Thoughts On The Theory Of The Testimony Of Tacitus As A Witness To The Historicity Of 1st Century Christianity

Although the Annals of Tacitus are technically not among the writings which I personally would classify as Early Christian Literature, nonetheless the utility of Annals XV.44 by Christian Apologists as a proof text for the theory of the historicity of 1st Century CE Christianity renders an examination of such expedient for those interested in the studies of topic itself. More specifically, the latter portion of Annals XV.44 is the text of interest for Christian Apologists, hence such will be the primary text under consideration for the purposes of my personal commentary on the topic.

As noted, Tacitus is oftentimes referenced as a secular source who supposedly verified the historicity of 1st Century Christianity.  Such a theory is based primarily upon the third paragraph of the text at hand (See below, Paragraphed by myself), which describes the aftermath of the Great Fire of Rome of 64CE. Although quite frequently so cited by Christian Apologists in order to support that theory, rarely is the text itself subjected to critical examination or dialectic inquiry when so referenced.  Such will be my effort in this brief commentary.

That said, note Annals XV.44 in its entirety, with the primary portion of interest for this commentary italicized:

"Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women.

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. 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 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. 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.”

(Tacitus: Annals XV.44 http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/tac/a15040.htm)

(NOTE: Emphasis and Paragraph Division mine, DLH)

In fact, the text so noted merely records an anachronistic and unconfirmed claim that the Roman Emperor Nero tortured and murdered a group of people known as “Christians/Chrestians” in the aftermath of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE.  Anachronistic in that the text itself was to have been written around 112 CE.  And unconfirmed in that there are no corroborating sources to verify the claims which are asserted in this text.

The limitations of the case against Nero then would be comparable to the indictment of Nazi war crimes in the 1940’s having been based upon an unconfirmed newspaper article written in 2003.  It seems clear to me then, that the only Court which would even indict, much less convict Nero of these accusations is that of public opinion.  It further seems unfortunate, if not inconsistent, that the biblical standard that “One witness cannot establish any wrongdoing or sin against a person, whatever that person has done. A fact must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 19.15) has for some reason not been applied to these accusations against Nero.  For in this case, there are actually not even any witnesses to the alleged crime, but rather only a mere anachronistic claimant in the form of this unconfirmed written allegation.

Of course, Tacitus would have been a boy when these atrocities allegedly occurred, yet there is no indication from the text that these are the memoirs of a child.  Memories from one’s childhood would certainly not include assessments of the victims being guilty of crimes of “hatred against mankind”. There is as little reason to believe that young Tacitus was an eyewitness to the atrocities which are described in the third paragraph above, as there is to conclude that the claims of such are even credible in the first place.

The lack of reliability of this unconfirmed claim as an historical account is a matter to itself, but there are further reasons to consider that these accusations against Nero may not even have been written by Tacitus in the first place.  A critical analysis of the text so referenced raise questions as to its authenticity, and quite frankly evidences traces of later interpolation.

Why so much effort to explain the background of Christians (Chrestians), and yet such brevity with reference to the Sybilline religion, and the deities so referenced?  And which term did Tacitus employ to describe the identity of the people under discussion: Chrestians or Christians?   

Chrestians (the original reading, which was evidently changed to “Christians” by an unknown hand at a later date) of course would likely be a reference to the rebellious Jews who Claudius reportedly banished from Rome in the 40’s (Seutonius, Claudius 25.4).  As the Chrestians were a group so well known to the Romans that they were expelled from their fair city in the 40’s, then why would Tacitus have felt compelled to give the backstory that he provided in the third paragraph above?  And how could their leader Chrestus have been executed during the time of Pontius Pilate in the 30’s, when he was so alive and well in the 40’s that he instigated his band of troublemakers to such mischief in Rome during that time that they were expelled from the city?  The time frames simply do not match, nor do the locations if in fact Tacitus was referring to “Christians’; instead of to “Chrestians”? Quite frankly, paragraph 3 of this Chapter seems to so conveniently provide backstory similar to the Christian gospels that its presence in the text seems out of place, and hence may be indicative of a later interpolation by a Church Scribe or Christian Apologist. A critique then of what may have been an anachronistic supplement to the original text seems in order, in consideration of the circumstances.

