Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Ken Olson
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by Ken Olson »

Chris Hansen wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:03 am For all we know the original was Christianos and the e was chosen because of the phonological similarities, fatigue, etc. Same as in Sinaiticus. My guess is that there simply was not a standardized lexical spelling of Christianos in the first few centuries, leading to Christians and pagans alike to interchange the e and i at will. Eventually, some authors began to either attempt correcting this, or utilized the different spelling to have their own ideas and conjecture about the terms (Gospel of Philip). At any juncture, the switch from i to e in Annals could have happened early, been retained, and then our later copyist fixed it reverting it to the original spelling.

We have no way to know, and at this point it is just conjecture, and rather pointless conjecture as far as I'm concerned, as there is no such spelling issue with Christus in the passage, which makes it clear how Chrestianos is being used.
Chris,

We have no way to know for sure, but I think there's a strong possibility that Tacitus' use of Christus with an i and Chrestians with an e (if, as I think likely, that Tacitus is authentic, and those are the correct readings) correctly reflects the origins of both words. In the New Testament, Christian does not appear to be a Christian word (i.e., not a word the group used to identify itself). Paul doesn't seem to know it in his letters and in its three occurrences in the New Testament (Acts 11.26, 26.28, 1 Peter 4.16) it appears to be an outsider's term for the group. In the two instances in Acts it seems to be used by outsiders and in the example from 1 Peter one who is called a Christian (or Chrestian) appears to be deserving of punishment in the eyes of outsiders:

15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; 16 yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. (1 Peter 4.15-216)

It may be that Chrestian, as a label coined by outsiders, preceded Christian chronologically, and only later became Christian when others who knew the name of Christ altered it to fit what followers of Christ ought logically to be called.

Tertullian, like Tacitus, appears to know that people are saying Chrestians, but thinks that this is an error:

The name Christian, however, so far as its meaning goes, bears the sense of anointing. Even when by a faulty pronunciation you call us Chrestians (for you are not certain about even the sound of this noted name), you in fact lisp out the sense of pleasantness and goodness. You are therefore vilifying in harmless men even the harmless name we bear, which is not inconvenient for the tongue, nor harsh to the ear, nor injurious to a single being, nor rude for our country, being a good Greek word, as many others also are, and pleasant in sound and sense. Surely, surely, names are not things which deserve punishment by the sword, or the cross, or the beasts.

Tertullian, Ad Nationes 1.3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/03061.htm

Best,

Ken
Last edited by Ken Olson on Thu Jan 13, 2022 4:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

mlinssen wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 11:56 am For all you know, Chris - which is less than little, by the looks of it.
Giuseppe once introduced me to the concept of "anti-mythicist": people whose only desire it is to obfuscate and derail anything that would lead to confirm the historical inauthenticity of the alleged Jesus Christ - and you most certainly fit the profile with this dubious little paragraph right here

Needless to say, you don't have any demonstration of your "Christians and pagans alike to interchange the e and i at will" "in the first few centuries", or do you?
Needless to say, I have no interest conversing with someone whose only mode of writing is hostile. Also, in the end, I really couldn't care less if Jesus existed or not. I'm pretty big on arguing obscure and fringe theories. I don't think John the Baptist had anything to do with foundations of Christianity (in fact, I am not sure we know anything about him, or even that the Josephan passage on him is authentic, which on this issue makes me more fringe even than the vast majority of mythicists haha), I think the Gospels resemble actual fiction/ancient novels and cannot be considered reliable biographies (or even biographies with much of any clear cut information about him), I think the quest of the historical Jesus is a waste of time and an ahistorical pursuit (more just an exercise in scholarly projection on ancient sources; to echo Schweitzer, there is no task more revealing of someone's person than writing a biography of Jesus), and frankly, I think that historicists should take mythicists (especially Jean Magne and Thomas Brodie) far more seriously and adopt great amounts of their efforts. I particularly think Brodie, Magne, and Soviet Mythicists are figures that should be seriously interacted with more and I utilize their work quite a lot in my own thinking. But sure, I'm "anti-mythicist" because I think Tacitus and Pliny are authentic sources, that a one letter spelling variation isn't particularly significant, and that they tell us nothing useful about the historical Jesus... like *most* mythicists. And, as a last note, I think that most historicist cases for Jesus are worse than the average mythicist case. I just don't focus on them because mythicists have poked holes in those enough to make any critical scholar scratch their head (and for that matter, so have many other critical scholars). Meanwhile, most mythicist cases get ignored, which I think is bad and so I pay attention to them, and critique them.

