Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

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John T
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by John T »

Let me see if I got this right. Because Tacitus may or may not have used the appropriate spelling for anointed, that proves Jesus did not exist?
Of course the spelling difference can not be attributed to scribal error or interpolation. Is that it?

Even so; Christus in Latin = Christos in Greek. Both are the word for anointed.

But hey, don't let common sense stand in the way of crackpot theories. :banghead:
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mlinssen
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Re: Tacitus Christus/Chrestus, Christianos/Chrestianos

Post by mlinssen »

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 1:13 pm
mlinssen wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:15 am
Ken Olson wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:16 am And I would agree with Kunigunde that the mention of Christ and Christians/Chrestians in Tacitus is probably authentic (i.e., I have not seen sufficient reason to doubt it).

Best,

Ken
I am inclined to agree given the fact that Chresto has remained unaltered.
My understanding, gathered from the secondary literature, is that the name or title is written Christus in Tacitus Annales 15.44, and the name of the group is written Christianos, but the latter appears to be a correction of Chrestianos which can still be seen faintly in the manuscript (MS plut 68.2).

Roger Pearse has a post about this from 2008, with a monochrome image of the word Christianos/Chrestianos (only):

https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/200 ... backtrack/

Since then, however, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana has put the the manuscript online here:

http://mss.bmlonline.it/s.aspx?Id=AWOIy ... sive#/book

I have not yet found the time to try to locate 15.44 in the manuscript. If anyone else wants to do so and post the page here, please feel free.

Best wishes,

Ken
You're a rockstar Ken!!!
Screenshot_20220809-234352_Chrome.jpg
Screenshot_20220809-234352_Chrome.jpg (1.09 MiB) Viewed 714 times
http://mss.bmlonline.it/s.aspx?Id=AWOIy ... ve#/oro/81

I'm on mobile as usual, it's tricky navigation and a small screen. I'll dig in tomorrow after work. But it is line 15 from the bottom:

gus Christianos appellabat ...
Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: Tacitus Christus/Chrestus, Christianos/Chrestianos

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 1:13 pm ... but the latter appears to be a correction of Chrestianos which can still be seen faintly in the manuscript (MS plut 68.2).

Roger Pearse has a post about this from 2008, with a monochrome image of the word Christianos/Chrestianos (only):
There is one more thing. The manuscript is written in Beneventana. The Beneventan script has a specific ligature for the combination of the letters "ri". One can observe this in the words "christus" and "Tyberio" as opposed to the corrected word "chrestianos".

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John T
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by John T »

I'm old enough to remember writing from ink wells. I had a teacher that said if you don't completely close your "o" in cursive it is a "c" and if you don't dot your "i" correctly it is a "l". Doesn't matter the intent of the word. Penmanship would get an "F" just as much as misspelling a word. It appears those English teachers are today's mythicists.

Sad, so sad.
ABuddhist
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by ABuddhist »

John T wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 1:45 pm Let me see if I got this right. Because Tacitus may or may not have used the appropriate spelling for anointed, that proves Jesus did not exist?
Such a claim, if made, would be easy to mock. But as far as I am aware, no one has made such an argument.

Does anyone else know whether any mythicist has made such an argument?
ABuddhist
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by ABuddhist »

John T wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:42 pm I'm old enough to remember writing from ink wells. I had a teacher that said if you don't completely close your "o" in cursive it is a "c" and if you don't dot your "i" correctly it is a "l". Doesn't matter the intent of the word. Penmanship would get an "F" just as much as misspelling a word. It appears those English teachers are today's mythicists.

Sad, so sad.
With all due respect, the difference between E/e and I/i is a lot greater than the difference between i and l or c and o. What I have read, though, is that in some forms of Latin, Chrest- and Christ- were pronounced identically, leading to confusion.

A similar process is why in French, Chrétien is the masculine form of "Christian" as noun, adjective or adverb.
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mlinssen
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Re: Tacitus Christus/Chrestus, Christianos/Chrestianos

Post by mlinssen »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:13 pm
Ken Olson wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 1:13 pm ... but the latter appears to be a correction of Chrestianos which can still be seen faintly in the manuscript (MS plut 68.2).

Roger Pearse has a post about this from 2008, with a monochrome image of the word Christianos/Chrestianos (only):
There is one more thing. The manuscript is written in Beneventana. The Beneventan script has a specific ligature for the combination of the letters "ri". One can observe this in the words "christus" and "Tyberio" as opposed to the corrected word "chrestianos".

