don't sound as if you really believe you could be wrong.

[Kapyong]

Gday,

A request for Kapyong!
Could you post up the section on Tacitus from OHJ, please?

Here you go


Carrier on Pliny and Tacitus

"We can see Josephus is a wash. That leaves only two other authors who wrote before 120 CE that actually mention Jesus (or at least, Christ): Pliny the Younger and Tacitus.97 These authors are particularly significant because they were not only contemporaries but best friends, who frequently cor­responded and exchanged information for writing their histories, and were governing adjacent provinces at the very time Pliny first discovered what Christians preached.98 Pliny tells us that he had no idea what Christians were or believed until he interrogated some of them and discovered it was some sort of base superstition involving the worship of a certain 'Christ' who was something like a God (quasi deo) but he gives no further details about him (not even the name 'Jesus'), and says nothing pertinent to estab­lishing historicity.99

"At best, we might assume these Christians repeated to Pliny mate­rial from the Gospels (at least some of those had been in circulation by then), but as such this is not independent evidence and therefore useless. Pliny's procedure involved no independent fact-checking, and from his behavior and attitude, we can conclude his effort would have been typi­cal, and thus Tacitus is unlikely to have done any better. Pliny had been governor of Bithynia (now northern Turkey) for over a year already before even learning there were any Christians in his province, and before that he held the post of consul (the highest possible office in the entire Roman Empire, short of actually being emperor). He had also been a lawyer in Roman courts for several decades, then served in Rome as praetor (the ancient equivalent of both chief of police and attorney general), and then served as one of Trajan's top legal advisors for several years before he was appointed to govern Bithynia. And yet, he tells us. he had never attended a trial of Christians and knew nothing of what they believed or what crimes they were guilty of. This confirms that his father, Pliny the Elder, never discussed Christians in his account of the Neronian fire—despite having been an eyewitness to those events and devoting an entire volume to that year (though his account is now lost). For if he had, his devoted admirer, nephew and adopted son Pliny the Younger Would surely have read it and thus would not have known 'nothing' about Christians as he reports in his letter to Trajan.

"We can therefore assume Tacitus would have been no better or otherwise informed when he wrote that Nero scapegoated the Christians for burning down the heart of Rome in 64 CE. The present text of Tacitus reads:

Nero found culprits and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those hated for their abominations, whom the people called Chrestians [sic], Christ, the author of this name, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and the most mischievous superstition, cheeked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea. the source of this evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous or shameful flow in from every part of the world and become popular.

Accordingly, arrests were first made of those who confessed; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much for the crime of burning the city as because of the hatred of man­kind. Mockery of every sort was added to their death. . . . [Tacitus here describes their torments] Hence, even for criminals who deserved the most extreme punishments, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it no longer appeared that they were being destroyed for the public good, but rather to glut the cruelty of one man.

"They key line here is 'Christ, the author of this name, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius'. This is the first-ever reference to a historical Jesus outside the NT, dating to around 116 ce (very near our cut-off date for usable evidence).100

"If the passage is authentic. I elsewhere demonstrate (following the argu­ments of scholars before me who have argued the same) that this line is probably an interpolation, and that Tacitus in fact originally described not the Christians being scapegoated for the fire, but followers of the Jew­ish instigator Chrestus first suppressed under Claudius (as reported by Suetonius: see §11). The line about Christ being executed by Pilate was added sometime after the mid-fourth century. Before then, no one, Chris­tian or non-Christian, ever heard of this persecution event under Nero, or of any reference to Christians in Tacitus; this event is not mentioned even when second-century Christians told stories of Nero persecuting Christians!101 However, we need not rely on that conclusion for the present analysis, and to demonstrate that I will simply assume for the sake of argu­ment that this passage is entirely authentic as received.

