As we know, Tacitus in his passage, writes the `Christians` and then mentions `Christus`. As already proved, we know that instead of `Christians`, he wrote `Chrestians` in the original manuscript.
Question 1: If it’s proved that he wrote `Chrestians`(I don’t know how it’s proved, I just know it is and don’t want to go to rabbit hole to figure that out), why don’t we know that he also must have written `Chrestus` instead of `Christus` ?
Question 2: if the answer to Question 1 is: “we don’t know how to prove it, but it’s possible, he could have written `Chrestus` instead of `Christus` and it could be an interpolation later on, then we got the following possible choices what Tacitus could have written originally.
Option 1: Chrestians + Christus
Option 2: Chrestians + Chrestus
In both options, we got `Chrestians` as it’s proved that it was what originally was written instead of Christians. I believe that Option 2 could be valid, don’t you ?
Question 3: This is mostly what I’m curious about. Is it possible that Option 1 could be valid as well ? Could you bring an explanation why ? As in, why would he write `Chrestians` and not write `Chrestus` ? To me, this seems highly unlikely.
To answer Q3–it is possible that he was writing the name as he had heard it pronounced–perhaps as he heard it pronounced by people with an accent or poor enunciation. “christianus” or “chrestianus” would have been a neologism, not a word he would have learned to say or spell by reading the great authors as a kid or listening to educated orators.
Perhaps he was even deliberately mocking the Christians’ poor accent, implying that they were predominately lower class and unlettered, by writing their name as they (mis)pronounced it.
Or perhaps, he wrote that way simply because, where the accent fell in the word, the vowel shifted in pronunciation. This happens in lots of Latin words when a vowel is unaccented; consider the verb to go– eo, ire, ivi, itum: the i in the stem changes to an e in certain forms (NB, that i is the stem, these are not chagnes demanded by the normal rules of Latin morphology).
At any rate, Latin spelling tends to be pretty strongly phonetic, and Latin orthography doesn’t always follow etymology as strictly as English does (English orthography is remarkably conservative, which is why we have so many odd and irregular spellings; it is why we study spelling in school for years; and it is why reading English fluently takes a good deal of work even for native speaking children–in contrast for example with children who natively speak Spanish who can decode Spanish texts fluently after about a year of education).
So I don’t think his knowing that the name came from Christus implies that he must have written it as christianos rather than chrestianos
Thanks so much for the answer.
So to sum up, you believe that he wrote Christus originally(which is exactly what we see today with no interpolation) and he wrote Chrestianus originally(which we see today as Christianus). The basis you depend your thoughts is that he wrote Christus as he had heard it pronounced, but I guess, when he had to write `christianus`, he thought and as you say the vower shifted and he wrote `chrestianus`. So we get `Christus` and `Chrestianos`.
Question 1: Is this what you believe as well that I wrote above just to make sure ?
Question 2: I’m asking this because this would be my basis what Suetonius meant when he sad: `Chrestus`. If you believe that Tacius mentioned `Christus`, then Suetonius is talking about a different person unless `Christus` and `Christus` were the words where people interchangeably write sometimes one, sometimes another but still referring to the same person, which I highly doubt. So This all means, if we believe in `Christus` and `Chrestianos` by Tacius, we have to agree that Suetonius means someone other than Jesus.
Would appreciate your inputs on this as it’s quite bugging me and I’m kind of new in the field. Appreciate it <3
to sum up, you believe that he wrote Christus originally(which is exactly what we see today with no interpolation) and he wrote Chrestianus originally(which we see today as Christianus)
I trust the editors unless I have a reason to doubt them. I haven’t looked into the question, but I don’t think the juxtaposition of chrestianos with christus is, of itself, a reason to think the editors messed up the spelling. I think that incongruity could be explained a number of different ways.
Now, having spent a few minutes looking into it, it seems the whole question is based on a single 11th century manuscript. Given that we know that that MS originally read chrestianos, it is impossible to say with certainty whether that is how Tacitus wrote it, or whether it was an error introduced by some illiterate scribe in the intervening millenium. (Although, lectio difficilior potior: it seems more likely that a pagan who died in c.120 couldn’t spell Christian than that a Christian scribe in 1000 couldn’t: even granting that Tacitus was certainly better educated. The fact that the variant spelling is found so late, makes it seem likely to be the original.)
