The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
The Whole of the External Evidence of the Christian Religion.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
(LN. Part 3, concerns the infamous tract on Nero's cruelty to the so-called Christians, who he apparently blamed for the burning of Rome, Rev. Taylor rightly argues that it is a forgery?)
Contents: Tacitus, AD. 107. The Celebrated Passage. The facts of the case are these-.
[LN. characters mentioned in this text include. Eusebius. Josephus. emperor Galba, Domitian, Nero, Tiberius, Tertullian, full name, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, around 150 to 240 AD. Early Christian author, from Carthage, Africa. Clemens Alexandrinus or Alexandria, called Titus Flavius Clemens, theologian, and writer. Abgarus, (may have been Abgarus V of Edessa, or Abgar V the Black). Melito, Bishop of Sardis, western Anatolia, died around 180AD.]
Tacitus, 107AD
We have investigated the claims -of every document possessing a plausible claim to be investigated, which history has preserved of the transactions of the first century; and not so much as one single passage, purporting to have been written at any time within the first hundred years, can be produced from any independent authority whatever, to show the existence at or before that time of such a person as Jesus Christ, Or of such a set of men as could be accounted to be his disciples.
After the many forgeries and interpolations that have been detected in the texts of authors of high repute, nay the forging of whole books and palming them upon authors of established reputation, for the purpose of kidnapping their respectability into the service of Christianity, and fathering them with admissions, which they never made nor intended; it would have been next to a miracle, if the text of the great prince of historians, had been suffered to come down to us un-engrafted with a suitable recognition of the existence of Christ, and of Christians: or if, after, the shrewdest talent and profoundest learning were engaged in the service, the important business of managing such an interpolation had been left to hands that could not have done it better than to fear detection from any ordinary powers of criticism.
Eusebius had Christianized Josephus; it remained for shrewder masters of criticism, and the more accomplished scholars and infidels of a later age to perform a similar regeneration upon the text of Tacitus.
This illustrious Roman inherits immortal renown as an historian, for his beautiful description of the manners of the ancient Germans, his Life of Agricola, his History of Rome, from the time of the emperor Galba to the death of Domitian; and lastly for his Annals, beginning at Tiberius, and terminating with the death of Nero. He was born about 62AD, and wrote his Annals very late in life, as nearly as probable conjecture can bring us, about 107AD.
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 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
After a description of the terrible fire at Rome in the tenth of Nero, and the sixty-fourth of our Lord, in which a large part of the city was consumed; and an account of the order given for rebuilding and beautifying it, and the methods used to appease the anger of the Gods: Tacitus adds, [A] "But neither all the human help, nor the liberality of the Emperor, nor all the atonements presented to the Gods, availed to abate the infamy he lay under of having ordered the city to be set on fire. To suppress, therefore, this common rumour, Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishments upon those people who were held in abhorrence for their crimes and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, though checked for a while, broke out again, and spread, not over Judea, the source of this evil, but reached the city also: whither flow from all quarters all things vile and shameful, and where they find shelter and encouragement. At first, they only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards, a vast multitude discovered by them; all which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs, some were crucified: others, having- been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up as lights in the night-time, and thus burned to death. Nero made use of his own gardens as a theatre on this occasion, and also exhibited the diversions of the Circus, sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer; at other times driving a chariot himself; till at length these men, though really criminal and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated as people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man."
[a] "Sed non ope humana, non largitionibus Principis, aut Deum placamentis, decedebat infamia, quin jussum incendium crederetur. Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor nominis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat. Repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat non modd per Judaeam, originem ejus mali, sed per Urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia, aut pudenda, confluunt, celebranturque. Igitur primo correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum, multitudo ingens, haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis, convicti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarurn tergis contecti, laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi, aut flainnmndi, 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 sontes et novissirna exempla meritos, miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non utilitate publica, sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur."
I consider this celebrated passage to be a forgery or interpolation upon the text of Tacitus, from no disposition, I am sure, to give offence to those who may have as good reasons, and probably better, for esteeming it to be unquestionably genuine, from no wish to deduct from Christianity one tittle or iota of its fair or probable evidence, but from a consideration solely of the facts of the case, which I here subjoin; and which, if they shall have less weight in the judgment of the reader than of the author: the reader will reap the advantage of holding the opposite conclusion, not only in concurrence with the decision of the wisest and best men in the world, but on that surer ground of satisfaction with which every conviction is held, after men have been so faithful to themselves as to weigh the objections that can be alleged against it.
The facts of the case are these-
1. This passage, which would have served the purpose of Christian quotation better than any other in all the writings of Tacitus, or of any Pagan writer whatever, is not quoted by any of the Christian Fathers.
