Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Is Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44 Authentic or Corrupt?

Recent threads in this forum indicate a mixed opinion on the authenticity of the Christian reference in Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44. IMO it represents an interpolation undertaken as late as the 14th/15th/16th century.

The chief fact supporting this provisional conclusion is that not one author cites Tacitus for this reference until the "discovery" of the manuscript in the archives of the 16th century church. The arguments against its authenticity put forward by Arthur Drews (see link below) I find reasonable.


Is Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44 Authentic or Corrupt?
Summary of sources


Ancient Sources____________________________________
115 - Tacitus, "Annals" 15:44
122 - Suetonius, "Lives", Nero, 16:
192 - Tertullian, "Apology" 5:
324 - Eusebius of Caesarea, "Historia Ecclesiastica" 2.25
325 - Lactantius, "On the Manner in which the Persecutors Died"", Chapter 2
4th - Seneca to Paul, Letter 12: "Dear Paul, How goeth the church industry? Your good buddy, Seneca"
403 - Sulpicius Severus, "Chronicle" 2.29.1-4a: "phrases and even sentences from many classical authors are interwoven here and there"
??? - Jerome, Orosius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Cassiodorus.

Middle Age Sources____________________________________
1071 - Oldest manuscript (Annals 15:44) dated palaeographically: Second Medicean manuscript, Benedictine abbey, Monte Cassino, using the Beneventan script
1513 - John de Medici (Pope Leo X) increases the price of rewards to persons who procured new MS. copies of ancient Greek and Roman works
1514 - Angelo Arcomboldi, Pope Leo X's "Thesaurum Quaestor Pontificius" ("steward", "receiver", or "collector") discovers the manuscripts of Annals 1-6
1515 - Publication of Annals 1-6 by Beroaldus in Rome
1559 - Index Librorum Prohibitorum
16th - Last known exemplars authored using the Beneventan script

Modern Sources____________________________________
1878 - John Wilson Ross, "Tacitus and Bracciolini: The Annals Forged in the 15th Century" (Ross disputes the Annals in its entirety but accepts the History)
1885 - Polydore Hochart "Études au sujet de la persécution des Chrétiens sous Néron"
1890 - Polydore Hochart "De l'authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite" (Hochart questions both the Annals and the History)
1902 - Georg Andresen commented on the "Chrestians"
1910 - W.B. Smith's "The Silence of Josephus and Tacitus", largely duplicated in "Ecce Deus"
1912 - Arthur Drews, "The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus" summarising Hochart: middle age forgery
1913 - W.B. Smith's "Ecce Deus" (Smith questions only the genuineness of the passage in the Annals about "Christus" and "Christians")
1947 - Arnaldo Momigliano, "The First Political Commentary on Tacitus"
2014 - Richard Carrier "The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44"

The detail sources (and links) behind the above summaries are listed and discussed:
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/author_Tacitus.htm
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Is the Pliny/Trajan letter exchange (Letters 10.96; 10.97) authentic or corrupt?

My position at the moment is that this letter exchange is a further instance of forgery by the church and is inauthentic. Out of many, the best arguments for inauthenticity IMO are outlined in articles written Professor Darrell Doughty and Enrico Tuccinardi (links below)

Timeline

Ancient Sources____________________________________

111 - Pliny Trajan "Letter Exchange": Pliny, Letters 10.96; Trajan in Pliny, Letters 10.97
192 - Tertullian of Carthage: "Apology for the Christians", Chapter 2
324 - Eusebius, "Church History", Book 3, Chapter XXXIII — Trajan forbids the Christians to be sought after.
390 - Jerome, "Interpret. Chron. Eus." Ann. 2121
417 - Paulus Orosius, "Historiae Adversus Paganos" 7.12
484 - Sidonius Apollinaris finds a nine-book manuscript; knew nothing of the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.


Middle Age Sources____________________________________
1498 - Father Giovanni Giocondo published (in Italian) Pliny's Epistles in Bologna
1499 - Father Giovanni Giocondo of Verona discovered a minuscule manuscript [P] and made a copy (I) of the ten books of Pliny's Letters.
1508 - Aldus Manutius, the publisher, uses copy (I) for his edition of the Letters.
1508 - No trace of P has ever come to light since the publication of the edition of Aldus. It was "lost".


