Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was one of the most reliable of all Roman historians and many first century figures are known to us solely through his mention of them. This means his passing reference to Jesus in Annals XV.44 remains an fly in the ointment of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. Despite Tacitus’ reliability and the scholarly agreement that the reference is genuine, Mythicist ideologues have several ways by which they try to dismiss this reference; all of them characteristically weak.

The reference to Jesus comes in Tacitus’ account of the Great Fire of Rome, which raged across the city for more than six days in July 64 AD.  When rumour spread that Nero himself had actually ordered for the fire to be started, the emperor sought out scapegoats for the disaster:

“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, Pontius Pilatus, 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.

(Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat. auctor nominis eius Christus Tibero imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiablilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque. igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti sunt).

This reference to the founder of Christianity by one of the most reliable and careful historians of the period is something of a problem for the Jesus Myth hypothesis and so Mythicists have to find ways to make it fit their thesis and argue, despite this clear reference to “Christus” as a historical person, no historical Jesus existed at all.  Generally, Mythicists deal with this reference in four main ways:

  1. “Tacitus only refers to the existence of Christians, not to Jesus”
  2. “Tacitus was talking about some other sect called the Chrestians”
  3.  “Tacitus does mention Jesus but he’s only repeating what Christians claimed, so this isn’t independent evidence”
  4. “The passage is a later Christian interpolation”

“Tacitus only refers to the existence of Christians, not to Jesus”

This first counter argument to the Tacitean reference is generally used by Mythicists of a more casual kind, mainly because it is self-evidently wrong.  Anyone who reads the passage can see that while it is certainly about Christians in Rome in the 60s AD, Tacitus clearly refers to their founder – “Christus” – and makes it obvious that he considered this person to be historical.  He gives four specific pieces of information about this individual: (i) he was the founder of the Christian sect, (ii) he founded the sect in “Judea”, (iii) he was executed by Pontius Pilatus and (iv) this occurred in the reign of Tiberius (14-37 AD).  These pieces of information give us a who, what, where and when for this “Christus” and therefore fix Jesus in a specific time and place in history in a way that accords with at least some of the information in the Christian gospel accounts.  Since Pilatus governed Judea from 26-37 AD, the Tacitus reference gives us a clear window on when Jesus existed.  So the naive attempt at dismissing this as merely a reference to Christians simply does not work: it is a reference to Jesus as a historical person and it gives some details about him.

“Tacitus was talking about some other sect called the Chrestians”

This slightly odd argument is found in a number of versions, including a couple that seriously try to argue that there was no Christianity prior to the fourth century and that all references to it before then are either more fraudulent or interpolated texts or just misunderstood references to these alleged “Chrestians”.  The argument regarding the Tacitus reference actually being about this alleged other sect rests on two supposed pieces of evidence.  Firstly, all the manuscripts we have of Books XI-XVI of Tacitus’ Annals are late medieval copies of a single earlier manuscript: called the “Second Medicean” or M.II and now found in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, or Laurentinian Library in Florence.  This manuscript was copied in a Beneventan script around 1030-1050 AD in the monastery of Monte Cassino and probably derived from an earlier, probably Carolingian copy or from a much older fifth century copy.  But the element in it which excites some Mythicists is the word “christianos” (Christians) in the passage in question.  This is because careful examination of the manuscript reveals that this was originally written as “chrEstianos“, with the “e” only scraped out and corrected to an “i” at some point later.

The word “christianos”/”chrestianos” in Annals 15.44 from M.II

Exactly when the correction was made is unclear, though it seems to have most likely been long after the manuscript was copied, possibly as late as the fourteenth century (for those interested in a detailed analysis of the evidence see Erik Zara, “The Chrestianos Issue in Tacitus Reinvestigated”, 2009).  The relevant point here is that the original spelling of the word was made by the M.II’s scribe and so, the Mythicists argue, this is what Tacitus originally wrote.  The later correction, they argue, is an example of Christians fraudulently changing the text to make it about them and their Jesus.

They also note a reference in Suetonius’ life of Claudius that mentions “[s]ince the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.” (Claudius, XXV). So they argue that the “Chrestians” of Tacitus are followers of this earlier “Chrestus” and so are not Christians at all.  Which means the “Christus” Tacitus refers to is not Jesus of Nazareth.

The first obvious problem with this is that it rests on the supposition that there was such a sect as the “Chrestians” who followed the “Chrestus” mentioned in Suetonius.  Given that there is no mention of any such sect elsewhere, this is a highly speculative basis for this reading of the Tacitus passage.  The “Chrestus” mention in Suetonius could be a mention of someone by that name (it was a common Greek name at the time), or could be a misunderstanding of “Christus”/Χριστός/Messiah and refer to Jewish theological disputes about eschatology, or could refer to a Jewish Messianic claimant in Rome given the title of “Christus”/Χριστός/Messiah, or (obviously) it could be a garbled reference to Jewish disputes over the Jesus “Christus”/Χριστός of Christianity.  To assume the first of these options and then suppose that this “Chrestus” founded a sect that Nero later persecuted is highly conjectural.

And this conjecture becomes more tangled when we examine what Tacitus says about the founder of the sect he is referring to.  He says that this founder was executed in Judea by Pilatus in the reign of Tiberius.  This makes no sense if this founder was instigating “disturbances” among Jews in Rome during the reign of Claudius, who came to the emperorship four years after Tiberius died and five years after Pilatus was removed from the governorship of Judea.

Of course, it could be that Suetonius was mistaken about the disturbances being caused by this “Chrestus” directly and it may be that they were about this person instead, but this still means that for this “Chrestus” to be the founder of any “Chrestians” in the Tacitus passage, then we must have two sects, with remarkably similar names, both claiming to be founded by a man executed  in Judea by Pilatus in the reign of Tiberius.  This co-incidence is far too close to survive an application of Occam’s Razor.

Overall, this hypothesis is based on a series of dubious conjectures and is too fanciful to be credibly sustained.

“Tacitus does mention Jesus but he’s only repeating what Christians claimed so this isn’t independent evidence”

This third approach at least admits that Tacitus is talking about Christians and accepts that the “Christus” he mentions is their founder and that Tacitus believed he was a historical person, though it dismisses the reference on the grounds that he is getting his information from what Christians claim about their own founder and so notes that what Tacitus says is not independent evidence of Jesus’ historicity.  But is there any basis for the assumption that Tacitus was merely repeating what the Christians said about Jesus?

The first problem with this idea is that Tacitus does not attribute this information to these “Christians” he has just mentioned or imply in any way that he was reporting what they believed about their founder.  Furthermore, nothing in what he says about this “Christus” person indicates the information came from Christians or reports about their beliefs about Jesus.  On the contrary, both the highly negative tone and the sparse information potentially indicate the exact opposite: a disapproving non-Christian source that was concerned with essential, concrete facts: who this “Christus” was, what happened to him, when and where.  There is no reference to any belief he was divine, no mention or hint about any preaching or alleged miracles and no indication of any belief about him rising from the dead.  Nothing here indicates a Christian source for any of this information.

Unlike modern historians, ancient ones did not footnote their sources or even consistently or regularly note where they received their information.  Tacitus is of a type in this respect, though when he does refer to his sources it is clear, first of all, that he researched his work carefully and, secondly, he was a judicious and often sceptical analyst.  To begin with, he made his distaste for merely accepting hearsay very clear:

“My object in mentioning and refuting this story is, by a conspicuous example, to put down hearsay, and to request that all those into whose hands my work shall come not to catch eagerly at wild and improbable rumours in preference to genuine history.”
(Tacitus, Annals, IV.11)

He did occasionally refer to things that were “said” to have been the case or were “reported”, but was careful to note this when he did so.  For example:

“A show of gladiators, given in the name of his brother Germanicus, was presided over by Drusus, who took an extravagant pleasure in the shedding of blood however vile — a trait so alarming to the populace that it was said to have been censured by his father.” (Annals 1.76)

Further examples of this noting of what was “said” can be found at Annals II.40, XII.7 and XII.65.  Similarly, things which were “reported” or from “popular report” are noted as such.  For example:

“For the present, however, Britain was in the charge of Suetonius Paulinus, in military skill and in popular report — which allows no man to lack his rival — a formidable competitor to Corbulo” (Annals XIV.29)

Other examples can be found at Annals XI.26 and XV.20.  So having just mentioned the Christians, it is very likely that Tacitus would have attributed the information about their “Christus” to their “report” or to what they “said” if their ideas about their founder were the basis for his information.  But he doesn’t.  Likewise, having just said that “the crowd” called the sect “Christians”, it would make sense for Tacitus to attribute his information about “Christus” to them if “popular report” or what was “said” was where he was getting his information.  But he doesn’t do this either.  The idea that he got his information from what Christians claimed about Jesus, whether directly or from “the crowd”, simply does not fit with the way Tacitus deals with such second hand information or with his attitude to “hearsay”.

It also does not fit with his vehemently scornful attitude towards the Christians.  This is, after all, a sect he describes in no uncertain terms as “a most mischievous superstition …. evil …. hideous and shameful …. [with a] hatred against mankind” – not exactly the words of a man who regarded its followers as reliable sources about their sect’s founder.  It is unlikely that he would blithely report what they had to say without any caveats or even just noting this was what he was doing.

All this means that while the idea that he was simply repeating Christian claims is not solidly founded, we still don’t know where he got his information.  Some Mythicists make the remarkable claim that, because of this, his reference to Jesus can therefore be totally disregarded.  This is, however, absurd.  If we totally rejected everything noted in an ancient historian’s text without reference to or indication of a source, we would have to reject about 95% of our source material and abandon the study of the ancient past almost totally.  This consequence tends not to bother Mythicist polemicists and online debaters, who are only concerned with making a historian’s reference to Jesus go away, but it should concern any genuine rationalist.

As noted above, we do know that Tacitus consulted many sources and was, by ancient standards, a rigorous and sceptical analyst of them.  C.W Mendell highlights the way Tacitus handles his sources with due care:

In the Histories there are sixty-eight instances in which Tacitus indicates either a recorded statement or a belief on someone’s part with regard to something which he himself is unwilling to assert as a fact; in other words, he cites divergent authority for some fact or motive …. [These] would seem to indicate a writer who had not only read what was written by historians …. but had also talked with eye witnesses and considered with some care the probable truth where doubt or uncertainty existed. …. Tacitius assumes the responsibility of the historian to get at the truth and present it. His guarantee was his own reputation. To make this narrative colorful and dramatic, he felt justified in introducing facts and motives which he might refute on logical grounds or leave uncontested but for which he did not personally vouch. There is no indication that he followed blindly the account of any predecessor” (C.W. Mendell, Tacitus: The Man and his Work, 1957, pp. 201-4)

Mendell goes on to note 30 separate instances in the Annals where Tacitus is careful to substantiate a statement or distance himself from a claim or report about which he was less than certain (Mendell, p. 205).

We know Tacitus made use of the work of earlier historians, but we also know from his own references to them that he examined primary documentary evidence, including copies of the Acta Diurna – the daily gazette put up in the Forum and other public places – and the records of the Senate.  He makes explicit reference to consulting “the registers of the Senate” (Annals XV.74), “the public records” (XII.24) and “the daily register” (III.3), though it is far from clear that any of these sources would have mentioned the execution of Jesus by Pilatus, let alone that Tacitus found and read this obscure notice – it’s not as though the crucifixion of a minor troublemaker would have been of great concern to the Senate or Pilatus’ master Sejanus back in Rome.  So while it is possible Tacitus was drawing on an official record or other documentary source, it cannot be said to be likely.

Several Mythicists who accept the authenticity of all or at least part of the passage claim that Tacitus probably got his information about “Christus” and/or the Christians from his friend Pliny the Younger.  It is not clear exactly when the Annals was written, but it is likely to have been either around the time Tacitus was proconsul of Asia (c. 112-13) or a few years after his return to Rome.  Pliny was governor of nearby Bithynia-Pontus at around the same time and we know from his surviving letter to the emperor Trajan from this period (see below) that he tried and executed some Christians there.  So, it is argued, who better for Tacitus to consult about Christians and their origins.  This is a strange argument, since it is hard to see why the governor of one eastern province would need to consult the governor of another on the subject of Christians when it is very likely there were as many if not more Christians in Tacitus’ province as there were in Pliny’s.  Both Pliny and Tacitus refer to Christianity as a “superstition” (Tacitus: exitiabilis superstitio – “the destructive superstition”; Pliny: superstitionem pravam and superstitionis istius contagio – “a depraved superstition” and “a contagious superstition”), but that is precisely the term we would expect pious Roman aristocrats to use about a novel cult.  Neither Pliny nor Tacitus uses the name “Jesus” and both refer to the focus and founder of the sect as “Christus”, but this seems to have been the most common way he was referred to by both believers and unbelievers.  So the idea that Tacitus consulted Pliny is, like the idea he used documentary sources, at least possible, but also too conjectural to be judged likely.

The final possible source of Tacitus’ sparse information is also conjectural, but has a certain logic to it.  Tacitus says that the sect of this Christus had its origin “in Judea” (a term he uses elsewhere for all territories of the Jews, including Galilee, not merely the region administered directly by the Romans before the First Jewish War).  He therefore seems to know this sect had Jewish origins, so a logical way to find out about it would be to simply … ask some Jews. And there was no shortage of aristocratic Jews in Rome for him to ask, since in the wake of the failed Jewish revolt, various pro-Roman Jewish exiles lived there, with several moving in the same circles as Tacitus at the court of the Flavian emperors and that of Trajan.  One was Princess Berenice, the daughter of Herod Agrippa and the mistress and, later, wife of the emperor Titus.  And another was the Jewish historian Yosef ben Matityahu, better known by his Latin name, Flavius Josephus.

There is no evidence that Josephus and Tacitus ever met or knew each other, but both were aristocrats, both had been of the priestly caste in their respective (very different) religious traditions, both had connections to the Flavian court and both were scholars and historians. So while we do not have direct indications that Tacitus consulted Josephus, J.P. Meier notes “a number of strong similarities” between the Tacitus reference and Josephus’ account of Jesus in Antiquities XVIII.63-4 and draws attention to four points of overlapping content (Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 1991, Vol. 1., 101-2, n. 13).  Stephen C. Carlson laid out the correspondences in a blog post in 2004 (Hypotyposeis – “A Pre-Eusebian Witness to the Testimonium”):

TacitusJosephus 18.63-64Josephus 18 (other)
Christus, from whom the name had its origin,18.64 and the tribe of Christians, so named from him,18.63 [[He was the Christ.]]
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius18.63 Now about this time18.33 Tiberius (also named 75 other times)
at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus,18.64 and when Pilate, … had condemned him to the cross18.35 Pontius Pilate
18.55 Pilate, the governor (ἡγεμών) of Judea
and a most mischievous superstition,18.63 a teacher of such people who gladly received the truth
thus checked for the moment, again broke out18.64 those who loved him at first did not cease
18.64 are not extinct to this day.
18.64 [[for he appeared to them alive again the third day,]]
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.18.63 He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles18.55 Pilate, the governor (ἡγεμών) of Judea

As Carlson’s chart shows, all of Tacitus’s information about Jesus is paralleled in Ant. XVIII, if not in the Jesus passage itself, then nearby in the same book.  He also notes Meier’s caution that “such similarities are not so startling as to prove the literary dependence of Tacitus on Josephus” but observes that “literary dependence is a very high standard” and is perhaps “inappropriately strict for identifying the sources of historians who rewrite their source material.”  It could be added that it is even more strict for identifying information remembered or noted from conversation with Josephus or another Jewish exile very much like him.

Yet again, this is far too conjectural to hang any kind of argument from, especially given the problematic nature of the Ant. XVIII passage, which all scholars agree is, at least, contaminated by later Christian additions.  But there is a certain coherence about this last conjecture.  A potential counter-argument to the idea that Tacitus consulted Jews about this Jewish sect could be based on his digressions about Jews and Judaism in his History V.1-5, in which he gives a highly scornful account of the origins and nature of the Jewish religion.  If he was so virulently anti-Semitic, would he be any more likely to ask Jews about this sect than he would be to accept Christian testimony?  A careful reading of the passages in question, however, shows that his scorn is actually for the Jewish religion, which as a Roman aristocrat and priest of the Roman religion, he finds alien, bizarre and quite repugnant.  This distaste for the weird monotheistic and iconophobic Jewish faith, with its avoidance of pork and its practice of circumcision, was held by most pagans of Tacitus’ class and this kind of disgusted language is to be expected in an account of Judaism by such a person.  This does not mean Tacitus would not have spoken to the most obvious source of information about a sect of this strange religion – other Jews.

The fact remains, however, that wherever Tacitus got his information, the Mythicist assumption that he was “only repeating what Christians claimed” has no solid foundation and is severely undermined by much of what we know about Tacitus’ use of his sources.

“The passage is a later Christian interpolation”

Which brings us, finally, to the Mythicist argument of last resort when all else fails – “interpolation!”  And here we find none other than the inevitable Dr. Richard Carrier (PhD.), yet again.  Among the surprisingly small corpus of actual academic papers by this unemployed “independent scholar” and full time anti-theism activist is “The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44″ (Vigiliae Christianae, 68, 2014, 264-283), in which Carrier seeks to dispose of this reference to Jesus by a highly reliable historian by excising the key sentence (“Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus”) as a later Christian interpolation and arguing that Tacitus was referring to a Neronic persecution of the shadowy “Chrestians” and not Christians at all.

He begins by drawing attention to “a few scholars [who] have argued some or all of Tacitus’ report …. is a 4th century (or later) interpolation and not original to Tacitus” (p. 264).  The operative word here is “few”, since no current Tacitus scholar holds this view.  Carrier has to go back to 1974 to find any relatively “recent” outlier who has done so (a short article by Jean Rougé; “L’incendie de Rome en 64 et l’incendie de Nicomédie en 303” in Mélanges d’histoire ancienne: offerts à William Seston, Paris, 1974, pp 433-41) though he pads this out with a citation of his fellow Mythicist, the self-published amateur Earl Doherty.  When, in 2012, Carrier clashed with Bart Ehrman over whether the authenticity of this passage was in any way a live issue among Tacitean scholars, Ehrman consulted his colleague at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the leading Classicist  James Rives.  This was Rives’ assessment:

“I’ve never come across any dispute about the authenticity of Ann. 15.44; as far as I’m aware, it’s always been accepted as genuine, although of course there are plenty of disputes over Tacitus’ precise meaning, the source of his information, and the nature of the historical events that lie behind it.  There are some minor textual issues (the spelling ‘Chrestianos’ vs. ‘Christianos’, e.g.), but there’s not much to be done with them since we here, as everywhere in Tacitus’ major works, effectively depend on a single manuscript.” (E-mail quoted in Ehrman’s blog article “Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier”, April 25, 2012)

The obvious question that arises from this is, if the sentence in question is so obviously an interpolation, why have so few (barely any, in fact) scholars of Tacitus noticed this?  After all, the clear interpolations in Josephus Ant. XVIII.63-64 mean there has long been a lively debate about their nature, how extensive they are and if the whole passage is itself interpolated.  Yet the idea of an interpolation in this Tacitus passage is a non-issue.  So Carrier is going to have an uphill battle to argue all these thousands of Classicists (with perhaps one exception) have got it wrong.  Luckily one thing Carrier definitely does not lack is plucky self-assurance.

He begins with one of his characteristically odd pseudo statistical arguments where he claims that because we know of many various later interpolations in the New Testament texts, Christian texts have a high “base rate” of interpolation.  If we add to this the fact that non-Christian references to Jesus includes one that is interpolated (Carrier holds the minority view that Josephus Ant. XVIII.63-64 is a wholesale interpolation) then the probability of this Tacitus reference being an interpolation is not “out of bounds”, in Carrier’s assessment (p. 266).  This tangled part of his article does acknowledge the “small sample size” of non-Christian references to Jesus (p. 265), but fails to note the very large sample size of manuscript copies and fragments of New Testament texts.  If we had anything like the manuscript evidence for any other ancient text that we have for the New Testament materials we are likely to find their level of later changes and additions is actually not so unusual.  That aside, his whole argument is effectively a convoluted way of saying “Josephus Ant. XVIII.63-64 has at least some interpolations so it’s not infeasible that Tacitus Annals XV.44 does as well”, with some numerical estimates of probability thrown in.  Carrier seems obsessed with trying to reduce history to statistical probabilities.

He goes on to argue that the letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan shows that “Christians were extremely obscure, and their beliefs and origins entirely unknown to the highest and most experienced Roman legal authorities”, adding “Tacitus is not likely to have been any better informed, indeed insofar as he was informed at all it would most likely have been through his very friend and correspondent, Pliny” (pp. 267-68).  As noted above, the idea that Tacitus must have got any information about Christians from Pliny is conjecture without much basis.  But Carrier’s conviction is that Pliny’s letter shows he knew nothing much about Christians when he first encountered them as governor of Bithynia-Pontus, saying “Pliny the Younger tells us he had never attended a trial of Christians and knew nothing of what they believed or what crimes they were guilty of” (p. 267, my emphasis). If we turn to the letter Carrier is drawing on here, however, we find no such thing.

In his letter to Trajan Pliny nowhere expresses that he “knew nothing of what they believed or what crimes they were guilty of”.  He says, as Carrier notes, that he has “never participated in trials of Christians” but goes on to say that as a result of this “I therefore do not know what offences it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent“.  He is saying he is not clear on exactly what it is Christians are meant to be punished for and which of them exactly should be executed, not that he does not know what they believe.  He reports that he has executed those who were non-citizens who refused to give up their “superstition” but does not express the ignorance of what they believed Carrier attributes to him.  He simply says “whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished”.  This is not saying he does not know the “nature of their creed”, just that, regardless of its nature, they deserved to be punished for their stubbornness.  He is not writing to Trajan perplexed at what they believed, but for guidance on which of the many Christians he has uncovered should be executed.  His report that those he interrogated told him “they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god” gives no indication that he was learning this for the first time, just that this was what they admitted to doing (and it’s interesting that he says “as to a god”, as this implies he understands this “Christ” was a man).  So Carrier overstates the ignorance of Pliny about Christians and then makes a mighty conjectural leap to attribute a similar level of ignorance to Tacitus.