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Oh Kunigunde!!!
LOL, that is conclusive evidence already - magnificent

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schillingklaus
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by schillingklaus »

An appropriate Latin word would be unctus, the etymological root of anointed. Christus is just one possible transliteration of the Greek. Tacitan authenticists are one hilarious bunch.
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mlinssen
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by mlinssen »

schillingklaus wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:44 pm An appropriate Latin word would be unctus, the etymological root of anointed. Christus is just one possible transliteration of the Greek. Tacitan authenticists are one hilarious bunch.
They couldn't have used that, they had to stick to the original Greek. Latin MSS are littered with literal IHS XPS (yes, exactly those literal letters!)

I am guessing that the anointed stories weren't incorporated by the Romans until well after 3-500. The dating game is a jungle
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Ken Olson
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Re: Adamczewski on the Testimonium Taciteum confirming the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum

Post by Ken Olson »

Giuseppe wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:26 am
Ken Olson wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:16 am But there I would contend that that material was Flavian propaganda from the time when Vespasian was campaigning to make himself emperor.
reporting that the enemies were divided in rival factions would seem a bit reductive, if your goal is to maximize the importance of the victory of Vespasian on the Jewish rebels. So I think that on this point Tacitus was probably based on Josephus.
This is an awfully thin basis for calling Tacitus' use of Josephus a fact.

First, you have presented no evidence that the initial hypothetical condition ('if your goal is ...') is true. Tacitus is not known for writing to build up the reputation of past emperors who had been dead for decades at the time he wrote (quite the contrary).

Second, the premise is at least mildly self contradictory. Tacitus could not have been simply lazily copying Josephus' account and inadvertently taken over something that went against his interest. Adamczewski posits that Tacitus brief (two line) summary in Histories 5.12.3-4 is dependent on three longer and widely separated passages in Book V of the Jewish War (B.J. 5.5-26, 71- 72, 98-105). This means that if Tacitus was using Josephus account, he must have combed through it looking for details about factional disputes to summarize:

Tacitus Histories 5.12.3-4:
The population at this time had been increased by streams of rabble that flowed in from the other captured cities,​41 for the most desperate rebels had taken refuge here, and consequently sedition was the more rife. There were three generals, three armies: the outermost and largest circuit of the walls was held by Simon, the middle of the city by John, and the temple was guarded by Eleazar.​42 John and Simon were strong in numbers and equipment, Eleazar had the advantage of position: between these three there was constant fighting, treachery, and arson, and a great store of grain was consumed. Then John got possession of the temple by sending a party, under pretence of offering sacrifice, to slay Eleazar and his troops. So the citizens were divided into two factions until, at the approach of the Romans, foreign war produced concord.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/ ... s/5A*.html


The first of the Josephan passages (BJ 5.5-26) describes the rivalry of Eleazar and John in 5..5-10, with Simon introduced in 5.11, the second (BJ 5.71-72) describes how the rivalries of the different (unspecified) parties was checked by the arrival of the Romans, and the third (BJ 98-105) describes how John's faction seized control of the temple and that Eleazar's partisans, who had taken refuge in the vaults, were allowed to leave.

Tacitus would have to have pulled out the names of the three commanders, omitting the names of the lesser sub-commanders given in Josephus' text, placed John's capture of the temple before the Roman arrival, rather than after, where Josephus had it, and implied that John's party had entered the temple to slay Eleazar and his troops, whereas Josephus says that Eleazar and his troops were allowed to depart once the temple was captured. Is it possible that Tacitus could have gotten the information which agrees with Josephus from Josephus and introduced the changes himself? Yes. Is there sufficient reason to conclude that is what happened? I think not.

Since we know from Josephus that others had written histories of the Jewish War before him (BJ 1.1-2), that he and others had access to the Commentaries of the commanders, Vespasian and Titus, (BJ 1.4.1/1.10, in which Josephus says the fact that the ruin of Jerusalem came about through civil strife and the actions of the Jewish tyrants is attested by Titus himself, Contra Apionem 1.56, Life 342, 358) and that Tacitus presumably knew Pliny the Elder's Continuation of the History of Aufidius Bassus (in Latin), covering the period from the end of Tiberius reign at least through Nero's (mentioned by the younger Pliny, Letters, 3.5) it is hardly necessary to suppose that Tacitus must have gotten his information from Josephus.

Best,

Ken
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