Josephus Antiquities 20.200 on James: The scholars who doubt

[MrMacSon]

So the whole reason for doubting the veracity of his citation of Pliny goes down the tubes. He isn't a liar, he was just reliant on stories from Justin. At best, Justin is a liar. Justin does not reference Pliny though, so this means that Tertullian got his reference from elsewhere or made it up ...

... If Tertullian worked from the work of a scribe who was in Pliny's circle, it would probably increase the chances of him knowing another in that same circle... especially since we know Pliny and Tacitus were close friends, Pliny edited and corrected Tacitus' work and contributed information to it, and more. Of course, I could definitely be wrong here, but I fail to see where my argument is lacking cogency.

• That is all whataboutery

(which I disproved by reference to Justin)

• Yet you appeal to Tertullian citing Justin yet you say 'Justin does not reference Pliny"
  
  And appealing to Tertullian possibly working "from the work of a scribe' comes across as clutching at straws

[ABuddhist]

I don't see any good reason to think this letter is inauthentic or has been tampered with. I've read it and numerous other Roman documents of the time, and it seems just in keeping with the rest of Pliny's letters, particularly the rest of Book X.

What about the reference to temples' being nearly abandoned because of Christian activities? Such a reference suggests that most of the people in the region were Christian, and is to me the passage least likely to be authentic. Or was Pliny prone to exaggerations in that sort of way?

[Giuseppe]

I don't see any good reason to think this letter is inauthentic or has been tampered with. I've read it and numerous other Roman documents of the time, and it seems just in keeping with the rest of Pliny's letters, particularly the rest of Book X.

What about the reference to temples' being nearly abandoned because of Christian activities? Such a reference suggests that most o the people in the region were Christian, and is to me the passage least likely to be authentic.

good point.

As if paganism in its various forms (including misteric religions and mysticism) was not able at all to attract people in Bythinia.

[Sinouhe]

No, I'm asking a Christian forger to act as almost all Christian forgers do... by not being consistent with their target forgery.

So you're approaching this letter the wrong way:

- you think that ALL forgers are necessarily clumsy like the TF one.
- You don't take into account that if it is a forgery, then it was constructed from Tertullian, with the limitations that imposes.
- You consider for some reason that it must be a forgery from a Christian for apologetic purposes only. It could be a forgery for economic reasons, as was done during the Renaissance. This letter would only be there because Tertullian mentions it.

And I still do not understand what prevents you from seeing the traces of apologies coming from Tertullian and which are taken up and developed by the forger:

- Christians are innocent
- But the Romans execute them if they do not renounce their beliefs
- The temples were emptied and the whole region became predominantly Christian in 112.

If these are not obvious traces of apologies, then I don't know what they are.

I will add another element that I have not yet discussed here. Pliny seems to know very little about the Christians, their beliefs, how to sort them out, how to punish them:

I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no difference between the very young and the more mature; whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a Christian, it does him no good to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated with the name are to be punished.

Yet Pliny says that these same Christians this:

"they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and responsively sing a hymn to Christ as to a god"

What is Christ? Why curse him? How can Pliny, who seems to be very poorly informed about these Christians, speak of Christ as if he were a proper name? What is logical coming from Tertullian's pen becomes very incoherent under Pliny's pen. We find ourselves here as in the TF or in the Testimonium Taciteum with a text that presents Jesus under the name of Christ as if it were a proper name. This is true for a Christian, but not for Pliny, who does not even know how a Christian should be punished or distinguished. What is Christ? Why curse him? The fraud is still visible here. He assumes that this is a fact already taken for granted by everyone, while a few verses before he says that he is very poorly informed about these same Christians.Its author is primarily concerned with the Christian reader to whom he is addressing himself and does not think that the one holding the pen is a pagan addressing pagans.

This does not remotely explain why the letter is not at all worded like any other Christian forgery. My comparison to the TF and others showed this, and why the actions of Pliny and Trajan are not obviously insidious... your explanation is to just psychoanalyze your hypothetical forger as not wanting to "make an apology of Christianity" but "to write a letter" and that this forger "wants the forgery to be credible." I mean, if we can just psychoanalyze this hypothetical forger enough, it seems like your theory becomes unfalsifiable, and therefore, I don't see how it is particularly rigorous, because at this point any counterargument you just sum up to the psychology of this forger.

It's not psychoanalyze, just logic.
A forger has Tertullian in front of him and writes the letter to be consistent with what Tertullian says. Nothing more.