Next Carrier turns to the lost history of Pliny’s uncle and adoptive father, Pliny the Elder, and argues that it cannot have mentioned any persecution of Christians in its eye-witness account of the Great Fire because “Pliny the Younger was an avid admirer and reader of his uncle’s works and thus would surely have read his account of the burning of Rome, and therefore would surely have known everything about Christians that Pliny the Elder recorded.” (pp. 268-9) Unfortunately, this argument depends on Carrier’s strange reading of Pliny’s letter to Trajan as expressing some great ignorance of Christianity, rather than its actual expression of ignorance of the legal way Christians should be handled.  His further point that “no one else ever mentions, cites, or quotes Pliny the Elder providing any testimony to Christ or Christians (as likely Christians or their critics would have done, if such an invaluably early reference existed)” (p. 269) also carries no weight.  Carrier himself correctly notes that Pliny the Elder’s only surviving mention of the Great Fire in his Natural History XVII.1.5 shows “Pliny believed Nero had started the fire deliberately” (p. 268), which means Pliny would have no incentive to talk about alternative accusations or other potential culprits and little incentive to talk about any scapegoats.  So it would not be surprising that he would have kept the focus on the guilt of Nero and not mentioned any Christians at all.  It’s also interesting to note Carrier’s reference here to “an invaluably early reference” to Jesus that therefore should have been mentioned by Christians if it existed.  Here and in many other places Mythicists speak as though Christians were desperate to prove Jesus existed and were therefore motivated by this to interpolate mentions of him or destroy works that fail to note him.  This assumption is weird, given that there were no Jesus Mythicists in the first centuries of Christianity; in fact there were none for the first 1790 years or so of the faith’s existence.  The fact that modern Mythicists like Carrier are convinced early Christians were desperately shoring up the evidence against an objection to Jesus that was not going to be made for another millennium and half is another of their argument’s many oddities.

Carrier goes on to make a related point when he argues “mentions of Christ seem to have been a motive for preserving texts in general: the works of Josephus and Tacitus may have survived the Middle Ages for precisely that reason” (p. 269).  Josephus may have been preserved in part because of his mentions of Jesus, but the fact that all of his works, particularly Antiquities, refers to a range of people and events from both testaments of the Christian Bible means his corpus is likely to have been widely read and copied anyway.  And contrary to Carrier’s claim, most Tacitus scholars agree that we have such a paltry and fragmentary manuscript record for Tacitus precisely because Tacitus was not popular in the Middle Ages, probably because of the scornful and disparaging way the Annals XV.44 passage speaks of Jesus and Christianity.  Finally, the idea that works only “survived the Middle Ages” if they were conducive to Christian needs is an overstatement, given that we have plenty of Greek and Roman works that served no apologetic purpose or were even directly contrary to key Christian doctrines, but which were preserved by Christian scholars anyway.  Indeed, if Carrier can read any Classical writers at all, he has a succession of Christian (and Muslim) scholars down many centuries to thank for that privilege.

Moving on to Suetonius, Carrier writes:

“Suetonius attests to a persecution of Christians under Nero, but is evidently unaware of this having any connection to the burning of Rome …. [his reference] confirms that Suetonius, a prominent and erudite Latin author and imperial librarian, knew nothing of any connection between Christians and the burning of Rome” (p. 269-70)

But the fact that Suetonius does not mention any such connection between Christians and the Great Fire does not necessarily mean (i) none was made or even (ii) that Suetonius was not aware of any such connection.  Again, like the older Pliny, Suetonius believed that Nero was responsible for starting the fire, stating directly that the emperor sent out “his chamberlains …. with tow and fire-brands” (Suetonius, Nero, XXXVIII) to do so.  Suetonius makes Nero the outright villain of his account and so has little rhetorical incentive to distract from this narrative by mentioning alternative theories or even Nero’s scapegoating an unpopular sect.  Similarly, if we turn to the other major account of the Great Fire – in Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXII.16-18 – we find the same thing; Dio places the blame for the fire squarely on Nero.  It is only in Tacitus’ that we find some scepticism about this blame, with the historian noting “whether [the fire was] due to chance or to the malice of the sovereign is uncertain – for each version has its sponsors”.  Tacitus certainly notes that Nero was blamed by many for the fire, but refers to this as “rumour” and makes no overt case for its truth or falsity.  This means that the more sceptical and neutral Tacitus does have the rhetorical room to discuss how the blame was put on Christians and to highlight Nero’s cruel nature by describing something he seems sure did happen (the execution of the Christians) rather than something about which he was uncertain (Nero starting the fire).

Continuing with his analysis of Suetonius, Carrier draws attention to his reference to Claudius’ expulsion of Jews from Rome mentioned above, dismisses the idea that its mention of a “Chrestus” could be in any way connected to the “Christus” of Christianity and says “this incident was more likely city-wide violence ginned up by a Jewish demagogue named Chrestus (a common name in Rome at the time)” (pp. 271-72).  As already discussed, this is certainly possible, but there is no real way to determine if it is the most “likely” way to explain this episode.  The fact that Suetonius’ reference to Nero’s punishment of Christians (Nero, XVI) means he understood Christians to be a distinct sect does not automatically mean that he, or his source, understood that any dispute among “Jews” over this “Chrestus” was purely among Jews or among Jewish Christians and other Jews.  But Carrier has plumped for the idea that there was “a Jewish demagogue named Chrestus” largely because he needs to utilise this in the next part of his argument.

Turning to the Tacitus passage, Carrier begins to make his case that the key sentence mentioning Jesus is an interpolation by arguing that the passage was originally talking about these supposed “Chrestians” and not Christians, as discussed above.   He notes that M.II originally had “chrestianos” rather than “christianos” and argues “it is more likely that Tacitus originally wrote chrestianos, ‘Chrestians,’, than that this was produced by subsequent error from ‘Christians’ and then corrected back again.” (p. 273)  But Carrier does not bother to explain how this is “more likely”, he simply asserts it.  Anyone who has tried any calligraphy projects or who has experimented with copying from an exemplar text using a medieval book hand (as I have) can assure Carrier that this kind of simple error happens all too easily when the scribe’s attention to the form of the script means their attention on the content wanders, so it is entirely possible that the original M.II spelling is simply a scribal error.  Carrier also does not bother to look at alternative reasons why Tacitus may have written “chrestianos” and still have been referring to Christians.  If this spelling was original to Tacitus, he says that this sect was one which “the crowd styled ‘Chrestians'” (vulgus Chrestianos appellabat) and then follows this by talking about “Christus, from whom the name has its origin” (auctor nominis eius Christus).  Adolf von Harnack and several later scholars have read this as Tacitus subtly noting that “the crowd” was making an error in calling them “Chrestians” and corrects it by noting that the founder was called “Christus”.  There is certainly evidence of some confusion about the pronunciation of the name, as Tertullian noted later in the second century:

“Now then, if this hatred is directed against the name, what is the guilt attaching to names? What accusation can be brought against words, except that a certain pronunciation of a name sounds barbarous, or is unlucky or abusive or obscene? But ‘Christian,’ as far as its etymology goes, is derived from ‘anointing.’ And even when it is incorrectly pronounced by you ‘Chrestian’ (for not even is your acquaintance with the name accurate), it is formed from ‘sweetness’ or ‘kindness.’ In innocent men, therefore, even an innocent name is hated.” (Apology, III)

So with these alternative possibilities in mind, it is hard to accept Carrier’s assertion that it is “most likely” Tacitus was not referring to Christians.  Carrier has a bad habit of asserting the interpretation that leads to his conclusion as “more likely” without bothering to address or even mention alternatives.

Not only does Carrier’s argument depend heavily on the idea that the word “chrestianos” is original to Tacitus, but it also requires that there actually be this otherwise unattested sect of “Chrestians”, based on the supposition that the “Chrestus” of Suetonius Claudius, XXV was actually a Roman Jewish person who founded a sect, which is, yet again, far from certain.  But Carrier continues blithely despite this, and goes on to pile supposition on supposition:

“I think it’s more likely that Tacitus had already explained who the Chrestians were in his account of the Chrestus riots (those also recorded by Suetonius), which would have appeared in his section of the Annals for the early years of the reign of Claudius, now lost. If that is the case, then what would become the Testimonium Taciteum was originally about the sect of Jewish rebels first suppressed under Claudius, who were at that time led by their namesake Chrestus and were thereafter named for him (whether he was still alive or not).” (p. 273)

No-one could accuse him of timidity when it comes to speculations, all bolstered with his favourite phrase “more likely”.  He then makes a number of arguments to justify the removal of the key line (“Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus”):

“First, the text flows logically and well with the line removed.” (p.274)

Considering the line is fairly short and represents a digression, this is hardly surprising.

“Second, the notion that there was “a huge multitude” (multitudo ingens) of Christians in Rome to persecute, though not impossible, is somewhat suspect” (p. 274)

Given that there is no definition of a “multitudo” that quantifies exactly how large a number of people it represents, this argument can carry little weight.  Writing as early as c. 57-58 AD Paul wrote to a community of Christians in Rome that was sufficiently large to justify him visiting them.  How large this community was seven years later is unknown, but if, as Carrier himself notes, the Jewish population of the city was in the tens of thousands, a Christian population of up to or even over one thousand hardly stretches credulity.  Even if we do not allow Tacitus some rhetorical exaggeration, the execution of even a small proportion of this group could qualify as a “multitude”.

“Third, it is not clear why Tacitus, much less the general public (as he implies), would regard the Christians as ‘criminals who deserved the most extreme punishments’ merely for being in thrall to a vulgar superstition (which was actually not even a crime, much less a capital one)” (p. 274)

This argument is strange, given that Tacitus tells us that the accusation of arson brought about the punishment and that it was seen as justified because of the Christian’s “hatred against mankind”.  Their “vulgar superstition” is not directly mentioned as the reason for their persecution, though clearly Tacitus understood it to entail beliefs that he saw as a “hatred against mankind”.  It is not hard to see how pious pagan Romans would see a cult that refused to sacrifice to the gods for the good of the Empire and which looked forward to some apocalyptic cleansing of the earth would “hate mankind”.

“Fourth, Tacitus says the people “called” them Chrestians, vulgus Chrestianos appellabat, notably the past tense. Why would he not use the present tense if he believed the group was still extant, as Christians were?” (p. 275)

This is another strange argument.  Tacitus is talking about events in the past, so it makes sense he should use the past tense here.  I can say “Germans in the 1930s nicknamed them ‘the Nazis’” despite the fact there are still Nazis today.  This also makes even more sense if the common people in Tacitus’ time were more familiar with Christians than the Roman crowd fifty years earlier and knew they were called “Christians” rather than “Chrestians”.  Tacitus is therefore possibly drawing attention to the erroneous appellation used by “the crowd” a generation earlier.

http://www.livius.org/pictures/italy/rome/rome-museum-pieces/tombstone-of-tacitus/
Possibly Tacitus’ tombstone – from Livius.org

“But fifth, and most convincingly, there is no evidence that this event happened.” (p. 276)

From this point Carrier embarks on the difficult business of making an argument from silence. He notes that it is only this passage in the textus receptus of Tacitus that connects the Great Fire with any persecution of Christians and goes on to argue that this is because there was no such persecution – it was the shadowy and hypothetical “Chrestians” Tacitus was talking about before the key line about “Christus” and Pontius Pilatus was inserted.  The first difficulty is that while the Fire is reasonably well-attested, we only have three detailed descriptions: in Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Suetonius.  As already noted, the latter two put the blame on Nero and the lost account of Pliny the Elder would have done so as well, so none of these three writers had any strong incentive to mention any scapegoating of Christians.  Only the more judicious and sceptical Tacitus is interested in exploring the question of who was to blame and who was blamed.  Carrier draws attention to the lack of mentions of this episode in Christian writings, saying:

“The first direct attestation to the Testimonium Taciteum is usually said to be the 5th century text of Sulpicius Severus, Chronicle 2.29-30, which certainly draws on this passage from Tacitus, but notably it does not attest the suspect line.” (pp. 276-77)

This is true, but a comparison of the account by Sulpicius Severus and the one by Tacitus he is clearly drawing on shows that it contains the same information, but minus the insults against Christians, so it makes perfect sense that Sulpicius would leave out the derogatory reference to Jesus’ execution.  And unlike Tacitus, Sulpicius was writing for a mostly Christian audience and so had no need to digress to explain the origin of Christianity and its name anyway.  Carrier goes on to rule out the idea that there was any persecution connected to the Great Fire on the grounds that “there would very likely have been a strong and widely-referenced Christian tradition deriving from it, widely enough in fact to be evident in extant literature. But no such Christian tradition exists.” (p. 277)  But this does not actually necessarily follow.  We have Suetonius saying that Nero persecuted Christians, though not in the context of blame for the Great Fire.  And we have two references to Nero persecuting Christians in Tertullian as well:

“Study your records: there you will find that Nero was the first to persecute this teaching when, after subjugating the entire East, in Rome he especially he treated everyone with savagery. That such a man was author of our chastisement fills us with pride. For anyone who knows him knows him can understand that anything not supremely good would never have been condemned by Nero.” (Cited in Eusebius, Defence V; and see also Scorpiace, XV)

Carrier queries why Tertullian would not have connected this persecution to the charge of arson and argue that the charge was false.  It is not hard, however, to see why Tertullian may have been reluctant to draw attention to the arson accusation, since it may have given his pagan opponents reason to suspect the persecution was actually justified.  Gerhard Baudy goes so far as to argue that the arson accusations actually had at least some foundation, linking Christian apocalyptic literature with its thinly veiled threats of destruction made against Rome to speculation that if Christians did not actually start the Great Fire, some of their more radical elements may have had a strong incentive to help it along once it got going.  This is highly conjectural, but there is no doubt that Christian apocalyptic contains no shortage of derogatory references to Rome and gloating predictions of its destruction.  Although it was probably written around 30 years after the Fire, Revelation depicts Rome as the Great Whore of Babylon, “the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev 17:18) who sits on “seven hills” (Rev 17:9), is “drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus” (Rev 17:6) and which will eventually “burn … with fire” (Rev 17:16).  All this was most likely written in the reign of Domitian and probably reflects some level of persecution of Christians in his time, but the fact that “the Beast” of Rev 13:15-18 has “a human number” that is most likely the the numeric form of “Nero Caesar” indicates that these ideas and this imagery go back further.

And Christian traditions also preserve other accusations of arson.  The Gospel of Peter has Peter describing his situation after the crucifixion and burial of Jesus:

“But I with the companions was sorrowful; and having been wounded in spirit, we were in hiding, for we were sought after by them as wrongdoers and as wishing to set fire to the sanctuary. In addition to all these things we were fasting; and we were sitting mourning and weeping night and day until the Sabbath.” (gPeter 26-27)

So even if Baudy’s speculation is entirely wrong, it is not hard to see why a sect that was liberal with threats of a coming fiery apocalyptic retribution against Rome might not only be accused of arson but also be very wary of drawing attention to those accusations.

Finally Carrier asks why Tacitus’ account itself is not referred to directly by early Christian writers:

“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?” (p. 282)

There are several problems here.  Firstly, while Carrier seems to be under the impression that Tacitus’ works were widely copied and read, it is actually hard to know how well known his histories were.  They do seem to have enjoyed a brief vogue during the (very) short reign of his namesake in the third century, with the ill-fated emperor Tacitus (d. 276) apparently having copies made thanks to a claim he was descended from the historian and out of concern they may be lost (Historia Augusta, X.3), so we may even have this partially to thank for the survival of Tacitus’ books at all.  But more importantly, even if the Annals and the passage was known to early Christian writers, it is not hard to see why a passage that links their sect to arson and which calls it “a most mischievous superstition …. evil …. hideous and shameful …. [and with a] hatred against mankind” would not be one they would highlight.

Conclusion

Overall, Carrier’s argument boils down to the fact no-one else connects any Neronic Persecution directly to an accusation of arson.  Attempts by some Mythicists to claim there was no Neronic Persecution at all, depending largely on some strained arguments by Candida Moss (see The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, 2013), is hard to sustain given clear and direct references to it in both pagan (Suetonius) and Christian (Tertullian) sources and the strong and early Christian tradition that depicted Nero as the archetypal pagan persecutor.  But as noted above, the other three accounts of the Great Fire apart from Tacitus are focused on blaming Nero and Christian writers would have had even less incentive to draw attention to the accusation of Christian arson.  So the argument from silence for an interpolation is very hard to sustain and seems yet another example of Carrier’s ideologically-driven motivated reasoning.

The other three arguments for dismissing the passage as a reference to Jesus are even weaker.  The claim it only refers to Christians and does not mention Jesus is simply factually wrong.  The claim that the passage is about some other sect and so some other “Christus” is absurd.  And the claim that Tacitus was merely repeating Christian hearsay goes against everything we know about him as a historian and is merely speculation presented as conclusion.  What we are left with is a direct reference to Jesus as a historical person, detailing the who, what, when and where of his execution, by one of the most competent, sober, careful and sceptical historians of the ancient world.  Tacitus makes literally hundreds of similar passing mentions of minor figures which are accepted without question as testament to the existence of these people, however fleeting.  There is no rational reason to treat this one any differently.

274 thoughts on “Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

  1. Tertullian, Apologeticum c.5 v.3:

    [3] 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.

    [3] Consulite commentarios vestros; illic reperietis primum Neronem in hanc sectam cum maxime Romae orientem Caesariano gladio ferocisse. Sed tali dedicatore damnationis nostrae etiam gloriamur. Qui enim scit illum, intellegere potest non nisi grande aliquod bonum a Nerone damnatum.

    Also relevant: Tertullian, Ad Nationes I, c.7 v.8:

    [8] This name of ours took its rise in the reign of Augustus; under Tiberius it was taught with all clearness and publicity;94 under Nero it was ruthlessly condemned,95 and you may weigh its worth and character even from the person of its persecutor. If that prince was a pious man, then the Christians are impious; if he was just, if he was pure, then the Christians are unjust and impure; if he was not a public enemy, we are enemies of our country: what sort of men we are, our persecutor himself shows, since he of course punished what produced hostility to himself.96 [9] Now, although every other institution which existed under Nero has been destroyed, yet this of ours has firmly remained—-righteous, it would seem, as being unlike the author (of its persecution).

    [8] Principe ¦Augusto nomen hoc ortum est, Tiberio disciplina
    eius inluxit, ¦Nerone damnatio inualuit, ut iam hinc de
    persona persecuto¦ris ponderetis : si pius ille princeps, impii
    Christiani; si iustus, ¦si castus, iniusti et incesti Christiani;
    si non hostis publicus, ||f6v nos publici hostes : quales simus,
    damnator ipse demonstrauit, ¦utique aemula sibi puniens.
    [9] “Et tamen permansit erasis omnibus ¦hoc solum institutum Neronianum, iustum denique ut dissimile ¦sui auctoris.

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    1. “Consulite commentarios vestros; illic reperietis primum Neronem in hanc sectam cum maxime Romae orientem Caesariano gladio ferocisse. Sed tali dedicatore damnationis nostrae etiam gloriamur. Qui enim scit illum, intellegere potest non nisi grande aliquod bonum a Nerone damnatum”

      Translates to:

      Consult your comments; there you will find that Nero first attacked this sect with Caesar’s sword, especially in the east of Rome. But we are also proud of such a devotee of our damnation. For he who knows him can understand that there is no other great good condemned by Nero

      “[8] Principe ¦Augusto nomen hoc ortum est, Tiberio disciplina
      eius inluxit, ¦Nerone damnatio inualuit, ut iam hinc de
      persona persecuto¦ris ponderetis : si pius ille princeps, impii
      Christiani; si iustus, ¦si castus, iniusti et incesti Christiani;
      si non hostis publicus, ||f6v nos publici hostes : quales simus,
      damnator ipse demonstrauit, ¦utique aemula sibi puniens.
      [9] “Et tamen permansit erasis omnibus ¦hoc solum institutum Neronianum, iustum denique ut dissimile ¦sui auctoris.”

      Translates to :
      This name originated with Prince Augustus, Tiberius disciplined
      his dawning, the damnation of Nero began, as already mentioned here
      the person of the persecutor will weigh: if that pious prince, the impious
      Christians; if just, if chaste, unjust and incestuous Christians;
      if you are not a public enemy, we are public enemies: what are we?
      the condemner himself pointed out, punishing his rival.
      [9] “And yet he remained obliterated by all ¦ ​​this only Neronian institution, just fine as unlike ¦ its author.

      1. Those are very (and weirdly) literal translations. The ones Roger gives are more much more accurate as to the real sense of what’s being said.

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  2. Good job Tim. I always like to ask mythers what other parts of Tacitus’ are they worried about. They never are concerned about the rest of it oddly enough.

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    1. The oldest “copies” of texts merely attributed to Tacitus date from Circa 850 – 1050 and anything within those texts cannot be considered anything but propaganda written centuries after the death of Tacitus.

      There are many historical references to messiahs (“christs”) but not a single 1st century originated historical trace of “Jesus”.

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      1. “The oldest “copies” of texts merely attributed to Tacitus date from Circa 850 – 1050 and anything within those texts cannot be considered anything but propaganda written centuries after the death of Tacitus.”

        This is a ridiculous argument. ALL ancient texts that we have survive to us thanks to much later manuscripts. And this fact can’t be used to just assume this (to some) inconvenient mention of Jesus is a later addition – you have to actually make the argument that it is. Good luck with that.

        “There are many historical references to messiahs (“christs”) but not a single 1st century originated historical trace of “Jesus”.”

        Utter garbage. There’s Josephus Ant. XX.200 to begin with.

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        1. You ask “What about Josephus” in response to my observation that there is no authentic and original, 1st century originated evidence of the existence and later written legends of “Jesus”.

          The oldest “copy” of the works of Josephus dates from some 600 years after the time in which he lived and the two ridiculous, out of character, randomly inserted reference to “Jesus” have long been considered later written forged interpolations.

          However: It is not merely that no authentic and original 1st century texts exist but that there is no historical evidence of any sort that mentions Yeshua/Jesus.
          No politician, chronicler, historian, philosopher or poet mentions “Jesus” or any of the remarkable exploits that appear centuries later.
          No inscription and not even graffito mentions “Jesus”.
          There is nothing but utter, total and complete historical silence regarding the existence and very newsworthy exploits of Jesus that appear for the first time around the 3rd century but about which nothing but historical silence echos from the first 3 decades of what only became known as the “1st century” in what at the same time became known as the 8th century.

          Even the oldest/first 4th century Roman religion they called “christianity” agrees:

          “Our documentary sources of knowledge about the origins of Christianity and its earliest development are chiefly the New Testament Scriptures, the authenticity of which we must, to a great extent, take for granted.”
          (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 712)

          The Church makes extraordinary admissions about its New Testament. For example, when discussing the origin of those writings,

          “the most distinguished body of academic opinion ever assembled” (Catholic Encyclopedias, Preface) admits that the Gospels “do not go back to the first century of the Christian era”

          (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, p. 137, pp. 655-6).

          This statement conflicts with priesthood assertions that the earliest Gospels were progressively written during the decades following the death of the Gospel Jesus Christ.
          In a remarkable aside, the Church further admits that,

          “the earliest of the extant manuscripts [of the New Testament], it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD”

          (Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., pp. 656-7).

          Referencing christian propaganda written centuries after the time in which the confused and contradictory legends of “Jesus” are set is not evidence that there is any historical origin of those fanciful and contradictory legends.

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          1. “The oldest “copy” of the works of Josephus dates from some 600 years”

            So you keep saying, as though this is somehow unusual or significant. It’s neither.

            “the two ridiculous, out of character, randomly inserted reference to “Jesus” have long been considered later written forged interpolations.”

            Bullshit. The first of the two – Ant. XVIII.63-4 – has long been recognised as having been at least added to, but the consensus position of modern scholars is that these additions were made to an original account of Jesus by Josephus. Then there is Ant. XX.200, which is not in any way “ridiculous”, is not “out of character” and is considered genuine by virtually every Josephan scholar. Don’t come to this blog and think that blurting your crackpot a priori conclusions is making an argument. It isn’t.

