Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

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Secret Alias
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Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Secret Alias »

"[Aquila] and his wife Priscilla had recently left Italy because an edict of Claudius had expelled all the Jews from Rome" (Acts 18:2, Jerusalem Bible).

"Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome." Suetonius Claudius 25
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Stuart
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Stuart »

Close, but backwards. Try it the other way around as a Christian interpolation into Suetonius.

The oldest manuscripts are rather late, with an 8th and a 9th century versions being the progenitors of all known copies. We have no idea what changes happened in the preceding 700 years. To have survived they had to serve a purpose for the Christian rulers and historians. So adjustments would be expected to confirm Christian (and Jewish as Christians saw them) place in history.

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/def ... TAPA_0.pdf

If Scripture could be altered, then certainly trivial things like church father writings and pagan histories could be.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Secret Alias »

But if you think that Acts was written after Suetonius, why is the least complicated explanation of the parallels bad or wrong?
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Secret Alias »

Lampe "The crowded sentence in Acts 18:2—3 is best explained if one sees it as the compressing of varying traditions."
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Secret Alias »

Found a scholar open to Acts being written after 120 CE and using Suetonius https://books.google.com/books?id=zO4-M ... s"&f=false

especially c.f. the footnote "It should be noted that the account (Acts 18:2) is in itself logically inconsistent: Aquila came from Italy because Claudius ordered Jews to leave Rome. Luke seems to have conflated Tacitus, Ann. 2.85 ( expulsion of all Jews from Italy) with Suetonius, Cl. 25.4 (expulsion of Jews from Rome).
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Secret Alias »

The statement in Tacitus:

There was a debate too about expelling the Egyptian and Jewish worship, and a resolution of the Senate was passed that four thousand of the freedmen class who were infected with those superstitions and were of military age should be transported to the island of Sardinia, to quell the brigandage of the place, a cheap sacrifice should they die from the pestilential climate. The rest were to quit Italy, unless before a certain day they repudiated their impious rites.

Tacitus was a senator reviewing the actions of an earlier Senate. I think Adamczewski is correct in seeing Acts 18:2 as being a blending of Suetonius and Tacitus making the actual underlying claim likely unhistorical. In other words, it might have been true that Aquila was a Jew who left Rome because of the Senate decision mentioned in Tacitus. But the specifically 'Christian Aquila' who left Rome because of the specific 'Christian disturbance' in Suetonius does not follow.

It isn't clear that Chresto was Christian in the first place. The Acts account seems to have patched together a story of a Chrsitian named Aquila from Pontus from:

(a) the story of the famous targumist Aquila who was a Jew (not a Christian) from Pontus
(b) the story of Jewish expulsions from Italy at the time of Claudius in Tacitus
(c) the story of an uprising in Rome during the reign of Claudius by a Jew named Chresto in Suetonius
(d) the similarity in the name of Chresto and Christos
(e) perhaps even an early understanding of the crucifixion taking place during the reign of Claudius in Irenaeus

(e) of course is the weakest link. But the hybrid character Aquila of Pontus the Christian (a figure who likely never existed any more than the legends of Philo the Christian or the like) is fused on to a hybrid Christian 'disturbance' in Rome. This makes the whole Acts account seem dubious and as a dubious story or calculation it was likely made after the publication of both Tacitus and Suetonius.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Charles Wilson
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Charles Wilson »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 10:02 amThis makes the whole Acts account seem dubious and as a dubious story or calculation it was likely made after the publication of both Tacitus and Suetonius.
Another 100%-er. You are correct.

CW
andrewcriddle
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by andrewcriddle »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 10:53 pm Found a scholar open to Acts being written after 120 CE and using Suetonius https://books.google.com/books?id=zO4-M ... s"&f=false

especially c.f. the footnote "It should be noted that the account (Acts 18:2) is in itself logically inconsistent: Aquila came from Italy because Claudius ordered Jews to leave Rome. Luke seems to have conflated Tacitus, Ann. 2.85 ( expulsion of all Jews from Italy) with Suetonius, Cl. 25.4 (expulsion of Jews from Rome).
Rome was IIUC the main Jewish settlement in Italy. Jews expelled from Rome were more likely to go East and join the Jewish communities in the Greek cities than settle in say Mantua.

Andrew Criddle
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by Secret Alias »

But the sense is that what Suetonius and Tacitus are reporting on are two different events
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
andrewcriddle
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Re: Did Acts 18:2 Use Suetonius

Post by andrewcriddle »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:01 pm But the sense is that what Suetonius and Tacitus are reporting on are two different events
They are different events. One under Tiberius one under Claudius. It is unlikely that Luke confused them.
(FWIW Aquila and Priscilla are mentioned in Paul's letters they are not an invention by the author of Acts.)

Andrew Criddle
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