|
Post by humphreyclarke on Dec 8, 2008 10:51:17 GMT
I quite agree with the points made about the profusion of intellectual firewalls and the ubiquity of bilge on the www. But, Humphrey, please tell me why you regard Dr Ida Giovanna Rao, a manuscript expert at the Biblioteca medicea laurenziana as a member of" the lunatic fringe"? It can't be because she's a woman (you cite Clio, the muse of history in affectionate terms). It can't be because she's an intellectual (you want access to more serious scholarship. Such as the following two publications written by the above-mentioned lady, maybe? • I Processi Di Girolamo Savonarola (1498) by Paolo Viti, Ida Giovanna Rao, Raffaella Maria Zaccaria January 2001, Il Carteggio Acciaioli Della Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Di Firenze by Biblioteca medicea laurenziana, Ida Giovanna Rao January 1996, Book So what is the problem? Is her area of expertise (the study of ancient manuscripts) perhaps irrelevant for the question at hand (Tacitus' Annals)? Mmm - no, the skills set seems to be pretty spot on. So what is your problem with her? Maybe it's because she is just plain inconsiderate? She writes in - what I guess we must term - a non-Anglo Saxon idiom. Very bad form. Why should we bother to take her seriously? Just for the record I have nothing against women. My wife happens to be one, and German American at that so any Anglo-Saxon or anti-feminist bias on my part would be met with a stern rebuke. As I said, my comments were ‘a bit harsh’. My temper was aroused when I saw this paper comes from ‘The Institute for Higher Critical Studies’ which is mostly a vehicle Robert M Price, Earl Doherty, Carrota and the other ‘Jesus Mythers’ use as a vehicle for promulgating ‘Da Vinci Code’ type conspiracy theories. But saying that, any argument has to be judged on its own merits and I note that the analysis on this part mainly comes from Oskar Augustsson, with possible input from Francesco Carrota. As it happens I don’t disagree with Dr Rao’s conclusions. Looking at the manuscript here: www.freewebs.com/lesgnats/mII.pngthe ‘i’ seems pretty clear and distinct, but looking at the ultraviolet photo in the paper, it seems plausible that the ‘i’ was changed from an ‘e’ at some point. Dr Rao seems to think the same when she says: ‘it is possible to hypothesize that there was an "e" under the actual "i", because the correction is really very clean and the only real pieces of circumstantial evidence—and not proofs—are the apex on the "i" and the hyphen linking "chri" with "stianos", drawn with a less dark ink’ Lets assume she is right for the time being, that leaves us with a couple of options: a/ The exemplar of the '2nd Medicean' read Chrestianos this was initially copied correctly but was altered from the 13th century on to the more usual Christianos b/ The exemplar read Christianos and Chrestianos is an 11th century copying error which was corrected by reference to the original in the 13th century. c/ As Lodi has claimed there are hints of erased ink--in fact the same ink, hence the conclusion that the scribe immediately corrected himself even before continuing, which would suggest the error was his, not in his exemplar. The 13th century corrections are a/ in many cases improvements b/ before the period of the revival of humanist Latin scholarship c/ carried out while the manuscript was still where it was originally copied from its exemplar. (Monte Cassino). Hence they may well often involve correction of the '2nd Medicean' against its still surviving exemplar. All this is uncontroversial. It gets more controversial if we feel we need a conspiracy, if we say (as I think Oskar Augustsson wants to imply) that the original ‘chresitianos’ was in fact the one in the original text and therefore Tacitus was referring to property speculators. Well we can work this out by looking at the two words in the passage and seeing how well they fit. Original LatinEt haec quidem humanis consiliis providebantur. mox petita dis piacula aditique Sibyllae libri, ex quibus supplicatum Vulcano et Cereri Proserpinaeque ac propitiata Iuno per matronas, primum in Capitolio, deinde apud proximum mare, unde hausta aqua templum et simulacrum deae perspersum est; et sellisternia ac pervigilia celebravere feminae quibus mariti erant. sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum placamentis decedebat infamia quin iussum incendium crederetur. ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos/Chrestianos appellabat. auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque. igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo+ ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti+ sunt+. et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus adfixi aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigae permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. unde quamquam adversus sontis et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur. Scenario 1 – Property Speculators But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished property speculators, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.Scenario 2 – ChristiansBut not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.So in scenario one we now have a series of anomalies 1) The leader of the property speculators is one Christus who was put to death by Pontius Pilate in Judea during the reign of Tiberius. 2) Property speculation is referred to as a ‘superstition’. 3) Property speculation appears to come from Judea. In order to make the property developers the plausible object of Nero’s persecutions, we need a load more Christian interpolations. For those reasons we can plausibly dismiss the ‘chrestianos’ being the original meaning of the text. So what we have here now is a scribe’s correction of 1 word in Tacitus. That’s not going to sell many books.
