Talk:Tacitus

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Taciti Germania

(Yes I used the Latin Genitive to indicate possession). This article is now mostly a discussion of the relationship between Tacitus and Christianity. However, his "Germania" has also been influential, especially with regards to the Germans hating us French and so on and so forth. I think this should be covered. Or at least this page should be renamed to "Tacitus on Christianity" Jean Moline (talk) 22:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Add it! Fuzzy "Cat" Potato, Jr. (talk/stalk) 22:41, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Detering, Hermann

Per Hermann Detering ap. Martin Bauer (30 September 2011) [now translated by Google Translate]. "Neue Zweifel an der historischen Existenz Jesu". Humanistischer Pressedienst (hpd) (in German).

[Bauer:]
Is not the famous persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero, which Hollywood so impressively shows us, an indication of an early Christianity, and thus at least indirectly of Jesus?

[Detering:]
At this point too, the early Christian witnesses once again have a deep silence. The connection between the "Great Fire of Rome" and persecution of Christians asserted by the Roman historian Tacitus is unknown to them. It is unlikely that the Christian apologists would have leveled this grave charge on themselves and their fellow believers - if they had known about it.

That the Christians should have been persecuted because of their alleged arson by Emperor Nero, is claimed only in the 4th to 5th centuries by the author of the falsified correspondence between Paul and Seneca and by the church historian Sulpicius Severus. Again, the passage in Tacitus resembles the passage in Sulpicius Severus very much in verbiage and expression. Presumably, a later Christian "supplemented" the Tacitus edition with an excerpt from the work of Sulpicius.

Cf. Detering, Hermann (2011). Falsche Zeugen außerchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf dem Prüfstand (in German) (1. Aufl ed.). Alibri-Verl. ISBN 978-3-86569-070-8 – Dbz (talk) 00:36, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Allen, N.P.L.

• Nicholas Peter Legh Allen argues that Tacitus’s Annals passage (15.44) could be equally based upon hearsay and/or popular/traditional folklore.

Per Allen, N.P.L. (2015) Clarifying the Scope of Pre-Fifth-Century C.E. Christian Interpolation in Josephus’ Antiquitates Judaicae (c. 94 C.E.). Unpublished Philosophiae Doctor thesis, Potchefstroom: North-West University. available online @ http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/14213

[Per Annales, XV, 44] If we disregard the glaring warning signs contained in this passage, including the preposterous reference to Pontius Pilate’s execution of someone called Christus, [^64] and naively accept (as does Meier and company), that this passage is authentic, it still does not supply the historian with any tangible evidence for the historical existence of Jesus (of Nazareth) in the early part of the first century C.E. As stated, and taken at face value, this information is at best a second-hand account that could be equally based upon hearsay and/or popular/traditional folklore.

If one takes a more critical view, the passage has all the signs of a deliberate attempt to paint the Romans as responsible for the indiscriminate and mindless persecution of Christians. Considering that Christians supposedly preached peace and deliberately conducted themselves in ethically upright ways hardly explains why they are described here as hating mankind. —(p. 54)

[note:64] The Roman authorities are hardly likely to have kept detailed records of every crucifixion victim in the provinces. Furthermore, if Jesus of Nazareth’s execution had indeed been recorded by Pontius Pilate’s clerics he would not have been referred to as “Christ”. Indeed, if the term “Christ” had been used in Jerusalem in c. 33 C.E. it would not have made any sense to either Jesus of Nazareth or Pontus Pilate. Similarly it would have meant very little to Tacitus in the early second century C.E. Therefore, if the latter actually wrote “Christus” he would have believed it to be a personal name. In this regard, it could never have been based on a Roman record but more likely hails from a Christian tradition. —(p. 54)

Dbz (talk) 00:36, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Shaw, Brent D.

Shaw, Brent D. (2015). “The Myth of the Neronian Persecution”. Journal of Roman Studies. 105: 73–100. doi:10.1017/S0075435815000982.

[Per Nero’s executions of large numbers of Christians in the aftermath of the fire that raged through the city of Rome in July of 64] the thinness of the evidence on all aspects of it is quite striking. The paucity and weakness of the data, however, have not prevented acceptance of the historicity of this ‘first persecution’ as an undisputed fact. . . . Those who have expressed even modest scepticism about the historicity of the one explicit passage in the historian Tacitus that attests to the executions have been voces clamantium in deserto . The simple argument of this essay, deliberately framed as a provocative hypothesis, is that this event never happened and that there are compelling reasons to doubt that it should have any place either in the history of Christian martyrdom or in the history of the early Church.
[…]
If the fictitious Neronian persecution is removed from the record, as surely it must be, then what follows about confrontations between the Roman state and the Christians as Christians? The plain answer seems to be almost nothing until the years focused on the coterie of texts that include Ignatius, the writers of the Prophecies of Isaiah and the Book of the Apocalypse, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, and others: that is to say, in the decades following the early 100s.