2. It is not quoted by Tertullian, though he had read and largely quotes the works of Tacitus;
3. And though his argument immediately called for the use of this quotation with so loud a voice, [b] that his omission of it, if it had really existed, amounts to a violent improbability.
[b] In his celebrated Apology, Tertullian is so hot upon the scent of this passage, that his missing it had it been in existence, is almost miraculous. In Chapter 5 of this Apology, he says, "Consult your histories, there you will find that Nero was the first to draw the bloody and imperial sword against this sect then rising at Rome." Yet even here, he stumbles not on this famous passage-]
4. This Father has spoken of Tacitus in a way that it is absolutely impossible that he should have spoken of him, had his writings contained such a passage. [c]
[c] After other quotations from the writings of Tacitus, Tertullian continues his argument: "And indeed that same Cornelius Tacitus, that most prating of all liars, in the same history relates," Atenim Cornelius Tacitus sane ille mendacio- rum loquacissimus in cad. hist. ref. &c. w - Citat. Kortholt, p. 272.]
5. It is not quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, who set himself entirely to the work of adducing and bringing together all the admissions and recognitions which Pagan authors had made of the existence of Christ or Christians before his time.
6. It has been no-where stumbled on by the laborious and all-seeking Eusebius, who could by no possibility have missed of it, and whom it would have saved from the labour and infamy of forging the passage of Josephus; of adducing the correspondence of Christ and Abgarus, and the Sibylline verses; of forging a divine revelation from the God Apollo, in attestation of Christ's ascension into heaven; and innumerable other of his pious and holy cheats.
7. There is no vestige nor trace of its existence anywhere in the world before the 15th century.
8. It rests then entirely upon the fidelity of a single individual;
9. And he, having the ability, the opportunity, and the strongest possible incitement of interest to induce him to introduce the interpolation.
10. The passage itself, though unquestionably the work of a master, and entitled to be pronounced the 'chef d'oeuvre' of the art: betrays the penchant of that delight in blood and in descriptions of bloody horrors, as peculiarly characteristic of the Christian disposition, as it was abhorrent to the mild and gentle mind and highly cultivated taste of Tacitus. [LN. 'Chef d'oeuvre' French for a Master -piece.]
11. It bears a character of exaggeration, and trenches on the laws of rational probability, which the writings of Tacitus are rarely found to do.
12. It may be met and overthrown by the concussion of directly conflicting evidence of equal weight of challenge; a shock to which no statements of Tacitus besides are liable.
13. It is not conceivable that Nero, who, with all his crimes, was at least not safe in the commission of crime; and paid at last the forfeit of his life, not to private revenge, but to public justice, for less heinous enormities; should have been so ludibund in cruelty, and wanton in wickedness, as this passage would represent him.
14. It is not conceivable, that such good and innocent people as the primitive Christians must be supposed to be, should have provoked so great a degree of hostility, or that they should not sufficiently have endeared themselves to their fellow-citizens, to prevent the possibility of their being so treated.
15. It is not conceivable, that so just a man as Tacitus unquestionably was, could have spoken of the professors of a purer religion than the world before had seen, as really criminal, and deserving exemplary punishment.
16. The whole account is falsified by the text of the New Testament, in which Nero is spoken of as the Minister of God for good; and the Christians have the assurance of God himself, that so long as they were followers of that which was good, there was none that would harm them. - See 1 Peter hi. 13.
17. It is falsified by the apology of Tertullian, and the far more respectable testimony of Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who explicitly states that the Christians, up to his time, the third century, had never been victims of persecution: and that it was in provinces lying beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire, and not in Judea, that Christianity originated. - See their testimonies in this Diegesis.
18. Not a disposition to reject Christianity, but an eagerness and promptness to run after and embrace it, has in all ages been the constitutional cacoethes of the human mind.
19. Tacitus has in no other part of his writings made the least allusion to Christ or Christians.
20. The use of this passage as a part of the Evidences of the Christian Religion, is absolutely modern.
-o0o-
Next Chapter 45. part 4.
SUETONIUS, AD. 110.
(LN. Part 4, concerns the writings of Suetonius, and considers the questions his work throws up.)
[LN. Main characters mentioned in this text include. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. Emperor Claudius. Vespasian. Paulus Orosius, was a Gallaecian Chalcedonian priest, theologian and historian. Dr Lardner, Nathaniel, 1684 to 1768, English theologian. Philip Doddridge, 1702-1751 was an English nonconformist leader, educator and hymnwriter. William Paley, 1743- 1805, English clergyman, apologist, philosopher and Utilitarian. Josephus the Jewish-Romano historian. Justin Martyr, 100 to 165, Christian apologist. Antoninus Pius, 86 to 161, Roman emperor 138 to 161. Theophilus of Antioch, died around 183 to 185? Early writer on the gospels. St. Jerome, 347 to 420, he was a priest, confessor, theologian and historian.]