|
|
|
Post by James Hannam on Dec 8, 2008 11:32:46 GMT
There are two views of early Christianity. Let's call them "big, quiet Church" and "small, obscure Church". The former relies on a few non-Christian references (Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny's letter, Lucian and Josephus). The latter on the absence of references to these references in the first church writings, their disjoint nature and the lack of references where they should be (Philo, Plutarch, ...). Absence of anything from archeology is their icing. Hi Conor (is that your name?), For me it is the small obscure church growing over three centuries to the big, lower class church which became an open upper class church after Constantine. I think Keith Hopkins (Journal of Early Christian Studies 6:2, 1998) is probably on the money when he emphasises the small size of the church and the minute number of literate Christians up to the early second century. But the church grew and the evidence gets denser through the late second and third centuries. The catacombs in Rome have a lot of bodies in them and although they continued in use through to the fifth century, their are a lot of pre-Constantine bones down there. I think you need to go back to sqaure one and list all (and I mean all) the pre-Constantine references and archaeology. Not just the literary references but all the mosaics, tomb stones, artifacts, papyri and art throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. You may find there is really rather a lot of it all together. Best wishes James
|
|
|
Post by gentleexit on Dec 8, 2008 17:01:35 GMT
Original LatinEt haec quidem humanis consiliis providebantur. mox petita dis piacula aditique Sibyllae libri, ex quibus supplicatum Vulcano et Cereri Proserpinaeque ac propitiata Iuno per matronas, primum in Capitolio, deinde apud proximum mare, unde hausta aqua templum et simulacrum deae perspersum est; et sellisternia ac pervigilia celebravere feminae quibus mariti erant. sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum placamentis decedebat infamia quin iussum incendium crederetur. ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos/Chrestianos appellabat. auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque. igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo+ ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti+ sunt+. et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus adfixi aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigae permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. unde quamquam adversus sontis et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur. Scenario 1 – Property Speculators But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished property speculators, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.... So in scenario one we now have a series of anomalies 1) The leader of the property speculators is one Christus who was put to death by Pontius Pilate in Judea during the reign of Tiberius. 2) Property speculation is referred to as a ‘superstition’. 3) Property speculation appears to come from Judea. In order to make the property developers the plausible object of Nero’s persecutions, we need a load more Christian interpolations. For those reasons we can plausibly dismiss the ‘chrestianos’ being the original meaning of the text. The "Christus" sentence, interpolated? One, highly loaded sentence that conveniently, anachronistically names and give distinguishing biography of someone who appears no where else? It is only plausible to dismiss the possibility if the sentence itself is plausible.
|
|
|
Post by gentleexit on Dec 8, 2008 17:37:53 GMT
For me it is the small obscure church growing over three centuries to the big, lower class church which became an open upper class church after Constantine. High, low, big, small. I'd qualify "big, lower". It grew significant in north Africa and north Egypt, some eastern cities. The disputes give us the pattern - Arian, Donatist etc. must read that - thx. There's a lot of time here and the gaps matter. How much growth from the early second through the late third and where? One biggie is how widespread the sect was in Rome itself before Constantine (I don't think very). The catacombs became a fetish for late fourth century popes who "found" things there, moved things there or out of there. It's a great example of building history, how to raise significance ala how Jerusalem rose again on the back of a cave and a cross. That's all? That's a lot (or a little but needs a lot of sifting!) but you're right. That's the task to get an answer or at least to tip towards an answer. I have a number of books on Christian art, which all promise "early" examples and then show mid fourth century stuff, usually the same stuff, before skipping a couple of centuries. Need to get and read better. Thanks James, Conor (I meant to get away from "gentle" yesterday).
