Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pilate

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pilate

Post by Giuseppe »

Nanine Charbonnel advances in p. 234-236 of her book a curious reconstruction of the origins that explains why the adorers of Jesus were called Christiani (despite of the seditionist origin of the term Christiani) and, as implicit corollary, why the Gospel Jesus had to placed under Pilate:

Il se peut aussi que les confusions herméneutiques se soient développees en liaison (voulue ou non voulue) avec l'activité réelle de personnages historiques de l'époque. Certains exégètes chrétiens d'ajourd'hui sont passés maîtres dans l'invention de scénarios pseudo-historiques. Il n'est pas interdit de s'inspirer de leur imagination pour lire autrement leur analyses. Ainsi un dominicain de l'Ecole française de Jérusalem se donne beaucoup de mal pour lire des vérités historiques sur les débuts du christianisme dans quelques lignes de Flavius Josèphe. Admettons avec lui que les fameuses lignes sur Jésus d'une part et sur Jean-Baptiste d'autre part soient authentiques, c'est-à-dire (selon notre exégète) écrites par Flavius Josèphe lui-même mais en fonction seulement de ce qu'il avait entendu à Rome à la fin du siècle. Cela pourrait, paradoxalement, nous ouvrir d'intéressants horizons sur l'imbrication entre des mouvements dus à des personnages historiques (des juifs messianiques, appelés “christianoi” c'est-à-dire messianiques, [3] à Rome du temps de Caligula, puis des mouvements baptistes comme celui de Jean-Baptiste (baptême au nom de Moise), duquel il faudrait rapprocher l'action de «Jacques, frère du Christ», lequel n'aurait, d'après notre dominicain, nul rapport encore non plus avec Jésus), et les mouvements dus à ce que nous appellerions la croyance à la réalité des personnages imaginaires des textes midrashiques que sont nos Evangiles.

Le baptême auquel Jean appelle, baptême de metanoia, de renversement, n'a peut-être de sens que dans une mise en scène du temps final. David Friedrich Strauss lui-même avait à ce sujet de fines remarques:

«Le baptême de Jean ne peut guère être regardé comme dérivant du baptême juif des prosélytes, baptême qui, sans doute, est postérieur aux commencements du christianisme. Il a plutôt de l'analogie avec les lustrations religieuses telles qu'elles existaient aussi parmi les Juifs, et surtout parmi les Esséniens. Il était principalement fondé, ce semble, sur les expressions figurées de plusieurs prophètes qui, dans la suite, furent prises au propre. D'après ces expressions, Dieu exige du peuple d'Israel, s'il veut rentrer en grâce, un bain et des ablutions qui enlèvent ses souillures, et il promet même de le purifier par l'eau (Isaïe 1, 16; Ezéchiel 36, 25; comparez Jérémie 2, 22). Ajoutons l'opinion qu'avaient les Juifs que le Messie et son règne n'arriveraient que lorsque les Israélites feraient pénitence [réf. au traité Sanhedrin], et nous verrons avec quelle facilité on a pu arriver à une combinaison d'idées d'après laquelle une ablution, image symbolique de la résipiscence et du pardon des péchés, devait précéder l'arrivée du Messie».

[David Friedrich Strauss, Vie de Jésus, ou examen critique de son histoire, 2° section, ch. I, § XLIV, trad. Littré, 1853, 2° P. t. I, pp. 365-366; c'est nous qui soulignons en gras.]

Nous pourrions alors voir (ce n'est plus notre dominicain qui parle) les choses se dérouler chronologiquement ainsi: des mouvements de juifs messianiques (dits christianoi, ce sont ceud dont parle Suétone) ont lieu à Rome sous Caligula (empereur de 37 à 41) et sous Claude (41 à 54); des mouvements de juifs baptistes prêchant un baptême de rémission des péchés se manifestent en Judée autour de Jean-Baptiste; des appels à un autre tupe de baptême, «au nom de Jésus», s'élaborent, dont celui des textes dits de Paul [si celui-ci a existé, Flavius Josèphe n'en parlant jamais]; et enfin l'invention du personnage Jésus-Christ dans des textes se développe après 70, mettant en scène la “mort” et la “résurrection” du peuple juif; après quoi on peut alors constater (et dans un contexte explicitement conquis par l'hellénisme) la croyance au caractère historique de ce qui était “annoncé-réalisé” dans ces textes.