Being constrained by Tertullian does not mean that this author would not interject their own perspectives

He does. Tertullian says that the number of Christians frightened Pliny. The forger exaggerates the line and makes Bythinia a predominantly Christian region and the temples empty because of these same Christians.
Even Ken is forced to recognize here that Pliny is exaggerating and lying to the emperor. A strange logic which shows the weakness of the argumentation : why would Pliny go so far as to lie to the emperor in order to get rid of the innocent Christians who gather to sing their hymn and who do not commit any crime ?

and frankly why not just make Trajan and Pliny more obviously brutalistic toward Christianity and really drive home Tertullian's point? This letter does not do this remotely, to me.

Now that's psychoanalyze. Why should he exaggerate an official letter to Trajan that is already described by Tertullian ? Apart from the risk of losing credibility in his forgery, I don't see the point. The letter is sufficiently incriminating against the Romans : they persecute Christians and execute those who refuse to deny Jesus.

I fail to see anything in this letter that jumps out as "forgery" to me.

And me, I think that after having invented reports of Pilate, Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius concerning the Christians, Tertullian invented a letter between Pliny and Trajan to maintain the legend of the Christian martyrs.

Tertullien - Apologies V
Tiberius accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world, having himself received intelligence from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ's divinity, brought the matter before the senate, with his own decision in favour of Christ. The senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his proposal.

Tertullien - Apologies XXI
All these things Pilate did to Christ; and now in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reigning Cæsar, who was at the time Tiberius.

Tertullien - Apologies XXI
But among so many princes from that time to the present day, with anything of divine and human wisdom in them, point out a single persecutor of the Christian name. So far from that, we, on the contrary, bring before you one who was their protector, as you will see by examining the letters of Marcus Aurelius, that most grave of emperors, in which he bears his testimony that that Germanic drought was removed by the rains obtained through the prayers of the Christians who chanced to be fighting under him.

[andrewcriddle]

If the text is a forgery, the author is better at counterfeiting the attitudes of Christianity's opponents than other counterfeiters of which I'm aware (see the two examples at the end). If it's a forgery, the author is expecting the reader to do a lot more work to get to the desired conclusion than in those examples.

If the letter is a forgery, then it follows point by point what Tertullian says in his book. The same Tertullian who told us all sorts of lies about Pilate, Tiberius and the Roman Senate concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus (Tertullian : Apologies Livre V - Eusebius: Histoire ecclésiastique livre II)

And if it is a forgery, it is certainly a renaissance forgery, more sophisticated than what one could read in antiquity or in the Middle Ages. It is still a bad forgery in my opinion, for the reasons that Polydor Hochart explains in his book.

There is no explicit statement of Roman wickedness,

This is not what Tertullian tells us in his text. He himself condemns Pliny and Trajan:

O miserable deliverance — under the necessities of the case, a self-contradiction! It forbids them to be sought after as innocent, and it commands them to be punished as guilty. It is at once merciful and cruel; it passes by, and it punishes. Why do you play a game of evasion upon yourself, O Judgment? If you condemn, why do you not also inquire. If you do not inquire, why do you not also absolve?

Anyway, how could a letter forged in the name of Pliny or Pliny himself can say openly that the Romans are cruel ? I don't understand your logic. On the other hand, what I read (and what Tertullien read or invent) is that Christians are harmless and virtuous but that they are condemned to death if they do not renounce their faith in Christ. And that is cruel.

That Christianity spreads rapidly is common to all our sources, though I suppose it is possible to think all of our sources that say this (including Tacitus Annals 15.44) are the work of Christians.

I really don't think that Bythinia had become predominantly Christian by 112 and that the temples were empty because of Jesus. I really don't.
And yes, Tacitus' testimony on christians is also doubtful.

Two further points:

1) There very likely were people in Bithynia that could and did advise Pliny on how Christians had been handled previously. But he's writing to the emperor for *approval*, and only the emperor can give that.

This is not what I read in this letter :

I have never participated in trials of Christians. I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no difference between the very young and the more mature; whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a Christian, it does him no good to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated with the name are to be punished.

They are the words of a lost guy who does not know what to do, who does not know how to punish them, nor to distinguish them, they are the words of someone who is alone and whom nobody can advise. This is ridiculous coming from someone like Pliny who is a magistrate and a lawyer, one of the most famous Romans in the city, an adviser to Trajan who asks his opinion in legal matters, etc. etc.
It is also ridiculous because it implies that no one had ever had to deal with these matters in Bythinia when it is said that Christianity is the most important religion in the region and that it has even supplanted paganism. And I repeat myself but Pliny was friends with Maximus, an ancient a former quaestor of Bythinia (VIII:24).

2) Pliny has an interest in exaggerating both the extent of the problem he dealt with and the effectiveness of the measures he took in dealing with it. However, I think there is probably an underlying truth to what he says about the sacrifices, even if it's exaggerated. The people most likely to denounce Christians to the government are those who had had their livelihoods impacted by them, such as those who sold animals for sacrifice in the temples. Even if only a few of the householder class who paid for most of the sacrifices in the temples converted to Christianity that may have caused a serious reduction in income for the vendors.

