Fictitious portrait of the Roman historian
Cornelius Tacitus.

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius Caesar at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre 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. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat[1]

Context

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [or Chrestians; see below] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre 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. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.[4]

Tacitus then returns to the topic of Nero's reputation and the effect on it of these events:

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.[4]

Codex Mediceus 68 II fol. 38 r: en:Cornelius Tacitus Annales 15:44. Harald Fuchs, Tacitus über die Christen, Vigiliae Christianae, 1950, p. 65. A reprint from a photographic facsimile: Tacitus. Codex Laurentianus Mediceus 68 I. (II.) [comprising Bks. 1-5, and 11-16 of the Annals; and Bks. 1-5 of the Histories].

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On the other hand, some argue that the passage is far too critical of Christians to be added by Christian scribes. The passage even implies that the Christians may have been guilty of setting fire to Rome. Additionally, any inaccuracies of the passage (i.e. "immense multitude", "prefect" vs. "procurator" Pontius Pilatus) could be due to exaggeration or mistakes in reporting when written in 116.

The secular historian Suetonius also mentions Christians being harmed during this period by Nero, but there is no connection made with the fire and the reliability of the passage is also questioned.

Authenticity and Reliability

The passage also apparently mistakenly calls Pontius Pilate a procurator instead of a prefect, an apparent mistake also made in a passage by Flavius Josephus. This apparent mistake, while possibly showing a common editor of Tacitus and Josephus could also be Tacitus using Josephus as a source or both of them using a common source. However, it should be noted that after Herod Agrippa's death in AD 44, when Judea reverted to direct Roman rule, the governors of Judea were given the title of procurator, which became the standard title to refer to those governors. Therefore, the more likely reason as to why we see Tacitus regarding Pilate as a Procurator instead of a Prefect is because in circa AD 110 when Tacitus wrote his Annals, the Roman title for a governor of Judea was in fact "Procurator."

On the other hand, others argue that the passage is far too critical of Christians to be added by Christian scribes. The passage even implies that the Christians may have been guilty of setting fire to Rome. Further, there may be evidence of persecution against Christians in Rome during Nero's reign. The historian Suetonius also mentions Christians being harmed during this period by Nero, but there is no connection made with the fire. Robert E. Van Voorst writes that "the vast majority of scholars" conclude that the passage is authentic. The passage contains an early non-Christian reference to the origin of Christianity, the execution of Christ described in the Bible's New Testament gospels, and the presence and persecution of Christians in first-century Rome. While a majority of scholars consider the passage authentic, some dispute it.[5]

Some who argue against authenticity assert:[6][7]

• No early Christian writers refer to Tacitus even when discussing the subject of Nero and Christian persecution. Tertullian, Lactantius, Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius and Augustine of Hippo make no reference to Tacitus when discussing Christian persecution by Nero.[8][9] If authentic, the passage would constitute one of the earliest, if not the earliest (see: Josephus on Jesus) non-Christian references to Jesus. Those critical of the passage's authenticity argue that early Christian writers likely would have sought to establish the historicity of Jesus via secular or non-Christian documents, and that their silence with regard to the Annals in this manner may suggest that the passage did not exist in early manuscripts. Furthermore, because the earliest surviving manuscript containing the passage is an Eleventh Century Christian scribal copy[10], skeptics of the passage's authenticity argue that it may be the result of later Christian editing. Supporters of the passage's authenticity, however, counter on the basis of the criterion of embarrassment that the passage's critical remarks on Christianity as a "mischievious superstition" argue against its having been made by later Christian editors who, it is argued, would have cast Christians in a positive and not negative light. Critics counter that the criterion of embarrassment wrongly assumes that a scribal interpolator would not intentionally write details critical of his or her religious group[11], and that a scribe may have found it advantageous and convincing to supply a less embarrassing fact (e.g., that Christians were regarded by the Romans as subscribing to a "mischievious superstition") in the place of a more embarrassing one (e.g., no early, non-Christian references to a historical Jesus).
• Pontius Pilate's rank was prefect when he was in Judea.[12] The Tacitus passage mistakenly calls Pilate a procurator, an error also made in translations of a passage by Josephus.[13] (However, Josephus wrote in Greek and never used the Latin term.) It should be noted that after Herod Agrippa's death in AD 44, when Judea reverted to direct Roman rule, Claudius gave procurators control over Judea.[14][15] This was made possible when he augmented the role of procurators so that they had magisterial power.[16][17] Tacitus, who rose through the magisterial ranks[18][19] to become consul and then proconsul had a precise knowledge of significance of the terms involved and knew when Judea began to be administered by procurators. It is therefore problematical that he would use "procurator" instead of "prefect" to describe the governor of Judea prior to the changes that he tells us Claudius brought in.
• The passage implies that the Christians may have been guilty of setting fire to Rome, another argument against veracity, for Tacitus was attempting to lay the blame of the fire on Nero by aspersion.[20]
• Another ancient writer, Suetonius, mentions Christians being harmed during this period by Nero, but there is no connection made with the fire[21].[22]

Christians or Chrestians?

