Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

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Chrissy Hansen
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Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

Neil posted a new bit on Tacitus and Barrett's discussion of it (source here: https://vridar.org/2022/01/13/rome-burn ... ore-100775). One thing that I found rather curious was when Barrett said, "But there are oddities in this part of the Annals that are so serious that in the late nineteenth century the Christian episode was denounced in its entirety as an interpolation." This is something interesting to me, because I love doing historiographical research on things, especially just searching through English manuscripts from the 1600s. But what also clicked was that, I actually know that interpolation theories on Tacitus go back way further than the late 19th century.

So let's get down to this:
This man having seen a collection that a learned man had published in Holland, and in which he had amassed abundance of Testimonies of some Mahometan doctors, who make honourable mention of our Lord Jesus Christ, he confidently told one of his friends, that he believed all these passages were supposititious. His friend asking him upon what proofs he found such a bold decision, Vorstius answered, that there was so great a number of Christians in Arabia, Persia, and the Indies, that ‘twas very easy to conceive they had inserted these Eulogies of Jesus Christ in the books of the Mahometans. […] There is incredible stupidity and perverseness in this judgment of Vorstius; but he has many imitators among those who defend the same sentiments with him. I know certain persons who say the same thing of what Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger write of Jesus Christ and the Christians. Noel Aubert de Verze, the Ecebolus of our days, had the boldness to accuse the beginning of the Gospel of St. John as supposititious; and Grotius, as well as the Racovian Catechism, advanced that the word of God was not to be found in the Syriac version, at the fifth verse of the ninth chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, although ‘tis to be found in all copies both printed and manuscript of that version, without excepting so much as one. I know of a very learned man, who, in a book wrote to confirm the truth of the Christian religion, hath maintained that the Dialogue of Philopatris, attributed to Lucian, and printed among his works, was a piece forged by the Christians.
This is from Anonymous, “Historical and Critical Reflections on Mahometanism and Socinianism,” in Four Treatises concerning the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Mahometans. London: B. Lintott, 1712. pp. 196-197. I was made aware of this text by Justin Meggitt's article in NTS on mythicism and so I sought it out for more details. This means that by the 1700s reports of Tacitus' text being interpolated were already circulating.

I find it again being referenced as suspected of being a forgery in 1792 by James Hamilton, page 309 https://www.google.com/books/edition/St ... frontcover

Also here in 1791, it is labeled a forgery along with Pliny's correspondence with Trajan on Christians: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Th ... frontcover

Given it was already in debate in English literature in 1712, my bet is that it had been being debated much longer whether this passage was authentic.

As I am not particularly familiar with Early Modern High German, or Dutch, and the likes, I am rather limited to see how much farther back it goes though.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by GakuseiDon »

What do those who propose interpolations make of Tertullian's comment about Nero in his First Apology, which was addressed to the "rulers of the Roman Empire":
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ian01.html

Consult your histories; you will there find that Nero was the first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect, making profess then especially at Rome. But we glory in having our condemnation hallowed by the hostility of such a wretch. For any one who knows him, can understand that not except as being of singular excellence did anything bring on it Nero's condemnation...

His disciples also, spreading over the world, did as their Divine Master bade them; and after suffering greatly themselves from the persecutions of the Jews, and with no unwilling heart, as having faith undoubting in the truth, at last by Nero's cruel sword sowed the seed of Christian blood at Rome.

And later in the same text he refers to Tacitus, so that is an obvious source to which Tertullian is referring above:

For, like some others, you are under the delusion that our god is an ass's head. Cornelius Tacitus first put this notion into people's minds. In the fifth book of his histories, beginning the (narrative of the) Jewish war with an account of the origin of the nation

If there was no passage referring to Christians in Tacitus, then it suggests another source of histories which the rulers of Rome could consult to see that Nero assailed the Christian sect especially at Rome.
Last edited by GakuseiDon on Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Chrissy Hansen
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

One of them I know thinks the Histories were interpolated also, but most don't seem to comment on this.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by MrMacSon »

One of the earliest to question the authenticity of the Annals as having been written by someone other than Tacitus is said to be Voltaire.

The alleged earliest instances of doctoring of the manuscripts I'm aware of are

1. Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459)

2. Beatus Rhenanus, aka Beatus Bild, (1485—1547) who is said to have

“edited the works of Tertullian (1521, first printed edition) and of the historians Curtius Rufus (1518), Velleius Paterculus (1520, first printed edition), Procopius, Jordanes, and Agathias (1531), Tacitus (1533), and, in collaboration with Sigismund Gelenius, Livy (1535). Influenced by Tacitus’s study of German history and culture, Rhenanus in 1531 wrote the first extensive commentary on the origins and cultural achievements of Germanic peoples, Rerum Germanicarum libri tres ("Three Books on Germanic Matters)” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beatus-Rhenanus

and see, Walter Allen Jr (1937) 'Beatus Rhenanus, Editor of Tacitus and Livy' Speculum Vol. 12, No. 3; pp. 382-385


eta: The first publication of any part of the Annals of Tacitus is said to have been by Johannes de Spire, at Venice, in the year 1468


fwiw, Wikipedia has this about their discovery and early handling

Zanobi da Strada (who died in 1361) had probably...discovered Annals 11–16 at Monte Cassino where he lived for some time.[6][12] The copies of Annals at Monte Cassino were probably moved to Florence by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), a friend of da Strada, who is also credited with their discovery at Monte Cassino.[12][13][14] Regardless of whether the Monte Cassino manuscripts were moved to Florence by Boccaccio or da Strada, Boccaccio made use of the Annals when he wrote Commento di Dante c. 1374, giving an account of Seneca's death directly based on the Tacitean account in Annals book 15.[15][16] Francis Newton states that it is likely that Annals 11–16 were in Monte Cassino during the first half of the rule of Abbot Desiderius (1058–1087) who later became Pope Victor III.[17] Annals 1–6 were then independently discovered at Corvey Abbey in Germany in 1508 by Giovanni Angelo Arcimboldi, afterwards Archbishop of Milan, and were first published in Rome in 1515 by Beroaldus, by order of Pope Leo X, who afterwards deposited the manuscript in the Medicean Library in Florence.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(T ... thenticity

Last edited by MrMacSon on Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by MrMacSon »

Hochart, Polydore. De l’authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite. Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1890.

