Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2020 6:02 pm
There is a good discussion of the
Testimonium Taciteum in a recent publication by 3 classical scholars:
The Emperor Nero: A Guide to the Ancient Sources (Princeton UP, 2016), by Anthony Barrett, Elaine Fantham, & John Yardley (pp. 161-170).
... if this passage is an interpolation added sometime before the end of the fourth century (when the Christian writer Sulpicius Severus cites it), it would have to be an almost unbelievably brilliant piece of deception by a true master forger who was prepared to create a negative image of his own cause in order to throw the skeptical reader off the scent.
Arthur Drews provided an interesting take on Sulpicius Severus's so-called citation: Drews proposed Sulpicus doctored
Annals 15.44 when he wrote his passage in his Chronicle.
See
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Witn ... /Section_2
Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2020 6:02 pm
About Tacitus’ incorrect identification of Pilate as Procurator, rather than Prefect ...
I think there was a period when both terms were used by the Romans, so that might not be an issue.
Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2020 6:02 pm
The authors rehearse the familiar argument from silence at length. Suetonius and Dio have no version of these events.
Perhaps even more astonishing is the silence of Christian writers...Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome, and Eusebius all refer to Nero generally as a persecutor. The supposed fates of Peter and Paul made this inevitable...But not a single Christian writer makes any mention of what they would surely have viewed as the first large-scale martyrdom. The case of Eusebius is striking since his Ecclesisastical History is in effect an exhaustive history of martyrdoms in every corner of the empire...
Yeah, that's noteworthy.
Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2020 6:02 pm
Then they discuss some internal difficulties of the text:
It is not well integrated into the narrative. Nero’s scheme to deflect blame from himself is introduced, and then the topic is dropped, with no indication of any permanent or long-term effects on the perception of Nero’s guilt or on Nero’s reputation generally. Indeed, the whole section from “But neither human resourcefulness...” to “...one man’s cruelty” could be eliminated from the Annals with no loss of sense or continuity.
Pontius Pilate is simply described as “procurator” without reference to the “province” for which he had a degree of responsibility (strictly, Judaea was not a true provincia but part of, and subordinate to, the province of Syria.) This is a very curious way to introduce him. Pilate is well known to Christian tradition as the governor of Judaea at the time of the crucifixion, but to the Roman reader of Tacitus’ day he was not known nearly well enough to “need no introduction.”
An interesting proposition is that of philosopher Jay Raskins: that
Annals 15.44 is authentic
except for the names Tiberius and Pontius Pilate, which would have originally been Nero himself and another procurator Porcius Festus, 52-60
AD, in the time that Annals 15 was otherwise about
(ie. not the time of Tiberius), ie. -
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite punishments on a class hated for their disgraceful acts, called Chrestians by the populace. Chrestus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty (ie. crucifixion) during the reign of Nero at the hands of one of our procurators, Porcius Festus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.
Raskins thinks
Antiquities 20.8.10, which starts with reference to disturbances in Judea in Festus' time as procurator, supports this, viz. -
Upon Festus’s coming into Judea, it happened that Judea was afflicted by the robbers, while all the villages were set on fire, and plundered by them. And then it was that the sicarii, as they were called, who were robbers, grew numerous. They made use of small swords, not much different in length from the Persian acinacae, but somewhat crooked, and like the Roman sicae, [or sickles,] as they were called; and from these weapons these robbers got their denomination; and with these weapons they slew a great many; for they mingled themselves among the multitude at their festivals, when they were come up in crowds from all parts to the city to worship God, as we said before, and easily slew those that they had a mind to slay. They also came frequently upon the villages belonging to their enemies, with their weapons, and plundered them, and set them on fire. So Festus sent forces, both horsemen and footmen, to fall upon those that had been seduced by a certain impostor, who promised them deliverance and freedom from the miseries they were under, if they would but follow him as far as the wilderness. Accordingly, those forces that were sent destroyed both him that had deluded them, and those that were his followers also.
via
https://jayraskin.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/294/
Who Christus/ Chrestus and his followers were at
this time - ie. mid-century - may be hard to fathom, but it could better align with Seutonius' references to Chrestus in Claudius' time, fl. 41-54
AD, in Claudius 25, and to Christians in Nero's time, in
Nero 16.