"If we instead assume the passage has not been tampered with, then where would Tacitus have learned of this? Not likely from government records. His report contains no distinctive information that one would expect from such a source, and Tacitus would not have wasted countless hours of his life hunting through obscure archives just to verify a single embarrassing anecdote the Christians themselves were already admitting to. Moreover, it is very unlikely any such records would have survived in Rome for Tacitus to consult, the capitol's libraries having burned to the ground at least twice in the interim, once under Nero, and again under Titus.102

"It's also unlikely Tacitus learned of this from earlier historians of Nero (such as Pliny the Elder, as discussed in §3), since had they written about Christians we would probably know of this, from their histories having been preserved (precisely because they mentioned Christ) or quoted (by Christians or their critics). Likewise, that Christians appear to have had no knowledge of the Neronian persecution having any connection whatever with the burning of Rome further entails no earlier historian is likely to have made such a connection either (as otherwise such pervasive ignorance even by the Christians themselves is nearly inexplicable). If Tacitus really made such a connection, he was apparently the first, and possibly by mis­take (conflating some other persecution of Christians, or even a Christian legend about a persecution that never really happened, with the burning of Rome; for as we shall see, Suetonius had no knowledge of such a connec­tion, either).

"But we know Tacitus asked Pliny for information to include in his histor­ical books. Thus the fact that Pliny discovered what Christians preached in 110 CE, right when Tacitus was governing an adjoining province and writ­ing his histories, and just a few years before Tacitus completed his Annals before 117 CE, suggests the most likely chain of information was Chris­tians telling Pliny about the Gospels, then Pliny telling Tacitus, and Tacitus then reporting (what would be to him) the most embarrassing details in his Annals. That would explain why his information matches what was already reported in the Gospels by that time and gives no further detail. At the very least, this cannot be ruled out. Accordingly, we cannot verify that the information in Tacitus comes from any source independent of the Gospels. And non-independent evidence carries zero weight.

"So either Tacitus never mentioned Christ or his mention of Christ cannot be shown to be independent testimony. Either way, his information has no effect on the probability of myth or historicity. And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny.

"Indeed, even if we blow past all probability and imagine that some­how Tacitus is paraphrasing or adapting a story from an earlier historian of Nero, Christians could already have been preaching the exoteric myth (some form of proto-Mark, for example) in 64, as an allegory (an extended parable) whose real meaning (it's esoteric meaning, that of a cosmic event) would be explained only to initiates (see Elements 13 and 14). Thus even a mention of Christ being crucified by Pilate at that date, if such a detail was only learned from Christians, would not strongly confirm historicity. And even if Christians hadn't yet gelled this exoteric myth by then, their claims that Jesus was celestially crucified by the 'rulers of this world' during the reign of Pilate could easily be misunderstood by a half-interested Roman audience as crucified by Pilate. Thus, even the 'cosmic crucifixion' of mini­mal mythicism could so easily be misreported in a historicist fashion that our inability to rule that possibility out further complicates third-hand evi­dence such as this.

"And that only compounds the fact that, as I've shown, Tacitus almost certainly had no such Neronian-era source, was most likely just report­ing information relayed to him from Pliny (who in turn learned it from second-century Christian informants), or taking his information directly from Christians himself. If he originally even mentioned Christians at all. This passage therefore has zero effect on the probability of either history or myth.


Notes :

" 97. Pliny. Letters 10.96: and Tacitus. Annals 15.44. See. e.g.. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, pp. 23-29 and 39-53: Theissen and Merz. Historical Jesus. pp. 79-83: and R.T. France. The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove. IL: InterVarsity Press. 1986). pp. 2I-23 and 42-43: Howard Clark Kee. Jesus in History: An approach to the Study of the Gospels (New York: Harcourt Brace .lovanovich. 2nd edn. 1970). pp. 45-47: and also Bradley Peper and Mark DelCogliano. 'The Pliny and Trajan Correspondence', in The Historical Jesus in Context (ed. Levine. Allison and Crossan). pp. 366-71. For extensive critical discussion see also Doherty, Jesus: Neither God nor Man. pp. 587-630 and 637-42.

98. On their being best friends, see evidence summarized in Richard Carrier. Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013 (Amherst. NY: Prometheus. 2014). p. 372 n. 6.

99. For my complete analysis of this passage see Carrier. Not the Impossible Faith. pp. 418-22: see also Knight. Disciples of the Beloved One. pp. 34-36 and 209-12. Note that Pliny's hesitant phrase "as if to a God' (quasi deo) could reflect his response to the exoteric myth (if his Christian informants were simply repeating the Gospels to him. in which Jesus is allegorically presented as a historical man) or the esoteric one (Jesus then being confusingly explained to him as a celestial archangel or demigod whom they pray to. but not exactly equal to "God"). It could also be a textual corruption, as there is some external evidence that Pliny may have originally written Christo et Deo. "to Christ and God", or Christo ut Deo. "to Christ as God". See Doherty. Jesus: Neither God nor Man. p. 640.