Cf. Godfrey, Neil (17 December 2015). "The Myth of Nero's Persecution of Christians". Vridar.

Shaw, Brent D. (2018). "Response to Christopher Jones: The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution". New Testament Studies. 64 (2): 231–242. doi:10.1017/S0028688517000352.

[A] persecution of Christians by the emperor Nero in connection with the Great Fire of 64 seems improbable given the context of the relations between officials of the Roman state and Christians over the first century CE. —(p. 231)

Dbz (talk) 00:36, 9 January 2019 (UTC) && 18:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Carrier, Richard

Per Carrier—following Rougé′s argument—the Tacitus passage is fraudulent only in the relevant part.

• Rougé, Jean (1974). “L’incendie de Rome en 64 et l’incendie de Nicomédie en 303”. In Jacques Tréheux. Mélanges d’histoire ancienne offerts à William Seston. Paris: E. de Boccard. pp. 433–441.
• Carrier, Richard (2014). “The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44”. Vigiliae Christianae. 68 (3): 264–283. doi:10.1163/15700720-12341171.

Carrier ap. “Transcript of interview with Dr Richard Carrier, Part 3”. The Free Thought Prophet. 1 October 2016.

[time: 1:06:30] What Rougé’s argument is, is that just the one line about Jesus being executed, or Christ being executed by Pontius Pilate, just that one bit was the interpolation that was added later. . . . it appears to be added to Tacitus, where it now fully assimilates the Chrestiens with the Christians. It says that [the Chrestien Jews passage] was actually a passage about the Christians and then ever after, the Jews being involved is completely forgotten. It’s just the Christians being persecuted by Nero. [time: 1:09:30]

See: “Jameson and Mythicism Episode #28”. The Free Thought Prophet. 9 September 2016.

Great Fire of Rome

Per the Great Fire of Rome and persecution of Christians, "the thinness of the evidence on all aspects of it is quite striking" (Shaw, 2015). I am skeptical of any persecution alleged to early Christians, especially when the historicity of the ‘first persecution’ i.e. under Nero, 64–68 CE, hinges on “the preposterous reference to Pontius Pilate’s execution of someone called Christus” (Allen, 2015). Candida Moss has established the Christian penchant for claiming imaginary persecutions, and Brent Shaw writes of the myth of the Neronian persecution of Christians.

Therefore it is likely that Tacitus attests the persecution of the "Chrestien Jews" noted by Suetonius, given that most classical scholars do not identify Chrestus with Christ.

• Porter, Stanley E.; Pearson, Brook W.R. (2000). “Why the Split? Christians and Jews by the Fourth Century”. Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism (JGRChJ). 1. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 1-905048-0-68.

[T]he name Chrestus is a very common one, no ancient source makes the identification with Christians, certainly not Suetonius… —(p. 102)

Cf. Slingerland, Howard Dixon (1997). Claudian Policymaking and the Early Imperial Repression of Judaism at Rome. Scholars Press. pp. 151–168. ISBN 978-0-7885-0425-9. – Dbz (talk) 19:09, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

No surprise there as the Christians themselves were using "Chrestians" spelling clear into the 5th century and there is evidence of groups using that name at least to the 1st century BCE.--BruceGrubb (talk) 15:26, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

This page needs work

This article implies that the overwhelming scholarly consensus is that the reference to Jesus is a Christian forgery. Unfortunately for our reliability, the actual scholarly consensus is the opposite, as I can show with these sources:

Wikipedia’s article [Tacitus on Jesus] says:

“Most scholars hold the passage to be authentic, i.e., they hold that Tacitus really wrote it, though this has sometimes been questioned.”

This cites Robert E. Van Voorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament, Brent Shaw’s “The Myth of Neronian Persecution” (clearly no Christian apologetics!) and, most damning considering our page’s use of Richard Carrier as a source, Willem Blom’s explicit refutation of Carrier, “Why the Testimonium Taciteum is Authentic: A Response to Carrier”. A later paragraph quotes John P. Meier stating in A Marginal Jew that “there is no historical or archeological evidence that a scribe may have introduced the passage into the text.” This is confirmed by Bruce Chilton, Craig Evans, Paul Eddy, and Gregory Boyd, none of whom are Christian apologists and some of whom are even atheists. At this point it is beginning to seem like the “forgery” position is the irrational one.

Tim O’Neill, the former state president of Australian Skeptics and a member of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, goes further into the evidence that Tacitus is not a forgery [here], debunking all four common arguments against authenticity and once again refuting Carrier.

In short, almost this whole article needs to be rewritten. We can point out the logical problems with the Christian claim that Tacitus mentioning Jesus in passing proves anything about the validity of the religion without having to defend weak and disproved arguments ourselves.--BrendanRizzo (talk) 20:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)