            “No politician, chronicler, historian, philosopher or poet mentions “Jesus” or any of the remarkable exploits that appear centuries later.”

            Yawn. Then I suggest you go find someone who believes in those remarkable exploits and argue with them. I’m an atheist and all I am doing is presenting the mainstream, non-Christian scholarly view that a historical Jesus existed. The other claims made about him are another issue entirely, though unfortunately people like you constantly confuse them.

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      2. If you you really insist that Annals must’ve not escaped tampering in the centuries between Tacitus’ original copy and the oldest manuscript we have…
        …despite no tampering in the subsequent manuscripts since the oldest one…
        …then please explain why, unlike the recognised embellishing of the recording of Jesus in Antiqiuties book XVIII, Tacitus’ description of Christians remains derogatory and contemptuous and why the possibility of the Christians having any responsibility is not negated.

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    2. Mythicists don’t seem to realize that if they applied their level of skepticism to everything, we know pretty much nothing about history before roughly 1500AD. We’d have to chuck out all ancient histories because they’re not contemporary enough or not reliable enough because their manuscripts were copied later.

      It’s similar to those who think Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by Shakespeare. If you apply that level of skepticism, we wouldn’t know who wrote anything before about 1800.

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    1. That’s more or less the idea. Certainly the “Great Myths” series is being written with one eye on doing that eventually. This new “Jesus Mythicism” series may be edited down to a long chapter in the same work or could end up being a book in their own right.

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      1. > This new “Jesus Mythicism” series may be edited down to a long chapter in the same work or could end up being a book in their own right.

        OR you can just have several chapters about Jesus Mythicism?
        It is a large subject.

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      2. If mythicist case does end up getting into it’s own book by you, you could call it “The foundational falsehoods of Mythicism”, reworded by another mythicist (aka history ignoramus) Aron Ra’s book countering creationism

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          1. _Young_ _earth_ creationism is pseudo-science, yeah. But that’s irrelevant here, this is a history blog. How about you debate Francis Collins? …that’s what l thought. Aron Ra’s science vids are somewhat impressive but when it comes to history, philosophy, and theology, guy’s a fucking retard (this is a guy who thinks Carrier is a credible authority so what does that tell you?). That Undertaker/Genghis Khan getup doesn’t make him special; he’s no different than any other uncultured Anti-theist ideologue. The condescending cynic should just stick to what he knows best, biology.

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          2. “Aron Ra is not a history ignoramus.”

            This post by him proves conclusively that this is exactly what he is. First, he says he’s impressed with Michael Paulkovich’s ridiculous list of 126 writers who supposedly “should” have mentioned Jesus but didn’t. “Aron Ra” clearly didn’t have the knowledge or capacity to check that list and notice (i) people on it who died before Jesus was even born, (ii) people on it who wrote poetry or books of vetinary science and would have absolutely no reason to mention any Jewish preacher and (iii) the fact that no-one else on it mentions any Jewish preachers at all or, in the case of Josephus, DID mention Jesus. He then tries to dismiss Bart Ehrman by claiming that Ehrman’s only argument is that that “everyone knows Jesus existed”, when this is not what Ehrman argues at all.

            Then he says he has been converted to Mythicism thanks to interrviews with “Frank Zindler, D.M. Murdock, David Fitzgerald, Robert Price, and Richard Carrier, all of whom he claims “are scriptural experts”. Zindler is a biologist, Murdock was a New Age loon, Fitzgerald is a self-published nobody and Carrier is an unemployed blogger. Of the people he lists, only Carrier and Price have relevant degrees and only Price could be called anything like a “scriptural expert”. He then goes off on some meandering burbles about Josephus being “Joseph of Arimathea” and says his “only mention of Jesus is now known to have been a forgery or redaction inserted later by someone else”, which skips over the whole issue of whether the TF is a wholesale forgery or just added to (the consensus position) and shows he’s bought the flawed argument that the Jesus in Ant. XX.200 is Jesus ben Damneus.

            This guy is beyond clueless when it comes to history.

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          3. AronRa IS a history ignoramus.
            I’m not knocking his credentials in palaeontology nor in certain areas of biology. I respect his crusade against attempts from the American religious right to de-secularise education.

            But I also cringe at anything he does outside of his area of expertise. He demonstratively doesn’t know very much about religions nor history. His entire attempted stint in politics was absurd (running in socially conservative Texas as an atheist looking like THAT?!). I cringe at him putting his adolescent/early teenaged son in some of his videos. I cringe at him associating himself with dubious “new atheists” like PZ Myers, Richard Carrier, etc. Even the title of his video series and book is a bit off-puttingly pompous.

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          4. when it comes to history, philosophy, and theology, guy’s a fucking retard

            I agree that clueless internet atheists should stop pontificating about historical subjects about which they know nothing. But can we please not use ableist language like “retard”, which stigmatises people with intellectual disabilities?

            Creationism is pseudo-science.

            That’s hardly the point, seeing as this isn’t a discussion about creationism. A person can be correct about biology but incorrect about history. Indeed many people are.

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          5. Funny. Creationists also always demand public debates. I have an eyeopener for ya. Scientific controversies (accepting the necessary but false assumption that there is one) are not decided by debates. That includes historical research.
            Creationism is pseudo-science.
            Jesusmythology is quackery. It’s only plus is that it doesn’t accept supernatural explanations. Otherwise it uses the same methods.

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      3. I, for one, would like that. There are problems with the other books. I would suggest adding your piece on doing History as an intro.
        Maybe even have “Dr” Carrier write the forward?
        He is, after all, a legit scholar. Just ask him.

  3. I can think of some simple explanations for the word Chrestus being changed to Christus in the Second Medicean text without postulating all the suppositions Carrier does.

    1.) the original word of Chrestus was a misspelling and corrected by a later scribe to Christus. Mistakes happen

    2.) If I do recall correctly early Christians spelled Christ as both Chrestus and Christus as the pronunciation is the same. Later as words changed the pronunciations became different hence the standardized Christus. Therefore a future scribe would alter a text to change what had because of linguistics become a mistake.

    Way simpler than Carrier’s suppositions

    1. The word in M.II that Carrier refers to is “chrestianos”, which a later scribe changed to “christianos”. “Chrestus” and “Christus” do seem to have come to be pronounced the same a little later than Tacitus’ time, as per Tertullian’s comment about the mispronunciation of “Christians” as “Chrestians”. But I while I could find several examples of even Christian scribes writing both χρηστιανοι and χριστιανος in various early manuscripts, indicating that the orthography was not fixed in the Greek, I couldn’t find any such variations in Latin forms of the word. There may be an argument about a Tacitean use of “chrestianos” by reference to the variant Greek orthography, but I suspect it would be a contrived one.

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      1. I was interested by the χρηστιανοι spelling. In Classical Greek, η would be pronounced like ai in hair (long vowel), while ι would be pronounced like i in bin (short vowel) or ea in bead (long vowel) [I am currently learning Classical Greek using the Joint Association of Classical Teachers textbooks]. If Koine Greek speakers used the second pronunciation of ι in this word, then it is possible that the two vowel sounds were sufficiently similar to be easily mistakable.

  4. >Attempts by some Mythicists to claim there was no Neronic Persecution at all, depending largely on some strained arguments by Candida Moss (see The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, 2013), is hard to sustain given clear and direct references to it in both pagan (Suetonius) and Christian (Tertullian) sources and the strong and early Christian tradition that depicted Nero as the archetypal pagan persecutor.

    Other than that, what do you think about Candida Moss’ book?

    1. I found it a odd one. The idea that later Christians exaggerated the extent and nature of any persecutions is not new or even particularly radical. But Moss seems to try to stretch it past breaking point to almost pretend there was no persecution at all apart from very late in the third century and just before Constantine, with even that exaggerated. And the fact that part of her book was a (valid) critique of modern evangelical Christians trying to claim “persecution” in the culture wars of US politics veered from a historian trying to use a modern parallel to give her historical work current resonance for her readers into a feeling that she actually had something of a modern agenda. And that always trips my “bad history” alarm bell.

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    2. There’s also Brent Shaws 2015 ‘The Myth of the Neronian Persecution’ Journal of Roman Studies (105); pp. 73-100. Shaw takes Annals 15.44 as probably genuine Tacitus, partly to make his argument harder, and also to avoid discussing the ins and out of its authenticity.

      He says the notion of a Neronian persecution reflects ideas and connections prevalent at the time Tacitus was writing and not the realities of the 60s. He makes reference to the Nero as antiChrist legend/s.

      “The conclusions are simple. There are no sound probative reasons to accept the mirage, however appealing it might be, that Christians were attacked by the Roman state as a special group and were martyred under Nero, and no good evidence, contemporary or even later, that links them with the Great Fire in 64 C.E. There is even less good evidence to sustain the Christian fiction of Nero as ‘the first persecutor’. There is no evidence — I mean none at all — to indicate that the emperor would have been capable of forming such a conception or that he would ever have executed such an imperial policy. It is completely anachronistic. The whole incident and its surrounding ‘historical’ addenda should be excised from histories of the early Church, and the sooner the better.”

      By ‘historical addenda’ he includes the deaths of Paul and Peter in Rome under Nero.

      1. Yes, I’m aware of Shaw’s article, though I didn’t bother to address it because so far I haven’t seen any New Atheists refer to it, only to Moss’ book. And tackling all of the problems with Shaw’s argument would have made an already rather long piece even longer – which wasn’t really worth it given that Shaw is tangential. Christopher P. Jones addresses the main flaws in Shaw’s argument – see “The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw”, New Testament Studies (2017), 63, pp.146-52.

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        1. Thanks for the reference to Jones’ incredibly lucid critique of Shaw. The Shaw seemed amazingly bad especially given his eminence, but I was lost trying to formulate and sort out the problems.

          One thing Shaw and especially Carrier keep out of focus is that Tacitus isn’t saying Nero claimed they were guilty of arson. Tacitus has just listed a bunch of cultic acts Nero required in order to placate the gods after the fire. It would seem, that is, that he wanted people to believe it was an ‘act of God. ‘ Then Nero reaches for the ‘Christians’. Tacitus says the problem wasn’t arson but the blurry expression ‘odium humani generis’ which is apparently a typical complaint about the Jews. The Jews generally might be thought to offend the gods by their rejection of cult, but have been normalized in the Roman economy of worship. It seems the text can be read as carrying forward the connection to the offended gods from the preceding sentences in the case of (non-Jewish) Christians – though this is not clearly brought out by ‘odium humani generis’

          Both Carrier and Shaw note that some later writers who refer to the ‘Neronian persecution of Christians’ don’t connect it to the fire or arson charges. Carrier notes Tertullian blamed Nero for persecution but doesn’t bring in the arson charges. Shaw notes Lactantius says Nero’s persecution was all about neglect of cult (duties to the gods) not e.g. arson. But it seems perfectly plausible that this is what Nero thought too, and what Tacitus is basically saying. The thought was that ‘the Christians have to go because they enrage the gods’ – the fire was a sign of the gods’ rage and the occasion of the ‘persecution’.

  5. The day Yeshua is erased from history is the day history dies. Yet they’re still going for it. Another off-base theory that still persists is the idea that because Christ allegedly shared things in common with pagan figures (never mind the Horus, Krishna, Adonis, Mithra etc. comparisons) the so-called dying-and-rising gods like Dionysus, Osiris, Inanna, Zalmoxis, and Romulus (who the desperate Carrier keeps pointing out had a “Passion Play” of his own), that somehow means Christ was mythical also – with the crucifixions, resurrections, virgin births, etc. – due to his butchering of Bays Theorem, in saying that Christ must also have been a god-like figure who got historicized like the others.
    I don’t think it’s crossed Carrier’s mind yet that it’s also been the other way around far more commonly, with flesh-and-blood human beings being deified over the ages like Imhotep, the Queens Kubaba & Dito, Buddha, Lao Tse, Julius & Augustus Caesar, various Chinese & Japanese military leaders, and many more examples. Care to touch on that matter also, Tim?

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    1. The argument that “figure x had attributes/worship similar to Jesus and was mythological so therefore Jesus was mythological” is, however you cut it, a non sequitur. It may indicate that, but (as you say) the fact we have plenty of examples of historical people with the same attributes and story elements means it does not necessarily follow that these elements = “mythological”. This is why Carrier has to fiddle with the Rank-Raglan Scale to get it to the point where, using his Bayesian smoke and mirrors, it “shows” Jesus was “more mythological” than say Augustus.

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    2. The claim that Jesus looks like a mythical figure is a dubious one, but let’s suppose that it may be true. Does that mean that we should be looking for some scenario which will eliminate a historical Jesus? Not necessarily. It might just be too hard to think of a remotely plausible scenario. The problem with mythicists is that they are trying to eliminate the historical Jesus at any cost. Consider the following scenario:

      In about AD 30 people started to take an interest in a figure that we will call Jesus Mark I. A few decades later Jesus Mark II was invented. Now here’s the clever bit: it has been made to look as if the people who were talking about Jesus Mark I were really talking about Jesus Mark II. Ingenious! So if this is the only mythicist scenario that “works” – notwithstanding some agonised contortions over Paul’s letters – this must be what we were looking for. Right?

      Or perhaps the initial impression that Jesus looks like a mythical figure was misleading.

      1. You never know what the Christ mythers will try next. Most of them probably won’t be satisfied till they’ve crucified him all over again. Recently, they tried dissecting the Titanic analogy (you’ll find that one almost prophetic and its parallels even more striking) and still they strut their feathers. I guess for some anti-theists, rejecting Yeshua’s divinity just isn’t enough — him being just a man is the default position for one who doesn’t believe in a higher power anyway, and 1 Corintheans 15:14 _already_ rings true.

          1. In the late 19th century, there was a book written about the Titan (the world’s biggest cruise ship) that crashed into an iceberg and sank. Sounds a lot like what happened in 1912, right? Once in a while, I’d bring that up to the mythicists who repeat the parallels Jesus had with earlier figures.

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        1. Keyra, do you mean there are still ideas waiting to be tried? God forbid! I think there are two basic kinds of myth theory. Either no one had ever heard of Jesus before the Gospels were written, or they had heard of Jesus… but it was a different Jesus. With the first theory it is necessary to argue that Paul’s letters are all fake. There is a certain logic to this idea, even though most mythicists realise that ultimately it won’t work. If there are letters which seem to corroborate a fake historical account, the obvious assumption must be that the letters are fake. A theory which concedes that the letters are fake and then, somehow, has to work around that, is going to be more contrived and complicated than one which just treats the letters as fake.

          Hence the desperate scenario favoured by most mythicists, which has a celestial Jesus coming first and then rapidly being replaced by the terrestrial Jesus. A theory which treats Paul’s letters as fake is an obvious hoax theory, but that doesn’t mean that the alternative is not a hoax theory. Inventing the earthly Jesus, setting the action in the recent past, and getting everyone to accept the idea still involves a remarkable hoax. And it’s a hoax that involves extra complications.

          But, supposedly, the search for some kind of myth theory is justified because we can just “see” that Jesus is a mythical figure. But who says? Can we just see that the Gospels are complete fiction and not an embellished account of actual history? In fact, the argument is in danger of backfiring. If you want to invent a character and then convince people that he lived in the recent past, how do you go about it? Do you make the character look as obviously mythical as possible? If you do that and people still believe that the character existed, it makes the hoax even more extraordinary.

  6. The Titanic analogy seems to prove the opposite to me. It shows that real life events can have fictional parallels. This would seem to be a good argument against the Pagan Copy Cat thesis, not a good argument for it.

  7. Sorry for the late comment. The idea that Tacitus consulted government archives is, I think, sound, but the idea that they wouldn’t have included notes about the crucifixion of Jesus isn’t. As a separate entry, probably not, but as part of a periodic report to the Senate by Pilate on activities in his area, very likely. My understanding is that Pilate didn’t crucify a whole lot of dissidents because there weren’t a whole lot of dissidents at that time, unlike 20 years later at the run-up to the revolt.

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    1. Thanks for the comment John. I’ve swung back and forth on this issue over the years and I suppose these days I’d put it down as no more than a “maybe”. I’d say we don’t really have enough information to judge how regularly dissidents (or people like Jesus who the Roman saw as close enough to dissents to kill) appeared and got crucified. I know Richard A. Horsley makes a strong case for actual Zealots being a later movement, but I’m not convinced by the idea that less organised, individual dissents weren’t relatively common earlier. My guess is (and it’s a guess) that Jesus would have made more of a splash in the sources if he was an unusual case.

  8. Personally I believe that Jesus most likely would have existed. If gospels are indeed considered to be historical, we have to acknowledge that such a person could have existed. But I am not really sure about the “Chrestus or Christus” references by the two Roman historians, Suetonius and Tacitus, as to whether they were actually talking about Jesus. Suetonius reference is the most hard to believe for me initially. There he is talking about some Jews who were creating disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus. And it happened at the time of Claudius who ruled from 41-54 CE. So it happened clearly after the death of Jesus. But instigation seem to be described as a present thing i.e. some Chrestus instigated them and they responded to it. So it seems difficult to believe that it was about Jesus. Chrestus seems to be a term Romans used to describe Jewish messiah. So the use of the term Chrestus doesn’t necessarily mean that it is about Jesus. Moreover, Jesus described in the gospels doesn’t seem to be a guy who instigated his followers to create disturbances with Romans constantly. That seems to be the modus operandi for zealots, a new group formed by Judas of Galilee. If one actually read Josephus, two of Judas’ sons, James and Simon were crucified by the then procurator of Judea, Tiberius Julius Alexander in 46 CE. That time frame fits well within the reign of Claudius. So probably, sons of Judas of Galilee would have taken over the mantle of being the Messiahs at that time leading the Jewish zealot movement both in Judea and Rome.

    If that is the background, we will have to relook Tacitus reference to Christus as to whether it definitely points to Jesus. For one, it doesn’t mention Jesus’ specific name rather again to generic title, Christus which could just mean messiah. Now the key identifying marker there is suffering extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate. So the question is whether Jesus was the only messiah who suffered extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate. We don’t know for sure. It could be. One other possibility is whether that Christus is Judas of Galilee, the founder of zealot movement according to Josephus. Judas of Galilee even though is extensively mentioned by Josephus, his death is not mentioned by him. He did create lot of disturbances in Judea against bringing of images to Jerusalem temple and tried to cleanse the temple of those images. Both Philo and Josephus mention about an event where Pilate brought Caesar’s images to Jerusalem temple and Jews organized against it and finally he was asked to take it down by Caesar himself due to Jewish revolt and repeated entreaties from people like Philo himself. It could be that these Jewish revolts were organized by Zealots and led by Judas of Galilee and Pilate might have eventually executed him. Daniel Underbrink (who is not a scholar) has suggested that death of Judas of Galilee could have been there originally in Antiquities of Jews which was replaced by what is now seen as Testimonium Flavianum. It may or may not be true. Note also Tacitus refers this movement as “most dangerous superstition”. Josephus describes Zealot movement in similar terms (Josephus, Antiquities of Jews Book XVIII, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1). And death of Judas of Galilee might have suppressed the zealot movement for a while, but it continued with his sons, James and Simon and later with his grandson Menahem and continued to the time of Nero as Tacitus was mentioning. Jesus’ movement, if gospels are right, seems more about a peaceful movement, not in confrontation with Rome as was the Zealot movement.

    In conclusion, I am willing to grant that Tacitus reference could be about Jesus of the gospels, even though I have still doubts about it. But I don’t think that Suetonius reference is about Jesus of the gospels. This is what my personal impressions about it.

    1. “Suetonius reference is the most hard to believe for me initially.”

      As you’ll see in my article, I fully acknowledge that the Suetonius reference to a “Chrestus” is sufficiently ambiguous that it is clear we can’t say more than it may be a reference to Jesus.

      “So the question is whether Jesus was the only messiah who suffered extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate.”

      Sorry, but Occam’s Razor makes short work of the idea that there were TWO people executed by Pilate who came to be called “Christus” and who founded a sect called “Christians” which had a community in Rome in the early 60s AD. We know that Christianity had a presence in Rome in this time and that they traced their founding to a Messiah executed by Pilate in Judea. To pretend it’s in any way likely that there was another group of “Christians” who traced their origin to a different “Christus” who just happened to also be executed by Pilate is fanciful to the point of being silly.

      “One other possibility is whether that Christus is Judas of Galilee”

      That is even more ridiculous, given that Judas died decades before Pilate took up the prefecture of Judea. And yes, I have read Unterbrink’s silly book and all I can say is, that is several days of my life that I will never get back.

      1. Can you give me what was the source of the claim that “Judas of Galilee died several years before Pilate took over”? I might have missed it.

        1. Judas’ uprising was in 6 AD. We have no direct reference to his death, but rebels against Rome generally didn’t survive the suppression of their rebellions and we know that one was brutally suppressed by Varus. He had adult children who were executed in 46 AD, but there is nothing to suggest he fathered them after his rebellion. The idea that “Judas the Galilean = Jesus” is just one of a grab bag of silly semi-Mythicist fringe theories cluttering up discussions of this topic.

          1. It is true that he had a rebellion in 6 CE. But Josephus does not say that he was executed then as he usually does. So you just assume that Romans killed him then when in fact we have no way to know whether he was killed by Romans then or at a later date.

          2. No, I don’t “assume” this – I conclude it. As I said, rebels against Rome tended not to go on to live into old age. “Executed” is one way to die, killed in battle is another. Josephus probably didn’t mention how Judas died because he didn’t know, but a rebel against Rome who somehow managed to survive the repression of his uprising and then escape capture for decades would be a tale worth telling. I think the one assuming things is you.

  9. But again, it is based on your presupposition that Romans has executed every one of the insurgents then and then. I don’t believe in such blanket presuppositions. As long as there is no mention of his death, there is no way to know whether he was executed by Romans then or at a later date. He could have escaped from being captured by Romans then, who knows.

    1. Historical analysis is always an assessment of what is likely, not simply noting the much larger list of things which are merely possible. Yes, it is possible that Judas somehow managed to escape the brutal suppression of his uprising, one which saw Varus crucify literally thousands of rebels, and manage to evade capture for decades afterwards only to be executed by Pilate over 20 years later. But in the absence of any evidence this happened, this mere possibility counts for little. Against this we have the facts that (i) Roman suppression of rebellions tended to be brutal and thorough, (ii) we know Varus’ suppression of this one definitely was and (iii) rebel leaders did not generally escape Roman reassertion of dominance unscathed. Then there is the fact that the escape of Judas from Varus’ suppression, his evasion of capture for over 20 years and his eventual capture and execution by Pilate, if all this happened, would be quite a story. Yet we don’t find so much as a hint about it in Josephus. That Josephus would be silent on exactly how Judas died in the routine suppression of his revolt by Varus makes sense. That he would fail to tell this remarkable story of a rebel against Rome on the run for over two decades and his eventual execution does not. So my assessment is that it is most likely that Judea died in 6 AD.