100. On dating the text: in Tacitus, Annals 2.61 and 4.4-5. references are made to Trajan's annexation of Parthian territories in 116 CE but not their loss a year or two later.

101. See Richard Carrier. 'The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus. Annals 15.44', Vigiliae christianae 68 (2014), pp. 1-20.

102. The fire of 64 CE is of course being recorded by Tacitus himself (and Cassius Dio. Roman History 62.16-18; also Pliny the Elder. Natural History 17.1.5, who was living in Rome at the time): the fire of 80 CE is reported in Suetonius, Titus 8.3 (and Domitian was tasked with rebuilding the libraries: Suetonius. Domitian 20). Officially published records that we know Tacitus relied upon, like the acts of the Senate, would have survived in libraries elsewhere in the empire, but those would not mention an obscure execution in Judea. However, we must dismiss the argument that Tacitus can't have been citing government records because he gets the office of Pilate wrong, mis-identifying him as a procurator when in fact he was a prefect, because Pilate was both a procurator and a prefect (as most equestrian governors were), and Tacitus had particular rhetorical reasons to prefer mentioning the procuratorial office in a passage like this (it was more embarrassing, and more appalling, to be executed by a mere business manager). See Carrier, Hitler Homer Bible Christ, pp. 103-40. "

[neilgodfrey]

Hair-splitting sophistry! How did you deduce that?

From your refusal to consider the context for the meaning.

[The Crow]

Gday,

A request for Kapyong!
Could you post up the section on Tacitus from OHJ, please?

Here you go


Carrier on Pliny and Tacitus

"We can see Josephus is a wash. That leaves only two other authors who wrote before 120 CE that actually mention Jesus (or at least, Christ): Pliny the Younger and Tacitus.97 These authors are particularly significant because they were not only contemporaries but best friends, who frequently cor­responded and exchanged information for writing their histories, and were governing adjacent provinces at the very time Pliny first discovered what Christians preached.98 Pliny tells us that he had no idea what Christians were or believed until he interrogated some of them and discovered it was some sort of base superstition involving the worship of a certain 'Christ' who was something like a God (quasi deo) but he gives no further details about him (not even the name 'Jesus'), and says nothing pertinent to estab­lishing historicity.99

"At best, we might assume these Christians repeated to Pliny mate­rial from the Gospels (at least some of those had been in circulation by then), but as such this is not independent evidence and therefore useless. Pliny's procedure involved no independent fact-checking, and from his behavior and attitude, we can conclude his effort would have been typi­cal, and thus Tacitus is unlikely to have done any better. Pliny had been governor of Bithynia (now northern Turkey) for over a year already before even learning there were any Christians in his province, and before that he held the post of consul (the highest possible office in the entire Roman Empire, short of actually being emperor). He had also been a lawyer in Roman courts for several decades, then served in Rome as praetor (the ancient equivalent of both chief of police and attorney general), and then served as one of Trajan's top legal advisors for several years before he was appointed to govern Bithynia. And yet, he tells us. he had never attended a trial of Christians and knew nothing of what they believed or what crimes they were guilty of. This confirms that his father, Pliny the Elder, never discussed Christians in his account of the Neronian fire—despite having been an eyewitness to those events and devoting an entire volume to that year (though his account is now lost). For if he had, his devoted admirer, nephew and adopted son Pliny the Younger Would surely have read it and thus would not have known 'nothing' about Christians as he reports in his letter to Trajan.

"We can therefore assume Tacitus would have been no better or otherwise informed when he wrote that Nero scapegoated the Christians for burning down the heart of Rome in 64 CE. The present text of Tacitus reads:

Nero found culprits and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those hated for their abominations, whom the people called Chrestians [sic], Christ, the author of this name, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and the most mischievous superstition, cheeked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea. the source of this evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous or shameful flow in from every part of the world and become popular.

Accordingly, arrests were first made of those who confessed; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much for the crime of burning the city as because of the hatred of man­kind. Mockery of every sort was added to their death. . . . [Tacitus here describes their torments] Hence, even for criminals who deserved the most extreme punishments, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it no longer appeared that they were being destroyed for the public good, but rather to glut the cruelty of one man.