The important note [3] reads:

«La difficulté se résout aisément en considérant l'origine du terme christiani, qui ne doit rien à Jésus: forgé par les Romains, ce terme désignait d'abord des Juifs messianisants fomentant des agitations au nom de la venue imminente de Christos, c'est-à-dire du Messie. C'est à Antioche que des disciples, entraînes dans divers tourbillons avec Barnabé et surtout Paul, ont reçu cette qualification, qui devait rester longtemps criminelle», Etienne Nodet, Baptême et résurrection. Le témoignage de Josèphe, p. 236.

So you have it:
  • 1) some time after 70 CE, the Christians were called CHRISTIANI, since they were confused by Roman authorities with the criminal Zealots (the true christiani).
  • 2) velim nolim, the Christians made their own the offensive label Christiani.
  • 3) when they wanted to place their Jesus in the real History, it was expected therefore from (1) and (2) that the Gospel Jesus had to be placed before the earliest occurrence of the label Christiani used by Romans for Jewish seditionists.
  • 4) since Suetonius talks about Christiani disturbing in Rome under Claudius (41-54) and earlier, under Caligula (37-41), then the Gospel Jesus had to be placed immediately before the reign of Caligula, i.e. under Tiberius. Pilate was the man of Tiberius in Judea (27-37).
Giuseppe
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

Even today, some confuse the seditionists called Christiani with the early Christians, the same confusion of identity made by the Roman authorities (Pliny the Younger for an example) who persecuted the Christians:

Eisenman probably more than about anyone has publicized the–for lack of a better term–Fourth Philosophy = Christ-movement argument in 1st CE. There have been other strong independent arguments as well, e.g. the little-known work of George Wesley Buchanan, The King and His Kingdom (1984), and Eric Laupot, “Tacitus’ Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans,” Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 54, no. 3 (2000), pp. 233–47 (which remains substantial despite criticism from Carrier).

Here is how this theory can be seen as compatible with the earlier deposit date of all of the literary texts in the caves of Qumran. The whole linchpin to everything is the dating and interpretation of the Damascus Document. Critical here is the article of Annette Steudel, “The Damascus Document (D) as a Rewriting of the Community Rule (S)” Revue de Qumrân 25/4 (2012): 605-620. Inverting traditional and prevailing views in Qumran scholarship, Steudel, along with Reinhard Kratz and a few others, convincingly show D is later than and rewrites from S, not vice versa. D is a late-composed text in the form in which it is known in the Qumran texts and Cairo Genizah, not early. I came to realize that the final composition of D is contemporary with the era of composition of the pesharim, and that this is all at the tail end of the Qumran texts, the final generation, the era of the Teacher vs. Liar conflict so central to the world of these texts, late 1st BCE.

The whole key is the Teacher is Hyrcanus II, and the Liar is Herod, and the Qumran texts end–the entire deposits of all of the literary texts in the caves of Qumran–on that note. The texts, deposited at a former Hyrcanus II site (Qumran being essentially an outpost of and controlled from the Palaces at Jericho), now with the entire Hasmonean dynasty nearly exterminated by Herod according to Josephus, end in that context and on that note, with D holding out only a forlorn hope that “in forty years” (i.e. not imminent) a Messiah of Aaron and Israel will arise.

But what happened after that? Hyrcanus II, or the 1st BCE Teacher revered high-priestly figure at the close of the texts whoever he may be, was not violent in the sicarii-terrorist sense that Josephus calls the Fourth Philosophy and attributes in origin to Judah of Galilee. And yet the world of D, the world of the Teacher’s circles of the Qumran texts, is a world in which the high-priestly figure, the Teacher, is explicitly not the Davidic violent warrior messiah which is foreseen to arise–an emphasis and ideological development which it is fairly mainstream scholarship reflected in a number of studies to reconstruct as having arisen and taken root starting ca. the second half of 1st BCE or ca. the time of Herod, very plausibly in response to and in opposition to Herod as its originating context.

