One of the common sources which Christian Apologists oftentimes cite as a secular witness of 1st Century Christianity is Pliny the Younger. Pliny was an elected official who allegedly wrote a letter to the Roman Emperor Trajan in the first decade of the 2nd Century CE, seeking advice as to how to deal with a certain people known as Christians. Some also cite this same letter as evidence of the historicity of an earthly Jesus In so doing, Pliny was to have claimed inexperience in trying and sentencing Christians, and subsequently he was to have sought the advice of the Emperor with regards to the matter. Oddly enough, in spite of his alleged reservations as to how to deal with the matter of Christians in the Empire, Pliny claimed to have executed numerous Christians for mere stubbornness and obstinance.
The Pliny letter then goes on to exonerate the very people who he allegedly executed of any actual culpability for any crime except for stubbornly refusing to worship the Emperor himself. Furthermore, Pliny was to have assured the Emperor that in spite of the extensive influence of Christianity in the local economy, as evidenced by an unfortunate decrease in sacrificial animal slaughter, that the projections for recovery from such were promising. The Pliny letter concludes with an expressed optimism that the Christians would surely reform, if they were but given time to repent.
Now, as to whether the Pliny letter refers to Christians who believed in a flesh and blood Jesus is very difficult to determine with any degree of certainty. There is certainly no expressed evidence of such beyond the utility of the terms “Christians” and “Christ”, the latter term a common Greek name, meaning “anointed”. That the referenced Christians praised a “Christ” as a god is recorded in the letter, but no qualifiers as to the identity of or the nature of “Christ” are included in the text.
Furthermore, the letter so noted appears in a book which is somewhat distinct from the original corpus of letters of Pliny, for originally there was but a nine book collection. The Pliny letter which references Christians is included in Book 10 (Book 10.96-97; including Trajan’s alleged response), which is a posthumous collection of his alleged personal correspondence with the Emperor during the former’s time as an elected official in the Trajan administration. The correspondence between the two has been edited and organized by an unknown redactor, hence allowing ample opportunity for forgery and/or interpolation. In addition, no one knows either the identity of the redactor of the content of Book 10, nor the logistics involved in the process. For example, there is no known explanation as to how the unknown redactor retrieved both the letters of Pliny to Trajan, and all the corresponding replies. Such matters being the case, a critical and dialectical analysis of the Pliny letter at hand seems expedient, if not advisable.
In addition, the lack of contextual content renders dating the letter seemingly impossible, and thus somewhat discredits the authenticity of the account itself. In fact, there is simply no internal evidence which would lead one to date this letter to Pliny’s time. To the contrary, the degree of systemic persecution of Christians described in the text, and the notion presented within the letter that Christianity was contra Paganism are each verifiable late 2nd Century themes.
There seems little doubt in my mind then upon an examination of the content of the letter of Pliny to Trajan that the literature therein is neither a letter, nor that such is contemporary to the first decade of the 2nd Century CE. For the letter of Pliny seems to be an effort to educate the reader regarding the practices and to over exaggerate effects of Christianity in the process, rather than to actually correspond with the Emperor. Such then leads me to conclude that although contextualized as a personal letter, the literature at hand is actually a brief treatise instead. The effort to predate the 2nd Century history of the embryonic development of Christianity into a 1st Century context merely seems a complement to similar such literary efforts which have since been catalogued as New Testament Epistles.
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