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    2. Also Acts of the Apostles (5:37) says that Judas of Galilee died after Theudas died, whom Josephus mentions died during the time of Cuspius Fadus who was the procurator from 44-46 CE. It is hard to say who got the history wrong there? The dating of deaths of ancient figures is very difficult unless there is specific mention of their deaths. The fact is that we don’t know for sure when Judas of Galilee died.

      1. The consensus is that it’s the author of Luke-Acts that got his chronology muddled there. Only Christian apologists try to salvage their holy books’ reliability by trying to argue that somehow Josephus, who we know to be highly reliable on chronology, somehow managed to transpose Judas the Galilean all the way back to the tax uprising of 6 AD. And no, we don’t know “for sure” when he died – as I just explained, given that we don’t know all kinds of things “for sure” in ancient history, we have to rely on assessment of what is most likely. It is highly unlikely that Judas survived the 6 AD uprising.

        1. Actually Josephus also transposes history at will. There is lot of discrepancies between his accounts in Antiquities and Wars. It is very difficult to rely completely on Josephus as well.

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          1. “Actually Josephus also transposes history at will. “

            Really? Please give examples of him doing so in a way that would parallel someone who led an uprising in the late 40s somehow being transposed, for no readily apparent reason, all the way back to 6 AD. Good luck with that.

  10. Maybe not that far. One thing that immediately springs to mind is death of Herod’s wife. He gives different timelines for the death of Herod’s first wife Mariamne. In Wars, he says he killed her along with her suspected lover immediately after suspicion of adultery while in Antiquities, he only kills her lover immediately and offers her a trial and puts her in prison for a while and had to be persuaded by his sister to finally kill her.

    I am also not saying that one has to conjecture that far. If the revolt by Judas of Galilee happened in 6 CE, Pontius Pilate was procurator from 26 CE onwards. In both situations, there is revolt against bringing of images into the temple. We can never know whether Judas of Galilee died in 6 CE or 26 CE when there is no mention of his death.

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    1. There is no great discrepancy between War I.443 and Antiquities XV.218-231. They tell more or less the same story, except the latter does in much more detail. In both Herod is convinced to execute his wife by Salome and the “immediately” in War I.443 refers to immediately after Salome’s intervention. The execution happens after this intervention in both, it’s simply that the War account is much briefer. So I’m afraid you’d need to do a lot better than that. This is nothing like confusing a rebel in the late 40s AD with rebellion that happened 35 years earlier.

      “In both situations, there is revolt against bringing of images into the temple.”

      Pardon? Where are any images being brought into the Temple mentioned in relation to the 6 AD tax revolt?

      “We can never know whether Judas of Galilee died in 6 CE or 26 CE when there is no mention of his death.”

      There you go with that word “know” again. No, we can’t “know”, just as we can’t “know” all kinds of things. So we have to go with what is likely. I’ve already explained why it is unlikely that Judas survived the 6 AD uprising. You tried to rope in the bungled reference to him in Acts 5:37, but that clearly says that his uprising was “in the days of the census” and goes on to say “[Judas] too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.” There’s nothing to indicate that this is anything other than a reference to the same 6 AD tax uprising, in reaction to the tax census, that Josephus refers to, with the Acts writer simply getting the Theudas/Judas sequence wrong. And the reference to him dying and then his followers scattering only makes sense if he was killed during the uprising.

      Then you’re trying to claim that this series of suppositions about Judas and his uprising being decades later than is generally accepted can support another even less likely series of suppositions about a second , totally unattested, sect of “Christians” in Rome tracing their origin to this other “Christus” executed by Pilate and that these are the “Christians” referred to by Tacitus! Sorry, but this is getting so completely silly I’m not wasting any more of my time on it.

    2. Also I have to add in Josephus’ Antiquities, he mentions Judas of Galilee in almost entirety of Book XVIII, Chapter 1. And Pontius Pilate appears in Book XVIII, Chapter 2, just second paragraph after the last mention of Judas of Galilee. I wouldn’t call it too far apart.

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      1. This is getting ridiculous. Yes, he is mentioned a few paragraphs later. This is in the context of a list of the succession of prefects before him that includes Coponius, then Marcus Ambivulus, then Annius Rufus, and then Valerius Gratus. That’s a total of twenty whole years of other prefects. So any proximity in terms of “paragraphs” doesn’t matter – Josephus is summarising two whole decades between the time of Judas and the arrival of Pilate.

        1. Still you have not given me any reason for the assumption that Judas of Galilee died in 6 CE. Since there is no mention of it in Josephus, it could be either way. There is no way to completely deny that he could have lived for another 20 years. Also there is no way to verify Josephus’ mention of timeline of procurators either.

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          1. “Still you have not given me any reason for the assumption that Judas of Galilee died in 6 CE.”

            I’ve explained to you twice now the reason for my conclusion (not “assumption”) that it is most likely he died then. I’m not going to bother doing so again.

            “There is no way to completely deny that he could have lived for another 20 years. “

            Luckily for me I don’t do anything as absurd as “completely denying” it, I simply note why it’s highly unlikely and why, therefore, any theory made up of this and other suppositions can’t be used to support another theory that is also riddle with suppositions. Creating stories out of mere possibilities isn’t historical analysis, it’s fiction writing.

            “Also there is no way to verify Josephus’ mention of timeline of procurators either.”

            So we can make up any crap we like out of mere possibilities and castles in the air made up of suppositions? Sorry, but that’s how crackpots like Unterbrink do things. I’ll stick to the actual historical method thanks. And now I think my patience has run out with you. Goodbye.

  11. In Jewish Wars also, Pilate comes right after the mention of Judas of Galilee. And there is no mention of procurators in between or time period of 20 years passing between the two events. The only event of significance that happens is ascension of Tiberius as Caesar which happened in 14 CE. So we will have to trust Josephus’ account of Antiquities over Wars and believe that they both conform to each other in order to assert a gap of 20 years. Why couldn’t it be other way? We trust timeline of Wars over Antiquities?

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    1. “In Jewish Wars also, Pilate comes right after the mention of Judas of Galilee. And there is no mention of procurators in between or time period of 20 years passing between the two events.”

      Utter nonsense. War II.167-169 summarises the period between the deposition of Archelaus (6 AD) to the prefecture of Pilate (20 AD), including the death of Salome (10 AD) and that of Augustus (14 AD). Just because he doesn’t name all the Judean prefects between Archelaus and Pilate does not mean there is some inconsistency between this passage and his summary of the prefects in Antiquities. BOTH make it clear that decades passed between the deposition of Archelaus and the arrival of Pilate. Your comments here are getting increasingly stupid. Please go away.

      1. Again, you assume that Wars needs to be interpreted in light of Antiquities. If one takes Wars in its own right, there is no reason to assume that gap. Pilate could have been made procurator from any time from 14 CE. Unless we have an independent verification of timeline of procurators other than from Antiquities, we will never know when Pilate took charge as Prefect.

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        1. “Again, you assume that Wars needs to be interpreted in light of Antiquities.”

          For the last time, stop confusing “assume” with “conclude”. There is absolutely no reason to reject the chronology of the prefects Josephus gives in Antiquities XVIII.29-36 and truncate the summary of the period from 6-26 AD summarised in War II.167-169. Trying to do so simply to prop up your other cluster of silly suppositions is completely ridiculous. You want to do this? Great – go away and do it somewhere else. I’m sure there is a self-publishing service that will be happy to take your money and let your churn out yet another unread crackpot book based on suppositions and crazy eisegesis of the source material.

          1. You cannot conclude something without making some presuppositions especially in history. Every historian has to acknowledge it. In this case, your conclusions are based on the assumption that: 1. Josephus’ Antiquities gives fully reliable historical material in everything it says. 2. The timeline of Antiquities have to be used to interpret Wars. Unless these two presuppositions are affirmed, your conclusions cannot be reached.

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        2. In this case, your conclusions are based on the assumption that: 1. Josephus’ Antiquities gives fully reliable historical material in everything it says.

          No, I conclude that his material is sufficiently reliable in the relevant sections. For Ant. XX.200, for example, this conclusion is based on the fact that he was living in Jerusalem when James was executed and was closely connected to the Temple priesthood and so would have been privy to the circumstances of the deposition of the high priest. This is a conclusion, not an “assumption”.

          2. The timeline of Antiquities have to be used to interpret Wars.

          I can’t see how anything I’ve said is contingent on this.

  12. Ehrman made it clear that at the end of the first century; christians believed everything from Jesus being an ordinary man who lived and died as ordinary men do, to being god himself. Therefore, anyone who believes Jesus really existed is a christian. NOT an atheist.

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    1. This is a very strange argument. There are two problems with it. Firstly, while Ehrman is correct that there were early Christians whose Christology meant they did not see Jesus as God, the definitely did see Jesus as the Messiah, and therefore as God’s anointed. Secondly, atheism is purely being without a belief in God or gods. So someone can believe that there is no God or gods and therefore Jesus was just a man and not God. So if your bizarre argument is trying to claim that I am a Christian and not an atheist, you’ve failed spectacularly twice over.

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    2. That’s odd.
      I’ve never believed in god and had a completely irreligious upbringing and all my life I always though I was atheist and was even called one and identified as one by my peers.

      But today I’ve learned something from Michael Hill. As I have long believed that while the Jesus Christ of the gospels is a fictional character, I always accepted that there was an actual Yoshua ben Yosef who got posthumously mythologised beneath it all, that I somehow haven’t been atheist all this time.
      Thanks for setting me straight on that Michael. But I have to confess that it really makes not one iota of logical sense to me. So could you please elaborate furher with some logical deduction of how my acceptance of Jesus historicity is even related to my atheism?

      Ta. Looking forward to your reply.

      1. It’s extra super odd, because as a non-atheist, Catholic believer who dares to raise her head here after the party is (I presume) mostly over, I assure you that I do not believe that any of you are Christians in any way at all. So none of you need have any doubts on that score.

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        1. There are a number of Christians who are regular, useful and polite contributors here. If you continue to post rude comments about them, you will not be posting here for long. Watch your mouth.

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    1. That link doesn’t seem to work. But if it’s the usual grab-bag of claims that Horus, Mithras and Attis were pre-Christian “Christs”, those claims are usually bolstered by things that simply aren’t true (e.g. “Mithras had twelve disciples” or “Horus rose from the dead”), things which would be expected of many deities (hailed as a saviour, worshipped on a particular day) or things we know were also said about historical humans (miraculous birth story, ascension in to heaven). So these parallels, even when they aren’t totally invented, don’t mean very much about whether Jesus existed.

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  13. Hi Tim,

    What would you say to a sceptical (rather than denialist) attitude to this passage, that all this really shows is not that Jesus existed but that someone thought he did in 64 CE?

    If we are looking for an account of Christian origins and haven’t a priori ruled out mythicism, then I wonder whether this does much to refute mythicism. According to mythicism, at some point mythological material acquired some aspects of a mundane biography, including a home town and an existence in the not too distant past, and people started believing this. Tacitus doesn’t give us eyewitness testimony, it’s not clear where he got his information from, and if it was just someone telling him the recieved view of the origins of Christianity (whether they be Christians themselves, or Jews, or pagans) this might just go back to the myth, not the man.

    It does give us a terminus ante quem for when this myth became widespread, which does create some problems for mythicism as they either only have about three decades to play with, or have to tell a more complex account where the mature form of the myth came into being much earlier than the time period in which it was actually placed.

    Just as a comparison, we would presumably not take a Roman historian mentioning the Galli following Attis was proof of Attis’s existence. One shouldn’t draw too many parallels here, of course, I’m just saying being mentioned isn’t enough to conclude existence, and it’s not clear to me it should do much to even sway someone.

    Just to be clear, I’m not a mythicist and nor am I particularly sympathetic to mythicism, as you can see if you refer to my epic battles (or tiresome, passive-aggressive displays, depending on how you look at them…) with mythicists on James McGrath’s blog, and I certainly think Tacitus’s reference does go back to a historical figure, but this is largely because I find Paul a convincing source.

    1. All good comments. I think I should stress though that nowhere do I say that the Tacitean reference is in any way a slam dunk against Mythicism. My article above is simply an analysis of the various ways that Mythicists try to make it go away. Yes, Tacitus clearly is reflecting what people believed about Jesus in his time, but the question then becomes why he is so clearly stating points that we also find in the Christian material – that Jesus was called the Messiah (“Christus”), founded the Christian sect and was executed in Judea by Pilatus in the reign of Tiberius. If Tacitus wasn’t such a careful historian this wouldn’t carry as much weight, but the fact we know he had access to people who were close to events in Judea and were just one generation removed from these events means that we have to subject this mention to a very high and, I’d argue, unreasonable level of scepticism not to conclude its most likely Tacitus says these things because they were widely known to be true. And I don’t think your Attis analogy is very good, I’m afraid. Tacitus is not mentioning the existence of a god, just an executed Jewish troublemaker.

      1. Yes, I can see you’re not saying it’s a slam dunk. I was just anticipating what a mythicist’s reply would be, and I imagine it would be easy to say “well, that only shows that some Christ or Chrestus or someone was thought in 64 CE by someone unconnected with the events to have been executed, this doesn’t show this person actually existed or was actually executed”

        I thought I had signaled quite clearly I didn’t think there were many (or really any) parallels worth drawing with Attis — I can only suppose that denying parallels must now be habitual with you due to too many goes on the mythicist hamster-wheel.

        My only point is that a mention of a name and something happening to them is not in itself enough to say that they existed, or even that there’s some evidence for their existence.

        How do we know Attis is a god? From other sources, so if we found an ancient historian saying “the Galli are devotees of Attis, who castrated himself” we do not think therefore that Attis existed (although if this was the only reference to Attis ever, we might be less sure about this).

        We are strongly persuaded that Jesus existed (and was crucified under Pilate) from other documentation, so in this case we’re more inclined to think it’s further supporting evidence of something we were already inclined to believe.

        Mythicists are not persuaded of this, and in fact prefer to believe that the other documentary evidence supports the notion of an out-and-out mythical person (however wrongly) so their situation is more akin to our situation with Attis.

        However, on reflection Tacitus tells us more than the fact that Jesus was executed, he gives us rather specific information about this — executed by Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and strongly implies this was in Judea. Time and place and person. Not long ago, and not in some far-flung place, either.

        I think historians would normally find this sufficient to treat the person so mentioned as being historical, and would only have significant doubts (beyond some kind of background “our sources are sometimes wrong about things”) if there were very persuasive evidence the other way. Even very extraordinary things can be attributed to historical individuals, so that extraordinary things are said about then elsewhere isn’t very persuasive.

        Are there any figures accepted as myths by reputable scholars that are reported by someone in this humdrum way, with historical specifics of something happening in the recent past?

        I just don’t think we have material that says “oh, yes, King Arthur, my uncle invoiced him for carving some kind of table, never paid up the bastard” but maybe I’m wrong about this…

        1. A Mythicist certainly could reply that way and I would respond to them the way I always do when that make that kind of response – if we applied that level of scepticism to everyone who is only attested in a passing mention by a much later source then literally thousands of figures who are fully accepted as existing would have to be probably mythical. This makes no sense. The default position to hold on people mentioned in passing in an ancient source is not “probably mythical”, it’s “probably existed”.

          “I thought I had signaled quite clearly I didn’t think there were many (or really any) parallels worth drawing with Attis “

          You did. But I didn’t say anything at all about any “parallels”, I said I didn’t think the specific reference you made to Attis is an valid analogy. Tacitus mentioning a Jewish troublemaker who was executed some decades earlier in a very particular time and place is absolutely nothing like him mentioning that some people worshipped the god Attis. Not even close.

          “I think historians would normally find this sufficient to treat the person so mentioned as being historical, and would only have significant doubts (beyond some kind of background “our sources are sometimes wrong about things”) if there were very persuasive evidence the other way.”

          Yes, that’s how it works. And given that we have other vectors of evidence that indicate he was historical, in this case this is indeed what they accept about this “Christus” in Tacitus.

          “Are there any figures accepted as myths by reputable scholars that are reported by someone in this humdrum way, with historical specifics of something happening in the recent past?”

          None that I can think of.

          1. You seem to be either continuing to misinterpret me, or continuing to engage a knee-jerk response to a mention of Attis.

            What analogy do you think I was making?

            Where did I say or imply there was some similarity between Attis and Jesus, and what similarity do you think this is?

            What I was intending to do — as I have already tried to explain — was draw a contrast. Which is a different thing entirely.

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          2. I may be misunderstanding you and if I am I’m happy to stand corrected. But I was referring to this:

            “My only point is that a mention of a name and something happening to them is not in itself enough to say that they existed, or even that there’s some evidence for their existence.

            How do we know Attis is a god? From other sources, so if we found an ancient historian saying “the Galli are devotees of Attis, who castrated himself” we do not think therefore that Attis existed (although if this was the only reference to Attis ever, we might be less sure about this).”

            I’d still say that there is a fundamental difference to Tacitus saying “this Christus was executed in Judea by Pilatus in the reign of Tiberius” and “the Galli are devotees of Attis, who castrated himself”. The former is fixing a human event in a particular historical time and specific geographical place. The latter is not. They are very different as a result. This means that it is actually quite reasonable to conclude that this Christus was a historical person but not that this Attis is, purely on the basis of the information given.

  14. NT scholar here, this is good stuff. I would push a couple of points.

    1) I suspect that the Tacitus reference shows only knowledge of Christian teachings about Jesus (rather than knowledge of the historical Jesus himself; i.e., I favour “option 3”) for the simple reason that scholars increasingly think that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah and was only attributed that title after his death. If so, “Chrestus” or whatever cannot indicate independent knowledge of Jesus, but knowledge mediated through Christians.

    2) Second, my own suspicion about why “Chrestus” instead of “Christus” is that the Greek “chrio” didn’t mean to anoint, but to smear. Since anointing was a specifically Near Eastern royal phenomenon, there was little reason for Greeks or Romans to be familiar with the practice, as it had long fallen out of practice by the first century CE. I suspect that Tacitus assumed that no one would call their leader “Jesus Smeared” and so thought “no, I’m pretty sure you mean Jesus Chrestus, that makes a lot more sense…” But who knows?

        1. Yes, I’m aware of what it is. I just can’t see why I’d watch a documentary that consists of Carrier talking about himself. It would be like sticking needles in my eyes.

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          1. Lol. I think he just really wants to bring his “game-changing” arguments for his Case against Yeshua existing to a larger audience (as if he’s not already overly-promoted on youtube), by making yet another mythicist documentary like “Batman vs Jesus” or some shit.

  15. How would you respond to the mythicist claims of rational wiki (a very hypocritical website, apparent critical of all pseudohistory and fringe theories accept Jesus mythicism), found here:

    Josephus[edit]
    See Josephus for more details.
    Josephus’s work, Antiquities of the Jews, mentions Jesus twice. The first is in Jewish Antiquities XVIII.3.4 (also known as the Testimonium Flavium, or TF), and the second one is in Jewish Antiquities XX.9.1.

    It can be shown that the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus has been tampered with and is not fully authentic[56], though most historians say that some part of it is genuine.[57] However, as Carrier’s examples of John Frum and Ned Ludd show, the more then 50 years between 36 CE and when Antiquities was written (c. 90 CE) is more then enough time for a possible founder’s origin to be entirely replaced or a narrative to be built around a founder who may have never existed in the first place. Even in the form we have the passage is insanely short when compared to Athronges: a “mere shepherd, not known by anybody” who with his brothers gets some five paragraphs and Josephus gives details on Athronges’ actions.

    As for Jewish Antiquities XX.9.1, mythicists such as Richard Carrier believe that this reference is an interpolation and actually references a figure named Jesus ben Damneus who is identified at the end of the passage as becoming high priest.[58] Moreover “Christos” was used in the Old Testament to refer to high priests so even though the majority of contemporary scholars believe the phrase is authentic[59][60][61] it need not refer to the Jesus of the Gospels.

    In fact, for a long time tradition held that James brother of the Lord died c. 69 CE but the James in Josephus died 62 CE. Furthermore, it was stated that James brother of the Lord was informed of Peter’s death (64 CE or 67 CE) via letter, long after the James in Josephus was dead and gone.

    Never mind, as seen with John Frum’s brother Prince Philip, a supposed founder can be said to be related to real people, even when those relations are not supported by fact.

    Origen[edit]
    Origen’s comments regarding the passage of James in Josephus he is referencing shows that it also had Josephus directly connected the death of James with the “fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple”[62] raises doubt about the reliably of the “the brother of Jesus, him called Christ, whose name was James” passage.

    Tacitus[edit]
    Often cited as evidence of a historical Jesus, Roman historian Tacitus’ Annals have problems.

    First, it is known the passage was tampered with. The “Chrestian” in the passage was changed to “Christian” after the fact.

    Second, the word rendered as “Christus” or “Chrestus” (seemingly based on if the transcriber/translator wants to connect it to Suetonius) is in reality “Chrstus”.

    Third, the part of the Annals covering the period 29-31 (i.e. the part most likely to discuss Jesus in detail) are missing.

    Fourth, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents by the time Tacitus wrote his Annuals so he could have simply gone to the Chrestians themselves or written to his good friends Plinius the Younger and Suetonius for more on this group.

    Finally, the account is at odds with the Christian accounts in the apocryphal “Acts of Paul” (c. 160 CE) and “The Acts of Peter” (150-200 CE) where the first has Nero reacting to claims of sedition by the group and the other saying that thanks to a vision he left them alone. In fact, the Christians themselves didn’t start claiming Nero blamed them for the fire until 400 CE.

    1. That entry is about typical of RationalWiki on this and similar subjects – mentioning the scholarly consensus position while bolstering the ideologically-driven fringe alternatives, usually peppered by references to the inevitable Richard Carrier. Taking their claims one at a time:


      “It can be shown that the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus has been tampered with and is not fully authentic[56], though most historians say that some part of it is genuine.[57] However, as Carrier’s examples of John Frum and Ned Ludd show, the more then 50 years between 36 CE and when Antiquities was written (c. 90 CE) is more then enough time for a possible founder’s origin to be entirely replaced or a narrative to be built around a founder who may have never existed in the first place.”

      That there may be “enough time” for this to happen doesn’t count for much. Notice how the entry doesn’t bother to explain why most scholars accept that the TF is partially authentic.

      “Even in the form we have the passage is insanely short when compared to Athronges: a “mere shepherd, not known by anybody” who with his brothers gets some five paragraphs and Josephus gives details on Athronges’ actions.”

      And this is a weak argument. Firstly, if the passage is partially authentic, we don’t know if parts of it were removed as well as having pieces added, so it could have originally been longer. Secondly, there are analogous passages where Josephus makes brief digressions which are as short as the TF, so the fact that sometimes his accounts are longer doesn’t count for much. And yes, Athronges was “a mere shepherd”, but he was one who managed to lead a major uprising that lasted for up to two years and took both Roman and Herodian troops to suppress. Even if we accept the exaggerated accounts of Jesus’ brief career in the gospels at face value, he was a very minor figure by comparison and was suppressed with a handful of Temple guards in a late night scuffle. So the idea Josephus would devote many paragraphs to him does not stand up to scrutiny.