If you believe that Tacius mentioned `Christus`, then Suetonius is talking about a different person
I seriously doubt that. Again, I think it is more likely these variant spellings are simply indications that this was a new word for pagan Latin speakers, and they were writing it as they heard it said.
It is also worth bearing in mind: the title Christus was originally Greek, Χρίστος; It was then transliterated into Latin and given a Latin 2nd declension ending. I don’t know that the system of transliteration from Greek to Latin characters was standardized (I should say, for at least some vowels, I know that it wasn’t standardized in the ancient world, and come to think on it, it still isn’t fully: sometimes upsilon comes into English as a Y and sometimes as a U).
I guess my point is, I don’t know why they used those spellings, and given that we are dealing with MSS from well into the middle ages, I’m not sure that they did use those spellings, but assuming they did, I don’t think we can draw any big conclusions from it. We are dealing with the ancient world–there was no spell check, there were no dictionaries. Rare, unusual, or new words were not always spelled consistently, even by the educated.
I was refreshing my memory of what Suetonius wrote on Christians, when I stumbled on this:
William L. Lane states that the confusion between Chrestus and Christus was natural enough for Suetonius, given that at that point in history the distinction between spelling and pronunciation was negligible.[34] Lane states that this is supported by the spelling of Christians in Acts 11:26, Acts 26:28 and in 1 Peter 4:16 where the uncial codex Sinaiticus reads Chrestianos.[34] Raymond E. Brown states in the second century, when Suetonius wrote, both Christus (Christ) and Christianus (Christian) were often written with an “e” instead of an “i” after the “r”.[35]
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Q1. To be honest, I don’t quite get what he means. In the Acts, it’s Christians. Why is it read Chrestianos in the uncial codex Sinaiticus ?
Q2. Well, we got very confusing mentions. but I want to express this, Suetonius was writing about Claudius 41-54. When he mentions instigator Chrestus, how would this be Jesus ? I guess, one can think of anything and I’m hitting my head on the wall. One argument Richard Carrier was he said that “The word “instigator” refers to the person who performs the act (i.e., making disturbances) and not to someone who is dead.”. Can we assume this is what instigator is ? someone who is alive ? in wikipedia, its meaning is: `a person who brings about or initiates something.`. So in my head, we could use instigator for someone who is dead as well. What’s your thoughts ?
Well, I understand that we can sum up that Chrestus still could be Jesus in Suetonius. I don’t have a problem with that, but Carrier’s arguments are quite good why it can’t be Jesus.
His arguments:
1. No other source—even Acts—mentions that the expulsion has to do with Christians.
2. Suetonius knew who Christians are and would not have referred to them as Jews and would not have written “because of the instigator Chrestus” but “because of the Christians”.
3. The text says “Chrestus”, not “Christ”; Chrestus was a common name.
4. The word “instigator” refers to the person who performs the act (i.e., making disturbances) and not to someone who is dead.
I can close my eye on 3 and 4 as they don’t seem strong arguments at all, but 1st and 2nd seem quite serious and valid. 1st one is valid, because in the Acts, we read:
“And he found a Jew named vAquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them”.
Nowhere is mentioned Christians. the author of Acts would certainly have made use of the fact that the Jews were making trouble for Christians in Rome and were duly punished for it by the emperor, so we can be fairly certain no such thing occurred (and thus no such rhetorical coup was available to the author of Acts). That’s the whole idea of apologetic acts(to defense the faith) and if the expulson was about christians, acts author would mention it. As for (2), It seems strange why Suetonius didn’t mention Christians himself. In Nero’s passage of his another book, he mentions them, so he knows who christians are.
Here is the Latin from the passage in Suetonius:
Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit
It is not a little ambiguous.
Aside from the question whether Chrestus means Christ or whether it is naming someone else (which is not impossible, given that Chrestus is an attested pagan name), there are at least two further issues.
One issue is whether Claudius expelled all Jews or only a subset who were always causing disruptions, i.e., does “assidue tumultuantis” describe the Jews in general (the Jews, who were together always making a disturbance), or should it be taken restrictively (he expelled that subset of Jews who were perpetually causing a disturbance, and left the rest alone)?
The other issue is that “impulsore Chresto” (the instigator Chrestus) is a bare ablative. Bare ablatives can express a lot of ** you do not have permission to see this link **, and you have to rely on context to figure out which possibility is intended by the author. I’d think this is an ablative of cause, and if that is right, then it wouldn’t really say anything about whether Chrestus was present at the time or not.
