Abstract:
Academia.edu abstract: "Advances the argument of Rougé to find that in all probability Tacitus never actually referred to Christ at all, and the famous passage now in the manuscripts originally referenced a Jewish rebel group formed by Chrestus a decade later, unconnected to Christianity, and Christian scribes subsequently 'improved' the passage by inserting a line about Christ."Some scholars have argued that Tacitus’ reference to Christ in connection with the burning of Rome under Nero is a 4th century (or later) interpolation. It is here argued that their arguments can be met with no strong rebuttal, and therefore the key sentence in Tacitus referring to Christ should be considered suspect.
Conclusion:
I've also attached the paper as a PDF.In the final analysis, given the immensity of the persecution Tacitus describes, its scale in terms of the number of victims, its barbarity, and the injustice of it being based on a false accusation of arson to cover up Nero’s own crimes, what are the odds that no Christian would ever have heard of it or made use of it or any reference to it for over three hundred years? By any reasonable estimate, quite low. Not even prolific and erudite professors of Latin like Tertullian or Lactantius? Lower still. That for nearly three centuries no Christian martyr tradition would develop from either the event or Tacitus’ account of it? Lower still. That no known legends, martyrologies, or tales would adapt or employ it as a motif in any way, not even in the various stories and legends of the persecutions and martyrdoms under Nero that we know did develop and circulate? Lower still. And on top of all that is the additional unlikelihood that all other pagan critics of Christianity (like Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, but even such critics as Celsus) would also somehow not have heard of the event or never make any mention of it.
Lowering the probability further is the way Tacitus describes the event. Tacitus treats the persecuted group as unusually large, and no longer existing, and at the time widely and inexplicably regarded as composed of the most vile criminals, who could credibly have committed arson—three features that do not fit “Christians” that well, but would have fit followers of the instigator Chrestus. It is certainly less likely that Tacitus would say these three things about the Christians in Rome in the year 64 than that he would say them of the Chrestians.
For all these reasons in combination I believe we should conclude the suspect line was probably not written by Tacitus, and was most likely interpolated into its present position sometime after the middle of the 4th century A.D. More likely Tacitus was originally speaking of the Chrestians, a violent group of Jews first suppressed under Claudius, and not the Christians, and accordingly did not mention Christ. We should so conclude because alternative explanations of the evidence require embracing a long series of increasingly improbable assumptions. So the line should be rejected as spurious, or at least held in reasonable suspicion. And this conclusion should now be taken into account when assessing the evidence for Christ and Christianity, and also when translating and interpreting Tacitus and the events following the burning of Rome under Nero. The whole passage in Annals 15.44 should instead be considered as possible evidence supplementing Suetonius on the matter of “Chrestus the instigator” and Jewish unrest at Rome.