Modern Sources____________________________________
1955 - The Basis of the Text in Book X of Pliny's Letters; S. E. Stout
1958 - The Origin of the Ten-Book Family of Pliny Manuscripts; S. E. Stout
2005 - Notes on Pliny-Trajan letters, Professor Darrell Doughty

Details for the above can be located here:
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/autho ... Trajan.htm

Additionally there is another relevant article as follows:

An application of a profile-based method for authorship verification: Investigating the authenticity of Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan concerning the Christians

by Enrico Tuccinardi

ABSTRACT

Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan regarding the Christians is a crucial subject for the studies on early Christianity. A serious quarrel among scholars concerning its genuineness arose between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th; per contra, Plinian authorship has not been seriously questioned in the last few decades. After analysing various kinds of internal and external evidence in favour of and against the authenticity of the letter, a modern stylometric method is applied in order to examine whether internal linguistic evidence allows one to definitely settle the debate.The findings of this analysis tend to contradict received opinion among modern scholars, affirming the authenticity of Pliny’s letter, and suggest instead the presence of large amounts of interpolation inside the text of the letter, since its stylistic behaviour appears highly different from that of the rest of Book X.

User avatar
GakuseiDon
Posts: 2295
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 5:10 pm

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by GakuseiDon »

Leucius Charinus wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:36 pm Is Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44 Authentic or Corrupt?

Recent threads in this forum indicate a mixed opinion on the authenticity of the Christian reference in Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44. IMO it represents an interpolation undertaken as late as the 14th/15th/16th century.

The chief fact supporting this provisional conclusion is that not one author cites Tacitus for this reference until the "discovery" of the manuscript in the archives of the 16th century church.
There is a hint in Tertullian's First Apology:
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...

Tertullian is probably referring to either the works of Tacitus or Suetonius or both when he asks the pagans to "consult your histories". Since he refers to the works of Tacitus a couple of times in the same apology (e.g. "in the fifth book of his [Tacitus'] histories"), arguably he might well be aware of Tacitus's passage on Nero persecuting Christians (if it existed at that time).

If you believe that Eusebius or any other 4th C author was the author of Tertullian's work, what do you think the author meant by asking pagans to "consult your histories" with respect to Nero persecuting the Christians?
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by Leucius Charinus »

GakuseiDon wrote: Thu Sep 22, 2022 9:44 pm
Leucius Charinus wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:36 pm Is Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44 Authentic or Corrupt?

Recent threads in this forum indicate a mixed opinion on the authenticity of the Christian reference in Tacitus' "Annals" 15:44. IMO it represents an interpolation undertaken as late as the 14th/15th/16th century.

The chief fact supporting this provisional conclusion is that not one author cites Tacitus for this reference until the "discovery" of the manuscript in the archives of the 16th century church.
There is a hint in Tertullian's First Apology:
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...
Eusebius cites Tertullian in Historia Ecclesiastica 2.25:

The Persecution under Nero in which Paul and Peter were honored at Rome with Martyrdom in Behalf of Religion.:

When the government of Nero was now firmly established, he began to plunge into unholy pursuits, and armed himself even against the religion of the God of the universe. To describe the greatness of his depravity does not lie within the plan of the present work. As there are many indeed that have recorded his history in most accurate narratives, every one may at his pleasure learn from them the coarseness of the man’s extraordinary madness, under the influence of which, after he had accomplished the destruction of so many myriads without any reason, he ran into such blood-guiltiness that he did not spare even his nearest relatives and dearest friends, but destroyed his mother and his brothers and his wife, with very many others of his own family as he would private and public enemies, with various kinds of deaths. But with all these things this particular in the catalogue of his crimes was still wanting, that he was the first of the emperors who showed himself an enemy of the divine religion.