So the passage could be taken to say: “There was an instigator Chrestus. Some Jews in Rome were always making a disturbance because of him. Claudius kicked them out.” Notice it doesn’t say anything about whether this Chrestus was there in Rome at the time actively instigating those particular disturbances, or whether he (let’s say for example) had been an insurrectionist in a far away land, since executed, but for some reason there were Jews in Rome still routinely causing problems because of him.
Okay, that’s interesting: if Dio Cassius is there correcting
Suetonius, then that means he read Suetonius as claiming (mistakenly) that Claudius expelled all the Jews.
That opens a host of possibilities:
1) Cassius might just have misunderstood Suetonius.
But if he read him correctly, then that means Suetonius was claiming the Jews in general were making problems because of chrestus. That would imply either: 2a) there was no reliable distinction drawn between Jews and Christians (presumably at the time of Claudius, when the decree was issued?); Thus Christians making problems might have led to some crackdown on all Jews. 2b) Or the Jews and Christians were together infighting (perhaps at common meetings–which Claudius then barred them from holding) on account of chrestos, causing constant disturbances, and leading to both groups getting restricted together.
That final possibility makes a lot of sense to me. The Christians and Jews were meeting together (at the time of Claudius this would fit), and regularly getting into fights over Christ; Claudius says, if the police are gonna get called to your meeting to break up a brawl every Saturday, no more meetings for you. And forbidding Jews from meeting might have cause a natural, partial exodus as well as lowering their public visibility, which could explain Suetonius’s mistakenly claiming Claudius expelled them outright.
Right: there was certainly a tendency to identify Christians as a kind of Jew.
I suppose what I meant to say was: did all Roman Jews get caught up in whatever decree Claudius issued, even though it was only Christians actually making problems, simply because Claudius couldn’t adequately distinguish Christians (who were making problems) from other Jews; or did all Jews fall under his decree because both Christian and non Christian Jews were together making problems on account of Christ, for example, by entering into internecine disputes, when they met at synagogue, about Christ, which intramural disputes would periodically spill into the public square and become general disturbances; so that Claudius took action against all Jews because Jews of all schools were involved in the disturbances, and he didn’t have any interest in getting in the middle of their religious cat fight: “if you Jews can’t meet without causing a public disturbance, then you can’t meet.”
That all seems plausible.
My main interest interest is that, if the line of reasoning that got me to that picture is right (and that is a big if), it does paint an interesting picture of Christianity in the 40s and 50s.
Roman Christians were sufficiently numerous to attract the emperor’s attention. They were still very much part of the broader Jewish community (this is consonant with the impression given by Paul’s letter to the Romans), meeting with other Jews, discussing Christ with other Jews, but the relations were strained and hostile and regularly boiled over into significant public disturbances.
I will copy the mention again.
“`
Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, since they were always making disturbances because of the instigator Chrestus.
“`
Well, what I said about the argument that Acts would mention it, I meant it. Here is the tricky part what Suetonius means by the above quote.
Option 1: The jews weren’t christians in the above quote. So we got 4 different parties here(Romans, Jews, Christians, Chrestus). Then, Jews making problems because of Chrestus and Romans expelled them. In that case, the event is truly gold for apologetic Acts. apologetic Acts is the defence of the faith. So, if Chrestus is Jesus(Christian leader), and jews getting expelled, This is 100% defence.
Option 2: Maybe, Suetonius means the Jews(that are Christians) and in that case, we got 3 parties(Romans, Jewish Christians, Chrestus). In this case, Jewish Christians were making disturbances, in which case this wouldn’t be good for Apologetic Acts. But note Jewish Christians wouldn’t alone make a disturbance alone. If they were christians(which we presume they were), then Suetonius would have said who they had problems with.
I can definately close my eye on how the words are pronounced, written, and not pay much attention to it, but now that I think about, we don’t even have the context of what Suetonius means at all. Whether it’s Option 1 or 2.
Thoughts ?
So, you’re going with Option 2 in my latest reply.
In which case, I don’t get it. I understand the jew could make disturbances with Christians, but who would jewish christians make disturbances with ? they alone wouldn’t do that. So maybe jewish christians were making disturbances with non-jewish christians ? but in that case, Suetinous would have mentioned more that he mentioned.
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