The funny thing is that when it comes down to it, I tend to agree with more mythicist ideas than historicist ones: I agree that Christianity has syncretic origins, and that depictions of Jesus likely became inspired by Greco-Roman deities (I particularly favor Romulus); that the methods employed by historicists are most commonly insufficient; that the reconstructions of Jesus that have been offered are unsatisfactory and methodologically suspect; that the extrabiblical sources for Jesus are useless in determining his historicity; that both Josephan passages are interpolations; that rapid legendarization occurs in cults; that the Gospels are most likely fictional in nature; etc. etc. etc. etc. Literally, the only main reason I'm not a mythicist is because I don't think mythicist interpretations (or deconstructions if we are Dutch Radicals) of Paul work. That's it.

I'm not anti-mythicist, and frankly, would happily lend my name to helping a mythicist case, even though I'm a historicist. In the end, if mythicists win out the debate and make the best case, cools. Just gives me more things to read about and study in the end.

I know I was a horrendous jerk to many people on this forum and I do deeply apologize to everyone here for it. I'm not going to make excuses, I only apologize profusely. I only kindly ask we bury the hatchet.
Last edited by Chrissy Hansen on Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

Ken Olson wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:25 pm
Chris Hansen wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:03 am For all we know the original was Christianos and the e was chosen because of the phonological similarities, fatigue, etc. Same as in Sinaiticus. My guess is that there simply was not a standardized lexical spelling of Christianos in the first few centuries, leading to Christians and pagans alike to interchange the e and i at will. Eventually, some authors began to either attempt correcting this, or utilized the different spelling to have their own ideas and conjecture about the terms (Gospel of Philip). At any juncture, the switch from i to e in Annals could have happened early, been retained, and then our later copyist fixed it reverting it to the original spelling.

We have no way to know, and at this point it is just conjecture, and rather pointless conjecture as far as I'm concerned, as there is no such spelling issue with Christus in the passage, which makes it clear how Chrestianos is being used.
Chris,

We have no way to know for sure, but I think there's a strong possibility that Tacitus' use of Christus with an i and Chrestians with an e (if, as I think likely, that Tacitus is authentic, and those are the correct readings) correctly reflects the origins of both words. In the New Testament, Christian does not appear to be a Christian word (i.e., not a word the group used to identify itself). Paul doesn't seem to know it in his letters and in its three occurrences in the New Testament (Acts 11.26, 26.28, 1 Peter 4.16) it appears to be an outsider's term for the group. In the two instances in Acts it seems to be used by outsiders and in the instance and in the example from 1 Peter one who is called a Christian (or Chrestian) appears to be deserving of punishment in the eyes of outsiders:

15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; 16 yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. (1 Peter 4.15-216)

It may be that Chrestian, as a label coined by outsiders, preceded Christian chronologically, and only later became Christian when others who knew the name of Christ altered it to fit what followers of Christ ought logically to be called.

Tertullian, like Tacitus, appears to know that people are saying Chrestians, but thinks that this is an error:

The name Christian, however, so far as its meaning goes, bears the sense of anointing. Even when by a faulty pronunciation you call us Chrestians (for you are not certain about even the sound of this noted name), you in fact lisp out the sense of pleasantness and goodness. You are therefore vilifying in harmless men even the harmless name we bear, which is not inconvenient for the tongue, nor harsh to the ear, nor injurious to a single being, nor rude for our country, being a good Greek word, as many others also are, and pleasant in sound and sense. Surely, surely, names are not things which deserve punishment by the sword, or the cross, or the beasts.