Compare: D opposed to Herod, with the hope in the world of D and the pesharim for a distinct Davidic warrior messiah to come, as the closing note of the Qumran texts as those texts end ca. end of the 1st century BCE. Militant Davidic messianism, which is arguably what Jewish-, as distinguished from Pauline, Christianity may have been other language for, in this way could represent development from and be in continuity from the end of the Qumran texts in the time of Herod. It would be post-Qumran texts’ development of Davidic messianism into–so to speak–radical al-Christiani terrorism in Judea, as the then-civilized Western world would have viewed it, and did if the Tacitus passage is genuine. This is the Eisenman and Laupot argument cut to essentials, though argued in different ways. In this line of argument the Fourth Philosophy, militant davidic messianism, 1st CE Jewish liberation movement activity in its various forms, the Nazorean movement, the Dagger-Men and other names by which such activity became known, could be the rest of the story, the postscript, the “what happened after that”, after the lights went out in the Qumran texts according to a long-overdue correction in the dating of the Qumran text deposits.

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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

That confusion (pacific Christians == rebel Christiani) would have been relegated to a marginal note in Acts 11:26:

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

...were it not that precisely that confusion of identity forced the Christians themselves to place their invented hero before the earliest reporting of the rioters called Christiani by the Romans: under Pilate.

ADDENDA: I hope I have made clear that Charbonnel is mythicist even if she is using partially the same point advanced first by the historicist Eric Laupot on a confusion happened historically between rebel Christiani and pacific Christians.
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

Mythicist Albert Kalthoff joins Nanine Charbonnel in the idea that the attention of the Roman authorities about this "new" sect, confused by them as a branch of the same criminal Christiani, obliged the adorers of Jesus to an apology, of which part and parcel was the Christian co-optation of the rumors about the criminal Christiani, the fabricated Gospel Jesus being not coincidentially placed more or less in the time when the presumed founder of the Christiani (i.e. Judas the Galilean) was crucified, i.e., under Pilate.

There were Messianic agitations and pretenders to the dignity crucified every year among the Jews. We need only point out that this individual experience is isolated from that of the community, yet subordinated to it and substituted for it. However many Jews and slaves were put to death on the cross, the crucified Christ of the New Testament is not a single one of their number. He is the ideal connecting link of them all in the crucifixion of the Christian community, and it is very probable that this experience has its historical background and Biblical conclusion in the persecution under Trajan. In the Neronian persecution the civic position of the Christians in the Roman Empire hardly calls for con- sideration. We have in it only the brutal act of a half-demented ruler, the vagueness of all current information about the Christian community making it easy for popular fury to be turned on them. Even under Domitian the idea of the Christians is so vague that they cannot be distinguished from the Jews. A regular judicial procedure against the Christians, such as is assumed in the Gospels (Matt. X. 18-20; Mark xiii. 11 and 12 ; Luke xxi. 12-14), only begins under Trajan, when the Christians first become confident that persecution will not destroy but ennoble them — that, in other words, death will be followed by resurrection.

Then the apologists begin their literary defence against the heathens. There must have been a definite attack before there could be a defence.

(The rise of Christianity, p. 40, my bold)
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by MrMacSon »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:23 am Nanine Charbonnel advances in p. 234-236 of her book a curious reconstruction of the origins that explains why the adorers of Jesus were called Christiani (despite of the seditionist origin of the term Christiani) and, as implicit corollary, why the Gospel Jesus had to placed under Pilate:
English translation via Mircrosoft Edge



It may also be that the hermeneutical confusions developed in connection (intended or unwanted) with the actual activity of historical figures of the time. Some Christian exegetes of today are masters in the invention of pseudo-historical scenarios. It is not forbidden to draw inspiration from their imagination to read their analyses differently. Thus a Dominican of the French School of Jerusalem goes to great lengths to read historical truths about the beginnings of Christianity in a few lines of Flavius Josephus. Let us admit with him that the famous lines on Jesus on the one hand and on John the Baptist on the other hand are authentic, that is to say (according to our exegete) written by Flavius Josephus himself but only according to what he had heard in Rome at the end of the century. This could, paradoxically, open up interesting horizons on the interweaving between movements due to historical figures (Messianic Jews, called "christianoi" that is to say messianic, [3] in Rome in the time of Caligula, then Baptist movements such as that of John the Baptist (baptism in the name of Moses), to which we should bring closer the action of "James, brother of Christ", who would not have, according to our Dominican, there is still no relationship with Jesus either), and the movements due to what we would call the belief in the reality of the imaginary characters of the midrashic texts that are our Gospels.

