Arthur Drews

“ The truth is that they prove nothing either for or against; they prove nothing at all. [81] J. Weiss is perfectly correct when he says, as we saw previously: “There is no such thing as a really convincing witness in profane literature.” It is true that he is able to console himself for this. “What,” he asks, “could Josephus or Tacitus do for us? They could at the most merely show that at the end of the first century not only the Christians, but their tradition and Christ-mythos, were known at Rome. ”

“ Possibly, however, the name is only another expression for Messianists, and the Chrestians of Tacitus are Jews exalted by eschatological ideas, living in expectation of a speedy end of the world by fire, and so contracting the suspicion of having set fire to the city. They may have formed a “multitude ingens” and incurred “the hatred of the human race” by being led in their fanaticism to express their satisfaction at the burning of the metropolis; possibly they even took part in it. However that may be, there is not the least proof in any case of a Neronian persecution of the Christians. ”

“ Not one of the evangelists applies the name Christians to the followers of Jesus. It is never used in the New Testament as a description of themselves by the believers in Jesus, and the relevant passage in Acts (xi, 26) , according to which the name was first used at Antioch, has the appearance of a later interpolation, belonging to a time when the term had become a name of honour in the eyes of some and a name of reproach in the eyes of others. [64] With this is also connected the peculiar way in which Tacitus speaks of the execution of Christ under the procurator Pontius Pilate. ”

“ When it originated, however, and how far it was based on truth, could not be discovered from Tacitus or Josephus” (p. 91) . The orthodox pastor Kurt Delbrück adds: “What does it matter whether or no Tacitus wrote it? He could only have received the information, a hundred years after the time, from people who had told it to others. It matters nothing to us, therefore, whether the passage is genuine or not. The historical personality of Jesus Christ is proved only by the fact [?] that the earliest Christian community recognised its Saviour in him whom it had once seen alive. ”

“ Death by fire was not a form of punishment inflicted at Rome in the time of Nero. It is opposed to the moderate principles on which the accused were then dealt with by the State. The use of the Christians as “living torches,” as Tacitus describes, and all the other atrocities that were committed against them, have little title to credence, and suggest an imagination exalted by reading stories of the later Christian martyrs. ”

“ How came the people to give the name of “the good” to men who were in their eyes notoriously bad? Clearly, the expression must, when we examine their way of thinking, be regarded as ironical; the Roman people called the followers of Serapis-Chrestus “good” because they were precisely the contrary. We might therefore regard the name “Chrestiani” as equivalent to “the clean brethren,” just as it is customary to call the scum of Paris the “Apaches.” [73]
We know from history what an evil repute the Egyptian people, which consisted mainly of Alexandrian elements, had at Rome. ”

“ In the astral myth, the Christ hanging on the cross, or world-tree (i.e., the Milky Way) , is killed by the lance of “Pilatus.” Hence, according to Niemojewski, the Christian populace told the legend of a javelin-man, a certain Pilatus, who was supposed to have been responsible for the death of the Saviour. This wholly sufficed for Tacitus to recognise in him the procurator in the reign of Tiberius, who must have been known to the Roman historian from the books of Josephus “On the Jewish War,” which were destined for the imperial house. ”

“ Vopiscus in the letter of the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-inlaw Servius: “Those who worship Serapis are the Chrestians, and those who call themselves priests of Chrestus are devoted to Serapis. There is not a high-priest of the Jews, a Samaritan, or a priest of Chrestus who is not a mathematician, soothsayer, or quack. Even the patriarch, when he goes to Egypt, is compelled by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Chrestus. They are a turbulent, inflated, lawless body of men. They have only one God, who is worshipped by the Chrestians, the Jews, and all the peoples of Egypt.” ”