What is the need to exaggerate the problem?
A new religion is spreading, it is known to Trajan (unless you consider that Trajan doesn't really know what Christians are and what they represent either). I don't see why Pliny should exaggerate the situation unless you consider him a dedicated enemy of the Christians. On the other hand, I understand very easily why a forger who knows Tertullian's text would exaggerate the dynamism of Christianity in Bythynia.
Besides, the fact that he describes the Christians to Trajan, their beliefs, the way they grouped themselves, etc., seems illogical if one assumes that the emperor knew the Christians and are a well known sect in the Empire. But again, if this is a forgery, then i understand why the author would presents the Christians in a beautiful light.

One of the reasons for this is that it's unlikely a forger would simply have placed letters 96 and 97 in Book X of Pliny and just waited for someone to stumble across them.

I rather think that the book X was entirely forged to be resold at a high price as it was very common at that time to create fake books of the antiquity. This would explain all the mysteries surrounding the discovery of the manuscript, its disappearance, the doubts surrounding this discovery, and the style of book X itself. Besides, no one had ever heard of a Book X before its discovery, Pliny's letters having always been considered as part of 9 books. The correspondence of the Christians would then be only an anecdotal element that would have been inspired by Tertullian. But not the primary purpose of the forgery.
Perhaps it was Tertullian's text that inspired the creation of a book of unpublished letters by Pliny. A whole book would have far more financial value and be far more believable than two lost letters concerning Christians in Bythinia.

That said, I don't see a smoking gun here. At least in my opinion, there isn't anything Pliny couldn't quite plausibly have said.

I think the opposite. Coming from a high magistrate of Rome, member of the senate, lawyer, adviser of the emperor in judicial affairs, this letter is really incoherent. But I guess we won't agree on that

Acts 5.33

If I imagine that it is a renaissance forgery, it is not very relevant to compare it with the Acts or Eusebius. Especially since the creativity of the forger is strongly limited by the text of Tertullian. And Tertullian is very clear: he makes Pliny a cruel being who condemns without reason the nice and innocent Christians. And I hope you will agree with me, in view of how he manipulates history with Pilate, Tiberius and the senate, it would not be surprising if Tertullian invented a story of a letter from Pliny to Trajan to present Christians under a good day and the Roman Emperor with Pliny as the villains.

I doubt if a renaissance forgery of the entirety of Book X is possible. see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8847&p=131327#p131327

Andrew Criddle

[perseusomega9]

I find it interesting that letter 96 has no specific time and place to it and just happens to fall between two other letters that are at opposite ends of Pliny territory.

[andrewcriddle]

I find it interesting that letter 96 has no specific time and place to it and just happens to fall between two other letters that are at opposite ends of Pliny territory.

letter 92 and letter 98 both refer to Paphlagonia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paphlagon ... ements.jpg
letter 94 is about a personal friend back in Rome.

Andrew Criddle

[DCHindley]

I find it interesting that letter 96 has no specific time and place to it and just happens to fall between two other letters that are at opposite ends of Pliny territory.

I think that both D Trobisch (First Edition of the NT) and H Gamble (Books and Readers in the Early Church) discuss how the elite classes edited their books for "publication" (that is, release into the public domain). At least one Roman writer explained how they edited their own letters, explaining they removed any material that was not to point ("Oh, yeah, I finally had My slave Erastus - yes it's made up - paint the southern wall") or "correct" their grammar and/or improve the style.

I am not at all sure that the earliest Christians were from anywhere close to that kind of status (much less means), so we might reasonably assume that the persons who edited the NT books for publication may not have had the ability or means to do that sort of thing in the way a man of the elite classes would.

Trobisch thinks that Rom, 1 & 2 Cor and Galatians were edited by Paul himself. The other books were from alternate collections (with duplications - if any - ignored), which T thinks were two, Eph-2 Thes was one such collection and the letters to individuals were from another collection. These were also edited by their earliest writers or readers before they made it into the Pauline corpus as we know it. See T.'s earlier Paul's Letter Collection if you have not already.

In theory, the NT letters and gospels could have gone through more than one redactional/editorial stage even before Polycarp (or whoever) published the collections we have today (almost always grouped as Four Gospels, Pauline corpus, Acts & General Epistles, and the Revelation).

Anyhow, the order of letters can be done several ways: Length, Chronological sequence as perceived by the editor, Subject, its Status within the editor/publisher's circle of readers, order encountered by the editor who published, etc.). Perhaps Pliny X.96-97 were just not in chronological order. The letters of Plato and certain Dialogues are were published in a couple different orders.