The Roman Tertullian is likewise a witness of this. He writes [Tertullian, Apol. V.] as follows:
  • “Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine, particularly then when after subduing all the east, he exercised his cruelty against all at Rome. We glory in having such a man the leader in our punishment. For whoever knows him can understand that nothing was condemned by Nero unless it was something of great excellence.”
Thus publicly announcing himself as the first among God’s chief enemies, he was led on to the slaughter of the apostles. It is, therefore, recorded that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself, and that Peter likewise was crucified under Nero. This account of Peter and Paul is substantiated by the fact that their names are preserved in the cemeteries of that place even to the present day. It is confirmed likewise by Caius, a member of the Church, who arose under Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome. He, in a published disputation with Proclus, the leader of the Phrygian heresy, speaks as follows concerning the places where the sacred corpses of the aforesaid apostles are laid: “But I can show the trophies of the apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian way, you will find the trophies of those who laid the foundations of this church.” And that they both suffered martyrdom at the same time is stated by Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, in his epistle to the Romans, in the following words: “You have thus by such an admonition bound together the planting of Peter and of Paul at Rome and Corinth. For both of them planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyrdom at the same time. I have quoted these things in order that the truth of the history might be still more confirmed.”

From this it seems clear to me atm (also see comments below) that both Tertullian and Eusebius were not referring to any general persecution of the Christians by Nero but rather the death of the chief apostles Peter and Paul in Rome.

This is IMO very important to understand because there is no mention of the death of Peter and Paul in the NT canonical literature.
Tertullian is probably referring to either the works of Tacitus or Suetonius or both when he asks the pagans to "consult your histories". Since he refers to the works of Tacitus a couple of times in the same apology (e.g. "in the fifth book of his [Tacitus'] histories"), arguably he might well be aware of Tacitus's passage on Nero persecuting Christians (if it existed at that time).
I find the following from WB Smith substantiates the idea that Tertullian is not referring to the history of Tacitus but rather the "history" of the deaths of Peter and Paul.

W.B. Smith's "Ecce Deus": STUDIES OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/autho ... s.htm#1006

(Smith questions only the genuineness of the passage in the Annals about "Christus" and "Christians")

THE SILENCE OF TACITUS p.243

But even Tertullian reveals no notion of such a Neronian persecution as we read of in Tacitus. Yet he was acquainted with this historian, whose Histories he cites at length, on whose name he puns, whom he cordially hates for defaming the Jews. Had he read of Nero's burning the Christians alive, would he have used such vague and commonplace imagery as "raged with Caesarean sword" and "through Nero's cruelty they sowed Christian blood"? Remember that Tertullian was a rhetorician to his fingertips. Would he have neglected such an exceptional opportunity for the display of his thrice-favourite art? It seems needless to discuss still later testimony, as that of Lactantius (De mort, persec, 2), of Origen (Eus., H. E,, ni, i), of Eusebius {H. E., H, 25), and of Jerome.

These late writers have at last learned, after two centuries or more of ignorance, that Peter and Paul fell victims to Neronian fury ; but they still have no idea that Nero falsely accused the Christians of setting the city on fire, nor do they hint that a "vast multitude" lit up the Roman night with the flames of their burning bodies. Not until the fourth century, in Ep. 12 of the forged correspondence of Paul and Seneca, do we read that " Christians and Jews, as if contrivers of (a) conflagration, when put to death are wont to be burned." But even here the allusion, if there be any, to the Neronian persecution is extremely vague."

If you believe that Eusebius or any other 4th C author was the author of Tertullian's work, what do you think the author meant by asking pagans to "consult your histories" with respect to Nero persecuting the Christians?
Let's approach my answer to these two questions in the opposite order.

(1) what do you think the author meant by asking pagans to "consult your histories" with respect to Nero persecuting the Christians?

Irrespective of any involvement with Eusebius ...

I think (as does W.B. Smith above) that this refers to "The Acts of Peter" (and other NT apocryphal texts) which provide information on the death of Peter and Paul in Rome during the rule of Nero. The big problem with this is that nobody really knows who wrote the Acts of Peter and WHEN it was written. If we were to consult our "histories" we would find that it is Tertullian (this time it is not Irenaeus) who is used to provide a terminus ad quem for the author of the Acts of Paul, and consequently then, by association, a chronological marker for the same author of the Acts of Peter .

