Tony said

You’re persistent.  I’ll give you the information which I’m sure you’ll reject, because your preconceived opinions are loud and clear.

Tacitus dates from 116, at which time some gospels had been in circulation for about a couple of decades. The Tacitus passage describes that Nero scapegoated Christians for burning Rome in 64. Other Roman historians had reported on the fire, but none have linked it to Christians. In fact, the first recorded mention of the Tacitus passage comes from the fourth century. Second century Christians told of persecutions by Nero, but never mention the Roman fire!  The passage in question refers to Chrestians and that was no misspelling.  Suetonius reports on an uprising by followers of a a Jewish instigator named  Chrestus,  first suppressed under Claudius. The line in question, “Christ the author of this name, was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign if Tiberius”, is likely a fourth century interpolation inserted into a Tacitus report about Chrestians.  Of course, “Christ” is an exalted Christian title. A Roman historian would have referred to this criminal as Jesus – something.

Another context point is that Pliny the Younger, Tacitus friend, fellow historian and Governor of an adjacent Province. He reported earlier on finding Christians.  Pliny had never heard about Christians and had no idea who, or what, they were. Pliny writes that they worshiped a certain Christ, who was something like a God (quasi deo).  No mention of Jesus of Nazareth, or anything about a Christian role in the Roman fire from Pliny.  

Look, I don’t want to get into Pliny, because what you say about him is flat wrong, but is sadly the type of non-academic treatment you get from many Mythicists.  Pliny never said he had hadn’t heard about Christians and certainly never said he had no idea what they were.  What he actually said was that he had never been present for “interrogations” of Christians before.  This is the type of slight of hand which is deeply troubling, and makes it almost impossible for me to take Mythicist arguments seriously.

But let’s get back to Tacitus.  Surprise, surprise, you say his passage about the Neronian persecution is a later Christian interpolation.  Big shocker, I know.  So, how exactly is this not an example of the very type of Mythicist methodology I criticized above, to wit: “interpreting all available data to support the pre-existing theory”?

Your argument conveniently left out the remainder of the subject passage by Tacitus: 

[T]he pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race.

Quite obviously, if the part about about Christ being put to death by Pontius Pilate could seriously be considered an interpolation, then the text immediately following it (quoted above), with its reference to a “superstitious” “sect” from “Judea,” must likewise be an interpolation.

So let’s apply Occam’s razor to this passage.  Is it more likely than not that a later Christian scribe inserted this text into Tacitus, referring to Christians as “a class of men, loathed for their vices,” believing in a “pernicious superstition,” indeed, a “disease” and something “horrible, “shameful,” yet indulgent in what’s “vogue,” who had “hatred of the human race,” all while celebrating their just-deserved torture with “derision”?  

Or … is it simply more likely that this passage was not an interpolation by a Christian writer, and does not reflect Christian thinking?  For obvious reasons, major scholars are all but unanimous on the subject.  But even if academics were silent on this issue, it simply beggars belief that a later Christian scribe would insert such defamatory language about his fellow Christians.

As a minor point, as I don’t think it warrants much discussions, there is absolutely no reason to think that a Roman historian would have used the birth name of a Palestinian Jew in referring to him, particularly since the word “Christ” had no preexisting Latin meaning.  Quite obviously, “Spartacus” was not the birth name of the slave leader of the Third Servile War; yet, that is the name Plutarch and Florus both used.

Tony said

“I’ll give you the information which I’m sure you’ll reject, because your preconceived opinions are loud and clear.”

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Prophesy fulfilled! I am the chosen one…  

Honestly… I was hoping for something more and interesting than the standard Mythicist go-to: “it was an interpolation.”

I also find it interesting that you brought up Suetonius’s mention of “Chrestus,” whom you refer to as “a Jewish instigator” (even though Suetonius never actually says who Chrestus was) and the silence of other Roman historians (Suetonius was one of two others who wrote about the fire) on linking the fire to Christians . . . 

. . . and yet you failed to mention that Suetonius does indeed report on Neronian persecution of Christians: “Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.”  Nero 16.

Of course, my original question had nothing to do with the fire; it was about Neronian persecution of Christians.  And yet, you went straight for the standard Mythicist claim of interpolation of the fire-blaming passage.

It almost as if these are prepackaged arguments, rather than well-reasoned responses to the narrow question being asked.