Tertullian, Ad Nationes 1.3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/03061.htm

Best,

Ken
I think it is also definitely possible. I agree it was an outgroup term applied to them, not an ingroup one (Bremmer and van der Lans' article responding to Shaw convinced me on that point). Personally, I am rather indifferent to how it was spelled, as I think the interchange of i and e was common (as with most scholars I have found), and we can see that interchange even in the texts we have of Tacitus, Pliny, and Suetonius. Tacitus has Christus, Suetonius has Chrestus. Pliny and Suetonius have Christian, and Tacitus has Chrestian. I also favor rather the idea that there was no fixed spelling of the term they applied to this superstitio, and that both spellings likely developed concurrently, hence why there is no consistency. I don't think we have good enough evidence to say what term if any came before the other, given that our first evidence of its usage is Acts, 1 Peter, Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius, giving us absolutely no consistency between them.

I'm also of the opinion that Acts and 1 Peter are second century documents too, so there is also that. I would argue Pliny is the earliest source for the term.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

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Chris Hansen wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2022 1:03 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2022 12:56 am What sources would Pliny have had that Tacitus lacked?
I argue that it is not necessarily that Tacitus was seeking a source, but that Pliny provided it of his own accord in helping edit/critique Tacitus' work, as we know he did. Pliny would have a relevant piece of information that further aids Tacitus' critical eye toward the reign of Nero, whom he consistently seeks to paint as a tyrant. So he included it to show more of his corrupt personality, along with also putting down a Judean "superstition" which he is rather fond of admonishing anyways (Histories 5).
I would have expected that a targeted persecution of Christians that involved the horrors attributed to Nero and that was sufficient to turn public opinion from disgust to sympathy for the Christians would have been more generally known about (even in the time of Tacitus) and not have relied upon a single source.

But this is veering away from the specific point of your thread.
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 3:58 pm
Chris Hansen wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2022 1:03 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Jan 09, 2022 12:56 am What sources would Pliny have had that Tacitus lacked?
I argue that it is not necessarily that Tacitus was seeking a source, but that Pliny provided it of his own accord in helping edit/critique Tacitus' work, as we know he did. Pliny would have a relevant piece of information that further aids Tacitus' critical eye toward the reign of Nero, whom he consistently seeks to paint as a tyrant. So he included it to show more of his corrupt personality, along with also putting down a Judean "superstition" which he is rather fond of admonishing anyways (Histories 5).
I would have expected that a targeted persecution of Christians that involved the horrors attributed to Nero and that was sufficient to turn public opinion from disgust to sympathy for the Christians would have been more generally known about (even in the time of Tacitus) and not have relied upon a single source.

But this is veering away from the specific point of your thread.
I am not really of the opinion that there was a targeted persecution of Christians of such a description (I tend to favor Shaw's and Moss' positions that this is largely mythical). If Nero did persecute Christians, I don't think it was this undertaking nor as a result from the Fire of Rome, at best a minor event. I think this is more a result of Christian invention, which Pliny relayed to Tacitus. Hence why it is absent everywhere else, even in Christian sources that talk of a Neronian persecution.