"They key line here is 'Christ, the author of this name, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius'. This is the first-ever reference to a historical Jesus outside the NT, dating to around 116 ce (very near our cut-off date for usable evidence).100

"If the passage is authentic. I elsewhere demonstrate (following the argu­ments of scholars before me who have argued the same) that this line is probably an interpolation, and that Tacitus in fact originally described not the Christians being scapegoated for the fire, but followers of the Jew­ish instigator Chrestus first suppressed under Claudius (as reported by Suetonius: see §11). The line about Christ being executed by Pilate was added sometime after the mid-fourth century. Before then, no one, Chris­tian or non-Christian, ever heard of this persecution event under Nero, or of any reference to Christians in Tacitus; this event is not mentioned even when second-century Christians told stories of Nero persecuting Christians!101 However, we need not rely on that conclusion for the present analysis, and to demonstrate that I will simply assume for the sake of argu­ment that this passage is entirely authentic as received.

"If we instead assume the passage has not been tampered with, then where would Tacitus have learned of this? Not likely from government records. His report contains no distinctive information that one would expect from such a source, and Tacitus would not have wasted countless hours of his life hunting through obscure archives just to verify a single embarrassing anecdote the Christians themselves were already admitting to. Moreover, it is very unlikely any such records would have survived in Rome for Tacitus to consult, the capitol's libraries having burned to the ground at least twice in the interim, once under Nero, and again under Titus.102

"It's also unlikely Tacitus learned of this from earlier historians of Nero (such as Pliny the Elder, as discussed in §3), since had they written about Christians we would probably know of this, from their histories having been preserved (precisely because they mentioned Christ) or quoted (by Christians or their critics). Likewise, that Christians appear to have had no knowledge of the Neronian persecution having any connection whatever with the burning of Rome further entails no earlier historian is likely to have made such a connection either (as otherwise such pervasive ignorance even by the Christians themselves is nearly inexplicable). If Tacitus really made such a connection, he was apparently the first, and possibly by mis­take (conflating some other persecution of Christians, or even a Christian legend about a persecution that never really happened, with the burning of Rome; for as we shall see, Suetonius had no knowledge of such a connec­tion, either).

"But we know Tacitus asked Pliny for information to include in his histor­ical books. Thus the fact that Pliny discovered what Christians preached in 110 CE, right when Tacitus was governing an adjoining province and writ­ing his histories, and just a few years before Tacitus completed his Annals before 117 CE, suggests the most likely chain of information was Chris­tians telling Pliny about the Gospels, then Pliny telling Tacitus, and Tacitus then reporting (what would be to him) the most embarrassing details in his Annals. That would explain why his information matches what was already reported in the Gospels by that time and gives no further detail. At the very least, this cannot be ruled out. Accordingly, we cannot verify that the information in Tacitus comes from any source independent of the Gospels. And non-independent evidence carries zero weight.

"So either Tacitus never mentioned Christ or his mention of Christ cannot be shown to be independent testimony. Either way, his information has no effect on the probability of myth or historicity. And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny.

"Indeed, even if we blow past all probability and imagine that some­how Tacitus is paraphrasing or adapting a story from an earlier historian of Nero, Christians could already have been preaching the exoteric myth (some form of proto-Mark, for example) in 64, as an allegory (an extended parable) whose real meaning (it's esoteric meaning, that of a cosmic event) would be explained only to initiates (see Elements 13 and 14). Thus even a mention of Christ being crucified by Pilate at that date, if such a detail was only learned from Christians, would not strongly confirm historicity. And even if Christians hadn't yet gelled this exoteric myth by then, their claims that Jesus was celestially crucified by the 'rulers of this world' during the reign of Pilate could easily be misunderstood by a half-interested Roman audience as crucified by Pilate. Thus, even the 'cosmic crucifixion' of mini­mal mythicism could so easily be misreported in a historicist fashion that our inability to rule that possibility out further complicates third-hand evi­dence such as this.

"And that only compounds the fact that, as I've shown, Tacitus almost certainly had no such Neronian-era source, was most likely just report­ing information relayed to him from Pliny (who in turn learned it from second-century Christian informants), or taking his information directly from Christians himself. If he originally even mentioned Christians at all. This passage therefore has zero effect on the probability of either history or myth.