      “As for Jewish Antiquities XX.9.1, mythicists such as Richard Carrier believe that this reference is an interpolation and actually references a figure named Jesus ben Damneus who is identified at the end of the passage as becoming high priest”

      As I explain in my article on Carrier’s argument about Ant.XX.200, this argument is hopelessly flawed. It requires Josephus to use identifying appellations like “son of Damneus” in a way that he does nowhere in any of his corpus. Jospehus is very consistent in when and how he uses these identifiers and Carrier’s two hypotheses about how the words “who was called Messiah” were interpolated both violate that consistent usage. His argument is another of his ad hoc contrivances to try to get the evidence to conform to his prior conclusions and more evidence of his sloppy scholarship and motivated reasoning.


      “Moreover “Christos” was used in the Old Testament to refer to high priests so even though the majority of contemporary scholars believe the phrase is authentic[59][60][61] it need not refer to the Jesus of the Gospels.”

      This argument doesn’t fly either. Yes, high priests were anointed with oil when consecrated and were referred to as “anointed” in the Septuagint translation of the OT. But this does not explain why this particular high priest would be “called Anointed”. If all priests were so called, why would Josephus note this one in particular was “called” this – how would this differentiate him from any of the others? More problematic, this alternative to Carrier’s argument which has “who was called Messiah/Anointed” as original to the passage and not an interpolation would mean that Josephus introduces this “Jesus” as “who was called Anointed” and then a few lines later refers to him as “son of Damenus”. Again, this is contrary to Josephus’ consistent usage of these sorts of identifiers – he never refers to one person by two different identifiers in the same passage, for the simple and obvious reason that it would be confusing. And when he refers back to someone and thinks it may be confusing to the reader, he makes this clear by using terms like “the aforementioned X”, which he does not do here. Again, the Mythers have to resort to contrived arguments that show they simply don’t have the relevant detailed knowledge of the texts.

      “In fact, for a long time tradition held that James brother of the Lord died c. 69 CE but the James in Josephus died 62 CE.”

      This is a reference to the later Christian tradition that the execution of James triggered the destruction of Jerusalem “immediately”. But this is a later hagiographic tradition that arose in the aftermath of the Jewish War and the destruction of the city. It’s understandable that an event in 62 AD could later be construed as bringing down divine judgement seven years later, but to say this means there was a tradition “that James brother of the Lord died c. 69 CE” is being weirdly literal (and ignoring what that “c.” stands for).

      “Furthermore, it was stated that James brother of the Lord was informed of Peter’s death (64 CE or 67 CE) via letter, long after the James in Josephus was dead and gone.”

      The Wiki article gives no citation or reference for this claim and I have no idea what it’s referring to.

      “Never mind, as seen with John Frum’s brother Prince Philip, a supposed founder can be said to be related to real people, even when those relations are not supported by fact.”

      Another rather weak argument. Yes, the Mythers’ favourite Pacific Islands mythic man does show this, but most of the time people are said to be related to other people because … they are. Mythers constantly clutch at weak “maybes”.

      “Origen’s comments regarding the passage of James in Josephus he is referencing shows that it also had Josephus directly connected the death of James with the “fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple”[62] raises doubt about the reliably of the “the brother of Jesus, him called Christ, whose name was James” passage.”

      As I’ve already noted, this tradition that the execution of James somehow “caused” the destruction of Jerusalem seems to have arisen later and, as these exegetial ideas do, came to depict the two events as being directly connected and implied they followed close together. To pretend that this kind of idea could not come to connect events a mere seven years apart is patently silly.

      And then we get the arguments about Tacitus, which I have dealt with in detail in my article above. So, as usual, the RationalWiki article is a tangle of hopeful maybes, weak arguments and convoluted but flawed stuff by Carrier, Looking at its “edits” page, is seems it’s mainly the work of a notoriously boneheaded Myther called Bruce Grubb, who pops up on various discussions of the historicity of Jesus with wearying regularity, peddling the same old tired arguments every time. Like most fanatics, he is impervious to counter argument.

      1. This is from an old version of the page and much of the core information has been put into daughter articles.

        For example the Josephus page has this:

        Finally, and most importantly the James of Josephus died ca. 62 CE by just stoning while Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Early Christian tradition all had James the Just dying ca. 70 CE by being thrown from a battlement, stoned, and finally clubbed to death by passing laundrymen.[30] In fact, Eusebius of Caesarea in his Church History, Book III, ch. 11 clearly writes “After the martyrdom of James and the conquest of Jerusalem which immediately followed…” but there are seven years and four High Priests[31] between these two events if the Josephus passage is genuine so either we have one of the wonkiest definition of “immediately followed” in the history of the world or these are two different James and the “him called Christ” phrase was added to make the connection. The later interpretation is supported by Rufinus of Aquileia in the 4th century who states James the Lord’s brother was informed of the death of Peter (64 CE or 67 CE ie after the James in Josephus was dead and gone).[32]

        1. This crap again? As I discuss in the very article you’re commenting on, there is no contradiction between Josephus’ very brief account and Hegesippus’ longer hagiography. And the idea that the destruction of the Temple was a consequence of the execution of James due to divine disfavour seems to be a very old tradition and is enough in itself to explain why much later sources exaggerate how close the two events were in time. That is not enough to sustain the idea that the James executed in Ant. XX.200 isn’t Jesus’ brother. Seriously – give it a rest Bruce.

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    1. Yes. It will be my next post and probably on the references to Jesus’ brother James and the problems they pose for Mythicism.

        1. That’s certainly the plan. There are several key Mythicist arguments that I find myself having to critique and refute in detail over and over again, so I intend to write an article on each.

    1. Complete skeletons are rare, but I’d imagine some remains may be out there somewhere. I strongly doubt there is any veracity to the tomb stories, which bear many hallmarks of a later tradition, so it’s most likely his remains were deposited in a mass grave somewhere outside Jerusalem.

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      1. Whats up Tim,
        I want to ask you what do you think about some mythers bringing up tacitus mentioning a precurator instead of a ”prefact”. How much weight does it hold?
        Also have you ever read the book that was supposedly an answer to Erhman called”Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth” composed by Carrier ,D.M Murdock , Earl Doughtery ,and Rene Salm? They supposedly debunked Erhman ,but i doubt it. But what do you think? What is yout take on that?

        1. The “prefect”/”procurator” thing is interesting, but too uncertain to carry much weight. Tacitus was aware that Claudius gave the governors of Judea the powers of procurators (see Tacitus Annals XII.60) but the use of the terms seems fairly fluid. “Procurator” was certainly the term used for the governor of Judea in Tacitus’ time, so it could be that he was using the term that would have made sense to his early second century readers, even if it was technically anachronistic. And no less a Mythicist than Richard Carrier even argues that the earlier prefects of Judea actually had the powers of procurator anyway and so Pilatus was effectively both a prefect and a procurator. However you cut it, it’s too slender a thread to hang a claim of later interpolation from.

          I have read the rather rushed and extraordinarily patchy response to Ehrman. It’s pretty typical of these obsessive contrarians. They seem frustrated that Ehrman was talking past them to a general audience and upset that he didn’t answer every single one of their many arguments and counter arguments. They seem to think he was supposed to be doing this, rather than talking to the general public about, broadly, why Mythicism isn’t well regarded by scholars. Parts of that book are unintentionally funny though, such as the bizarre email exchange between Ehrman and Frank Zindler (a biologist, so automatically a great expert on history and archaeology). Zindler publishes the emails in full, thinking they show Ehrman in a bad light. They actually demonstrate great patience and politeness on Ehrman’s part in the face of increasingly long and unhinged emails from an obsessive loon. And then we have the usual crap from the dizzy New Ager D.M. Murdock a.k.a. “Acharya S” and the weird little piano tuner, Rene Salm, who thinks he can do archaeology from his armchair in Eugene, Oregon. And then these people wonder why no-one takes them seriously.

        2. What annoyed me about Carrier’s anti-Ehrman polemic – apart from the needless verbal abuse – was that he spent a lot of time ranting about peripheral issues which didn’t affect Ehrman’s point. What possible relevance does it have that Ehrman said “letter 10” when he meant a letter in book 10, or that he mistakenly thought Carrier’s degrees were in classics? But I haven’t read the book to which you refer.

        3. the weird little piano tuner, Rene Salm

          To be (probably needlessly) pedantic, I thought he was a retired piano teacher, not a piano tuner. This seems to be his CV: http://independent.academia.edu/ReneSalm/CurriculumVitae It looks like he’s worked as an aide in various psychiatric hospitals as well as a self-employed piano teacher, and has a BA in Music and German.

          But of course this doesn’t affect your point, since he has no apparent qualifications in archaeology, ancient history, or ancient languages. I don’t really understand why he’s regarded as an expert among mythicists. (But biblical archaeology isn’t something I know a great deal about.)

          1. He ran (or runs) a piano tuning service in Eugene, Oregon, for a while. But no, he’s never been within shouting distance of any kind of archaeological training.

        1. Yes. But if it’s just skeletal remains in an unmarked grave or mass burial how would we know it was him? For all we know his remains may have been found already and are sitting in a box in a museum store room. Or, more likely, he’s one of the majority of ancient people who remains are never going to be found, let alone identified.

  16. Hi there.
    I was wondering what you might think of this mythicist article? I’m not sure if they really make any new arguments, and some of them you’ve dealt with in this and other posts, but I’d still like to know your thoughts on it, if you don’t mind. It’s more directed at Christian apologists, but you might be interested (or exasperated).

    http://truth-saves.com/jesus-christ

    1. Also, are there really 22 similarities between Jesus Ben Ananias and Jesus of Nazareth? Some mythicists say that the early Mark tradition was based off of Jesus Ben Ananias.

      1. No, those “22 similarities” are another of Carrier’s carefully crafted but actually weak arguments. They fall into two main categories: (i) things you could simply expect to be similar if you had similar people doing similar things in similar contexts, (ii) things which actually aren’t similar at all. For example, he says that “both were killed by the Romans”, but Jesus of Nazareth was handed over to the Romans and executed whereas Jesus ben Ananias was released and was randomly hit by a Roman catapult stone years later. To pretend these two things are “similar” is absurd, yet this is what passes for an argument with people like Carrier.

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        1. I look forward to Carrier’s argument that there are uncanny parallels between me and Napoleon, because Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo and I lost my Oyster card at Waterloo station.

    2. Nice clickbaity title. These guys are desperate, there’s always a new “argument” every year. Along with the alleged “parallels” with pagan deities, it was only recently that they started collectively (ever notice the hive-mind mentality?) claiming that Jesus was a “copy” of Moses, Elijah, and Elisha, although Christians have been acknowledging these [stylistic] parallels for centuries.

    3. I nominate this website for the 2018 Alexander Hislop Award for Tendentious Bilge. It rehearses some of the standard mythicist arguments, but also adds in some novel bullshit:

      Strobel points out that a historian born in 37 CE, named Flavius Josephus, writes about Jesus Christ in his book, “Antiquities of the Jews.” He then claims that this is historically documented evidence for the existence of Jesus. Sound convincing? What Strobel always avoids mentioning is that Antiquities is not book about history, it is a collection of religious stories.

      As far as I know, this is not something scholars have ever said about Josephus. Indeed, as I understand it he’s one of the most important historical sources about first-century Palestine and the Jewish War.

      Also I’m not sure what any of it has to do with Lee Strobel. He’s hardly the first person to point out that Josephus mentions Jesus. But it’s the typical mythicist tactic of setting up a false dichotomy, with conservative evangelical apologists on one side and mythicists on the other, while ignoring the vast middle ground.

  17. Congratulations for the Blog. I’m reading this from Brazil, and i’m so excited for the mode you construct your arguments. Here, on Brazil, this examples of arguments is very rare. Although I am a non-denominational Christian, I confess that I was very happy to know that there are atheists who take historical research seriously, to the point of leaving their particular points of view aside and pointing out what history presents as fact. Congratulations on your work, pardon for having discovered this source of wisdom so late.

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  18. Atheists do take historical research seriously Flávio. That’s how we know that there is not one original word written by Tacitus or Josephus in existence. Only spurious and interpolation filled texts written centuries after the deaths of those folk but that are merely ATTRIBUTED to them.
    Please don’t be taken in by the dishonest claims of the religious liars. There is no evidence of the existence of “Jesus” and no evidence that supports the legends that first appeared in christian bibles in the 4th century CE.

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    1. Who the hell is “Flávio”? As for the rest of your comment, I can assure you if it is somehow addressed to me rather than this “Flávio” person, I am not “taken in by the dishonest claims of the religious liars” and depend only on the work of mainstream historians and textual scholars. The majority of whom actually disagree with your assertion “there is not one original word written by Tacitus or Josephus in existence”. Since you seem to be new here, you don’t seem to realise that I am very, very familiar with the Mythicist arguments against the authenticity of the Josephus and Tacitus passage and their arguments generally and I really don’t need your help on this. Thanks all the same.

      I also don’t need this blog’s comments to be cluttered up with a long 1,300 word cut and paste job on the Testimonium Flavianum which you took without attribution from an article from Gordon Stein on the Secular Web site. Not only am I aware of all those arguments and why most of them are rejected by Josephus scholars, they also don’t have much relevance to this article. And I don’t like randoms who post plagiarised material as their own anyway. So that comment went into the trash where it belongs. Address arguments made here with arguments of your own by all means, but if you just keep mindlessly repeating Mythicist mantras and cutting and pasting huge blocks from Mythicist sites, you will quickly end up in the spam folder.

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      1. Who the hell is “Flávio”?

        I believe Flávio is a person who commented above in this thread:

        Flávio says:

        July 17, 2018 at 1:35 am

        Congratulations for the Blog. I’m reading this from Brazil, and i’m so excited for the mode you construct your arguments. Here, on Brazil, this examples of arguments is very rare. Although I am a non-denominational Christian, I confess that I was very happy to know that there are atheists who take historical research seriously, to the point of leaving their particular points of view aside and pointing out what history presents as fact. Congratulations on your work, pardon for having discovered this source of wisdom so late.

        Confusingly, D Williams did not reply to Flávio’s comment on the same thread but instead started their own thread. (Something I’ve also done by mistake several times.) This may be the source of the confusion.

    2. So by your second sentence, you’re comfirming that you’re not an atheist that you speak of in your first sentence?

  19. The Tacitus reference is a problem for me because I am a Fundamentalist Christian who believe in a Historical Jesus. But I have come to find many reasons to doubt the historicity of the Neornian Persecution.
    http://midseventiethweekrapture.blogspot.com/2018/04/i-dont-think-nero-persecuted-christians.html

    Worse still, Tacitus is the only basis in all ancient sources, Christina or Secular, fore directly linking it to the Great Fire of 64 AD. And I definitely now that that version of the event is false. If a Neronian Persecution happened it couldn’t have been while Poppea and Seneca were still alive. Which means after 65 AD. And that happens to fit the earliest commemorations of the Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul placing them in 67 AD.

    1. I cover most of those points in my article above.

      “If a Neronian Persecution happened it couldn’t have been while Poppea and Seneca were still alive.”

      Why?

      1. Because I believe they were influences that would have prevented it.

        Some aspects of that you covered, but there is more discussed don my Blog. The fact that Paul clearly says he acquitted at his Trial before Nero.

        1. “Because I believe they were influences that would have prevented it.”

          Your arguments there are extremely weak.

          “The fact that Paul clearly says he acquitted at his Trial before Nero.”

          He does? Where in the Pauline epistles can this be found?

          1. No critical scholar regards 1Tim as anything other than later pseudepigraphy. It is not by Paul. Please don’t clutter up my comments section with fundamentalist stuff like this.

            8
            1
          2. No critical scholar regards 1Tim as anything other than later pseudepigraphy. It is not by Paul.

            Indeed. Cf Bart Ehrman’s excellent book Forged.

            (And even if it were by Paul, I don’t see why one would need to read this passage as being about his persecution by Nero, as opposed to the other times he’s said to have run into trouble with the authorities. Though of course we can’t take Acts as an accurate account of Paul’s life.)

          3. Tim,
            On what grounds do you stand to assert that 1 Timothy “is not by Paul?”
            Is it simply an assertion of authority, or do you have some specifics about why certain or any particular authority claims 1Timothy is not by Paul and is merely pseudepigraphy.

  20. Hi Tim, I spoke to you after your second non seq appearance.
    I’ve read your piece and find a lot of special pleading in the topic of why other writers do not mention Christians being accused of arson eg
    “Pliny believed Nero had started the fire deliberately” (p. 268), which means Pliny would have no incentive to talk about alternative accusations or other potential culprits and little incentive to talk about any scapegoats.  So it would not be surprising that he would have kept the focus on the guilt of Nero and not mentioned any Christians at all. ”

    “But the fact that Suetonius does not mention any such connection between Christians and the Great Fire does not necessarily mean (i) none was made or even (ii) that Suetonius was not aware of any such connection. ”

     “This means that the more sceptical and neutral Tacitus does have the rhetorical room to discuss how the blame was put on Christians and to highlight Nero’s cruel nature by describing something he seems sure did happen (the execution of the Christians) rather than something about which he was uncertain (Nero starting the fire). ”

    “Tertullian noted later in the second century:
    “Now then, if this hatred is directed against the name, what is the guilt attaching to names? What accusation can be brought against words, except that a certain pronunciation of a name sounds barbarous, or is unlucky or abusive or obscene? But ‘Christian,’ as far as its etymology goes, is derived from ‘anointing.’ And even when it is incorrectly pronounced by you ‘Chrestian’ (for not even is your acquaintance with the name accurate), it is formed from ‘sweetness’ or ‘kindness.’ In innocent men, therefore, even an innocent name is hated.” (Apology, III)”
    (If you read Theophilus of Antioch’s early work it sure looks to me that there was a kind of Christ cult with no apparent connection with a Palestinian Jesus.

    “Only the more judicious and sceptical Tacitus is interested in exploring the question of who was to blame and who was blamed. ”

    “……….so it makes perfect sense that Sulpicius would leave out the derogatory reference to Jesus’ execution.”

     “It is not hard, however, to see why Tertullian may have been reluctant to draw attention to the arson accusation, since it may have given his pagan opponents reason to suspect the persecution was actually justified. ”

    ” But as noted above, the other three accounts of the Great Fire apart from Tacitus are focused on blaming Nero and Christian writers would have had even less incentive to draw attention to the accusation of Christian arson.”

    Sorry you haven’t convinced me but look forward to your next appearance.  

    1. “I’ve read your piece and find a lot of special pleading in the topic of why other writers do not mention Christians being accused of arson”

      I can’t see how any of my arguments on that point are “special pleading”. Special pleading is “citing something as an exception to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exception”. Carrier is making an argument from silence and I am simply noting there are solid reasons for that silence, backing those arguments with evidence. Carrier does not explain why we would expect Pliny, Suetonius or Cassius Dio to mention Christians being blamed for the Great Fire when all of them put the blame squarely on Nero himself. And the arguments I give for why Christians would not draw attention to Tacitus’ derogatory references to Jesus are entirely solid. The fact is that the persecution of Christians by Nero is attested by both Suetonius and Tertullian and the fact neither explicitly connect this to the Fire is not sufficient to sustain Carrier’s cluster of suppositions. The evidence can be read parsimoniously as it stands and simply does not require Carrier’s suppositions – which is why this is precisely how Tacitean scholars read it. Occam’s Razor favours that reading.

      This is yet another example of about half a dozen positions where Carrier stands alone against pretty much every other scholar on earth. It is not unusual for a scholar to occasionally stand against the consensus and sometimes they even prove to be right. But when someone seems to do so on a large number of issues and every single one of their contrarian positions just happens to have a clear ideological slant, any objective observer has to conclude that bias is in play.

      “If you read Theophilus of Antioch’s early work it sure looks to me that there was a kind of Christ cult with no apparent connection with a Palestinian Jesus.”

      I have no idea what you’re referring to here. And if this was “clear” then there would be an extensive scholarly literature on this question – but I know of no such discussion. Which “early work” of Theophilus? Why would such a late writer preserve this remarkable thing where no other writer does so? What exactly makes this so “clear”, according to you?

  21. “so this isn’t independent evidence”
    Thanks for debunking this one – for a long time I thought this JM argument the only credible one. Of course the argument doesn’t provide positive evidence for JM by any means; it only keeps the option open that Tacitus repeated information that can be traced back to the Gospels. You’ve made clear this is very unlikely. My excuse is that I’m not familiar with Tacitus and you’ve remedied this.

    1. I’ve already dealt with Carrier’s very odd views on these references in Tacitus and Suetonius in my article “Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus”. It’s ironic that in his post Carrier preaches that “one cannot argue to a probability, from a possibility. That’s a possibiliter fallacy” given that his Tacitus article is packed full of claims that things which are merely possible are “more likely” without giving any reason why this should be so. So he dismisses the Suetonius reference to “Chrestus” had anything to do with Christianity and declares “this incident was more likely city-wide violence ginned up by a Jewish demagogue named Chrestus (a common name in Rome at the time)” (pp. 271-72). This is entirely possible, but why is this “more likely”? Carrier doesn’t say – he just declares this.

      The rest is just typical Carrier nitpicking and sneering. One line reads simply “Dork”, which is how an Ivy League doctorate graduate makes an argument, apparently. And I was going to say that at least he manages to get through this whole sneer without calling the guy a “liar”, but then I noticed his final sentence. He never disappoints when it comes to being an immature jerk.

    2. Carrier, in a comment on that page.

      “But please quote to me any arguments in it you think aren’t already refuted in my article it’s about and thus warrant a reply.”

      How about you relay to us any arguments you find in Carrier’s article not already refuted by the above post?

  22. Hi Tim

    Came across something interesting while googling some info:

    Abstract
    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.

    https://brill.com/view/journals/vc/68/3/article-p264_2.xml

    1. Did you actually read my article above? I respond to Carrier’s arguments in that paper, point by point, in detail.

  23. Pingback: video seo
  24. While not about Carrier, a recent paper has further analyzed whether Suetonius could be speaking of a different Chrestus and mounts even more evidence that this is not the case. John Cook, “Chrestiani, Christiani, Χριστιανοί: a Second Century Anachronism?”, Vigiliae Christianae (2020).

  25. Apparently a 2019 paper in the same journal as the one Carrier published in also debunks his work:

    Blom, Willem JC. “Why the Testimonium Taciteum Is Authentic: A Response to Carrier.” Vigiliae Christianae 73.5 (2019): 564-581.

  26. Hi Tim,

    it seems to me that Carrier thinks Pliny trials took place in Bithynia.

    When asked by his patron:

    “Hi Richard, 75% of the way thru JfoS, I am enjoying it & hopefully learning as well. I have just read this sentence:

    “And he had also governed that same province a decade before that.”

    This of course is referring to Pliny the Younger in Bithinya(?). I thought it was a mantra that no-one governed Roman provinces twice, not Pilate, not Pliny and especially not Quirinius! Would you mind clearing this issue up for me?”