I am somewhat inclined to the position that Christians had a myth of Neronian persecution, which they report to Pliny. Pliny reports this to Suetonius and to Tacitus. Tacitus takes it of his own volition to attach this to the Fire of Rome, both to give cause to this persecution, and to further push his own anti-Neronian opinion, as his own work is very antagonistic to Nero's reign. Hence, why no Christians attach this to the Fire of Rome, because it was a mixture of Christian-Tacitean invention. I think David Álvarez Cineira posited this as a possibility in his response to Shaw, again if I'm remembering correctly (La persecución neroniana de los cristianos tras el incendio de Roma (Tácito, Anales XV)), where the Fire of Rome and Nero's involvement, and Christian persecution were two different items merged by Tacitus.
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by mlinssen »

Ken Olson wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:25 pm
Chris Hansen wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:03 am For all we know the original was Christianos and the e was chosen because of the phonological similarities, fatigue, etc. Same as in Sinaiticus. My guess is that there simply was not a standardized lexical spelling of Christianos in the first few centuries, leading to Christians and pagans alike to interchange the e and i at will. Eventually, some authors began to either attempt correcting this, or utilized the different spelling to have their own ideas and conjecture about the terms (Gospel of Philip). At any juncture, the switch from i to e in Annals could have happened early, been retained, and then our later copyist fixed it reverting it to the original spelling.

We have no way to know, and at this point it is just conjecture, and rather pointless conjecture as far as I'm concerned, as there is no such spelling issue with Christus in the passage, which makes it clear how Chrestianos is being used.
Chris,

We have no way to know for sure, but I think there's a strong possibility that Tacitus' use of Christus with an i and Chrestians with an e (if, as I think likely, that Tacitus is authentic, and those are the correct readings) correctly reflects the origins of both words. In the New Testament, Christian does not appear to be a Christian word (i.e., not a word the group used to identify itself). Paul doesn't seem to know it in his letters and in its three occurrences in the New Testament (Acts 11.26, 26.28, 1 Peter 4.16) it appears to be an outsider's term for the group. In the two instances in Acts it seems to be used by outsiders and in the instance and in the example from 1 Peter one who is called a Christian (or Chrestian) appears to be deserving of punishment in the eyes of outsiders:

15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; 16 yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. (1 Peter 4.15-216)

It may be that Chrestian, as a label coined by outsiders, preceded Christian chronologically, and only later became Christian when others who knew the name of Christ altered it to fit what followers of Christ ought logically to be called.

Tertullian, like Tacitus, appears to know that people are saying Chrestians, but thinks that this is an error:

The name Christian, however, so far as its meaning goes, bears the sense of anointing. Even when by a faulty pronunciation you call us Chrestians (for you are not certain about even the sound of this noted name), you in fact lisp out the sense of pleasantness and goodness. You are therefore vilifying in harmless men even the harmless name we bear, which is not inconvenient for the tongue, nor harsh to the ear, nor injurious to a single being, nor rude for our country, being a good Greek word, as many others also are, and pleasant in sound and sense. Surely, surely, names are not things which deserve punishment by the sword, or the cross, or the beasts.

Tertullian, Ad Nationes 1.3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/03061.htm

Best,

Ken
Well put Ken. There is a very structured pattern to using either the word with an eta or a iota, but perhaps Chris will humour us and provide at least one example of his wild
guess (is) that there simply was not a standardized lexical spelling of Christianos in the first few centuries, leading to Christians and pagans alike to interchange the e and i at will
The spacing is evident of course and there simply is no room for faking an E where initially an I was - yet the reverse scenario does allow for both yet would leave ample blank space as a result, which we can easily witness in Tacitus, Bezae, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. One thing is clear, and that is that every Christian scribe tried to fix these into saying ChrIst-xyz

One remark though: so far the Nag Hammadi Library would appear to lead with a 35-to-2 score on labelling anything, given the fact that there is more a single manuscript in the first 5 centuries that contains the full name of Jesus or Christ (and Chris still has to correct that mistake as well as his wild claim of P72 got debunked by me).
So we stand without a single record of anyone claiming that XS-ians called themselves Christians, save for the Church Fathers. Or am I missing something?
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

Yeah you got me on the whole P72, didn't look at manuscript photos and thought I would trust the peer reviewed scholarship. Damned be me for... trusting academic material. I'm such a terrible person for it.

And I agree Tacitus (probably) used e originally (though I withhold certainty, as we have very little manuscript data to go off of)... still I would say the interchange is rather evidenced by his use of Christus/Chrestian and Suetonius Chestus/Christian. I agree that there later became structure to the usage of those terms.