Biblical scholarship seems to be comfortable with the fact that The Acts of John, The Acts of Peter, The Acts of Paul, The Acts of Andrew, The Acts of Thomas (and possibly others as well) were authored by the one author. This author eventually named "Leucius" in the 4th and 5th centuries and finally (via Photius) named "Leucius Charinus" in the 9th century. The original reference in Tertullian provides no name for the author. Here is what Glenn Davis writes about the Acts of Paul:

The Acts of Paul (Asia Minor, 185-195 CE) is a romance that makes arbitrary use of the canonical Acts and the Pauline Epistles. Many manuscripts have survived, there is an English translation in [Schneemelcher] v. 2 pp. 237-265, but there is not yet a critical edition. The canon list in the 6th century codex Claromontanus includes it with an indication that it contains 3560 lines, somewhat longer than the canonical Acts with 2600 lines. The author, so Tertullian tells us, was a cleric who lived in the Roman province of Asia in the western part of Asia Minor, and who composed the book about 170 CE with the avowed intent of doing honor to the Apostle Paul. Although well-intentioned, the author was brought up for trial by his peers and, being convicted of falsifying the facts, was dismissed from his office. But his book, though condemned by ecclesiastical leaders, achieved considerable popularity among the laity. Certain episodes in the Acts of Paul, such as the 'Journeys of Paul and Thecla', exist in a number of Greek manuscripts and in half a dozen ancient versions. Thecla was a noble-born virgin from Iconium and an enthusiastic follower of the Apostle; she preached like a missionary and administered baptism. It was the administration of baptism by a woman that scandalized Tertullian and led him to condemn the entire book.

http://www.ntcanon.org/Acts_of_Paul.shtml

So if the same author wrote all these "Leucian Acts" (a proposition considered to be true by mainstream scholarship) then these non canonical "Acts of the Various Apostles" were all written about the same time - later 2nd century. This is the mainstream PARADIGM.

So to now return to the other question:

(2) If you believe that Eusebius or any other 4th C author was the author of Tertullian's work ...

You'll note that all of the above reflects the mainstream paradigm as to when the Acts of Peter containing the first surviving narratives of the death of Peter in Rome by Nero began to circulate. The mainstream later 2nd century chronology of all the "Leucian Acts" is dependent upon an assertion in the writings of Tertullian, the Bishop of Carthage.

My opinion as to whether "Eusebius or any other 4th C author was the author of Tertullian's work" need not have any relevance to any of the above. If you are interested in it however I am happy to provide it.
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Three Challenges:

(1) Identify (from the list or elsewhere) any non Christian source which attests to the historical existence of Christians prior to the rise of Constantine, and for which you are prepared to argue, with a reasonable level certainty, that the source identified is legitimate and authentic.


(2) Explain to me why there are so many forgeries, frauds and interpolations in this class of literature.

(3) What evidence would it take to invoke your suspicion that the interpolation / forgery of these Christian references in these sources was systematic?
davidmartin
Posts: 1589
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2019 2:51 pm

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by davidmartin »

Celsus?
Imagining Christianity appeared only after Constantine is strange when Celsus documents it in the 2nd century, and it's also insulting to the intelligence to think it wasn't decades of work to reach a point where an emperor could embrace it, instead of magically making one appear out of nowhere and replace the entire empire's belief system of centuries on a whim. I think there is no contest. This thing existed and it had accumulated power
User avatar
GakuseiDon
Posts: 2295
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 5:10 pm

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by GakuseiDon »

Leucius Charinus wrote: Mon Oct 10, 2022 10:02 pm Three Challenges:

(1) Identify (from the list or elsewhere) any non Christian source which attests to the historical existence of Christians prior to the rise of Constantine, and for which you are prepared to argue, with a reasonable level certainty, that the source identified is legitimate and authentic.


(2) Explain to me why there are so many forgeries, frauds and interpolations in this class of literature.

(3) What evidence would it take to invoke your suspicion that the interpolation / forgery of these Christian references in these sources was systematic?
(1) Lucian of Samosata refers to Christians in two of his works:

1. Passing of Peregrinus
2. Alexander the False Prophet

The works are dated to the Second Century CE. According to this site, his works have reached us from volumes published from between the 9th Century CE and the 11th C CE.

