Hi there,
Tam Chris here,
this will be my english transcript of my video trying to analyse the tacitus quote on jesus and early christians
lets see about Cornelius Tacitus
Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest roman historians by our scholars almost unanimously.
His latin also known as 'silver latin' is a unique form of classical latin which is quite difficult to be reproduced by a casual writer. Most scholars also agree that he was genuine and careful in selecting his source materials for his history and rarely has he been found inadequate in his research (in contrast to historians like seutonius or josephus flavius who were not as concerned about sources as tacitus was)
There are three works of Tacitus that are available to us now
germania - about the germanic tribes
histories - history of rome from 69 to 96 AD
annals - roman history from 14th to 68th Ad
none of these works have survived as a complete work and most of them have been lost to wear and tear over the centuries. Even the Annals that we are going to talk about is an incomplete work of tacitus and has less than 30 percent of its contents available to us!
and we have only 2 manuscipts of annals and that too dates later than 11th century AD!
so does it mean it was a forgery, which was written during this time gap? oh really.. the claim is that the vedas are 1000s of years before christ and yet the oldest manuscript of Rig Veda is not older than 12th century AD. you still want to argue along that line now??
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So this is what the actual text says in the book 15.44 of Annals.
before we go on and see what it says and implies let take a look at the expert opinion and consenses regarding this Tacitus quote on Jesus
Prof. Bart Ehrman is a world famous historian working in University of North Carolina and this is what he has to say regarding historicity of jesus!
"in my experience as an historian , i have met and interacted with literally 1000s of historians and schoalars, and almost all of them have no issues in accepting the historicity of Jesus Christ. Christ Mythicism is not even considered as an option among the scholarly circles!"
Prof. E. Van Voorst has given his opinion on the scholarly consenses in his book "Jesus outside the New Testament" in which he declares that inspite of certain discrepencies, almost all scholars accept the validity of this quote by Tacitus
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"The Historical Jesus in Context" a book edited by Non Christian Skeptics like John Dominic Crossan and the Jewish histoian Prof, Amy Jill Levine also attest to the validity of this tacitus quote.
Infact John Dominic as the following to say regarding the historicity derived just from the two quotes of Flavius testimonium and Tacitus testimonium quotes!
we also have skeptical writers and historians like
Catherine Nixey (who wrote The Darkening Age) and Prof Candida Moss (The Myth of Persecuation) who both have attested and used the Tacitus quote as if it was certainly valid historical record. even Candida Moss who has proposed in her book that the early Christians exaggerated the Christian Persecution doesn't actually call the Tacitinian quote as some christian interpolation!
Now, Let us analyse and see what the text actually shows and proves from an historical perspective!
1) a person names Christ existed
2) Christians, as a group of people existed in the 1st century
3) Christians - got their name from their leader - Chrestus
4) This religion arose in Judea and was later suppressed for a short time
5) the severe punishment of Chrestus led to the suppression of this religion for s short time
6) Chrestus was severely punished and executed by procurator Pontius Pilate
7) during the reign of Tiberius Caesar (both of which gives an approximate time of the death of Christ)
8) the suppressed religion again grew and they had followers of this religion even in rome at the time of nero
9) the Christians were a persecuted minority
10) Emperor Nero Blamed this small Sect for the fire mishap of Rome city and
11) Punished them severely for this the supposed crime of 'hatred towards mankind'
12) Christianity was called PERNICIOUS SUPERSTITION and a dangerous abominable disease!
OBJECTION 1 -
COULD THIS BE A CHRISTIAN INTERPOLATION
IT CANNOT BE - FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS
1) all manuscripts that we have on this quote contain the entire quote without omission or addition, the burden of proof is on the skeptic to provide a manuscript which shows that the quote was added later one!
2) The manuscript tradition for these two copies are stable with no concerns of manipulation as of date.
(yes it is true that there is some minor scribal manipulation in one of the mansucripts that we have with us- the change of 'i' and 'e' in the word chrestians / christians. but that word manipulation has nothing to change in the meaning of the text in any way and hence can be discarded as insignificant scribal error)
3) "IF" christians had been meddling with this quote, the way they meddled with that of josephus, we would't ever expect them to be calling Christianity a SUPERSTITIOUS PERNICIOUS DISEASE!!. they would have engaged in a little bit of self praise and called some praises for jesus too (as they did in the josephinian interpolations!)
4) None of the early church fathers quote this in their writing? - this quote is extremely disrespectful and adds no new information to the church fathers writings and its unlikely that they would include a quote that is neither gives new information nor confirms any of the already known facts at that time.
5) Classical Latin used by Tacitus has been found to be consistent in this quote too. if the christians had added anything to the text, it would have been obvious to the Latin Scholars who have analysed this text.
OBJECTION 2 - CHRESTUS VS CHRISTUS AND CHRESTIANS VS CHRISTIANS ?
1) The reason why Tacitus used the term "chrestus" rather than , say "Jesus" is because , it doesnt serve its purpose. the only reason why he mentions "chrestus" is because he was alluding to the name as the origin of the religion based on this name and not that he had any intentions of mentioning this ordinary criminal executed under roman rule!. so in context "Chrestus - whose followers were the Chrestians" makes more sense than saying "jesus or yeshua" ( which was a very common name in israel back than - constituting almost 10 to 15 percent of the population at that time )
2) (the Chrestus disussed by seutonius in his quote on christians could be different from the chrestus mentioned here, lets not confuse the two at this stage )
3) we have several records of early church fathers who had mocked pagan writers and secular scholars for not even knowing the difference in spelling - "chrestus" and "christus" and hence shows that the non christian writers certainly had this confusion during the early centuries. and Tacitus would have simply repeated such a confusion in spelling, especially considering, the name "chrestus" was common in Rome (but both Chrestus and Christus was uncommon in Judea where the christian religion arose!)
4)
Archeological evidence of early christian tombstones excavated in Phrygia has shown that the common population used both the terms "
chrestians and christians" almost interchangeably and even in the same sentence as seen in this tombstone! so this spelling variation is not atall seen as an issue
OBJECTION 3 - WAS TACITUS A RELIABLE PERSON
1) Tacitus is one of the greatest Historian of his time
2) he was known to be meticulous in choosing his sources unlike his contemporaries who simply went with the popular opinion/ majority consenses.
3) its unlikely that he would use the christians sources whom he has called a pernicious superstition and an abominable disease!
Prof Bart Ehrman also considers this as an independent witness of Jesus Christ
4) yes, it is true that no other historian mentions about nero blaming the christians for the rome fire, biut this is unjustified under historical studies because, so many other incidents have been mentioned once or even less than once in documented manuscripts. we dont doubt their historicity, neither can we this one!
5)"WHY MENTION PILATE AS PROCURATOR WHEN HE WAS A PERFECT AT THAT TIME" -
well.. lets imagine that i write about Mr.Narendra Modi , some 100 years from now, does it matter if i call him Prime Minister Narendra Modi or as Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi- see.. it doesnt make any difference to the meaning or context ! this objection doesnt invalidate the credibility of Tacitus
so we have an early independent non christian hostile witness to the existence of the person of Jesus Christ!
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