A significant point, too, is that the version of Tacitus Annals 15 we have today is various alleged to be
1. from a single copy found in the scriptorium and library of the monastery at Monte Cassino in the 14th century;
2. a forgery by Italian calligrapher, Latin scholar and Papal secretary Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) in the 15th century;
3. via a single manuscript published by a Johannes & Vindelinus de Spire/de Spire/von Speyer, at Venice, in the year 1468, purported to have been written in the eighth century.
The copies of Annals at Monte Cassino were likely moved to Florence by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), a friend of Zanobi da Strada, who is also credited with their discovery at Monte Cassino.[11][12][13]
11 Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia by Christopher Kleinhenz (Nov 2003) ISBN 0-415-93931-3. p.1174
12 The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105 by Francis Newton (Apr 1999) ISBN 0-521-58395-0 Cambridge University Press. p.327
13 The Fortunes of Apuleius by Julia Haig Gaisser (Jan 2008) ISBN 0-691-13136-8 Princeton University Press. pp.93–94
In 1878, Latin scholar JW Ross wrote the book Tacitus and Bracciolini: The Annals Forged in the XVth Century which, however, evinced that the entire 'Annals' were a forgery in very flawed Latin by Bracciolini in the 15th century.
Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue May 05, 2015 5:44 pm, edited 5 times in total.
The first publication of any part of the Annals of Tacitus, was by Johannes de Spire, at Venice, in the year 1468. His imprint being made from a single manuscript, in his own power and possession only, and purporting to have been written in the eighth century. From this manuscript, which none but the most learned would know of, none but the most curious would investigate, and none but the most interested would transcribe, or be allowed to transcribe; and that too, in an age and country, when and where, to have suggested but a doubt against the authenticity of any document which the authorities had once chosen to adopt as evidence of [p.394] Christianity, would have subjected the conscientious sceptic to the faggot; from this, all other manuscripts and printed copies of the works of Tacitus are derived: and consequently in the forty-fourth section of the fifteenth. book of these 'Annals', we have
THE CELEBRATED PASSAGE [Book 15 4.4]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S. (1829) The Diegesis; Being a Discovery of the Origen, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity ...
... Rev. Taylor ... suspected the 15.44 passage to be a forgery because it too is not quoted by any of the Christian fathers, including Tertullian, who read and quoted Tacitus extensively. Nor did Clement of Alexandria notice this passage in any of Tacitus's works, even though one of this Church father's main missions was to scour the works of Pagan writers in order to find validity for Christianity. As noted, the Church historian Eusebius, who likely forged the Testimonium Flavianum, does not relate this Tacitus passage in his abundant writings. Indeed, no mention is made of this passage in any known text prior to the 15th century.
The tone and style of the passage are unlike the writing of Tacitus, and the text "bears a character of exaggeration, and trenches on the laws of rational probability, which the writings of Tacitus are rarely found to do." Taylor further remarks upon the absence in any of Tacitus's other writings of "the least allusion to Christ or Christians." In his well-known Histories, for example, Tacitus never refers to Christ, Christianity or Christians. Furthermore, even the Annals themselves have come under suspicion, as they themselves had never been mentioned by any ancient author.
.
Even Tacitus's Histories "depends on a single manuscript ... written in the eleventh century in Langobard script at Monte Cassino"
ie. "the Mediceus II (M), known also as the Laurentianus 68, 2, in which are found as well Annals XI‑XIV and Apuleius, De Magia, Metamorphoses, and Florida"
Bibliography
Manuscripts
The text of the Histories depends on a single manuscript, the Mediceus II (M), known also as the Laurentianus 68, 2, in which are found as well Annals XI‑XIV and Apuleius, De Magia, Metamorphoses, and Florida. This manuscript was written in the eleventh century in Langobard script at Monte Cassino. It is published in facsimile with an introduction by Enrico Rostagno: Codices Graeci et latine photographice depicti, VII.2, Leiden, 1902. All other manuscripts are copies of the Mediceus and comparatively useless, except to supply the text in two passages that are now missing in the parent manuscript: I.69‑75 and I.86‑II.2.
Printed Editions
The editio princeps brought out by Vindelinus de Spira in Venice in 1470 contained Annals XI‑XVI, Histories, Germania, and Dialogus. The first edition of all the works was by Beroaldus, published at Rome in 1515.
Peter Kirby wrote:The best argument here is simply that the passage were not yet in Josephus to be read.
And this is where examples would come in handy
Certainly would...
