Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

neilgodfrey wrote:Further, if Tacitus was indeed repeating knowledge that in his day was as widespread and common as our knowledge of Ron Hubbard (and just as scant) then it is not at all likely that he would have given any elaboration to explain who the person was for his already knowledgable readers.

WTF? That was his job - writing history - to give elaboration and clarification to his readers as to what happened during these times!! Is knowledge of Hubbard "widespread"? Not really. The average punter would not have heard of him, or if so, only in brief passing - "oh, that guy who started scientology"... I suspect the average punter reading Tacitus in those times would have been the same. Many would not have heard of him, and some perhaps only knowing him as "that guy who started that Christian cult". And others perhaps knowing more. Either way, Tacitus is more than justified in clarifying the situation as he understands it, as I would be if I were writing a History of 20th C America and including a brief mention of Hubbard.

Question (not rhetorical, but real): does Tacitus mention Julius Caesar in his writings? If yes, then there is Jesus.

GakuseiDon wrote:

toejam wrote:For me, Tacitus' reference remains on the table. Is it secure? Nope. But can it be as easily dismissed as Carrier seems to imply here. Nope. At the end of the day, it remains the kind of thing we might expect had their been a historical figure: his acknowledgement in the writings of the great historians of the time.

Yes, that's right. Assuming the Tacitus account is genuine, it becomes data in a cumulative case. Whatever one's theory, it needs to account for what Christians were believing around 110 CE. if Tacitus had referred to Christians believing in a celestial crucified Christ, and a historicist wrote off the reference as "Oh that's just what Christians believed at the time -- it doesn't count towards historicity or ahistoricity", I think that would be questioned. Regardless of whether one prefers a historicist or ahistoricist model, the Tacitus reference is an interesting data point in the growth of early Christianity.

Yep.

Gday,

toejam wrote:

MrMack said:
Does Carrier say that [Tacitus got his information from Pliny]?
"And neither does the infor­mation recorded by Pliny"

According to the quote posted by Kapyong he does...

Yes, here is Carrier's key sentence :

"Thus the fact that Pliny discovered what Christians preached in 110 CE, right when Tacitus was governing an adjoining province and writ­ing his histories, and just a few years before Tacitus completed his Annals before 117 CE, suggests the most likely chain of information was Chris­tians telling Pliny about the Gospels, then Pliny telling Tacitus, and Tacitus then reporting (what would be to him) the most embarrassing details in his Annals. "

^I wonder if Carrier used Bayes Theorem to determine that this was "most likely" the chain of events? It seems very speculative to me. Again, we don't know where Tacitus got his Jesus info from.

toejam wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:Further, if Tacitus was indeed repeating knowledge that in his day was as widespread and common as our knowledge of Ron Hubbard (and just as scant) then it is not at all likely that he would have given any elaboration to explain who the person was for his already knowledgable readers.

WTF? That was his job - writing history - to give elaboration and clarification to his readers as to what happened during these times!! Is knowledge of Hubbard "widespread"? Not really. The average punter would not have heard of him, or if so, only in brief passing - "oh, that guy who started scientology"... I suspect the average punter reading Tacitus in those times would have been the same. Many would not have heard of him, and some perhaps only knowing him as "that guy who started that Christian cult". And others perhaps knowing more. Either way, Tacitus is more than justified in clarifying the situation as he understands it, as I would be if I were writing a History of 20th C America and including a brief mention of Hubbard.

Sounds like your arguing from a knowledge of knowing the mind of Tacitus. Certainly not on the basis of what historiography meant to Tacitus. So the point stands as you yourself clarified in your initial post -- the evidence of Tacitus is not secure.

My initial response was to your opening argument; now you have given a qualified argument. Fair enough, but it's a fruitless task to argue on the basis of such hypotheticals -- especially so without reference to a broader discussion of the works of Tacitus and ancient historiography.

^Where did I make a knowledge claim?

neilgodfrey wrote:... it's a fruitless task to argue on the basis of such hypotheticals

I agree... And this is what I see Carrier doing to Tacitus' reference - fruitless hypotheticals of why his reference to Jesus has to be something other than the simplest explanation - that he's just recording a historical event.

GakuseiDon wrote: Yes, that's right. Assuming the Tacitus account is genuine, it becomes data in a cumulative case.

I have never quite followed the logic of this. If a piece of data on its own carries a weight of zero, how does it somehow gain weight if there are other grounds for the case?

If a piece of data can be argued to be either for or against (50-50), how does the fact that there are other grounds for a case change the pros and cons of that initial piece of data?

Surely the case is made on the grounds of the other evidence and the zero or 50-50 bit of data remains just that.

toejam wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:... it's a fruitless task to argue on the basis of such hypotheticals

I agree... And this is what I see Carrier doing to Tacitus' reference - fruitless hypotheticals of why his reference to Jesus has to be something other than the simplest explanation - that he's just recording a historical event.

The simplest explanation of yours does not work when you understand a little about ancient historiography and the problems facing historical sources for ancient times.