In 1950, at Harald Fuchs request, Dr. Teresa Lodi, the director of the Laurentian Library, examined the features of this item of the manuscript; she concluded that there are still signs of an 'e' being erased, by removal of the upper and lower horizontal portions, and distortion of the remainder into an 'i'.[24] In 2008, Dr. Ida Giovanna Rao, the new head of the Laurentian Library's manuscript office, repeated Lodi's study, and concluded that it is likely that the 'i' is a correction of some earlier character (like an e), the change being made an extremely subtle one. Later the same year, it was discovered that under ultraviolet light, an 'e' is clearly visible in the space, meaning that the passage must originally have referred to chrestianos, a Latin word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning 'good, useful'. "I believe that in our passage of Tacitus the original reading Chrestianos is the true one" says Professor Robert Renehan, stating that it was "natural for a Roman to interpret the words [Christus and Christianus] as the similarly-sounding χρηστός".[25] The word Christian's is in Codex Sinaiticus (in which Christ is abbreviated - see nomina sacra) spelled Chrestian's in the three places the word is used. Also in Minuscule 81 this spelling is used in Acts of the Apostles 11:26.[26]

Notes

1. «  Tacitus, Annales 15.44.
2. «  Syme 533 n. 5 ("This famous chapter has provoked an enormous literature...").
3. «  Tacitus, Annals 15.39–43.
4. «  Tacitus, Annals 15.44, translated by Church and Brodribb.
5. «  Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, pp. 42-43 uses the words "the vast majority of scholars". Quoted at earlychristianwritings.com
6. «  Darrell Doughty, Persecution and martyrdom in early Christianity
7. «  Stein, Gordon, The American Rationalist, "The Jesus of History: A Reply to Josh McDowell" (1982).
8. «  See Tertullian, Apologeticum, lost text quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History II.25.4; Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died II; Sulpicius Severus, Chronica II.28; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History II.25.5; Augustine of Hippo, City of God XX.19.3
9. «  Robert E. Van Voorst (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 43. See also the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment.
10. «  Newton, Francis, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058–1105, Cambridge University Press, 1999. "The Date of the Midecean Tacitus (Flor. Laur. 68.2)", p. 96-97.
11. «  Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Doubleday: 1991. vol 1: p. 168-171.
12. «  See Pilate Stone.
13. «  See Louis Feldman (translator), Josephus, Loeb Library, Volume 12, Jewish Antiquities 18.55 (p.43), which mentions Pilate as procurator in translation (as does Whiston's translation), but as ηγεμων, ie governor, in Greek.
14. «  Tac. H.5.9.8.
15. «  Geoffrey W. Bromiley, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1988. ISBN 0802837859, 9780802837851. p.979, col.1.
16. «  Tac. A.12.60 Claudius said that the judgments of his procurators had the same efficacy as those judgments he made.
17. «  P. A. Brunt, Roman imperial themes, Oxford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0198144768, 9780198144762. p.167.
18. «  These ranks were exclusively available for patricians only, while equestrians could become procurators.
19. «  Syme pp.63-72.
20. «  Inez Scott Ryberg, "Tacitus' Art of Innuendo", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 73 (1942), p.399.
21. «  Suetonius, Lives of Twelve Caesars Life of Nero 16:2
22. «  "The great fire of AD 64 is not mentioned in this connection, and indeed the punishment of Christians is included in that part of the book (up to section 19) which deals with Nero's good acts, before he turned to vice and crime. (The fire is not reported until section 38, where it is unconditionally blamed on Nero himself.) Nor does Suetonius even so much as mention the 'Christus' from whom their name derived." - R.T. France, The Evidence for Jesus, 1986, p. 40.
23. «  Georg Andresen in Wochenschrift fur klassische Philologie 19, 1902, p. 780f
24. «  Harald Fuchs, Tacitus on the Christians, published in Christian Vigil (1950) volume 4, number 2, p. 70, note 6
25. «  Robert Renehan, "Christus or Chrestus in Tacitus?", La Parola del Passato 122 (1968), pp. 368-370
26. «  Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, 26. neu bearbeitete Auflage, 1979

References

• Syme, Ronald (1958). Tacitus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-814327-3.