That 99% of all 1st-2nd century manuscripts are forever lost, the few that by pure chance remain may not be recognized as valuable by copyists, and was probably copied as practice for monks and professional scribes. The realization that a particular manuscript was significant, seems to have occurred in the late medieval period.

Just my 2 cents. DCH

[Chrissy Hansen]

I don't see any good reason to think this letter is inauthentic or has been tampered with. I've read it and numerous other Roman documents of the time, and it seems just in keeping with the rest of Pliny's letters, particularly the rest of Book X.

What about the reference to temples' being nearly abandoned because of Christian activities? Such a reference suggests that most o the people in the region were Christian, and is to me the passage least likely to be authentic. Or was Pliny prone to exaggerations in that sort of way?

I firstly think it a major exaggeration on Pliny's part, something he does do in his letters elsewhere, and secondly don't think that the passage can be taken to mean that all the region was suffering from Christianity. It also seems to me that much of the disuse of the temples and festivals may have nothing to do with Christians at all, but that the accusation of "Christianity" was used against non-practitioners in general, hence why Trajan and Pliny have taken to disavowing hearsay as a basis for criminal prosecution. Hence Trajan replies: "But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution." It appears that the disuse and losses were not entirely a result of Christianity, but probably several factors, of which accusations of Christianity began being levied as an explanation, as it was a superstitious cult that violated the Imperial code.

Even Ken is forced to recognize here that Pliny is exaggerating and lying to the emperor. A strange logic which shows the weakness of the argumentation : why would Pliny go so far as to lie to the emperor in order to get rid of the innocent Christians who gather to sing their hymn and who do not commit any crime ?

They did commit a crime... they didn't worship at temple. Hence why they are being punished. It was a crime not to worship the Roman gods at the Temple. Pliny never once declares Christians innocent. He reports that the Christians proclaimed themselves innocent, but he declares them guilty of violating Roman law and therefore deserving of punishment, which Trajan agrees with.

What is Christ? Why curse him? How can Pliny, who seems to be very poorly informed about these Christians, speak of Christ as if he were a proper name?

Well, if you read earlier in the letter, he claims to have interrogated Christians:

Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have followed the following procedure: I interrogated them as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment

Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses.

So, he gained information from torturing and interrogating Christians. Hence, he can talk of Christ and all of this, and would use "Christ" as a name, as Christians had been doing for ages.

The forger exaggerates the line and makes Bythinia a predominantly Christian region and the temples empty because of these same Christians.

No he doesn't. That is you exaggerating the temple and festival line, which never declares the whole region predominantly Christian but only that temple and festival practices had fallen into disuse, and assuming that Pliny is incapable of exaggeration himself... even though he regularly overinflates his import and events in his letters.

And me, I think that after having invented reports of Pilate, Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius concerning the Christians, Tertullian invented a letter between Pliny and Trajan to maintain the legend of the Christian martyrs.

He didn't invent those. Those were in circulation before Tertullian was writing. Again, I pointed out that Justin Martyr said the same things. You seem to really want to impart dishonesty to Christian authors for no apparent reason. Tertullian is just repeating something in common circulation. He isn't lying or inventing anything. And therefore, this does not impugn his reference to Pliny.

[Ken Olson]

I think that both D Trobisch (First Edition of the NT) and H Gamble (Books and Readers in the Early Church) discuss how the elite classes edited their books for "publication" (that is, release into the public domain). At least one Roman writer explained how they edited their own letters, explaining they removed any material that was not to point ("Oh, yeah, I finally had My slave Erastus - yes it's made up - paint the southern wall") or "correct" their grammar and/or improve the style.

[Snipped]

Anyhow, the order of letters can be done several ways: Length, Chronological sequence as perceived by the editor, Subject, its Status within the editor/publisher's circle of readers, order encountered by the editor who published, etc.). Perhaps Pliny X.96-97 were just not in chronological order. The letters of Plato and certain Dialogues are were published in a couple different orders.

That 99% of all 1st-2nd century manuscripts are forever lost, the few that by pure chance remain may not be recognized as valuable by copyists, and was probably copied as practice for monks and professional scribes. The realization that a particular manuscript was significant, seems to have occurred in the late medieval period.

Thanks, David.

Here's what Pliny says in the first letter of the collection, which serves as a prologue:

Gaius Pliny sends greetings to his friend Septicius Clarus

On numerous occasions you have urged me to assemble and to pub-
lish such letters as I had composed with some care. I have now
assembled them without maintaining chronological sequence, for I
was not compiling a history, but as each happened to come to hand.
What remains is that you should not repent of your advice, nor I
of obeying you. On that assumption I shall seek out those still lying
neglected, and I shall not expunge any which I intend to add to the
collection in future. Farewell.

(Pliny, Letters 1.1, Walsh translation)

Best,

Ken