The baptism to which John calls, baptism of metanoia, of reversal, perhaps has meaning only in a staging of the final time. David Friedrich Strauss himself had fine remarks about this:

"John's baptism can hardly be regarded as deriving from the Jewish baptism of the proselytes, a baptism which, no doubt, is later than the beginnings of Christianity. Rather, it has an analogy with religious lustrations as they also existed among the Jews, and especially among the Essenes. It was mainly based, it seems, on the figurative expressions of several prophets who, in the following, were taken literally. According to these expressions, God requires of the people of Israel, if they want to return to grace, a bath and ablutions that remove their defilements, and he even promises to purify them with water (Isaiah 1:16; Ezekiel 36:25; compare Jeremiah 2:22). Let us add the view of the Jews that the Messiah and his reign would only come about when the Israelites did penance [ref. to the Sanhedrin treatise], and we will see how easily a combination of ideas could be arrived at according to which an ablution, a symbolic image of respiteence and forgiveness of sins, was to precede the arrival of the Messiah."

[David Friedrich Strauss, Vie de Jésus, ou examen critique de son histoire, 2° section, ch. I, § XLIV, trad. Littré, 1853, 2° P. t. I, pp. 365-366; emphasis added.]

We could then see (it is no longer our Dominican who speaks) things unfold chronologically as follows: movements of Messianic Jews (called Christianoi, those* of which Suetonius speaks) take place in Rome under Caligula (emperor from 37 to 41) and under Claudius (41 to 54); movements of Baptist Jews preaching a baptism of remission of sins manifested themselves in Judea around John the Baptist; calls for another baptismal tupe,^ "in the name of Jesus", are elaborated, including that of the so-called texts of Paul [if this one existed, Flavius Josephus never speaks of it]; and finally the invention of the character Jesus Christ in texts develops after 70, staging the "death" and "resurrection" of the Jewish people; after which we can then see (and in a context explicitly conquered by Hellenism) the belief in the historical character of what was "announced-realized" in these texts.

* 'ceud' in Guiseppe's French text is likely supposed to be ceux

^ 'tupe' doesn't translate into English, either



The important note [3] reads:

"The difficulty is easily solved by considering the origin of the term christiani, which owes nothing to Jesus: coined by the Romans, this term first referred to messianizing Jews fomenting agitations in the name of the imminent coming of Christos, that is, of the Messiah. It was in Antioch that disciples, drawn into various whirlwinds with Barnabas and especially Paul, received this qualification, which was to remain criminal for a long time", Etienne Nodet, Baptism and Resurrection. Josephus' Testimony, 236.


Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:23 am
So you have it:
1) Some time after 70 CE, the Christians were called Christiani, since they were confused by Roman authorities with the criminal Zealots (the true christiani).

I wouldn't be so sure it was as simple as that.

Though this is an interesting proposal/proposition:
Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:23 am
3) ... the Gospel Jesus had to be placed before the earliest occurrence of the label Christiani used...for Jewish seditionists.

The term didn't have to have been applied by the Romans . . .
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:59 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:23 am
So you have it:
1) Some time after 70 CE, the Christians were called Christiani, since they were confused by Roman authorities with the criminal Zealots (the true christiani).

I wouldn't be so sure it was as simple as that.
If I remember well, Valliant advances a similar argument to explain why Pliny the Younger had to persecute the Christians despite of their pacifism: the reason is that they were confused with the criminal Christiani, by the time Pliny started the inquiry.

I should quote a Ken Olson's comment on this forum where he appeared to like the Valliant's reconstruction about this specific point.

