Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

spin wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:- It is helpful to distinguish between "chrestian" and "christian," isn't it? (Until shown that it isn't, of course.)

I think "chrestian" is a red herring.

How so?

Peter Kirby wrote:

spin wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:- It is helpful to distinguish between "chrestian" and "christian," isn't it? (Until shown that it isn't, of course.)

I think "chrestian" is a red herring.

How so?

1 Peter 2:3, χρηστος ο κυριος or, as Sinaiticus has it, χρηστος ο κς.

spin wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:

spin wrote: I think "chrestian" is a red herring.

How so?

1 Peter 2:3, χρηστος ο κυριος or as Sinaiticus has it, χρηστος ο κς.

What's your understanding of the relationship between χρηστος and χριστος in early Christian writings? I ask because I'd like to learn.

Two points

a/ IMO a 2nd century date for 1 Peter is improbable. Apart from the use of Christian (which begs the question) its vocabulary and teaching seems rather early (earlier than Clement's letter to the Corinthians.)
b/ The early uses of Christian do not indicate that it is a recent word. The claim in Acts that it goes back to Christianity in Antioch before 50 CE is probably wrong. However it does imply that the word has been around long enough (a number of decades) for such a claim to be plausible.

Andrew Criddle

spin wrote:I think "chrestian" is a red herring.

Peter Kirby wrote:How so?

spin wrote:1 Peter 2:3, χρηστος ο κυριος or as Sinaiticus has it, χρηστος ο κς.

Peter Kirby wrote:What's your understanding of the relationship between χρηστος and χριστος in early Christian writings?

I'm not really sure what you want, Peter. There is no relationship between the terms χριστος and χρηστος as evinced by 1 Peter 2:3. Otherwise I would have expected χρηστος to have been in the form of a nomen sacrum, say χρης. Instead, it's there for anyone to read fully. Stephan can chime in here with his interest in Marcion and his followers' use of χρηστος, but I don't think it helps us with the earliest Jesus religion. As regards χρηστιανος, it reflects an apparently 2nd century development, which does not point to original Jesus believers' usage, as Tertullian makes clear, when he says that people mispronounce "our name". This indicates an external origin for χρηστιανος, but with Greek sound shifts there was later confusion in speaking of the term, hence its predominance in Greek manuscripts. Codex Bezae reflects the Greek linguistic developments, while its Latin preserves Christianos in Acts 11:26.

Three issues:

1. external confusion (the term was probably confusing to non-christians),
2. Marcionite influence, and
3. linguistic changes in Greek.

andrewcriddle wrote:Two points

a/ IMO a 2nd century date for 1 Peter is improbable. Apart from the use of Christian (which begs the question) its vocabulary and teaching seems rather early (earlier than Clement's letter to the Corinthians.)

What do you see in 1 Peter that would not be appropriate for Peregrinus's christians (as recorded by Lucian)?

andrewcriddle wrote:b/ The early uses of Christian do not indicate that it is a recent word. The claim in Acts that it goes back to Christianity in Antioch before 50 CE is probably wrong. However it does imply that the word has been around long enough (a number of decades) for such a claim to be plausible.

So if Acts was written in the 2nd c., the term could have been used for decades. I don't see anything more than another of your IMOs.

spin wrote:

andrewcriddle wrote:Two points

a/ IMO a 2nd century date for 1 Peter is improbable. Apart from the use of Christian (which begs the question) its vocabulary and teaching seems rather early (earlier than Clement's letter to the Corinthians.)

What do you see in 1 Peter that would not be appropriate for Peregrinus's christians (as recorded by Lucian)?

For what it's worth, Otto Zwierlein puts I Peter around 110-113, and I Clement later than it;

cf. viewtopic.php?p=4871#p4871

This passage in Tacitus is incredibly strange. What makes it strange is this line: "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."

Four forms of execution/torture are mentioned:
1. Covered with animal skins.
2. Torn to death by dogs.
3. Nailed to crosses.
4. Burnt to serve as human torches.

Why are these forms of execution called "mockery". Is it mockery in general or mockery specifically of Christians? If it has nothing to do with the Christians themselves and Tacitus considers all these forms of death mockery for everybody, one has to explain the coincidence of having "nailed to the cross" as one of the forms of mockery. It is impossible to believe that Tacitus/Nero just randomly picked this punishment without any connection to the gospel story. Could it be that the story of Christus being nailed to the cross developed out of this punishment or this story of punishment about the early Christians?

On the other hand, if Tacitus/Nero has chosen these four forms of execution/torture because they mock specifically Christianity, one has to ask why these specific forms mock Christian beliefs or rituals. What does being put in animal skins, being torn apart by dogs and turned into human torches have to do with Christianity?

It does suggest the famous rituals whereby it was said that early Christians gathered in caves, ate babies, caused dogs to knock over lamps and then engaged in incestuous rituals. The problem is that at ;east 100 years afterwards, we have Christians still claiming that they do not practice such a ritual. If the early Christians didn't practice such a ritual, how could the Roman elite for over 100 years believe that they did. Certainly there was no reason for the Romans to make up this story as they attached it to nobody else but early Christians. Secondly, would not Christians have set the record straight by denouncing and denying such rituals immediately?

If early Christians did not practice such rituals it is hard to see how such rituals could have been attributed to them by the Romans who ruled over them for over 100 years.

The only other possibility that comes to mind is that Romans never held this view of early Christians, but that early Christians made it up as propaganda against Romans to show their complete ignorance and hostility to learning the truth about the Christian practices. If this is the case, then the passage in Tacitus was written by a Christian. However this seems improbable to me and I have to go back to the view that baby-eating, dog-led, incestuous orgies was an actual practice of early Christians.


Warmly,

Jay Raskin

If you search JSTOR for articles on Tacitus, you find a few dealing with the grammatical incongruities in the section about Nero and Christians. There are mistakes due to tampering or editing that haven't been fixed by the author or redactor.

One scholar has apparently suggested that the passage was originally about the persecution of Isis worshippers, but I can't remember who that was.

Hi Tenorikuma,

Isis followers would make much more sense than Christians in this context. Isis worship was associated with animals and dogs. She was often portrayed holding a torch which would explain how setting Isis followers on fire would be a form of mockery. There is a vigorous debate if crucifixion was part of the Isis cult and if Osiris was crucified. Josephus does say that priests of Isis were crucified in Rome around 19 C.E..

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Tenorikuma wrote:If you search JSTOR for articles on Tacitus, you find a few dealing with the grammatical incongruities in the section about Nero and Christians. There are mistakes due to tampering or editing that haven't been fixed by the author or redactor.

One scholar has apparently suggested that the passage was originally about the persecution of Isis worshippers, but I can't remember who that was.