If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
spin
Posts: 2146
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 10:44 pm
Location: Nowhere

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by spin »

Sinouhe wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 11:26 pm
spin wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 6:47 pm
Sinouhe wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:15 pmIt seems obvious that one of the writer borrowed from the other.
I was arguing that the TT was dependent on Severus.
If SS was really independant from Tacitus, we should explain where does SS take his information about Neron being in Atium when the burning begin ? To my knowledge, it was only mentioned by Tacitus and SS
The TT is dependent on Severus and it was the TT that I was examining. Severus used Tacitus. (Someone knowing Severus may have been triggered reading Tacitus to wonder why the fire/Christians story was missing.)
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Irish1975 »

DCHindley wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 5:58 pm To me your struck-out words (I have them in brackets above) do not really improve my understanding of the existing text. Unfortunately, my Latin is practically non-existent (Oh ... I have dictionaries and a grammar and some lexicons, pretty basic).
I was trying to show how little of the content of the passage is specfically Christian. It could have been “baptized” in the 4th century or later, without difficulty.
That's not to deny that the original strikes me as chaotic and disjointed, which suggests to my shriveled old brain that a muddled revision history lay behind it.

My own opinion is that Nero singled out a generic group he called "christians" (or "those of the anointed one"), perhaps calling them that in jest of the unfortunate fact that they had been selected pretty much at random to be subjected to punishments as examples. But punished for what?
“flagitia”
“atrocia”
“pudenda”
“odium humani generis”

Whoever these people were, they had a repuation in Rome for some kind of abominations, i.e. abominable practices. How could that be a description of Christians, Pauline or otherwise? I don’t see how this reputation could attach to anything that we know, or even imagine, about 1st century Jews. But I suppose we could compare Tacitus’ surviving remarks on the Jews in the Histories. Maybe there’s something there.

However unwelcome, unconvincing, or obnoxious their public preaching might have been, I don’t see how that could provoke actual disgust and moral horror among Romans.
Are they just scapegoats? Or did the concept of "belonging to an anointed one" signify an anti-establishment messianic movement?
Tacitus thinks “Christus” is the proper name of a guy who initiated a superstitio. There’s no awareness in this passage the political concept of a Jewish messiah (much less the eschatological).
We know from the Sibylline Oracles that such anti-Roman propaganda predicting a new world order was known (well, at least in 3rd century CE form).
Do you know of evidence that such oracles could have provoked animosity or violence in Italy?
Last edited by Irish1975 on Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Giuseppe »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:22 amThere’s no awareness in this passage the political concept of a Jewish messiah (much less the eschatological).
Are you sure?

Josephus would say the same thing about the Fourth Philosophy: that it was originally repressed under the governor who crucified Judas the Galilean (please choose you the name of a such governor) - the so-called founder of the "sect" - , and then it became more important during the revolt of the 70 CE.
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Irish1975 »

I just don’t see it in the text, Giuseppe. Am I missing something?
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Giuseppe »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:29 am I just don’t see it in the text, Giuseppe. Am I missing something?
my point is that Josephus may say the same thing about the Fourth Philosophy: originally repressed, then it increased to a great extent.

So the pattern of "repression first, expansion after" fits well the history of the Zealot messianism according to Josephus. Why can't it fit the history of the Chrestiani according to Tacitus, too?
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Irish1975 »

But Josephus doesn’t “say the same thing” if it’s not something that Tacitus says. I don’t see the relevance of your appeal to Josephus.
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Irish1975 »

Hard to imagine a group accused of odium humani generis being perceived by Romans as a seditious political movement.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Giuseppe »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:40 am But Josephus doesn’t “say the same thing” if it’s not something that Tacitus says. I don’t see the relevance of your appeal to Josephus.
Where is the problem?

Josephus claims irrationally that Judas the Galilean was the "founder" of the Zealot movement.

Josephus describes the crucifixion of the two sons of Judas the Galilean.

Josephus describes the expansion of a such movement, and he insists even in War in this abstract claim, when he says that Menahem was the son (sic) of the 'founder', Judas the Galilean.