Notes :

" 97. Pliny. Letters 10.96: and Tacitus. Annals 15.44. See. e.g.. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, pp. 23-29 and 39-53: Theissen and Merz. Historical Jesus. pp. 79-83: and R.T. France. The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove. IL: InterVarsity Press. 1986). pp. 2I-23 and 42-43: Howard Clark Kee. Jesus in History: An approach to the Study of the Gospels (New York: Harcourt Brace .lovanovich. 2nd edn. 1970). pp. 45-47: and also Bradley Peper and Mark DelCogliano. 'The Pliny and Trajan Correspondence', in The Historical Jesus in Context (ed. Levine. Allison and Crossan). pp. 366-71. For extensive critical discussion see also Doherty, Jesus: Neither God nor Man. pp. 587-630 and 637-42.

98. On their being best friends, see evidence summarized in Richard Carrier. Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013 (Amherst. NY: Prometheus. 2014). p. 372 n. 6.

99. For my complete analysis of this passage see Carrier. Not the Impossible Faith. pp. 418-22: see also Knight. Disciples of the Beloved One. pp. 34-36 and 209-12. Note that Pliny's hesitant phrase "as if to a God' (quasi deo) could reflect his response to the exoteric myth (if his Christian informants were simply repeating the Gospels to him. in which Jesus is allegorically presented as a historical man) or the esoteric one (Jesus then being confusingly explained to him as a celestial archangel or demigod whom they pray to. but not exactly equal to "God"). It could also be a textual corruption, as there is some external evidence that Pliny may have originally written Christo et Deo. "to Christ and God", or Christo ut Deo. "to Christ as God". See Doherty. Jesus: Neither God nor Man. p. 640.

100. On dating the text: in Tacitus, Annals 2.61 and 4.4-5. references are made to Trajan's annexation of Parthian territories in 116 CE but not their loss a year or two later.

101. See Richard Carrier. 'The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus. Annals 15.44', Vigiliae christianae 68 (2014), pp. 1-20.

102. The fire of 64 CE is of course being recorded by Tacitus himself (and Cassius Dio. Roman History 62.16-18; also Pliny the Elder. Natural History 17.1.5, who was living in Rome at the time): the fire of 80 CE is reported in Suetonius, Titus 8.3 (and Domitian was tasked with rebuilding the libraries: Suetonius. Domitian 20). Officially published records that we know Tacitus relied upon, like the acts of the Senate, would have survived in libraries elsewhere in the empire, but those would not mention an obscure execution in Judea. However, we must dismiss the argument that Tacitus can't have been citing government records because he gets the office of Pilate wrong, mis-identifying him as a procurator when in fact he was a prefect, because Pilate was both a procurator and a prefect (as most equestrian governors were), and Tacitus had particular rhetorical reasons to prefer mentioning the procuratorial office in a passage like this (it was more embarrassing, and more appalling, to be executed by a mere business manager). See Carrier, Hitler Homer Bible Christ, pp. 103-40. "

Well now theres a piece I can agree with him on.....Kap your making it hard for me not to order this book man.

[toejam]

Carrier:
"So either Tacitus never mentioned Christ or his mention of Christ cannot be shown to be independent testimony. Either way, his information has no effect on the probability of myth or historicity. And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny."

Hang on... but has Carrier demonstrated that it isn't independent testimony? Nope. Not at all. We have no idea where Tacitus got his Jesus information from. Trying to say he only got this info from Pliny is total speculation. Who knows what he did and didn't get from Pliny?? Was Tacitus only repeating what Christians were preaching and just taking their word for it? Possibly. Or was it just a known thing, like the way most of us know L Ron Hubbard existed without ever having to speak to a scientologist nor read their literature? I've never met a scientiologist, nor ever read any of their literature. But if I were writing a 'History of 1980s America' and included a section on Tom Cruise, I might well included a little passing reference to Hubbard and his cult and how they were trying to recruit celebrities during that time. For all I can see, this is what Tacitus is doing - he's just passing on what could well be something known to most.

For me, Tacitus' reference remains on the table. Is it secure? Nope. But can it be as easily dismissed as Carrier seems to imply here. Nope. At the end of the day, it remains the kind of thing we might expect had their been a historical figure: his acknowledgement in the writings of the great historians of the time. I often remind people: If Christianity had never taken off and it died slowly in the 3rd Century, and all that remained was this brief mention by Tacitus, no one would question it. It would just be taken for granted that there was another Messiah cult which started from a Jewish guy who was crucified under Pilate whom Nero used as a scapegoat.