    He replied with:
    “Oh good catch. Bithynia wasn’t a consular province. But I miswrote that line. Pliny was on the first occasion special prosecutor in Bithynia (he prosecuted its governors), not governor. I shall have that fixed in the next printing.”

    I always thought trials took place in Rome.
    Am I missing something?
    Thanks!

    1. Why would all trials be held in Rome? That makes no sense – the expense and time involved getting everyone involved in a case all the way to Rome and back again for thousands of legal cases and trials would be monumnetal. The whole idea of having governors with delegated power was the have distributed power of local lawmaking and judicial authority outside Rome. So no, most trials were local.

      1. Hi,

        I always thought those trials were held in Rome/Senate.

        “Later, he was a well-known prosecutor and defender at the trials of a series of provincial governors, including Baebius Massa, governor of Baetica; Marius Priscus, governor of Africa; Gaius Caecilius Classicus, governor of Baetica; and most ironically in light of his later appointment to this province, Gaius Julius Bassus and Varenus Rufus, both governors of Bithynia and Pontus.”
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger

        So, Pliny visited Bithynia 10 years before he was appointed governor.
        I was not aware of this.

        You don’t have to publish this to save some space for more meaningful comments.

        Thanks for your time, have a nice day!

        1. The trials of provincial governors were held in Rome. Those men were high ranking patricians and ex-Consuls of Rome and could only be tried by the highest magistrates in the Empire. But you seemed to be talking about trials generally. So what trials were you referring to, exactly?

  27. Hello Tim. Do you know what is the current scholarly consensus about the Neronian persecution? AFAIK, the scholarly consensus has rejected Shaw’s arguments against its historicity, but I’m not sure. Thanks

  28. I’m what would best be described, historically speaking, as a Christian Jew, or a Nazarene (as understood by primitive Christianity). I just wanted to pass along my great thanks for this article. Though we have our theological differences, I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to read an unbiased, logical, and historically substantiated article on topics such as this.

  29. Where are the articles about :

    – plagiarism in the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John ?
    – anonymous texts in the NT ?
    – fake attributed texts in the NT ?
    – Interpolations in the NT ?
    – interpolations in jewish texts ?
    – made up letters from christians authorities ?
    – made up letters from roman authorities
    – made up letters from roman philosopher ?
    – made up letter from Jesus ?
    – and all the multiple apocrypha texts attrituted to various important characters ?

    I just see articles to protect Jesus’s historicity but nothing going against it.
    Why going only in this direction if you make history for atheists ?
    It looks suspect.

    1. I refer to several of those things in my articles here. But I don’t present articles arguing against Jesus’ historicity because (i) I think that position is garbage and (ii) so do almost all critical scholars. This site is to present mainstream, consensus, scholarly history and show why my fellow atheists shouldn’t accept fringe, contrived and badly argued ideas that most scholars consider to be bullshit. Mythicism is the latter. Understand now? Mythicism doesn’t get “equal time” here for the same reason Creationism doesn’t get it on a site presenting mainstream evolutionary biology.

      1. Unreliability of the gospels and forgeries are mainstream scholarship.
        I can’t even see an article about one of those subjects.

        I repeat, this is pretty suspect for someone pretending to make history for atheists.

        1. Unreliability of the gospels and forgeries are mainstream scholarship.

          If you mean they can’t be taken at naïve face-value, yes it is. Though if you mean they have to be rejected completely on anything they say, then no, that is not mainstream scholarship at all.

          I can’t even see an article about one of those subjects.

          Why would I need to write articles about those things? This site is about what atheists get wrong about history.

          I repeat, this is pretty suspect for someone pretending to make history for atheists.

          I repeat, you don’t seem to understand what this site is doing. There’s an FAQ at the top of every page of this site. Go and read it before commenting again.

    2. “plagiarism in the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John ?”

      What’s that supposed to mean? That those guys cribbed from Mark? Everyone knows that, and has for like a century. Even lots of fairly conservative Christians know that. Or did you mean something else?

    3. “I just see articles to protect Jesus’s historicity but nothing going against it.”

      You mean like when biologists “protect evolution” and don’t argue for creationism?
      Like when doctors “protect” medicine instead of arguing for voodoo?
      You’re free to make your own site and post your stuff. I for one would love to see a good case for mythicism! If you have something “against it” that hasn’t already been said by mythtics, you might be the first to make a compelling case!

      Why is it “suspect” for Atheists to think there was a historical Jesus?
      There’s nothing at all implausible about it.

  30. @steve Watson :
    I was referring to plagiarism in multiple forms. Plagiarism of the Old Testament to create new stories in the NT. And of course plagiarism from Mark.
    And yes, this is a consensus in NT studies.
    But ask about this subject to random Christians. They will say : “Matthew is the first and every gospels are independent”.

    So if the author of this blog pretend to make articles for Atheists and to be impartial, im wondering why subjects like this as nowhere to be found.
    When you can find multiple articles to defend the historicity of Jesus.
    The historicity of Jesus is subject to debate because the gospels are unreliable.
    So if you go only in one direction, you can’t pretend to be impartial.

    I mean, we have multiple stories of the gospels being completely made up by anonymous writers, plagiarizing the Old Testament, to create new stories with Jesus.
    I think a curious mind is entitled to wonder why those many stories are totally made up isn’t it ?

    1. So if the author of this blog pretend to make articles for Atheists and to be impartial, im wondering why subjects like this as nowhere to be found.
      When you can find multiple articles to defend the historicity of Jesus.
      The historicity of Jesus is subject to debate because the gospels are unreliable.
      So if you go only in one direction, you can’t pretend to be impartial.

      One more time: this site is not trying (or “pretending”) to be “impartial” on the issue of the historicity of Jesus. I’m presenting the mainstream, consensus and overwhelming majority view that Jesus most likely existed and explaining why the Mythicist alternative is bullshit. I’m under no obligation to give equal time to fringe and crackpot Mythicist ideas and arguments that I and virtually every scholar on the planet thinks are wrong.

      Either grasp what is going on here or go away. Any more asinine comments from you will go into the trash and you’ll go straight to the spam file.

  31. You seems to have difficulty to accept criticism isn’t it ?

    You don’t have to put me in the spam messages because i will never post again because your disproportionately reaction give the impression i touched something and that’s all i wanted to check.

    Merry Christmas

    1. You seems to have difficulty to accept criticism isn’t it ?

      I have no problem at all with accepting criticism. Or with explaining why some supposed criticism is invalid and stupid. I’ve even been patient enough to explain why your criticism here is both.

      i will never post again because your disproportionately reaction give the impression i touched something and that’s all i wanted to check.

      Or you just made a criticism that was both invalid and stupid. But okay – goodbye. Yet again we see that Mythicism appeals to people who aren’t very bright.

  32. Tim, I say this as a Messianic…your ability to prove the existence of the man Yeshua puts most Christians to shame. I think if people spent the time actually READING your articles they would find all the details they’re looking for. The reliability of the gospels is, in my opinion, established. I admit to problems, and admit that clearly there is scholarship that contends with my conclusion. What these recent comments have to do with this particular article on Tacitus…who in the world knows?!

  33. True, you are correct. Better said, you provide compelling evidence. Nothing is technically “provable” when it comes to ancient history. Either way, thanks again!

  34. According to the bible, the character Jesus (note that we are told that “Jesus” is the English form of the Latin form of the Greek form of the Hebrew name, “Joshua”, but one should be aware that “Jesus” is an Anglicized version of IESU,”IESU”, the Roman version of Iesius! – to demonstrate the complexities of historical contexts and multi-generational and multi-linguistic transliterations) warned of reliance on the Scribes, declaring they were more intent on spreading their versions of historical context than on maintaining the truth.

    And yet so many “christians” today are wholly reliant on similar Scribes.

    I can point to several hundred supposed quotes, supposedly spoken and/or written by numerous historical figures, from just one to two hundred years ago, but which are devoid of extant proof of their validity.
    The internet, with it’s ability to transmit “information” at the speed of light, can spread wrong information just as easily as it can good information.
    Same can be said of the dissemation of information of past eras.

    Tacitus was likely born 25 years after the oft-regarded narrative of Jesus’ death.
    So, he was not witness to the event.
    Rather than serving a revelation of events, he was merely retelling events told to him, which could have been wrong.

    Tacitus does not reveal the source of his information.
    In Tacitus’ works he labelled Pilate incorrectly as a procurator rather than a prefect.
    So, obviously Tacitus’ history was not without error.

    If he can make one error (as all fallible humans are capable), so too can he make other errors.

    Confirmation Bias is the tendency to look for information that supports, rather than rejects, one’s preconceptions, typically by interpreting evidence to confirm existing beliefs while rejecting or ignoring any conflicting data.

    I wasn’t there personally, so I have no idea the absolute truth.
    But it fascinates me how so many humans are so determined to absolutely believe things they can’t possibly know for certain.
    Like uncertainty is deemed a weakness.

    1. Yes, ancient history is based on sources like Tacitus. Which means we don’t always have the kind of sources that can give us “certainty” So? This just means we treat all of our sources with this uncertainty in mind and work to determine how potentially reliable they are. Tacitus is very reliable when we can check his information against other sources. We also know he was sceptical, careful and based his information on sources now lost to us. And what he says about Jesus here is confirmed by other sources. So we can rely on what he says here and conclude that Jesus was known to be a historical figure.

    2. “I wasn’t there personally, so I have no idea the absolute truth.”
      You weren’t there personally when the Big Bang happened either, as YECs like to point out. Are you equally fascinated by physicists who are determined to believe our Universe started with it? If no you’re the one who suffers from confirmation bias – Jesus has a special place in your heart.

  35. There are no original, extant texts of Tacitus’ writings.
    The “best preserved” works attributed to Tacitus were written some 900 years after his death.
    Thus reliance on works attributed to Tacitus are mere copies, likely of other copies.
    To place full faith on a mere likeness is foolishness.

    Regarding another supposed work of Tacitus, Germania, Tacitus himself had never travelled in the Germania; thus all his information is oft-regarded as second-hand at best. It’s been supposed that Tacitus closely copied the lost Bella Germaniae of Pliny the Elder, since the Germania is in some places outdated.

    Now, consider the game wherein people sit in a circle, with one person whispering a sentence to the second, whom then tries to relay that sentence to a third, and so one.
    The last person then states their interpretation of that original sentence to the whole group, which is most often highly-skewed, if not completely wrong.

    Such is the pains of “history”.

    Ben Franklin wrote “Historians relate, not so much what is done, as what they would have believed.”
    (From Poor Richard’s Almanac).

    1. This is a very naïve and actually rather silly take on history. Most of what you say could be said about any ancient source. So what? Do we therefore abandon the study of ancient history completely and believe what ever we like? No, we use the tools of historical analysis to use the source material we have and arrive at conclusions about what is likely to have happened in the past. Tacitus is very reliable when we can check his information against other sources. We also know he was sceptical, careful and based his information on sources now lost to us. And what he says about Jesus here is confirmed by other sources. So we can rely on what he says here and conclude that Jesus was known to be a historical figure.

      1. Overall I think this thread is touching on one major point I believe is overlooked, forgotten, or neglected when discussing ancient history – methodology. Tim, you hit the nail on the head when you said “we use the tools of historical analysis.”. The study of ancient history is, in the words of Langlois/Seignbos: “Historical knowledge is essentially indirect knowledge. The methods of historical science ought, therefore, be radically different than those of the direct sciences; that is to say, all of the other sciences, except geology, which are founded on direct observation.” (Introduction to the Study of History, Langlois & Seignobos, page 64 – https://archive.org/details/introductionto00lang/page/64/mode/2up)

        Long story short, most expect more from history than it is even able to provide under the best circumstances. Expecting a contemporary reference of Jesus, for example, is unreasonable as it relates to proper historical methodology, just as it would be unreasonable to expect the same for Herodotus, Suetonius, Livy, Tacitus, and the like. And, even if something was found that “dated” to his life time, I have zero doubts that piece of evidence would still be explained away by Mythicisits using some other form of unreasonable criteria.

        None of our ancient historical record is complete. Whatever method you apply to study it, at least be fair and apply it equally to all historical characters.

        Also recommended reading, from a different angle: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/historical-methodology-and-new-testament-study/

    2. “Most of what you say could be said about any ancient source.”
      Or mutatis mutandis about fossils. Still not any pseudoskeptic criticizes both the historical Jesus ánd common descent. Especially paleontology places a lot of “faith in mere likeness”. TorgeyS should look up morphology (biology).

  36. The first-ever reference by a historian was written around 116 CE by Tacitus. Richard Carrier says, in On the Historicity of Jesus:

    But we know Tacitus asked Pliny for information to include in his historical books. 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. That would explain why his information matches what was already reported in the Gospels by that time and gives no further detail. At the very least, this cannot be ruled out. Accordingly, we cannot verify that the information in Tacitus comes from any source independent of the Gospels.

    1. The first-ever reference by a historian was written around 116 CE by Tacitus.

      No, Josephus mentioned Jesus at least once and possibly twice about 20 years earlier.

      Richard Carrier says …

      No-one around here cares much about what that guy says about anything.

      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

      Nothing makes that “most likely”. It’s merely possible, nothing more.

      That would explain why his information matches what was already reported in the Gospels

      Except, as I detail in the article above, (i) nothing in what he says indicates an ultimate Christian origin for his information and (ii) he is unlikely to have merely repeated the claims of this group he despised without some caveat about the reliability of this dubious source.

      At the very least, this cannot be ruled out.

      True. But that’s setting a very low bar. See above for why this argument carries very little weight beyond a mere “maybe”.

      we cannot verify that the information in Tacitus comes from any source independent of the Gospels.

      No, but the Mythicist dogmatic insistence that it did come, ultimately, from Christians is still nonsense. The most we can say is (i) we don’t know exactly where he got his information and (ii) he’s generally very reliable and the fact he treats Jesus as a recent, historical person in a specific time and place counts for something.

      1. since Richard Carrier has a phD in history AND atheists cite his work on atheist forums I thought to hear from you

        “No, Josephus mentioned Jesus at least once and possibly twice about 20 years earlier.”

        Richard Carrier addressed this with the claim both were interpolations.

        this claim

        “we cannot verify that the information in Tacitus comes from any source independent of the Gospels.”

        presumably there were Christians who were eye witnesses or 1-2 removed from eye witnesses, who got their information from them but independent of the Gospels.

        1. I’m pretty clear on who and what Carrier is. He’s a bad historian and a biased polemicist and his opinions are not worth much. I detail why his arguments on this question don’t work in the article above. Did you actually bother to read the article?

          Richard Carrier addressed this with the claim both were interpolations.

          Yes, and Carrier’s arguments against the AJ XX.200 reference don’t work and have failed to convince other scholars, as I explain in detail here. His insistence that the AJ XVIII.62-3 reference is provably a wholesale interpolation is also wrong. That is possible, but not clear. Which is why it’s only a minority position among Josephus scholars. You should probably pay attention to what genuine, professional scholars say on these matters, not a biased, unemployed blogger. who no-one takes seriously.

          presumably there were Christians who were eye witnesses or 1-2 removed from eye witnesses, who got their information from them but independent of the Gospels.

          Probably. But I can’t see how that’s relevant to what I’ve said about Tacitus. The simple fact is that we don’t know where Tacitus got his information and the idea that he got it from Christians, either directly or indirectly, is merely one possibility among several.

          1. I’m pretty clear on who and what Carrier is. He’s a bad historian and a biased polemicist and his opinions are not worth much.

            Did Colombia University history departments err in granting Carrier a phD in history ?

          2. Any university is only responsible for what a PhD candidate presents as their doctoral research. They have no control over what that person does after they graduate. Most people who earn a doctorate use the training they gain from it to do credible work within their chosen field. But a few, like Carrier, veer off in all kinds of other directions and embrace silly fringe ideas out of narcissism and ideological biases. Simply having a PhD doesn’t make you immune from spouting nonsense. The fact that Carrier never managed to gain an academic position after he gained his doctorate and has remained an unemployed nobody who is disregarded or rejected by other scholars (when anyone pays any attention to him at all) should tell you something.

            10
        1. I detail other possibilities in the article above, including what I think is the most likely source he would turn to: aristocratic Jewish exiles at the court of Titus. Perhaps you should actually read the article you’re commenting on.

  37. What about Mara Bar Serapion? He could potentially be even earlier than Josephus since his letter dates from 73 ad to before the 3rd century. He mentions a “wise king of the Jews” which could potentially refer to Jesus which would make it even earlier.

    1. Given Bar Serapion doesn’t mention Jesus by name and that there are other contenders for who he was referring to as the Jews’ “wise king”, that reference is not clear enough to count as solidly about Jesus.

  38. Wonderful article Tim.

    One point. Even if Tacitus got his information from an ultimate Christian source, it still bodes poorly for Mythicism. Under Carrier’s theory, roughly 100% of Christians believed in a purely celestial Jesus circa 60 AD, and the first writing about a historical Jesus dates to about 75 AD (that’s what Carrier uses for gMark). So if Tacitus had Christian sources, and Carrier’s theory is correct, then we have a huge issue either way. Because Tacitus is only reporting the historical version. If he’s talking to Christians, then under Carrier’s theory he should be hearing both versions, I.e. “the Christianos derive their name from Christus. Some of these Christianos claim Christus was killed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, other Christianos claim he was killed in the heavenly realm by demons.” But he doesn’t. He only reports the historical version. This would mean the early Christian movement went from 100% believing in a celestial Jesus to all or nearly all believing in a historical Jesus in a span of like 2-3 decades under Carrier’s proposal. We have no precedent for a religion changing their doctrine that dramatically that quickly. There would still have been Christians alive that had been believers in the supposed celestial Jesus that Paul supposedly preached in the 60s when Tacitus/Pliny talked to them in the 90s /100s.

    1. Good points. One of the key weaknesses of Doherty/Carrier-style Mythicism is that it rests on a black hole in the evidence. Apparently there was this proto-Christianity which believed in a purely celestial Jesus and which is the origin of all the later forms, including the “historical earthly Jesus” forms that are the ancestors of Christianity today. Except … there’s no references to this ur-faith anywhere. No pagan or Jewish critics note its existence or former existence. No anti-heretical apologetic debunks it or even hints it ever existed. The whole thing is a pile of suppositions based purely on wishful thinking.

      The hard fact is that ALL of the reference to the origins of Christianity, including this one in Tacitus, trace it to an earthly, historical human (even if the Christian ones claim he was much more than that). This means Mythicism has a serious problem with any encounter with Occam’s Razor.

    2. I agree with the general direction of your remarks, but I think it overstates the the case a bit.

      Tacitus’s remarks do show his understanding is that Jesus is a historical figure, and granting for the sake of the argument his sources were Christian, it indicates that this understanding was common among Christians, but it doesn’t decisively prove that it was universal or near-universal. Tacitus writing this passage is compatible with there being a great many celestial Jesus believers, and on that assumption Tacitus could be simply unaware they exist, or he could be aware but not think they’re worth mentioning.

      I would not expect him to record a minority belief of Christians even under the assumption he knows of celestial Jesus Christians, he just doesn’t seem at all interested in recording Christian belief in any detail.

      However, as Tim points out in his reply to you, we have no shred of evidence (nor any persuasive historical inference) that any such celestial Jesus believers existed, so there is actually no reason to think there ever were any. And as you point out if we say Tacitus got his information from Christians, belief in earthly Jesus is common (at least in Tacitus’s experience) by ~100 AD, If he didn’t get his information from Christians it represents an independent understanding of who Jesus was.

      No matter which way one turns, Mythicists have to make ungrounded assumptions to save the assertion that there were any such people. I don’t believe we can decisively and absolutely rule out their existence, but a historically informed person could easily come up with dozens of conjectures which aren’t impossible but also aren’t supported, and no such conjecture needs to be taken seriously.

      1. “I don’t believe we can decisively and absolutely rule out their existence”
        No, but we can’t decisively and absolutely rule out that Newton’s Laws are incorrect either. In science the principle is that an alternative hypothesis must explain more known data, not less.

      2. Sure, there are still alternative explanations. But no matter how you slice it, you still have Christianity going from 100% believing in celestial Jesus to it being a minority position in something like only a few decades. That is remarkably fast for a religion to change. Look at for example the ancient Jewish religion. They very slowly, over a span of centuries, went from henotheism to monotheism. Look at the much smaller doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity. We go from no virgin birth, to virgin birth, to Mary having always been a virgin over a span of about 70 years. Look at the new testament canon even. Now this is a bit fuzzy, as Athanasius is the first explicit attestation of it, but there are good arguments that what Athanasius listed was already widely held to be the canon. Let’s be generous to Christian apologists and let’s suppose Origen had the complete new testament. That still is a little over a century for the canon to be straightened out.

        Religious doctrines and beliefs do change. No doubt about that. That absolutely is a thing that occurs. But the problem is the Carrier/Doherty thesis requires an incredibly drastic change in the span of a few decades. Typically, large dramatic changes in the doctrine of a religion occur slowly with small developments over centuries. Not all at once in a few decades.

        If they could structure argument and provide evidence for Christianity going from celestial to historical Jesus through a very slow gradual process over a span of let’s say 200 years or so, that wouldn’t be so unreasonable. But what they’re essentially arguing is it took about 25-40 years for this entire religion to completely change such a key, fundamental, cornerstone doctrine. I’ve studied many world religions. I’ve never seen a religious belief change so dramatically so fast.

        1. Yes, I’m just making the minor point that Tacitus’s statement doesn’t completely rule out the existence of celestial Jesus believers at that point in time.

          One might say this is pedantic, but I think we have to be careful when we consider what a piece of evidence means, particularly when we don’t have very much of it.

          Let’s zoom out from the very specific and surprising-if-true possibility of celestial Jesus believers and ask whether it’s possible that some Christians at this time believed something quite different from what Tacitus tells us about Jesus, leaving open the exact nature of that belief.

          That is quite possible! Tacitus doesn’t even tell us that Christians believe, only that *he* believes Jesus was executed by Pilate. Some possibilities in this set aren’t even that implausible — it’s not unheard of for devotees to deny that their leader was actually killed by the authorities, for example, so ‘Jesus’s execution was fake news’ Christians wouldn’t be unprecedented.

          (It’s worth keeping in mind that there we do have evidence of diversity of belief among Christians (although not on this particular point as far as I know), and there were surely many more views than the ones we have evidence for.

          And note that we actually do know Christians believed something that departs fairly radically from what Tacitus tells us — sure they believe that, but they also think he came back to life shortly afterwards!)

          The situation would be different if we had an author at the time attempting to survey Christian belief of the day. If such a writer failed to mention any belief apart from being executed by Pilate, then while it doesn’t completely rule out other beliefs either, it would be pretty good evidence that any such beliefs were quite marginal if they existed at all.

          I have to reiterate that this is all completely speculative, speculation I’m only conducting to reason through what possibilities Tacttus leaves open, and there’s no evidence that any such beliefs existed. But it wouldn’t overturn the world if we found evidence for a Jesus-execution-denier sect in the early 2nd century — and we wouldn’t view that as contradicting Tacitus.