|
|
|
Post by humphreyclarke on Dec 8, 2008 17:46:37 GMT
Here is a passage from ‘Jesus Outside the New Testament’ by Robert E Van Voorst which sheds a bit of light on the matter and shows that Dr Rao is on firm ground.
‘The only textual difficulty of particular importance for our study comes at the first and only use of ‘Christians’ in chapter 44. Most older critical editions read ‘Christianoi’, ‘Christians’. However, the original hand of the oldest surviving manuscript, the second medicean (11th century), which is almost certainly the source of all other surviving manuscripts, reads ‘Chrestianoi’, ‘chrestians’. A marginal gloss ‘corrects it to Christianoi. Chrestianoi is to be preferred as the earliest and most difficult reading, and is adopted by the three current critical editions and the recent scholarship utilising them. It also makes better sense in this context. Tacitus is correcting, in a way typical of his style of economy, the misunderstanding of the crowd (vulgas) by stating that the ‘founder of the name’ (auctor nominis eius) is Christus, not the common name implicitly given by the crowd, Chrestus. Tacitus could have written auctor superstitionis, ‘the founder of the superstition’ or something similar but he calls attention by his somewhat unusual phrase to the nomen of the movement to link it directly and correctly to the name of Christ.’
Looking at the ultraviolet photo I would say Dr Rao and Otto are right saying that the original is Chrestianoi, and go along with Van Voorst’s conclusion. From the Western theological wordbook:
‘Confusing the matter are the variant spellings of Christ and Christian used by Christian and non Christian writers alike. The variants Chrestos, Chrestus, and Chrestianoi often appear, and Chrestus was a familiar proper name, meaning ‘good, useful’. So it was argued that non Christians heard Christos and converted it to the understandable Chrestos, then created the form chrestianoi, which was thus the original form of the word they used to identify believers...Outside the Jewish world ‘anointed one’ would have been virtually meaningless, and Christ thus became thought of as a name more than a title.’
So that turned out to be an interesting paper in the end; apologies to Carole. Just shows I shouldn't read discussion boards when I come home from the pub.
|
|
|
Post by caroleeilertson on Dec 8, 2008 17:54:38 GMT
Hi Humphrey, Well, I'm relieved we've cleared that up! I didn't quite understand your initial blanket dismissal of the investigation by Dr Rao, but now I see that your objections were to the publication it appeared in rather than to Dr Rao herself. I find it refreshing to occasionally have some hard evidence (paper and ink) to discuss, rather than just speculate, but (property) speculation can be fun too, so here goes! You quote the original Latin with both versions of the term Christiani/Chrestiani. For the sake of argument let us assume that just one sentence in the text is an interpolation, namely the credentials of Christ. If we now read the passage it makes perfect sense:
But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration, the fire of Rome. Hence to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished property speculators, who were hated for their enormities, but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.
This explanation solves your anomales: 1. The leader is one Christos If the fragment is an interploation, this does not need to be addressed. In fact if it is not an interploation , the leader should be called Christius and not Christus, as -"ani" is the suffix and not "iani" (cf Sulla-Sullani, Marius-Mariani, Pompeius-Pompeiani). Anyway -ani, iani" doesn't alsways follow a proper name,as you seem to be suggesting (cf praetoriani, tertiani) 2. If the speculators were Jews, this reflects T's terse style 3. See above
bw Carole
|
|
|
Post by humphreyclarke on Dec 8, 2008 18:20:14 GMT
Still not convinced, although if you look at the above post I now agree that the original word was 'Chrestianoi' which I suppose is progress of a sort. My contention is that Chrestianoi is defiantly an early term for Christians and to see it as such in the passage makes more sense.