"A fascinating study of early work done on the Annals and Histories of Tacitus, beginning with the discovery of a key manuscript by Poggio [Bracciolini] and Niccolò Niccoli, extending through the identification of spurious passages, and concluding with the argument that the author of these passages was Poggio. Includes the texts of the letters cited in the discussion on pp. 239–317."

via https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/vi ... 1-0095.xml
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spin
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by spin »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:05 pm Hochart, Polydore.
Does Hochart know anything about Boccaccio having had possession of M.II seventy odd years before Bracciolini? :scratch:
Charles Wilson
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by Charles Wilson »

https://archive.org/details/tacitusandbracci09098gut

OK, OK, I've thought of starting a New Thread on Tacitus and a New Thread on Annals and have written nothing so...

1. When putting together all the material I saw years ago, esp. the material on Annals, I read the Wilson Critique just after studying Annals and the 12th Legion getting their asses handed to them by the Parthians. I immediately saw that, in Acts, "Aeneas" being a cripple for 8 years was a good Match for the 12th Legion being routed without even a fight in 62, staying in their tents as the Parthians butchered who they wanted and making slaves of the rest. I still see it that way.

If the Annals that was "found" in the 1500s was a forgery, however, it was a tougher slog to get where I was going.

Bill Thayer, whose Site I use a lot, answered a desperate E-Mail concerning Annals. He was quite certain that Annals was Real and from the hands of Tacitus. Modern Linguistic Analysis showed the there were telltales for this.

It certainly made my life easier.

2. The problem of Tacitus has been wrongly Analyzed, I believe. Tacitus - and Pliny the Younger - DID play a great role in the Construction of the NT...

...BUT...

It is NOT that Tacitus wrote/did not write about Christians/Chrestians/Whatever. His contributions were, I believe, of a different nature. I believe that Tacitus had his works - esp. Histories - used as a Template for the much of the NT. I also believe that some form of the "Empty Tomb Motif" came from his pen with Pliny the Younger. These two spoke at the Funeral of Verginius Rufus, who provided Real-World Material for the Empty Tomb Idea with events that came from the death of Otho and the Empty Tomb at Brixellum, combined with V. Rufus high-tailin' it out the back door when the soldiers came to declare him Emperor.

It is not that Tacitus had Interpolations added about Jesus. It appears that Tacitus and Pliny had no idea that this new savior-god material would be turned back on them!

There is a chance that their work was composed in total ignorance. Or perhaps it didn't occur to then that their own "honest work" would be inverted. In any event, it was edited to make it appear that they indeed wrote about this savior-god thing, however obliquely it might seem.

If the savior-god material is stripped out, does the remainder read as if it came the Historians' pens?

CW
Last edited by Charles Wilson on Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Sinouhe
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by Sinouhe »

spin wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:53 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:05 pm Hochart, Polydore.
Does Hochart know anything about Boccaccio having had possession of M.II seventy odd years before Bracciolini? :scratch:
Nouvelles considérations au sujet des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, Paris, Thorin et fils, 1894.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by neilgodfrey »

GakuseiDon wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:34 pm What do those who propose interpolations make of Tertullian's comment about Nero in his First Apology, which was addressed to the "rulers of the Roman Empire":
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ian01.html

Consult your histories; you will there find that Nero was the first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect, making profess then especially at Rome. But we glory in having our condemnation hallowed by the hostility of such a wretch. For any one who knows him, can understand that not except as being of singular excellence did anything bring on it Nero's condemnation...

His disciples also, spreading over the world, did as their Divine Master bade them; and after suffering greatly themselves from the persecutions of the Jews, and with no unwilling heart, as having faith undoubting in the truth, at last by Nero's cruel sword sowed the seed of Christian blood at Rome.

Hochart discusses the Tertullian testimony but I have not yet read it: https://archive.org/details/tudesausuje ... 0/mode/2up

Barrett does cover Tertullian's remarks in several places and cites several works of Barnes, two of which is available online: https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/299693 and https://archive.org/details/tertullianhistor0000barn
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Re: Tacitus, Annals 15.44 Interpolation Historiography

Post by Peter Kirby »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:55 pm One of the earliest to question the authenticity of the Annals as having been written by someone other than Tacitus is said to be Voltaire.

The alleged earliest instances of doctoring of the manuscripts I'm aware of are

1. Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459)
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:55 pm eta: The first publication of any part of the Annals of Tacitus is said to have been by Johannes de Spire, at Venice, in the year 1468
An interesting old discussion from Earl Doherty:

https://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/sh ... l?t=248025

https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/tacitus/
"The existence of such a consolidated edition is implied in Jerome's oft-quoted reference (Comm. ad Zach. 3, 14; = Migne, 25, 1522) to the triginta volumina (= libri) of the Tacitean 'vitae Caesarum'" (thirty books of a combined Annals + Histories)
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