Whether those documents published 1000 years ago were reproducing works actually written by Lucian is a good question of which I don't know the answer. It seems the attribution of those works, as well as other pagan and Christian works, are accepted with a 'reasonable level of certainty' by modern scholarship. I think your theory is crazy, but it does call into question something that seem to me (as an amateur) need to be questioned: the provenance of early texts. (I don't see a problem with assigning provenance provisionally, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, but we also shouldn't forget that it is provisional).

(2) There are forgeries, frauds and interpolations in both pagan and Christian literature. Plutarch, Lucian, Plato, Seneca, all had texts purported to have been written by them. It would be surprising not to find it in Christian literature. The more famous the writer, the more likely that later authors would have leveraged off of that fame.

(3) Means, Motive, and Opportunity. I think your theory falls down in the 'motive' department. Why the confusing mess of heretics, almost pointless interpretations into pagan literature (what's the point of interpolating those passages about Christians into Lucian, for example?), when rewriting the three centuries before Constantine? It just seems unlikely from the get-go I'm afraid.
Chrissy Hansen
Posts: 546
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:46 pm

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by Chrissy Hansen »

I personally do not think that Pliny the Younger or Tacitus are interpolations, and I've elsewhere shared several reservations I have with Tuccinardi's work on the former, specifically that he does not actually demonstrate the letters were forgeries but only "parts" of the letters seemed inauthentically Plinian. Further, he did not identify which parts were inauthentic, so we have no way of knowing, and there are several caveats. Since that letter is the only one where Pliny discusses Christians, it would make perfect sense for him to have terms and phrases (which he got from interrogating Christians supposedly) that are not Plinian in origin. As a result, finding "non-Plinian" phraseology and language in the letter actually demonstrates nothing about its authenticity.

So, from the get go, I think Tuccinardi's entire methodology and results are essentially not pointing out anything meaningful. If authentic, we would expect non-Plinian elements in a letter discussing a hitherto undiscussed cult of Christians. And then Tuccinardi never actually points out what parts are supposedly inauthentic, so in total, he demonstrates nothing usable in the paper.

As far as I'm concerned, then, he hasn't demonstrated anything about its inauthenticity. He has just given us a few things interesting to think about, at most. Similarly, I don't see any good reason to consider Annals 15.44 by Tacitus as inauthentic. The whole "Tacitus isn't quoted" bit is rather insignificant. As scholars have long noted, Tacitus' work was basically ignored by virtually everyone and fell into disrepair and disuse fairly quickly. His most popular volume in general was Histories, not Annals, and even that is only sparsely ever quoted by anyone. So the fact that the passage isn't quoted is unsurprising. Tacitus was rarely ever quoted or cited to begin with in any capacity. And the fact that it is such a staunchly negative text would decrease the chances of its usage, imo. At the most, I am partial to considering the mention of "Pontius Pilate" to be an interpolation of clarification, so that the original passage would have read:
Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. 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 Christians 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, [interpolation] Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
Furthermore some of the edits we know of make no sense in the hands of a Christian interpolator. For instance, if, as MountainMan proposes, the Annals were forged in the Medieval-Renaissance era, then we have the issue that the oldest manuscript originally read CHRESTIAN not CHRISTIAN, and as we all know from any of the million rants on here about this issue, later Christians standardized the spelling with an I. So this only makes sense if this is a copied manuscript from years prior and not some invention. Additionally, we have the issue that it is quoted by Sulpicius Severus and this manuscript dates to the 11th century at earliest. And, again, I find no real reason for Severus to have made up this quote, especially one so negative, and one that also in virtually all ways replicates Tacitus' linguistic style in the Annals. To my knowledge, Deterring and others have only been able to propose "Pontius Pilate" and "humani generis" as examples of non-Tacitean language. The former is debatable but I will hand it to them as a possible interpolation. But "humani generis" is hardly convincing, as I demonstrated there was rarely any consistency among any author on writing this phrase, and in Agricola 42, Tacitus also uses "humani ingenii" which is related in form. So there just isn't any sufficient or good reason for considering this non-Tacitean. In total, maybe two words (Pontius Pilate) are problems for this passage, but it in no way indicates that the rest of the passage is inauthentic. Having one suspicious part does not mean the whole rest must be incriminated, and this part itself is highly debated in scholarship.