The confusion between Christians and Christiani has the great merit to explain why the author of the first gospel placed Jesus precisely under Pilate: someway, he had ended to accept that Christiani and Christians were one and the same sect (by accepting de facto the exact false opinion of the Roman authorities about the Christians) and consequently he had dealt with the hearsay about Christiani how if it was hearsay about the Christians themselves.

If the Testimonium Taciteum is genuine, then it is even probable that Tacitus himself was one of the first Romans who confused the contemporary Christians with the criminal Christiani persecuted by Nero. Victim of this confusion between Christiani and Christians, Tacitus would have given Pilate as the name of the Roman governor who had punished Judas the Galilean (== the real founder of the sect of the Christiani, i.e. the Fourth Philosophy), believing wrongly that the latter was the Christus of the Christians.


The silence of the Fathers about the Testimonium Taciteum would find its natural explanation in their justified fear that the two distinct sects continued to be confused even in their time.

Hence, the great notice, at least for me, is that Charbonnel, Kalthoff, Laupot, Valliant, Nodet and Couchoud are saying the same thing: good Christians confused with evil Christiani. :cheers:
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

This is the Ken's post I mean (more precisely, the part by me put in yellow):
Ken Olson wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 3:05 am But underlying their major thesis Valliant and Fahy have another which I think has a lot going for it. They think that the Gentile-friendly Christian writings of the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels and Acts, is a later development from outside Judea and that the Jerusalem church led by James should be understood as a (solely) Jewish messianic movement which might best be interpreted in terms of the sectarian scrolls at Qumran and Josephus' descriptions of Jewish rebels in the Jewish War. I think they probably overstate the connection between messianism and eschatology with violence. Sometimes eschatology brings about violent revolution as the believers try to help God's plan along, but sometimes it encourages them to accept the status quo as they wait for God to bring about change. But I think Valliant and Fahy have seen the disconnect between early Jewish messianism and the Gentile-friendly movement that came to be called Christianity more clearly than most.

To bring this back to Suetonius, they point out that there is no good reason to associate the Jewish agitators in Rome under Claudius and the Christians punished by Nero (both before 70) with the later gentle or Gentile-friendly Jesus who advised turning the other cheek. They may well have been Jewish messianists engaged in rebellion, or at least agitation, against Roman authority.
There is no good reason to identify the two sects, sure, but when Pliny the Younger realized the difference, it was too late: the Romans had confused the two sects as one and the same.

Therefore the historical founder of the former had to be a contemporary of the invented founder of the other.
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

So James S. Valliant & C. W. Fahy (Creating Christ), even if they are entirely wrong when they think that a connection there was between Christiani and Christians, beyond the mere suspicions by the Roman authorities:

Whatever their exact dating, the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm what Josephus relates, at least to some extent: the messianic Jews of this period were militant, xenophobic purists and strict adherents of the Mosaic Law. If the so-called “sectarian” documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls are any indication, they were not at all the peace-seeking, cheek-turning, enemy-loving, taxpaying, Roman-appeasing Christians of the sort who could possibly follow the New Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm that they constituted a religio-political powder keg about to explode—and that they would certainly have opposed Christ’s central message in the Gospels. Today, these rebellious Jews are not normally called “Christians” even though they anticipated the arrival of a “christened” or “anointed” one (the Messiah or the Christ) to lead them in their holy war against Rome. To pagan Romans like Tacitus and Suetonius, who may have been ignorant of the finer distinctions between messianic Jewish groups, the term “Christian” may well have applied to messianic Jews as a whole. Suetonius’s confused mention of a Jewish “Chrestus” causing violence in Rome itself before 50 CE appears to confirm this conflation of terminology. The evidence suggests, therefore, that it was these messianic rebels and not Christians as we know them today who were martyred and persecuted by Romans during the first two centuries of the Common Era. There is ample evidence that the Romans crucified these followers of messianic Judaism by the thousands during this period. It is certain that they would refuse to acknowledge any Roman emperor as divine or in any way their master. The mystery of why Claudius and later Nero perceived these “Jewish-Christians” to be a military threat to Rome now makes perfect sense. They were not “Christians” as we understand the term today but violent insurgents. Quite unlike these dangerous “christians,” another type of Christian seems to have immediately embraced pagan images among their first symbols, along with the dramatic modifications of traditional Jewish law this required, as well as adopting an accommodating attitude toward Romans themselves.