“ Hence the “people” rightly called them “Chrestians,” which was, as we saw, an ambiguous name, and a not uncommon epithet in Rome at the time. Tacitus, about the year 117, confuses them with the Christians of his time, just as the Emperor Hadrian does in his letter to Servius fourteen years afterwards. Having done so, he felt compelled to add the explanatory words, “autor nominis ejus Christus,” etc., and describe them as coming from Judaea, confusing the Alexandrian Jews, who were identified with them, with the Jews of Palestine. ”

“ This supposed “purity of the text of Tacitus as shown by the oldest manuscripts” exists only in the imagination of Gibbon and those who follow him. It is, further, not true that the Christians did not read Tacitus. We have a number of instances in the first centuries of Christian writers who are acquainted with Tacitus, such as Tertullian, Jerome, Orosius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Sulpicius Severus, and Cassiodorus. It is only in the course of the Middle Ages that this acquaintance with the Roman historian is gradually lost ”

“ They are just what one might suppose to be in harmony with the disposition of Tacitus. The expressions, moreover, are at once enfeebled by the reference to the sympathy that the Romans are supposed to have felt for the victims of Nero's cruelty. It is a common occurrence in the accounts of the Christian martyrs for the pagan opponents of Christianity to find their hostility changed into sympathy, and recognise the innocence of the persecuted Christians. ”

“ Moreover, many of these Christians often sought death out of religious fanaticism, irritated the authorities to proceed against them when they had no need to do so, and provoked, by their own behaviour, the cruelties of the persecutors which were afterwards so loudly deplored by Christian critics. ”

“ Why, then, does Tacitus call the title ‘Christians’ a ‘name imposed by the people’?” The circumstance is really very curious. “In order to put an end to the trouble, Nero laid the blame on those whom, hateful for their crimes, the people called Christians.” However, Andresen has made a fresh study of the Tacitus manuscript, and shown that the word was at first “Chrestianos,” and was later altered to “Christianos”; whereas it is written “Christus,” not “Chrestus.” “Now it is quite clear,” says Harnack, “Tacitus says that the people call the sect Chrestiani ”

“ The interpolator, Hochart thinks, transferred to the days of Nero that general hatred of the Christians of which Tertullian speaks. Indeed, the French scholar thinks it not impossible that the phrase “odium humani generis” was simply taken from Tertullian and put in the mouth of Tacitus. Tertullian tells us that in his time the Christians were accused of being “enemies of the human race” (paene omnes cives Christianos habendo sed hostes maluistis vocare generis humani potius quam erroris humani) . ”

“ They speak often enough of the return of Nero and his cruelties, but he is never represented, as he is afterwards in Eusebius, as the enemy of God and Christ and the persecutor of the early community. It seems very doubtful if the poets knew anything whatever of such an occurrence. [32] Hence the idea that Revelation is the Christian “counter-manifesto to the Neronian persecution” is of no value. Ecclesiastical tradition assigns Revelation to the year 96 A.D. When recent theological scholarship assigns it to the year 65, it is assuming that the work refers to the burning of Rome in 64. ”

“ It is incredible that the Jessaeans or Nazoraeans amongst them, who must in any case have been few in number at the time of the fire, were the object of an especial hatred, and so would be likely to bear the blame of the fire in the eyes of the people. ”

“ Even J. Weiss observes: “Assuredly there were the general lines of even a purely fictitious Christian tradition already laid down about the year 100; Tacitus may therefore draw upon this tradition” (p. 88) . It has been said, on the authority of Mommsen, that Tacitus may have derived his information from the Acts of the Senate and the archives of the State, and it has been suggested that his authority was Cluvius Rufus, who was consul under Caligula. ”

“ Then will the tragedians roar louder than on the stage, and the player coo more seductively when he is softened by the flames, and the chariot-driver be seen careering red as fire on the flaming wheel. ”

“ Josephus also says this in his Antiquities. [76] A few years later, under Claudius, “the Senate decreed the expulsion of the mathematicians from Italy, though the decree was not put in force.” [77] The mathematicians—that is to say, astrologists—are the Egyptians and Egyptian Jews, the followers of Chrestus, as we read in Fl. ”