So, I just see no reason to see this passage as an interpolation, and I don't see any reason to consider Pliny's letter on Christians an interpolation either. In both cases, the methods and arguments proposed just don't seem remotely convincing to me.
User avatar
GakuseiDon
Posts: 2295
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 5:10 pm

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by GakuseiDon »

Leucius Charinus wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:16 pmFrom this it seems clear to me atm (also see comments below) that both Tertullian and Eusebius were not referring to any general persecution of the Christians by Nero but rather the death of the chief apostles Peter and Paul in Rome.
I don't see the logic in that, I'm afraid. Can the execution of Peter and Paul be separated from a general persecution of Christians under Nero? When Tertullian writes:

"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. Domitian, too, a man of Nero's type in cruelty, tried his hand at persecution; but as he had something of the human in him, he soon put an end to what he had begun, even restoring again those whom he had banished."

... how can you infer from that that Tertullian meant just the deaths of Peter and Paul, rather than the general persecution of Christians in Rome at the time? "Domitian, too, a man of Nero's type in cruelty, tried his hand at persecution". It seems to support the idea of a general persecution of Christians.

As for Eusebius: He writes:

"It is probable indeed that as Nero was more disposed to mildness in the beginning, Paul's defense of his doctrine was more easily received; but that when he had advanced to the commission of lawless deeds of daring, he made the apostles as well as others the subjects of his attacks."

By "others", does he mean other Christians? I think he does, since he also mentions the persecution by Domitian later on. He is also aware of the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Peter which speak of Nero's persecution of Christians, even though he doesn't believe that they were authoritative. So he had to have been aware of the story of Nero persecuting Christians generally.

As for Smith: his first paragraph are questions which add nothing to the weight of evidence, and his second paragraph are irrelevancies about what Smith believes that Tertullian should have written. I invoke Hitchen's Razor: "that which is proposed without evidence can be rejected without evidence.
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Non-Christian Literary Witnesses to the Historicity of Early Christians

Post by Leucius Charinus »

davidmartin wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 5:34 am Celsus?
Imagining Christianity appeared only after Constantine is strange when Celsus documents it in the 2nd century,
The objective here is to understand precisely what the supposedly independent Jewish and Graeco-Roman (non-Christian) writers of the first three centuries reported about the activities of the "Early (and Universal) Christian Church". Now this is simply a standard practice in any investigation. Eusebius supposedly wrote a history of what he refers to as "the nation of Christians". This is a reasonably well acknowledged "Eusebian trope".

People need to understand that it is highly likely that Eusebius did not just interpolate an attestation to the historical existence of Jesus (if it be lawful to call him a man) in the 1st century. Eusebius also interpolated "the nation of the Christians" into the first century. We should therefore double-check Eusebius' reliability.

Celsus

We don't have the writings of Celsus. We only have Eusebius quoting Origen. In regard to Celsus the historian Momigliano writes: “it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him”. The same applies to Hierocles and Fronto. In all cases we are reliant upon later Christians quoting the original author.

The plan is to seek the non Christian literature which mentions the Christians. I have taken the time to identify it as comprehensively as I can. That's the first step. The second step is to evaluate its integrity / authenticity or otherwise. That's when the proverbial starts to hit the fan.

and it's also insulting to the intelligence to think it wasn't decades of work to reach a point where an emperor could embrace it, instead of magically making one appear out of nowhere and replace the entire empire's belief system of centuries on a whim. I think there is no contest. This thing existed and it had accumulated power
It's just as insulting to the intelligence of any independent investigator not to ask up front how can we be sure that the 4th century Nicene Church industry (say between 325-381 CE) did not fabricate its own history. Eusebius asserts this thing called "the universal early Christian church" existed and it had accumulated power. OK. So let's look at the evidence which remains and double check what we have been told by Eusebius (and his continuators). That's what investigators should double check. Why should we simply throw our hands in the air and extend to the church industry the benefit of the doubt that their story about their history is legit? Question stuff. At least once.
Post Reply