[MrMacSon]

Carrier:
"So either Tacitus never mentioned Christ or his mention of Christ cannot be shown to be independent testimony. Either way, his information has no effect on the probability of myth or historicity. And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny."

Hang on... but has Carrier demonstrated that it isn't independent testimony? Nope. Not at all. We have no idea where Tacitus got his Jesus information from.

Others have suggested the Tacitus references to Christians & Christ are either

• interpolation
• simply references to what early Christian were saying about themselves eg. RT Francis*

* France, RT (1986). Evidence for Jesus (Jesus Library). Trafalgar Square Publishing. pp. 19–20. ISBN 0-340-38172-8.

Trying to say he only got this info from Pliny is total speculation.

Does Carrier say that?

And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny"

[neilgodfrey]

Carrier:
"So either Tacitus never mentioned Christ or his mention of Christ cannot be shown to be independent testimony. Either way, his information has no effect on the probability of myth or historicity. And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny."

Hang on... but has Carrier demonstrated that it isn't independent testimony? Nope. Not at all. We have no idea where Tacitus got his Jesus information from. Trying to say he only got this info from Pliny is total speculation. Who knows what he did and didn't get from Pliny?? Was Tacitus only repeating what Christians were preaching and just taking their word for it? Possibly. Or was it just a known thing, like the way most of us know L Ron Hubbard existed without ever having to speak to a scientologist nor read their literature? I've never met a scientiologist, nor ever read any of their literature. But if I were writing a 'History of 1980s America' and included a section on Tom Cruise, I might well included a little passing reference to Hubbard and his cult and how they were trying to recruit celebrities during that time. For all I can see, this is what Tacitus is doing - he's just passing on what could well be something known to most.

For me, Tacitus' reference remains on the table. Is it secure? Nope. But can it be as easily dismissed as Carrier seems to imply here. Nope. At the end of the day, it remains the kind of thing we might expect had their been a historical figure: his acknowledgement in the writings of the great historians of the time. I often remind people: If Christianity had never taken off and it died slowly in the 3rd Century, and all that remained was this brief mention by Tacitus, no one would question it. It would just be taken for granted that there was another Messiah cult which started from a Jewish guy who was crucified under Pilate whom Nero used as a scapegoat.

Your argument would stand if what we read in Tacitus about Jesus had the same larger contextual support as anything any of us reads today about L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, Tacitus might be relaying information that was as solid and secure in his day (and for the same institutional reasons) as what we read today about the founder of Scientology. It is possible. But mere possibility is not enough to secure the data as you yourself say.

So it does follow that Tacitus cannot be used to establish the historicity of Jesus.

One characteristic indicator that a source is independent is that it contains information that is unique in relation to other sources. Tacitus's information about Jesus does not pass this test. Tacitus gives us no a priori grounds for thinking his information is from an independent source.

Further, if Tacitus was indeed repeating knowledge that in his day was as widespread and common as our knowledge of Ron Hubbard (and just as scant) then it is not at all likely that he would have given any elaboration to explain who the person was for his already knowledgable readers. So neither does Tacitus give us a priori grounds for thinking his information was as widely, if scantily, known as the founder of Scientology is today.

[toejam]

MrMack said:
Does Carrier say that?
"And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny"

According to the quote posted by Kapyong he does...

[GakuseiDon]

For me, Tacitus' reference remains on the table. Is it secure? Nope. But can it be as easily dismissed as Carrier seems to imply here. Nope. At the end of the day, it remains the kind of thing we might expect had their been a historical figure: his acknowledgement in the writings of the great historians of the time.

Yes, that's right. Assuming the Tacitus account is genuine, it becomes data in a cumulative case. Whatever one's theory, it needs to account for what Christians were believing around 110 CE. if Tacitus had referred to Christians believing in a celestial crucified Christ, and a historicist wrote off the reference as "Oh that's just what Christians believed at the time -- it doesn't count towards historicity or ahistoricity", I think that would be questioned. Regardless of whether one prefers a historicist or ahistoricist model, the Tacitus reference is an interesting data point in the growth of early Christianity.