1) The conclusion of Van Voorst was that:
Tacitus is correcting, in a way typical of his style of economy, the misunderstanding of the crowd (vulgas) by stating that the ‘founder of the name’ (auctor nominis eius) is Christus, not the common name implicitly given by the crowd, Chrestus.
Since he is correcting the common name given by the crowd (Which is in turn a corruption ‘Chrestos’, of the greek word ‘christos’, which is that Greek translation of the Hebrew word ‘manshiah’ (messiah, anointed one’), this explains why he isn't using the correct sufix.
2) Terse, yes. But property speculation, a superstition?. Is there any evidence that the property speculators were all Jewish?
3) Ditto, it doesn't support the property speculation theory. Why would it start in Judea?.
|
|
|
Post by caroleeilertson on Dec 8, 2008 19:21:44 GMT
OK how about this? Starting with your last points first. Why does Tacitus refer to property speculation as a superstition, a word he commonly reserves for Jewry? Maybe he is using it as a form of pars pro toto - a sneaky aside linking Jews and usury to property speculation (there is little evidence that Nero persecuted the Jews on a large scale at this time, and maybe Tacitus is pursuing a personal hate agenda -two birds with one stone - the hated Jews and the hated Julian-Claudian Nero)
Sorry,but I don't quite get your point about the suffix? If we are to assume that chrestiani or christiani has a proper name as its root, that name must be Christius or Chrestius (a tleast originally at Tacitus' time of writing). But as I pointed out, we can't necessarily assume that a proper name is at the root.
A few random thoughts on the appellation "Chrestos" Apparently Chrestos (Greek = kindness) was a common name for a slave. The opposite meaning could be (ironically) inferred making the bearer of the name a target for punishment. Tertullian needed to evoke positive connotations and remind his contemporaries of the positive roots of this designation. The similarity of chrêstai (speculators) and chrestos (kind and or blessed - especially as applied to the deceased) would offer Tacitus plenty of mileage as a play on words. Another interesting point is the poetic justice of the punishments Nero allegedly inflicted on this group of people: burning, and being torn to death by dogs. According to Talion law, just punishments, indeed, for arsonists and property speculators !(And what punishment should we inflict on the bankers and CEOs in the States? ;-))
|
|
|
Post by humphreyclarke on Dec 9, 2008 11:09:24 GMT
Perhaps. But of course there is that reference from Suetonius who says
'Multa sub eo et animadversa severe et coercita nec minus instituta: adhibitus sumptibus modus; publicae cenae ad sportulas redactae; interdictum ne quid in propinis cocti praeter legumina aut holera veniret, cum antea nullum non obsonii genus proponeretur; afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae; vetiti quadrigariorum lusus, quibus inveterata licentia passim vagantibus fallere ac furari per iocum ius erat; pantomimorum factiones cum ipsis simul relegatae.'
Even if the original was Chrestianoi, which it doesn't appear to have been; it is a 'new and malicious superstition'. There was nothing new about Judaism and property speculation is not a superstition.
|
|
|
Post by caroleeilertson on Dec 10, 2008 8:00:44 GMT
You're right, Humphrey. The way this is written it doesn't make any sense to read property speculators/usurers into it. But there still remains this quote: Suet. Claud. 25.4: Iudaeos impulsore chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit. Chresto in the ablative could be read as at the instigation of Chrestos : " ...the Jews, who caused constant turmoil at the instigation of Chrestos, he expelled them from Rome.’ or ‘…the Jews who practised usury and thereby caused constant turmoil, he expelled them from Rome.’ The Jews were expelled by Claudius, ie at the beginning of the second century. So this mention of Chrestos (if we read it this way) can't be Jesus Christ. Or Suetonius mixed up his chronology. In which case Christ was not a familiar figure to him. Curious and curiouser!
|
|