The phrase “during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus” is notably similar to Luke 3.1 “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea,” yet refers to Pilate as the “procurator”, instead of as “governor”.  The significance of such a change of wording is that the Latin Vulgate translation of Luke 3.1  likewise references Pilate as “procurator”.  Hence, it appears that this phrase may have been a  rewrite of, or at least referenced from, the Latin Vulgate translation of Luke 3.1, which could be dated no earlier that the 4th Century CE.  As an added note, Tacitus would surely have well understood that Pilate was a mere Prefect instead of a Procurator since he himself discussed the fact that the role and responsibilities of the regional governors was not expanded accordingly until the time of Claudius, in the early 40’s CE. (Annals XII.60)

As to “an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind”, if the main reason for their conviction was due to their hatred against mankind, then why wait for the fire as a pretext for such convictions?  And what group of people is arrested, much less executed, for the hatred against mankind in the first place? The accusation of “hatred against mankind” is furthermore similar to the accusation in 1 Thessalonians against the Jews as a people who were “hostile to everyone”, leading back to the question of the actual identity of the Christians/Chrestians being referenced in the first place.

The mockery and crucifixion references seem reminiscent of the Crucifixion of Jesus narrative, which would be more suited to the mid to latter 2nd Century CE historical development of Church doctrine of a flesh and blood earthly Jesus.  The degree of persecution so described likewise seems more suited to the mid to latter 2nd Century CE history (if not later), than to 60’s Rome.  

The description of Nero lighting his garden at night with the burning bodies of human beings seems hardly reconcilable with Tacitus’ description earlier in this narrative of Nero opening those same gardens to the homeless in an effort to “relieve the people” and to “receive the destitute multitude” in the aftermath of the catastrophic fire (Annals XV.39).  Nero’s personal shortcomings notwithstanding; nonetheless the malevolence attributed to him in the text under discussion simply seems unlikely in the light of the benevolence attributed to Nero by this same writer earlier in the same text.

Furthermore, if Nero was so preoccupied with his public image that he fingered a specific group of people as scapegoats on whom to blame the fire, then why ruin his public image in the process of executing punishment upon those scapegoats?  Why divert blame as to the cause of the fire, only to become blameable for cruelty beyond measure in the eyes of the very people whose scorn he was allegedly attempting to avoid in the first place?  In this regard, the described atrocities would have been too much of an “overkill” to merit credibility.  Yet, the recording of such atrocities by an overzealous Christian interpolator would have been quite suited to the claims of persecution and the Martyrdom theme of the latter 2nd and 3rd Century Church.

Furthermore, if in fact such atrocities were exercised against Christians in 64 CE Rome, then why did the early Church Fathers never refer to such in their writings?  Surely Patristic writers such as Tertullian, Origen, and even Eusebius would have added the tale of Christians being burned at the stake in order to illuminate a Roman Emperor’s garden to their allegations of persecution against early Christians.  And even though Cassio Dio and Seutonius both recorded that Nero played his lyre and sang on a hillside as Rome burned, neither of these commentators wrote a word of the atrocities attributed to the Emperor in the text under discussion.  

Even the historian Josephus, who lived in Rome for an extended period of time just a few short years after the fire, seems to have known nothing about the persecution of Christians by Nero as described in the text at hand. Josephus likewise spoke of historians who hated Nero so much that their accounts included many lies about the controversial Emperor (Antiquities 20.8). In this regard, Nero would have been an easy mark for a later interpolation to record an anachronistic account of the persecution of Christians, using the Great Fire of Rome as the context for such a literary endeavor.

There is simply no evidence or corroborating testimony to sustain the allegations recorded in the Tacitus account, which lends further credence to the theory that the portion of the account so referenced may very well have been a later interpolation by an unknown hand. Upon examination of the text at hand then, it is my personal conclusion then that the unconfirmed allegations that Nero tortured and murdered Christians as so described are far fetched and fictional. And as to the notion of the historicity of 1st Century Christianity, whether such merits any measure of validity, it is my personal view that the Annals of Tacitus lend no credibility to the theory as is so oftentimes proposed.

Dave Henderson
Denison, Texas