We can easily apply to the Fourth Philosophy the words of Tacitus on the Chrestiani, i.e. the pattern 'repression first, expansion after'.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by Giuseppe »

In addition, the same pattern is used by Claudius, in his epistle to Alexandrians:

Otherwise I will by all means take vengeance on them as fomenters of which is a general plague infecting the whole world

http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/claualex.html

Surely we agree at least that the "plague" is not the covid-19. :D
andrewcriddle
Posts: 2806
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:36 am

Re: If even Tacitus didn't mention Pilate in connection with Jesus...

Post by andrewcriddle »

Giuseppe wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:34 am
Chris Hansen wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:12 am Not really that surprising. Christ and Jesus became interchangeable as both proper names
The following quote from Anthony Barrett, Rome is Burning, has persuaded me that at least the reference to Pilate in the Testimonium Taciteum is probably an interpolation:


The way that the now famous Pontius Pilate is introduced raises suspicions; he is mentioned simply as “procurator” without any indication of the “province” for which he was responsible (Judea was strictly The Christians and the Great Fire speaking not a true provincia but administratively subordinate to the provincia of Syria). Pilate is, of course, a very familiar figure in the later Christian tradition as the governor of Judea at the time when the crucifixion occurred. But to a Roman readership in Tacitus’s day, he was not nearly well enough known to be mentioned without some prefatory information. One might explain that away by assuming that an earlier reference to his generally incompetent term of office was made in one of the lost books of the Annals that covered the latter years of Tiberius’s reign, when Pilate served (chapter 1). But a major role for Pilate in one of those now lost books seems very unlikely, given Tacitus’s almost flippant statement in his Histories about Judea at the time: “under Tiberius all was quiet” (sub Tiberio quies). Even the mere fact that Pilate’s term of office is mentioned as the context for the death of Christ comes as something of a surprise; it is a detail about Christ that would be of very little interest to a Roman but would have had considerable significance for a Christian reader.

More strikingly, Pilate is said to have held the rank of “procurator.” This is simply inaccurate. The term “procurator” for someone in an administrative position has a long history (it is attested well before the imperial period), but it was not used for the equestrian governors of quasi-provinces like Judea at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, that is, late in Tiberius’s reign (he died in AD 37).64 In fact, the designation of such governors as procurators was introduced by Claudius, thus after AD 41. The change apparently did not occur everywhere at the same time and seems to have prevailed only gradually.65 Before Claudius, equestrian governors like Pilate held the title of “prefect” (praefectus). We have explicit primary evidence that Pilate was no exception: on a building inscription found in the city of Caesarea in Judea he is unequivocally called a praefectus. 66 Thus, the allusion to Pilate’s office, an item already likely to be far more interesting to a Christian than to a pagan in the Rome of Tacitus’s day, adds to the mystery by committing a serious, and quite elementary, anachronism on a technical point. Tacitus is elsewhere quite punctilious in his use of such terminology and makes a careful distinction between procurators and prefects. He reports, for instance, that during the preparations for a major offensive against the Parthians in AD 63, letters were sent out to “tetrarchs, kings, prefects, procurators and praetors in charge of neighbouring provinces [sc. to Syria]” where a distinction is drawn between the procurators, that is, the governors of small “provinces,” and the prefect who commanded cohorts of troops established within some provinces.67 While it may be true that at times the phraseology and the concepts applied by Tacitus to an earlier era are more properly those of his own day (this certainly might be reasonably claimed about the language that he uses to describe the Christians),68 the error over Pontius Pilate’s office is of a different order, it is a basic historical blunder and, as such, very surprising indeed if made by Tacitus. If this passage is not by Tacitus but is rather a later interpolation, there may be a clue to how the error arose.
[...]
All of this adds weight to arguments that at least the specific reference to the “procurator Pontius Pilatus” could actually be an interpolation by someone very familiar with Christian writings.

(p. 158-161, my bold)
Tacitus says
But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called "Chrestians" by the populace.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, 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.
I think we are meant to infer from the origin of the Chrestians/Christians in Judea and from Pilates measures while procurator against them, that Pilate was procurator in Judea.

Andrew Criddle
Post Reply