...

The picture of Jesus’s followers portrayed in the New Testament makes it impossible to understand how the Romans could feel threatened by such mild and forgiving proponents of political peace. Indeed, they seem to be the fulfillment of a Roman wish-list for what messianic Jews in Rome would comprise. The conflation of these two groups, along with the marked contrast between them, makes it easy to see why Pliny the Younger was in a quandary over what to do with what might be called “New Testament” Christians, with whom he was dealing only a few decades after the first Jewish War. The rebellious “Jewish Christians,” as they can be designated, went to war with Rome one more time under Bar Kokhba in 132-136 CE (although violent disturbances started as early as 123 CE). They would continue to be a threat to the Roman Empire well after the first full-scale revolt. Throughout this time they were tortured and crucified in large numbers. The abundant evidence of their persecution by the Romans stands in stark contrast to the dearth of evidence that New Testament Christians were persecuted during Christianity’s first two centuries. This distinction between “Jewish Christians” and Gospel-adhering Christians has been convincingly argued by the scholar Robert Eisenman in his books, James the Brother of Jesus and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians. 33 Eisenman, one of the important translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls, demonstrates that the first group of messianic Jewish believers may indeed be identified as a rebel sect similar to if not identical in religion and politics with the well-known Jewish Zealot movement itself. Professor Eisenman argues that the so-called “sectarian” documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that is, those specific texts that detail the lifestyle and history of a purist Jewish sect normally identified as “Essenes,” are likely to have been authored by the same ideological movement that instigated the revolt against Rome in the 1 st Century.

(my bold)
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

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Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jul 14, 2022 11:13 pm
This is the Ken's post I mean (more precisely, the part by me put in yellow):
Ken Olson wrote:
To bring this back to Suetonius, they point out that there is no good reason to associate the Jewish agitators in Rome under Claudius and the Christians punished by Nero (both before 70) with the later gentle or Gentile-friendly Jesus who advised turning the other cheek. They may well have been Jewish messianists engaged in rebellion, or at least agitation, against Roman authority.

Well, then we can add Jewish messianists to followers of Serapis and/or Simon as those who might have been called Christians from the mid-first century to, say, the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
MrMacSon wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:45 pm
Giuseppe wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 8:42 am
... we have 'evidence' that at least for the source used by Suetonius who talked about the impulsore Chresto, the deity Jesus was already euhemerized as the agitator who provoked the troubles in Rome under Claudius.

[single quotation marks added by me, MrMac]


yeah, Nah. Who or what Suetonius' impulsore Chresto was is not certain. We know
  • followers of Serapis were likely to have been called 'Christians' from Hadrian's alleged letter to Servianus;* and
  • Simon, said to be a contemporary of Paul, and thus contemporaneous with Claudius, was also said to be called 'Christ'
    • Justin Martyr stated that the followers of Simon were called 'Christians': 1 Apology 26.6
    • Origen said that the only people who honoured Simon were 'Christians' (Contra Celsus 1.57)
    • other sources about Simonians

    ['Christian's and 'Christ' might well include 'Chrestians' and 'Chresto[s]'
And Nero punishing Jesus-following Christians is unlikely as a few people have argued cogently, eg. Brent Shaw, among others
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Re: Charbonnel joins Eric Laupot on the criminal origin of the label 'Christiani' as the reason of the dating under Pila

Post by Giuseppe »

Ken gives even more reason to think that the Christians were confused by the Roman authorities as the rebel Christiani, obliging so the author of the first gospel to place his invented Jesus' life in the same time the sect of the rebel Christiani was probably born: under Pilate.
Ken Olson wrote: Mon Jul 18, 2022 8:48 am My comment was more about the sect that came to be called Christians than about Jesus himself. Some of them may well have engaged in rebellion against in Rome, while perhaps others did not.
Here I am remembered also about the fragment 2 of Tacitus in Sulpicius's work.
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