Side note, my pronouns are she/her or they/them. Not he/him.

Again, if your level of discourse is going to remain at polemical, there is no point having a conversation.
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by mlinssen »

Chris Hansen wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:31 am Yeah you got me on the whole P72, didn't look at manuscript photos and thought I would trust the peer reviewed scholarship. Damned be me for... trusting academic material. I'm such a terrible person for it.
Now you're making a mockery out of it
And I agree Tacitus (probably) used e originally (though I withhold certainty, as we have very little manuscript data to go off of)... still I would say the interchange is rather evidenced by his use of Christus/Chrestian and Suetonius Chestus/Christian. I agree that there later became structure to the usage of those terms.

Side note, my pronouns are she/her or they/them. Not he/him.

Again, if your level of discourse is going to remain at polemical, there is no point having a conversation.
You'll get treated the way you behave Chris, that's how it works in the world. But this whole interchange teaches me that that you're an awful lot of effort for very little value - if any.
Bye
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

Yeah, I sarcastically respond to those who nonstop insult me (after I've apologized multiple times here for my behavior and am trying to make active attempts at bettering my tone and rhetoric) for making a simple mistake in trusting an academic source.

Again, and I'll say it one last time for the record, I am profusely sorry to everyone on this forum for how I treated them. There was no excuse for it.

Bye.

I'm more than happy to be wrong. I am curious as to what structure you would argue is behind Suetonius', Tacitus', and Pliny's usages of the term. Pliny, I would argue (as I think Acts, 1 Peter, and Revelation are second century texts, especially Acts which I think uses Josephus) is the earliest source to use the term at all, and spells it Christian. Tacitus uses Chrestian, but then has Christus. Suetonius reverses this with Chrestus and Christian. I'm curious what the structure would be to the usage of them.

I would love to have good conversations with you, seriously would.
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Re: Tacitus an Interpolation: Detering Argument

Post by mlinssen »

Chris Hansen wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 10:17 am Yeah, I sarcastically respond to those who nonstop insult me (after I've apologized multiple times here for my behavior and am trying to make active attempts at bettering my tone and rhetoric) for making a simple mistake in trusting an academic source.

Again, and I'll say it one last time for the record, I am profusely sorry to everyone on this forum for how I treated them. There was no excuse for it.

Bye.

I'm more than happy to be wrong. I am curious as to what structure you would argue is behind Suetonius', Tacitus', and Pliny's usages of the term. Pliny, I would argue (as I think Acts, 1 Peter, and Revelation are second century texts, especially Acts which I think uses Josephus) is the earliest source to use the term at all, and spells it Christian. Tacitus uses Chrestian, but then has Christus. Suetonius reverses this with Chrestus and Christian. I'm curious what the structure would be to the usage of them.
Chris, I have no recollection at all of whatever you did or did not do on this forum (I joined about 2 years ago), so you can apologise for that all you want but it bears no relevance at all to the "p72 claim" by you which I refuted, which you subsequently ignored, after which I did start to be less friendly towards you in the hopes that such would pay off. And guess what?
Yet if you think the mistake is so simple, why is your behaviour about it so difficult? You make a mistake, you get notified of it, you say "sorry, my bad, thanks for that!" and move on.
Life is as complicated as you make it Chris, and accusing me of "nonstop insulting" you leans fairly heavily towards the complication side if you ask me

Secondly, I think it is very futile to have an opinion on opinions of someone else's opinions, and I don't want to bother with three Roman dudes when we have 3 Christian codices and an entire Nag Hammadi Library, the latter of which is filled with Chrestos-xyz to the rim.
It is evident that there was a Chrestian movement that preceded the Christian movement, even the Church Fathers attest to that. What is your point? That everyone is confused on that because e and i look so similar?
Then why is all of this an issue, if it's such a non-issue?
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