          1. You’re right, and Tacitus does indeed not rule out a belief in celestial Jesus. But, the common mythicist proposal is

            A.) Tacitus got his information from Christians

            B.) During most of Tacitus’ life, the majority of Christians believed in a celestial Jesus. A celestial Jesus can’t be executed by a Roman governor.

            So my observation is merely pointing out that Tacitus’ writing is still problematic for mythicists assuming he did get his information from Christians. It isn’t definitive, because yes it is possible that at this time something like 80% of Christians still believe in some hypothetical celestial Jesus and that Tacitus just so happened to have gotten his information from the 20% historical Jesus group. But, under the theory that Tacitus is getting information from Christians, this reference at least does establish that the historical Jesus believing Christians were significantly sized at this time. This is a very fast time for a religious doctrine to change.

        2. Are there any precedents for the trajectory of a celestial figure and celestial events turning into a mundane ones?

          From what I know myths tend to go in exactly the opposite direction, mundane figures get elevated somehow into celestial ones. There’s often some fluidity between gods and legendary or semi-legendary kings, but that threshold always exists in the distant past in the examples I know about.

          It’s as though Inanna’s descent to the underworld became Inanna’s descent to the basement, and oh by the way it happened a few years ago, she used to live in that house over there, and I knew someone who used to hang out with her…

  39. I think they often try Zeus since one Greek author claimed Zeus was actually some king in Crete around 1300 BC or something along those lines. John Frum may be sort of an example of that, kind of, in a loose sense, as he is composite character and one of the figures he’s a composite of was a volcano god.

    They really don’t have many examples of what they’re talking about. Conversely, the historical Jesus theory does have lots of examples. We’ve seen so many real events and real people become mythologized. From Roman emperors and Alexander the great as tim points out in this article, but even modern day cult leaders like Charles Manson and David Koresh had mythologies attached to them by their believers. Hong Xuiquan is my go to example. He claimed to be the son of God. Started a war that killed about 20 million people in 19th century China. I know some mainstream archaeologists do think there was a real city of Troy that was destroyed by Mycenaean Greeks. If so that is another example of a real event being mythologized. But your observation is basically spot on. The opposite direction, which is what Carrier is proposing, is very, very rare.

  40. these claims i found on quora

    The Antitheist/Atheist Pastafarian’s Rag
    ·
    Follow
    Answered by
    Thomas Ryan Matthews

    13h
    Is there some historic proof of the existence of Jesus?

    Let me give you a summary of the evidence for the existence of Jesus;

    (1) Tacitus and Josephus, around 130 AD. They wrote on Jewish uprisings, and they mention Jesus, each twice.

    (2) The Bible itself; the claims of someone named Jesus existing is some proof; Particularly since we have Paul’s letters and the New Testament gospels (all 40 of them) which mention the name Jesus.

    (3) the argument from embarrassment; It postulates in mythologies your hero is never put beneath another, or found in embarrassing positions; since Jesus was our beneath John the Baptist at baptism and was crucified, he must be a real person as a heroic person wrote fictionally wouldn’t have had these things happen to them.

    (4) Jewish Rabbis acknowledged his existence in 300 AD.

    That’s pretty much all of the evidence. Let’s look closer.

    The earliest works we have of Tacitus and Josephus are copies from 1100 AD. they were exclusively translated by CHRISTIAN scholars for a thousand years; when you read the name Jesus in their work, it doesn’t follow either content nor style from the authors themselves, and doesn’t even fit in context with the writings where they are found. Many historians believe these to be additions placed by Christian’s in translation (a practice we know with certainty they did.)

    (2) Paul’s letters always speak of a spiritual Jesus, and the gospels contradict themselves several times, especially if you include the 36 other gospels we know about. Which means devoid of any additional proof thereof, the Bible is not a reliable arbiter of truth, and cannot be used as a basis for historical claims.

    (3) If the argument from embarrassment is true; Thor must exist. It’s a terrible argument made by theistic historians to try to save face and uphold their pet project. It’s why we don’t use it when we try to prove someone like Thales existed. Nobody talks about the argument from embarrassment when he fell in the well. It’s not even a referenced proof for his existence and is used almost exclusively in the Jesus discussion.

    (4) This is non-contemporaneous, and the Rabbis who acknowledge the existence would be aware of the histories of Josephus and Tacitus, which were already translated by Christian’s at this point.

    Now, do bear in mind; contemporaneous historians like Pliny the Elder are essentially completely silent on Jesus; There is no historical or archeological evidence whatsoever; There are no diary entries or scribes that we have found talking about a single miracle. Not a shred of true evidence exists.

    Now, silence on a subject is not proof of non-existence. I.E. lack of proof of Jesus existence doesn’t mean he didn’t exist. However, it DOES mean you don’t have a good basis to believe he did exist, until actual solid proof is provided.

    And my favorite proof; There was objectively never a Jew named Jesus. It would have been Joshua. The fact Paul used Jesus when he wrote in Greek is a powerful argument against the existence thereof. If he actually existed, Paul, an educated individual, would have used the actual name, not a bad translation of a translation of it.

        1. The comments sections on these articles are not a venue to present the same old tired Mythicist crap that we debunk here. Do your own homework and work out why no scholars find those pathetic arguments convincing. Start here.

  41. atheist forums are also full of posters claiming there is “no evidence” Paul existed. They say all his letters were forgeries and there is no evidence outside the bible that Paul ever existed. There are no contemporary references to Paul ever existing and Acts is pure fiction. They also say using the bible to prove either Jesus or Paul existed is a circular argument, there’s no extra biblical argument that Paul existed.

    I debated one, and he said without Acts how do you know Jesus and Paul were contemporaries? How do you know all his letters weren’t forgeries?

    1. The whole point of attributing letters to a particular author who has authority is to lend them that authority. There would be little point in me forging an article by Einstein and presenting it as brilliant because it’s by Einstein if Einstein wasn’t instantly recognised as a authoritative expert. And it would be very hard to explain how Einstein could have gained that reputation if … there was never an Einstein to begin with.

      So anyone who claims there was no Paul at all needs to explain why people were writing letters and attributing them to this non-existent person and how someone who didn’t exist had got this authoritative reputation. It makes more sense that there was a Paul and that his writings were well-known enough to gain authority. And that, as a result, some letters that were not by him came to be attributed to him – either as pseuepigraphy or by mistake – because of his reputation. The sceptics would then need to explain the coherence in content, style, grammar and theology found in the seven letters almost all scholars regard as being by Paul and explain who wrote them and why.

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      1. you should write a book – atheists now also say that Paul never existed either. I can provide Quora links if you want.

        Is Acts 100% pure fiction?

        If it is how do we know Paul and Jesus were contemporaries?

        A common mythicist claim is that Matthew Luke and John rely on Mark, and Mark is pure fiction possibly derived from Paul’s visions of Jesus and Old Testament passages, therefore there’s no information about the historical Jesus other than what is in Paul’s letters, who he admits he never met.

      2. Well of course there’d be a point in “attributing” letters to a person (character) that isn’t/wasn’t known to truly exist, though someone obviously wrote those “biblical letters.” How you fail to see this explains why someone who claims to be an atheist is stuck on defending a “historical” Jesus (a Joshua) that may or may not have existed and is irrelevant.

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        1. of course there’d be a point in “attributing” letters to a person (character) that isn’t/wasn’t known to truly exist,

          The issue that is not whether Paul was “known to truly exist” or not. The issue is where did the authority gained by attributing these letters to Paul come from if there … was never any Paul in the first place. See if you can explain that one to us. The very fact people were faking letters by Paul shows that Paul’s authorship lent authority to these letters. You need to account for that authority without a Paul. Can you?

          How you fail to see this explains why someone who claims to be an atheist is stuck on defending a “historical” Jesus (a Joshua) that may or may not have existed and is irrelevant.

          See above. I “fail to see this” because what you said is idiotic. Almost as stupid as thinking accepting that a historical Jesus existed is somehow incompatible with atheism. It isn’t. You seem to be an idiot.

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          1. You seem to be not grasping what I’m saying (no surprise there). You’re decontextualizing and making assertions that aren’t accurate; the fact that I have to sit here and spell this out means you’re out of your depth.

            1.) I did not suggest that to be an atheist that you couldn’t accept the idea that there may have been a historical Jesus. I said it was IRRELEVANT and a waste of time to be STUCK on defending the existence of a historical Jesus, but that’s just my opinion, but no it is not incompatible. Make sure you understand the point a person is making before trying to personally attack them. Atheists that want to focus on and defend a historical Jesus that may or may not have existed, be my guest. It’s just silly. Sensible atheists typically would focus on the supernatural, as the historical Jesus is a byproduct of looking for the existence of the biblical one, the reason Theology exists, to study DEITIES, in this circumstance Christian Theology.

            2.) My point about you failing to “see” had to do with not understanding WHY there’d still be a point in attributing letters to someone who is not known to exist. Paul’s existence was not the main point. My point was about the use of attribution and again why there WOULD be a POINT in attributing letters to a person that is not known to exist. AGAIN, while his existence to some degree is important, it wasn’t my main argument, like I said it doesn’t surprise me that this doesn’t connect or that you’re not able to connect the dots.

            If you think the biblical character “Paul” existed please continue on. It just looks silly and uninformed to people who know and understand actual history. That’s what idiotic. You’re what I call a sciolist and not a very good one.

          2. You seem to be not grasping what I’m saying (no surprise there).

            No, it’s not surprising, given your earlier comment is incoherent, ungrammatical and poorly expressed.

            I did not suggest that to be an atheist that you couldn’t accept the idea that there may have been a historical Jesus. I said it was IRRELEVANT and a waste of time to be STUCK on defending the existence of a historical Jesus, but that’s just my opinion

            Okay. Consider your opinion ignored. I’m not defined by the fact I’m an atheist, except where it’s relevant. I’m interested in history and the history of religion. So it makes sense that I’d be interested in the origins of the largest and most influential religion on earth. You can shout that this is “IRRELEVANT” if you like, but I’d simply respond “Irrelevant to … what?” It’s very relevant to my interest in history, thanks.

            Make sure you understand the point a person is making before trying to personally attack them

            Then try being more coherent.

            My point was about the use of attribution and again why there WOULD be a POINT in attributing letters to a person that is not known to exist. AGAIN, while his existence to some degree is important, it wasn’t my main argument

            Then what the hell has that “main argument” got to do with anything I’ve said? You were, apparently, responding to my point about how the argument that no Paul existed made no sense because there had to be a Paul originally to lend authority to the later Pauline pseudepigrapha. So if you weren’t responding to that point, your “main argument” makes no sense as a reply to me.

            like I said it doesn’t surprise me that this doesn’t connect or that you’re not able to connect the dots.

            Maybe you should ponder the possibility that it’s your incoherence that’s the problem here.

            If you think the biblical character “Paul” existed please continue on. It just looks silly and uninformed to people who know and understand actual history.

            Gosh. Okay. “Silly” why, exactly? “Uninformed” in what way, precisely? Do tell.

            You’re what I call a sciolist and not a very good one.

            Projection much?

    2. It’s classic conspiracy theory method: X is evidence, -X is also evidencefor the predetermined conclusion. When debating such people don’t expect rationality or being able to convince them. Still such debates can be useful by entertaining yourself with their errors and by refreshing your own knowledge and understanding. You could eg use their “arguments” to “demonstrate” that Sokrates is mythical (no archeological evidence, contradictory sources written after he died etc.). They usually don’t like that.

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    3. @Neo

      I have learned over the years to simply not waste any time talking with that crowd. Their New Testament and Early Christian History ” historical methodology “can basically be summed up as until we can travel back in time and verify it’s history we reject it all as utterly false. No evidence less than that will make them budge in the slightest with their absolute conviction that all New Testament and Early Christian History is a complete fraud and that they are rationalists ( and better than you) for having figured this out.

  42. What do you think of Odes of Solomon and Ascension of Isiah and docetism and letter of John as evidence of Jesus myth theory?

    Earl Doherty in his Jesus Puzzle references Odes of Solomon as coming from early Christians who saw Jesus as a purely celestial figure.

    Richard Carrier also cites Ascension of Isiah, and garden variety mythicists cite docetism as evidence there were early Christians who saw Jesus as purely spiritual.

    The letters of John said the antichrist is anyone who denies Jesus had come in the flesh, is this a reference to early Christians who saw Jesus as a purely spiritual revealer?

    btw anyone heard of Neil Godfry ? I’ve seen him as a Jesus mythicist who posted rebuttals on his blog on just about everyone who claims Jesus existed from James McGrath to Bart Ehrman.

    1. Doherty doesn’t see explicit references to Jesus’ bodily incarnation as a human in the highly mystical Odes and so concludes it reflects his assumed mystical/celestial Jesus paradigm. This is much harder to do with the Ascension of Isaiah because that does contain references to Jesus coming to earth as a man, so Carrier and his supporters have to argue that these are all later additions. That’s easy for some of them, given the wor’s tangled history, but not possible for all of them. The John epistle seems to be talking about Docetism, but of course the Mythicists claim it’s referring to their hypothetical proto-Christian celestial Jesus sect. No-one else is convinced.

      Godfrey is a weird contrarian who claims he is more of an agnostic on the issue than a Mythicist, though he spends his whole time trying to prop up Mythicist arguments. He’s a strange obsessive and rather paranoid – he thinks anyone who turns up on any of the forums he posts on making arguments against Mythicism is me in disguise. His favourite tactics are taking the most bad faith or uncharitable misreading of someone’s argument and arguing against that, nitpicking very minor points while ignoring substance and preaching good manners while using passive aggressive tactics and slander. He’s a fairly ridiculous figure and best ignored.

      1. Thanks for replying,

        as you can tell I’ve seen a lot of mythicism and it seems to be 100% of quora atheists who reply to questions about whether Jesus existed.

        Doherty also cites Hebrews, and there’s Revelation

        Is John of Patmos Jesus the same Jesus as the Jesus in the gospels, and the Jesus of Paul, and did his death happen in the celestial realm?

        Was John of Patmos and the Book of Revelation think of Jesus as a real historical person or did he think of Jesus as a purely celestial being?

        Is John of Patmos, possibly combined with the letter of John, evidence some Christians had purely spiritual visions of Jesus in the heavenly realm, and not seem to know of any earthly Jesus. Specifically is John of Patmos someone who the letter of John had in mind someone who denies Jesus had come in the flesh?

        What did John of Patmos know about the historical Jesus? For John of Patmos, did Jesus come in the flesh or is he only known via revelation by angels?

        Revelation 1 NIV reads

        1 The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,

        12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man,[d] dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

        17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

        1. These comments are getting a long way from being on topic for the article above. Please keep to the subject: Tacitus’ mention of Jesus.
          The Apocalypse is focused purely on visions of the coming End Times and so the Jesus figure is going to be celestial – it’s the Risen Jesus. This is not support for Mythicism.

          1. sorry about that but I do read quora and visit atheist reddit and rationalwiki

            well, i’ll say on quora and reddit,
            what atheist Jesus mythers say is this

            one huge issue they make is Chrestus vs Christus,

            Tacitus originally wrote Chrestus, and the e was changed to an i, so he was writing of some person named Chrestus.

            https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tacitus#Tampering_of_Annals

            Tacitus was not contemporary to Jesus nor an eye witness, he wrote 115 AD , some 80 years after the supposed events, repeating what others have said, and this claim comes from a single medieval manuscript dated around 1100AD some 1000 years after and plenty of time for a Christian interpolation.

            rationalwiki also cites examples of how urban legends can form on this topic as an explanation for Tacitus.

            This passage, accepted as authentic by many, must be declared doubtful, if not spurious, for the following reasons:

            It is not quoted by the Christian fathers.
            Tertullian was familiar with the writings of Tacitus, and his arguments demanded the citation of this evidence had it existed.
            Clement of Alexandria, at the beginning of the third century, made a compilation of all the recognitions of Christ and Christianity that had been made by Pagan writers up to his time. The writings of Tacitus furnished no recognition of them.
            Origen, in his controversy with Celsus, would undoubtedly have used it had it existed.
            The ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, in the fourth century, cites all the evidences of Christianity obtainable from Jewish and Pagan sources, but makes no mention of Tacitus.
            It is not quoted by any Christian writer prior to the fifteenth century.
            At this time but one copy of the Annals existed and this copy, it is claimed, was made in the eighth century — 600 years after the time of Tacitus.
            As this single copy was in the possession of a Christian the insertion of a forgery was easy.
            Its severe criticisms of Christianity do not necessarily disprove its Christian origin. No ancient witness was more desirable than Tacitus, but his introduction at so late a period would make rejection certain unless Christian forgery could be made to appear improbable.
            It is admitted by Christian writers that the works of Tacitus have not been preserved with any considerable degree of fidelity. In the writings ascribed to him are believed to be some of the writings of Quintilian.
            The blood-curdling story about the frightful orgies of Nero reads like some Christian romance of the dark ages, and not like Tacitus.
            In fact, this story, in nearly the same words, omitting the reference to Christ, is to be found in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, a Christian of the fifth century.
            Suetonius, while mercilessly condemning the reign of Nero, says that in his public entertainments he took particular care that no human lives should be sacrificed, “not even those of condemned criminals.”
            At the time that the conflagration occurred, Tacitus himself declares that Nero was not in Rome, but at Antium.

            Many who accept the authenticity of this section of the “Annals” believe that the sentence which declares that Christ was punished in the reign of Pontius Pilate, and which I have italicized, is an interpolation.[9]

            https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tacitus#Tampering_of_Annals

            therefore not evidence Jesus existed (along with both references in Josephus being Christian interpolations)

          2. I deal with all of these arguments in the article you’re commenting on. So why are you just repeating bad arguments I’ve already countered?

  43. Hey Tim, how would you respond to these three objections to the Tacitus passage?
    1. Tacitus uses the title Christus to refer to Jesus instead of his actual name. Does this suggest a later Christian interpolation? I only ask because why would Tacitus, if he didn’t believe in Jesus, refer to him by his title Christus which suggests some kind of belief about a messiah? Why not just refer to him by his actual name? (Also, considering Tacitus wrote in Latin not Greek, why did he use the title Christus which is a Greek word instead of the Latin form of the name Jesus?) My knowledge of Latin is a bit sketchy so forgive me if that was a stupid question.
    2. Clement of Alexandria collected and quoted EVERY reference to Jesus by pagan writers from before his time, but he never mentioned Tacitus, indicating that this passage was not in existence prior to Clement’s time and thus is an interpolation. Is this correct?
    3. This one actually comes from an article from American Atheists titled “Did Jesus Exist” and in its section about Tacitus, Frank Zindler says, “According to Robert Taylor, the author of another freethought classic, the Diegesis (1834), the passage was not known before the fifteenth century, when Tacitus was first published at Venice by Johannes de Spire. Taylor believed de Spire himself to have been the forger.” Is this correct? Also, the link to the full article is here if you want some context. https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/did-jesus-exist/

    1. I’ve already dealt with the first two of those arguments in the article above. Perhaps you should actually read my article.
      The idea that the passage is a fifteenth century forgery is total nonsense. It was one posited in the nineteenth century (note that the source cited in that article is from 1834) as a crackpot conspiracy theory, claiming our two manuscripts of Tacitus are in fact fifteenth century forgeries. Modern manuscript analysis shows this is total garbage. That Zindler bothers to repeat this nonsense shows just how hopeless he is at anything to do with history.

    1. Several motivations. Firstly, it makes Christianity more wrong that if there was a historical Jesus who just wasn’t what Christians claim he was. And Carrier wherever his historical analysis touches on any aspect of religion, Carrier is motivated by his anti-religious animus and bias. Secondly, it makes Carrier into one of a tiny number of people with any relevant qualifications who takes this thesis seriously. Carrier is a contrarian and something of a narcissist and so he likes the idea that he is so special and so intelligent that he’s figured out something almost all the other experts can’t see. Thirdly, related to the last point, it makes him a prime focus of a cult-like fringe, with fanboys who regard him as a great guru and source of all knowledge on the subject. He rather likes that as well. It also gives him a small but devoted audience for his blog posts, which seem to be his major source of income via Patreon.

      Combined, these are powerful motivations.

      1. Well it’s either do all that or get a job at Taco Bell seeing his wife divorced him and various skeptic organizations have blacklisted as basically a creepy horndog. Money doesn’t grow on trees after all. One does have to wonder what he will do in his old age.

  44. Is there any mention of Barrabas anywhere other than the bible? I mean, he murdered a Roman government official, which I assume would generate mention in a do ument somewhere, especially since he was set free in exchange for the capital punishment of a rabble rouser instead (Jesus).
    If there’s no mention of Barrabas, then there cannot possibly have been a Jesus.

    1. Is there any mention of Barrabas anywhere other than the bible?

      No.

      I mean, he murdered a Roman government official, which I assume would generate mention in a do ument somewhere

      Such as where, exactly? Is there some catalogue of this kind of thing? And where did you get the idea that he “murdered a Roman government official”? You seem to be imagining things.

      If there’s no mention of Barrabas, then there cannot possibly have been a Jesus.

      No, that doesn’t follow at all.

      1. Well written article. I like your careful attention to detail and willingness to consider the arguments seriously, though it seems like there are a few notable issues worth pointing out.

        1. I don’t actually think that removing the sentence Carrier suggests makes the passage read better. In order to get it to read well you have to remove at least one more sentence past what Carrier proposes for the interpolation.

        2. Even if the passage is genuine, Tacitus is writing 80 years after Jesus died thousands of miles away. He wasn’t an eye witness obviously. Probably almost all reliable eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life were dead by the time Tacitus was born. Tacitus had to get his information from somewhere. Given that he is telling us nothing that isn’t in the gospels and we don’t know his source, why should we assume he is independent of the gospels? One could ask why should we assume he is dependent on the gospels, but if we take the consensus view that Mark was written 40 years before Tacitus wrote and was sufficiently well circulated to have spawned one or two or even three sequels by Tacitus’ time, it seems unreasonable to argue that we should assume that Tacitus is sharing information from a reliable source independent of the gospels. We don’t know his source. As you said, it is unlikely that news of Jesus’ crucifixion would have been reported on in news sources available to Tacitus in Rome. He could have perhaps had access to official Roman sources if they existed, but their existence is unlikely. If Tacitus did have some source for his information about Jesus, isn’t it reasonably likely that those sources would ultimately derive from Christians? I think ultimately if we had to postulate a most likely source for Tacitus’ information about Jesus it would be Christians whether directly or indirectly. What other alternative would be more likely? Trying to speculate on the alternatives – maybe a Roman eye witness of Jesus’ life reported it entirely through a chain of non-Christians to Tacitus?

        I feel like the above reasoning is more than sufficient for a Jesus Mythicist to dismiss the Tacitus passage as not providing compelling evidence for Jesus’ historicity. A quality case for Jesus’ historicity has to rely on evidence beyond what is in Tacitus. Without a compelling argument for tampering, Tacitus is indisputable proof that the Christian myth was in circulation as far as Rome by the 110s but that is no surprise given the New Testament texts.

