According to the translation quoted by Helen’s Eidolon, Pilate is identified as “one of our procurators” – just the sort of identification that would be useful to a Roman reader who does not recognize the name.
Even without the Sulpicius argument, his proof is just not there. His assertion that, since Nero didn’t start the fire, he didn’t need a scapegoat is just ridiculous. Whether or not he started the fire, if there was common talk that he did (which is clearly true), he could want a scapegoat. Every step of that argument is dumb and without proof.
Does anyone know the exact reference in Josephus? I haven’t read him in a while - Tacitus is much fresher in my head.
Here’s the Latin: “per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat.” More literally, it would be “he was inflicted with punishment by the procurator Pontius Pilate.” This is a perfectly Tacitean way to write history - he doesn’t explain every name he brings up. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he expects us to know him.
Another page from infidels.org provides a good summary of all the textual references, along with a discussion of Tacitus’ possible sources.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/chap5.html
The word “procuratorem” fits into the sentence a bit more smoothly than the phrase “one of our procurators” used in the translation, and thus seems less like something deliberately inserted in order to provide an explanation for an unfamiliar name.
I’d conclude that the author didn’t particularly expect his readers to recognize the name of the procurator of Judaea a century earlier, and didn’t think it was particularly necessary to go into detail on the subject.
Huh. And here, I’d always thought that “Cretin” originally meant “inhabitant of Crete”, and that the insulting use was originally applied to the famous self-admitted liar Epimenides.
The more immediate problem is that Pilate was a Prefect, not a Procurator. If the passage is authentic then Tacitus got the title wrong.
In terms of mainstream scholarship, Tacitus is mostly accepted as authentic while the Josephus passage is almost universally regarded as a least a partial forgery.
The answer to the OP is that most Romans probably made little distinction between Christians and Jews at first. Eventually, Roman authorities came to dislike them not so much for their beliefs but because they wouldn’t sacrifice to the State gods and support the temples. That meant that a lot of people saw Christians as being “unpatriotic” and untrustworthy and there were a number of anti-Christian smears in circulation, including allegations of infant sacrifice and cannibalism. Interestingly, the early apologist Tertullian not only did not deny the accusations of infanticide but actually defended it as a practice.
I’m definitely going to need a cite for that.
That’s clearly a sarcastic rhetorical technique. Early Christians did not eat babies, nor is he saying that’s the case. He’s pointing out the absurdity of accusing them of it.
There’s nothing sarcastic about it. He takes the accusation seriously, does not deny it and instead tries entirely seriously to justify it. At no point does he suggest there is anything absurd about it nor does he suggest that he thinks the practice is immoral. I realize that the common Christian rebuttal to this passage is to try to wave it off as “satire,” (they have to say something, after all), but the passage does not follow any satirical form. Satire is about exaggeration and pointing out absurdities. This chapter does neither. The entire book is a serious response to attacks on Christians.
Well, I’m not giving a Christian rebuttal, I’m giving a historical and literary rebuttal. Tertullian takes it to the point of absurdity, as he does in the entire Apology. Here are some other examples:
Regarding the charge of incest:
Are you seriously arguing that Christians ate babies, and that Tertullian is evidence of this?
I’m saying Tertullian didn’t deny it and that he did not employ any obvious satirical techniques in his response. I acknowledge that used irony elsewhere but he always makes it obvious.
How do you think a serious defense of infanticide would look any differently than how it looks in Ad Nationes?
Actually, upon reading it again, I think it may well have been intended to be satirical. I will concede on that while still maintaining that I was still technically correct that Tertullian did not deny the practice.
I don’t think there would be a serious defense of infanticide written by a Christian apologist. I think you’re absolutely wrong that he’s not being sarcastic in that passage.
Sorry, I got interrupted and didn’t refresh before posting. I think his denial is implicit, but I suppose technically he doesn’t outright deny it. Now I’m just curious - do you think early Christians ate babies?
No. At most, I thought Tertullian might have believed it had been a real practice in the past.
But it shows some background that the “Christians being in a celebratory mood for the fire” was not pulled out of… nothing. Although it sounds silly, that celebratory mood was mentioned too by Larry Gonick in the Cartoon history of the universe II, it seems that he referred to Gibbon E. *The decline and fall of the Roman Empire * or Heichlim, F.M and Yeo, C., A history of the Roman people (Interestingly, he also consulted Tacitus). It seems many Romans complained to Nero for the misbehavior of the Christians during the fire and so, we got easy scapegoats by popular demand.
Bottom line: I do think that Nero and the majority of Christians were innocent, but I have the feeling some nuts on the Christian side had the motivation to do it, remember that everybody “knows” that Hitler burned the Reichstag, but in reality one crazy communist did it (as much as Hitler wanted to blame the communists, the German courts declared that the perpetrator had no connection to the communist leadership, but he was indeed a communist)