Ben C. Smith wrote:
Peter Kirby wrote:The best argument here is simply that the passage was not yet in Josephus to be read.
I agree that undercutting the Testimonium altogether is the best argument against Tacitus having used it. However, I was attempting to comply with the spirit of the thread:
toejam wrote:In this thread, we're working on the assumptions that Tacitus' passage is authentic, and that Josephus wrote *something* about Jesus in a pre-tampered with TF, and whether or not anyone has ever explored in any detail the thought that this may have been Tacitus' source for his passage.
Ben.
I haven't made a study of Tacitus to find "examples" (I'm not sure how restrictive this would be--examples of what? precision? accuracy? precision about names? distinction between name and not-name? use of names as names in general? non-use of non-names as names? fidelity to sources? any of the above? or should we be even more exacting than that?), but I'd be interested if anyone wanted to take on the task.
My argument (more of a secondary argument, given the constraint of the thread that we should assume that Josephus did write or might have written something about Jesus) was based on an emphasis for accuracy or preciseness in general noted for Tacitus by some scholars. This does boil down to an appeal to authority for that claim, in the absence of my own personal study of it, but there you have it.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Peter Kirby wrote:
... an emphasis for accuracy or preciseness in general noted for Tacitus by some scholars ...
Annalistic History
Tacitus' qualities have a lot to do with his acquired senatorial rank. For three centuries, senators had been writing a very specific type of history, called Annals. In these chronicles, the authors summed up the events in one particular year, starting with the names of the magistrates, continuing with foreign affairs, domestic politics, and finishing with other information and notable portents. This division was based on the notes that Rome's high priest kept to show which omens were related to which events.
This method, which creates maximum chronological clarity, also creates problems, because the story of - for example - a protracted war is interrupted by other events. One has to have a good memory to remember what has already been said about the topography of a given theater of war. In spite of this problem, Tacitus accepted this model in all his works - most clearly in the Histories and Annals, but also in parts of the Agricola. Without access to a map, an object few Romans owned, it is hard to understand Roman military strategy. Still, his information about the campaigns themselves appears to be comparatively accurate.
This brings us to the vexed question: what sources were used by Tacitus? We know that he wrote letters to people who could tell him more - two letters from Pliny the Younger, concerning the eruption of the Vesuvius, survive - but he must have used other sources of information as well. He pretty accurately renders a speech by Claudius, which has survived as an inscription. The idea that he checked the state's archives, has by now been rejected; and he sometimes quotes authors like Pliny the Elder. Still, it is remarkable that he was capable of ignoring important sources as well - his account of the Jewish War is not based on Flavius Josephus. Essentially, Tacitus' sources are an unsolved riddle - which is less surprising than it seems: he was not a real historian, but a moralist.
MrMacSon's livius.org article wrote:[Tacitus'] account of the Jewish War is not based on Flavius Josephus
So this is pretty well accepted? If there's good reason to think Tacitus didn't use Josephus' Jewish War as a source for his account of the war, then that certainly lowers the possibility of his reference to Jesus being sourced from Antiquities...
My study list: https://www.facebook.com/notes/scott-bignell/judeo-christian-origins-bibliography/851830651507208
MrMacSon's livius.org article wrote:[Tacitus'] account of the Jewish War is not based on Flavius Josephus
So this is pretty well accepted? If there's good reason to think Tacitus didn't use Josephus' Jewish War as a source for his account of the war, then that certainly lowers the possibility of his reference to Jesus being sourced from Antiquities...
I'd say that Livius article is
a. referring to all Flavius Josephus's works;
b. referring to Tacitus's account of the actual Jewish war/s, separate to Joesphus's writings titled the same
If Tacitus's reference to "Christ, from whom the name[Chrestiani]had its origin .." is not interpolation, that raises the prospect there was a Christ who was later conflated with other messiah narratives to form the NT-Jesus narrative; ie. the NT was in it's formative years when Tacitus wrote, rather than the gospels and epistles then being well-defined or well-collated bodies of work.
If authentic, Tacitus's Annals 15.44 is more likely to align with his contemporary Suetonius's statement in The Life of Claudius 25.4 - "As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome" - than with Josephus's works (and, of course, their contemporaries Pliny the Younger & Hadrian also wrote of Christians and Christ, yet they were referring to Christians in quite different locations ie. away from Rome: Pliny-t-Y as Roman governor in Bithynia-Pontus (now in northern modern Turkey), and Hadrian as a visitor to Egypt).