        3. Regarding the default position for trusting ancient historical written sources, I would agree that the default assumption should be that the average level of trust given to an average ancient source should be somewhere around “mostly trying to be truthful”. But that default assessment should be changed if we come across some compelling reason to think we’re not dealing with reliable sources. You make a good case that Tacitus should certainly be given an assumed level of reliability that is greater than the average source. On the other hand something like the gospel of Mark that contains 20+ miracles, 100+ fictional details obviously pulled out of pre-Christian Jewish scriptures, and an entirely implausible plot should be given a assumed level of reliability of near 0. When the primary evidence Jesus Mythicists have to talk about is the stuff in the New Testament, it is completely reasonable for them to treat that material as of having almost zero reliability. You don’t have to be an irrational hyper skeptic to be a mythicist. Many main stream scholars who think Jesus existed would say that just about the only thing you can say about him with any confidence is that he was crucified. It is very mainstream among atheists with proper qualifications in academia to assume that something close to 99% of the material we have for Jesus cannot be trusted.

        4. Goldberg in the 90s published a peer reviewed article that is freely available online that demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the Testimonium Flavianum derives from the Emmaus story. The linguistic parallels between Josephus’ writing and the Emmaus Pericope are far too similar to be explained by anything other than dependence. That really should be the end of the Testimonium Flavianum as evidence for Jesus’ existence. Most likely an interpolator, perhaps Eusebius wrote the Testimonium using Luke’s gospel as his source. But even if you reject the idea that it was an interpolator, the forced conclusion is that Josephus used Luke or proto Luke as his source and therefore it is not independent of the gospels. Given that many scholars are starting to think that Luke used Josephus and maybe even Marcion, the only realistic conclusion is that it was an interpolation.

        5. When you recognize Josephus as the interpolation that it is, Suetonius as dubious evidence for Jesus’ historicity, and Tacitus as most likely getting information directly or indirectly from Christians (or at least admitting that this is a sufficiently likely hypothesis as to deserve serious consideration), the gospels are so completely mythologized that the authors cannot be given that average level of assumed reliability and must be assumed to be highly unreliable, the question of Jesus’ historicity really comes down to how you interpret Paul.

        6. If you look at what I am hypothesizing as the interpolation: Carrier’s fragment plus an extra sentence or so, the extra part that carrier doesn’t flag as an interpolation is actually easy to read as a backhanded insult to “Rome, the place where all things that are terrible are popular”.

        1. Well written article. I like your careful attention to detail and willingness to consider the arguments seriously, though it seems like there are a few notable issues worth pointing out.

          Thanks. But given your several of your “notable issues” are addressed in my article above, I have to wonder how carefully you read it.

          Tacitus had to get his information from somewhere.

          Yes. And I go into some detail on why it is not likely he was simply repeating Christian claims.

          if we take the consensus view that Mark was written 40 years before Tacitus wrote and was sufficiently well circulated to have spawned one or two or even three sequels by Tacitus’ time, it seems unreasonable to argue that we should assume that Tacitus is sharing information from a reliable source independent of the gospels.

          This is even more unlikely than him sharing hearsay information from Christians. In the early second century the gospels were circulating in a tiny handful of copies among Christians only. We have zero indication of any non-Christians being aware of these obscure texts until at least the third century. The idea that Tacitus would even know of these works, let alone have any interest in reading them or even have access to them, is pretty absurd. So no, this is not likely at all.

          We don’t know his source. As you said, it is unlikely that news of Jesus’ crucifixion would have been reported on in news sources available to Tacitus in Rome. He could have perhaps had access to official Roman sources if they existed, but their existence is unlikely. If Tacitus did have some source for his information about Jesus, isn’t it reasonably likely that those sources would ultimately derive from Christians?

          That’s possible, but I detail why it’s not likely. Yes, what he says contains information also found in the gospels and Christian teaching about Jesus. But if those elements were historical, this is what we’d expect. The problem with the idea that he’s reporting Christian claims about Jesus is there is nothing in what he says that is specifically Christian: no references to claims about miracles, no indication of a claim he was somehow divine and nothing about him rising from the dead. That kind of detail would indicate an (ultimate) Christian source, but we get nothing like that in Tacitus’ account. Instead we get a fairly bald and quite hostile who, what, where and when about Jesus – of the kind we would expect from a non-Christian source. And as I note in the article, Tacitus had access to non-Christian sources who would be the logical people to ask about the founder of a Jewish sect: the various aristocratic Jewish exiles who moved in the same social circles as Tacitus. What he says fits what they would have told him perfectly.

          On the other hand something like the gospel of Mark that contains 20+ miracles, 100+ fictional details obviously pulled out of pre-Christian Jewish scriptures, and an entirely implausible plot should be given a assumed level of reliability of near 0.

          No, that doesn’t follow at all. Historians use ancient sources which are clearly rhetorical in intent and which contain miracles and supernatural events all the time. They have to – these are often the only sources we have. So no, those elements don’t mean those sources have zero reliability. I have a whole article on why that line of reasoning is invalid here. I’m also not clear on what point you’re trying to make here. Yes, Tacitus is in most respects a more reliable historical source than gMark. And?

          Goldberg in the 90s published a peer reviewed article that is freely available online that demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the Testimonium Flavianum derives from the Emmaus story.

          That’s nonsense. Goldberg makes a case for this, but it is not so clear that he establishes it “beyond any reasonable doubt”. Not even he would claim such a dogmatic thing, so that claim is pretty silly. Both the relevant section of the Emmaus story and the TF are fairly brief passages summarising Jesus’ life and death, so there will inevitably be parallels and linguistic overlaps even if the two are completely independent of each other. And many scholars now think gLuke was written quite late and that the writer used Josephus, which means it is more than possible the influence is the other way around, with an original summary of Jesus in Bk XVIII of Antiquities influencing the gLuke summary in Luke 24.

          the only realistic conclusion is that it was an interpolation.

          Another silly overstatement. No, that is not the “only realistic conclusion”. There are many good reasons to accept the majority position of Josephus scholars that the passage is partially authentic. I detail the pros and cons here. A case can be made for wholesale interpolation too, but neither position has a definitive set of arguments. Claims that one position or the other is the “only realistic conclusion” are plain stupid.

          When you recognize Josephus as the interpolation that it is, Suetonius as dubious evidence for Jesus’ historicity, and Tacitus as most likely getting information directly or indirectly from Christians (or at least admitting that this is a sufficiently likely hypothesis as to deserve serious consideration), the gospels are so completely mythologized that the authors cannot be given that average level of assumed reliability and must be assumed to be highly unreliable, the question of Jesus’ historicity really comes down to how you interpret Paul.

          Leaving aside all the problems with your dogmatic claims noted above, you’re ignoring the second Jesus reference by Josephus in Ant. XX.200. Almost all scholars regard that one as authentic. And “how you interpret Paul” is a major problem for Mythicists, given their attempt at claiming Paul was only talking about a purely celestial Jesus simply don’t work. Paul Jesus was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Gal 4:4). He repeats that he had a “human nature” and that he was a human descendant of King David (Rom 1:3), of Abraham (Gal 3:16), of Israelites (Rom 9:4-5) and of Jesse (Rom 15:12). He refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1Cor 7:10), on preachers (1Cor 9:14) and on the coming apocalypse (1Thess. 4:15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1Cor 2:8, 1Thess 2: 14-16) that he was crucified (1Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8, 2Cor 13:4) and that he died and was buried (1Cor 15:3-4). And he says he had an earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Gal 1:19). Mythicist arguments to make these references fit their theory are at best highly strained and, in some cases. simply ridiculous. Rom 1:3 alone causes them major headaches and result in some truly ridiculous arguments from them, as I detail here.

          Mythicism is simply a bad position. It’s essentially an assumed conclusion desperately searching for supporting arguments.

          1. Hey Tim! It’s been a while since I’ve commented, but I had one question about Tacitus. You said that it’s unlikely that Tacitus was dependent on Christians for his information, because he didn’t mention things like Jesus’s miracles, resurrection etc. But if Tacitus WAS repeating what Christians claimed about Jesus, shouldn’t we expect him to not mention these things? Why would he go out of his way to mention the miracles if he didn’t even believe in them in the first place? He could have easily have obtained his information from Christians, but simply chose to “leave out” the stuff about the miracles, because he didn’t think Jesus was significant or he just didn’t believe in them. Thanks!

          2. What I actually say is that it’s possible that Tacitus’ information came, directly or (more likely) indirectly from Christians. But nothing in what he says actually indicates this. If he had included references to claims of divinity, miracles, rising from the dead etc. this would be a sign that the source was likely Christian. But we don’t get that. The fact he doesn’t mention these elements doesn’t mean it didn’t come from Christians, but there is no positive evidence it did.

          3. @Jacob Testa
            Given the contemptuous tone to Tacitus’ description of Christians: I find it hard to believe that he would be sourcing them for any information.

            To me it seems common sense to assume that a model historian like Tacitus would have sourced his information from a source that was reliable (and was the influence of his low opinion): Jews. Especially those former Judean aristocrats who had been exiled to Rome after thy e Jewish war.

  45. Generally, Mythicists deal with this reference in four main ways:

    “Tacitus only refers to the existence of Christians, not to Jesus”
    “Tacitus was talking about some other sect called the Chrestians”
    “Tacitus does mention Jesus but he’s only repeating what Christians claimed, so this isn’t independent evidence”
    “The passage is a later Christian interpolation”

    I’m surprised you’ve not mentioned #5-6 as I have interacted with plenty of mythicists

    * The passage was written CA 115AD, way too late to have any value historically on events that happened 80 years after they occurred (33CE) so it doesn’t count.

    * Tacitus incorrectly called Pilate “procurator” instead of prefect, therefore his information is erroneous and his reference to Jesus is rubbish.

    *Candida Moss in Myth of Persecution states there was no persecution of Christians under Nero (or greatly exaggerated) , so Tacitus claims are apparently factually incorrect

    I have debated mythicists on point

    “Tacitus does mention Jesus but he’s only repeating what Christians claimed, so this isn’t independent evidence”

    and ask why if Tacitus got his information solely from Christians, why these Christians believed Jesus existed historically and not purely celestial, and whether these Christians Tacitus supposedly relied on used the Gospels as information or independent of Gospels, especially since mythicists like Doherty and Carrier date the Gospels second century . They claim somehow the original Christians disappeared and replaced by historical Christians by the time Tacitus got his information.

    1. “* The passage was written CA 115AD, way too late to have any value historically on events that happened 80 years after they occurred (33CE) so it doesn’t count.”

      I don’t address this argument because it’s so obviously stupid. By this ludicrous criterion we’d have to reject pretty much all ancient sources as having “no value historically”. A mere 80 years is relatively close in time as ancient sources go. This is an argument made by people with no understanding of how ancient history is studied and no interest in actual history.

      “* Tacitus incorrectly called Pilate “procurator” instead of prefect, therefore his information is erroneous and his reference to Jesus is rubbish.”

      I have dealt with this in a previous comment above.

      “*Candida Moss in Myth of Persecution states there was no persecution of Christians under Nero (or greatly exaggerated) , so Tacitus claims are apparently factually incorrect”

      Moss’ book is okay while it’s just going over what is already well-understood: the way later Christian saint traditions exaggerated the frequency and extent of the persecutions and projected memories of the Great Persecutions of the third century back onto earlier Christian history. Where she goes off the rails is her attempts at dismissing pretty much all earlier persecution, including the Neronic one. Her book also has a modern political agenda, since it’s a reaction to American evangelicals on the Religious Right trying to present themselves as persecuted victims in the tedious culture wars of the US. Her arguments against the historicity of the Neronic Perscution are weak, given it’s attested by both pagan (Tacitus, Suetonius) and Christian (Tertullian, Sulpicius Severus) writers. I deal with this and with similar arguments by Brent Shaw in some previous comments as well.

      “Doherty and Carrier date the Gospels second century”

      Carrier actually accepts the consensus datings of the gospels. Both he and Doherty would argue that by Tacitus’ time the Celestial Jesus had been “euhemerized” into an earthly and historical figure, so it would be possible for Mythicists to say this is what the Christians that Tacitus got his information from believed.

  46. “With the reading ‘Christian’ the text would be saying that at the time of the fire the name by which members of the sect would be later known, Christians, was already common currency among ordinary people. With the somewhat better attested original reading ‘Chrestiani,’ the message would be that at the time of the fire the term ‘Christian,’ presumably by then a familiar and normal term, was erroneously pronounced ‘Chrestian’ by ordinary people. The author goes out of his way to indicate that he is not being anachronistic and is speaking not of his own day, but of the period immediately after the fire, by his use of the past imperfect tense, ‘common people used to call’ (appellabat). Whichever is the correct reading, Christians or Chrestians, this discussion of the minutiae of nomenclature seems to be something that would have been of marginal interest to a Roman reader, although it would perhaps appeal to a Christian writer, or a writer preoccupied by Christian issues. Thus, for all the reasons enumerated, we should regard with grave suspicion at least the passage ‘These were people hated for their shameful offences whom the common people called Christians/Chrestians. The man who gave them their name, Christus, had been executed during the rule of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilatus. The pernicious superstition had been temporarily suppressed, but it was starting to break out again, not just in Judea, the starting-point of that curse,’” (p.162).

    1. Yes, pretty weak. Tacitus was a historian and scholar. They tend to be a bit pedantic. Whether he’s referring to what the common people called the sect at the time of the fire or in his time (either is possible) or whether his original read “Christianos” or “Chrestianos” (arguments can be made for both scenarios), there’s nothing particularly unusual for a writer like Tacitus to pause to either (i) explain how the common people got the name wrong or (ii) just explain where the name came from. I think to say “this discussion of the minutiae of nomenclature seems to be something that would have been of marginal interest to a Roman reader” and then claim “it would perhaps appeal to a Christian writer, or a writer preoccupied by Christian issues” is to dangle a lot of conclusion from a very slender thread of argument.

      1. Indeed. think the only plausible scenario for interpolation here would be that somebody (a) hated Christians, but not as much as they (b) hated Nero and (c) were in a position to kill two birds with one stone by interpolating Tacitus and have that interpolation become significant in the manuscript tradition.

        1. That’s actually very possible. Or he was using an anachronistic title because that’s what the rulers of Judea were called in his time. Or the Romans weren’t as rigid and consistent in their use of these titles as some modern commentators assume. Or he was, technically, both a Procurator and a Prefect (as argued by one R. Carrier). Or some combination of these. Given all these possibilities, his use of the “wrong” title isn’t much to hang an argument on.

  47. Barrett’s complete argument for interpolation is:
    1) The province Pilate was responsible for is not named when his rank is given.
    2) Calling Pilate a procurator was anachronistic and may have been caused by the influence of a 3rd century Christian text (the Vetus Latina) in which Pilate was referred to as a “procurare.”
    3) The passage seems to indicate that Christianity was previously suppressed by Rome in Judea, for which there is no evidence.
    4) The aforementioned nomenclature argument regarding “Chrestians”
    5)”This possible interpolation would resolve the problem of the silence of both pagan and Christian writers on the aftermath of the fire. More-over, since it would leave the description of the punishments intact, it might also be argued that a potential interpolator who saw the reference to crucifixion assumed that the victims must be Christian and altered the text accordingly, although crucifixion was a general form of punishment used by the Romans against non-citizens, and indeed widely used by other ancient societies.”

    1. 1. Why should it be given we’re told this happened in Judea?
      2. Already answered above.
      3. I can’t see how that works at all.
      4. Not actually an issue.
      5. Already answered in my article above.

      So, not very impressive.

      1. That’s what I figured. To be clear, Barrett isn’t married to the interpolation hypothesis. He considers the passage’s indication that the Christians paradoxically confessed before being arrested and the silence of later authors to be problems and suggests two solutions: interpolation or Tacitus connecting the fire and the persecution when they were actually unrelated. I can send you the chapter if you like.

        1. I think the second of his two suggestions makes more sense. But, again, I make what I think are stronger arguments re the “silence” issue in my article above. Yes, I’d be interested in reading the chapter – see my “Contact the Author” link at the top of the page.

  48. « “I’ve never come across any dispute about the authenticity of Ann. 15.44; as far as I’m aware, it’s always been accepted as genuine, although of course there are plenty of disputes over Tacitus’ precise meaning, the source of his information, and the nature of the historical events that lie behind it. There are some minor textual issues (the spelling ‘Chrestianos’ vs. ‘Christianos’, e.g.), but there’s not much to be done with them since we here, as everywhere in Tacitus’ major works, effectively depend on a single manuscript.” (E-mail quoted in Ehrman’s blog article “Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier” (https://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard- carrier/), April 25, 2012) »

    I recently read something similar from Margaret H. Williams:
    “In fact, I know of no serious Tacitean scholar who considers for a moment that this passage is an interpolation. ”
    Early Classical Authors on Jesus, p73

    1. If you say this on a mythicist-friendly site, they’ll dredge up one or two pro-interpolation scholars from the 1960s and accuse you of dishonesty for not knowing about them.

  49. Hey Tim I seen someone denying the neuronian persecution and decided this paper The Number of the Myth: A Defence of the Ahistoricity of the Neronian Persecution
    Christopher M. Hansen

    1. I’ll have to read that paper, but I must say I find Hansen a tendentious writer who overstates her positions to a grating degree.

      1. I was disappointed when you two had a falling out. Even if her embrace of minimalism strikes me as a hasty, there’s no denying that she knows her chops on the historiography of Mythicism.

    1. Yes, we had an exchange on that subject on Reddit a few years ago where I politely criticised some of her overstatements and elicited a series of increasingly unhinged and weird responses that ended with her blocking me. Though I see that in the final paper she moderated the points I critiqued. So maybe there is some hope. Her tendency toward hysteria and paranoia are a bit tedious, unfortunately. I don’t think she has the temperament to be a serious scholar.

      1
      0
      1. I wouldn’t engage with that lunatic. They’re a truly deranged extremist, who, among other things, supports violence against innocent people (in the name of weird political views), and groundlessly accused my Assyriology tutors of racism, saying they had ‘no sympathy’ when SOAS pulled its Assyriology BA.

          1. Okay. I’ve certainly seen some very weird behaviour from Chrissy, which is why I’ve made a point of putting as much distance as possible between me and her. At one point she and Neil Godfrey were attacking anyone who defended the historicity of Jesus on the IIDB forum, accusing them of being me using sock puppets. I never use sock puppets and haven’t bothered posting to that very strange community in many years. So it seems her behaviour is getting increasingly odd.

  50. All right I got a response I have it quoted here’s what she responded to him with Chris_Hansen97

    •1y ago

    Hi thanks for the comments, but it appears you were severely reductive of my argumentation, and ignored some key issues.

    Firstly, we have no previous sources which mention Christianity aside from (A) Christians themselves, or (B) Pliny the Younger. In addition to Josephus having key differences, I also noted that Josephus’ work depends entirely on which reconstruction one chooses to use (there are several as I note). Thus, even assuming Josephus is “extant” as a source, until we can definitively showcase which reconstruction is best, it is a nonstarter from the very beginning.

    Lastly, you also just reduce my argument in favor of Pliny to: “Pliny is extant and has a couple of similarities in wording, therefore it’s Pliny” which is not even remotely my entire case at all. If this is what counts as your “summary” then I would suggest reading things more than once.

    My argument has several prongs to it, far more than just verbal agreement. My first role is to rule out other sources as unlikely:

    There is no previous source which mentions Christianity, aside from Pliny or Christians themselves-The “extant”-ness of Josephus is questionable and unreliable for multiple reasons: (1) the TF reconstruction is hypothetical and multiple models have been postulated. (2) The TF even in the most widely accepted model has noted differences which do not align with Tacitus at all. (3) Josephus’s other work also has noted differences, and Tacitus showcases common Roman beliefs over Judean ones. Tacitus is also wildly antisemitic so, the likelihood of him using Josephus is slim at best.-Jesus is unlikely to have ever been mentioned in any official documentation, and Tacitus (as with the majority of Roman historians) did not bother citing much archival material to begin with.-Tacitus is unlikely to have relied directly on Christians for his information, as most scholars have conceded. The only possibility recently is that Tacitus may have sat in on trials of Christians, but there is no direct evidence of this, thus, it is completely speculative in my view. This sets up Pliny as the best alternative for the following reasons:

    -Pliny is known to have interrogated Christians directly, and thus, clearly had information on them and their beliefs, as his letter demonstrates.-Pliny and Tacitus were close friends who communicated regularly. At various points we have evidence of Pliny: (1) offering corrections and edits on Tacitus’s manuscripts, (2) Tacitus soliciting Pliny for information (such as on his uncle’s death), (3) that Tacitus used Pliny’s work elsewhere in his Annals and Histories, as noted in The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (2009) and also Margaret H. Williams’ latest volume Early Classical Authors on Jesus (2022). This means we have good reason to think Tacitus was well familiar with Pliny’s writings.-We have several verbal correspondences between Tacitus’ writing and Pliny’s.

    So, let me ask, what is more likely: that Tacitus got his information from someone who was a regular part of Tacitus’ writing process and a good friend, or that Tacitus is using some hitherto unknown source that is cited nowhere else and has no evidence of actually existing?
    very out of date, and your Potter reference is funny because that very same volume notes that Pliny was a source of information for Tacitus on various things… In fact, Potter himself notes Tacitus’s soliciting of Pliny for information such as his uncle’s death (127).

    Your argument for the “most consistent” is a bit odd also given that this practice is still largely consistent with my own paper. As Potter notes:

    “Tacitus’ own procedure, as evidenced by passages such as the ones just quoted, was to determine what should be in the narrative and then work up individual episodes as he saw fit.”

    What I described would not be outside Tacitus’ normal practice. And as Potter notes, from episode to episode, Tacitus would use a variety of sources:

    Pliny’s understanding that it was Tacitus’ practice to work from episode to episode, drawing on a variety of sources when he chose to, is likewise reflected in his decision to write about his role in the extortion trial of Baebius Massa”

    It appears you did not closely read Potter’s own work, as it in no way undermines my own conclusions.

    1. Okay, so the usual simplistic stuff, overstatement and pomposity that we generally see from Hansen. The basis for her ruling out other sources is pretty weak – we simply don’t know what sources Tacitus had access to and almost all of them are likely lost anyway. She also assumes that Tacitus’ sources have to have been written, rather than oral. Tacitus mixed in circles that included plenty of exiled Jews, who were the obvious people to ask about a Jewish offshoot sect. Her argument is, to use her own word, “reductive”.

    2. I used to chat with Chrissy often but things started getting weird after this one time, l told him that Classical Theists (from Aristotle to Aquinas) had a better perception of reality than the pagans. He accused me of bring a racist and went on a rant about “white philosophers” (correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Augustine and several of the church fathers black?)

      1. wasn’t Augustine and several of the church fathers black?

        Well, probably not black (as in sub-Saharan African), but his family were Berbers. They were a collection of north African peoples, though they had been mixing with the Punic peoples who established the Carthaginian Empire and originally came from Phoenecia in what is now the Middle East, as well as Romans. So they weren’t exactly “white”, but no they were not “black” in the modern American sense of that word. Darker skinned, probably, but more Mediterranean-looking than anything.

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