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An Evaluation of the Claim that Christians were the Source for Tacitus in Annals 15.44
Back to Overall Defense of Tacitus Page.
As quoted on the main page in defense of the Tacitus passage, the objections to it do not typically revolve around arguments of interpolation. There just isn't any evidence for such a view. Instead, the argument has centered around the sources for Tacitus, in an attempt to perform the bizarre trick of saying that only the existence of Christians is shown in the passage, and not the existence of Christ. Below is a summary of the argument, copied from the front page of this essay, here.
The argument against utilizing the Tacitus passage can be found summarized neatly here:
"There are serious problems with Tacitus' account concerning the historicity of Jesus. Roman imperial documents would never refer to Jesus by his Christian title as 'Christ' and Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator. This has led many scholars to conclude that the passage is a later Christian interpolation, inserted to provide validity to their fledgling movement. Unlike Josephus however, no real evidence exists to suggest literal textual tampering, so this has become a controversial position to take and others like Robertson, prefer to say that Tacitus was merely repeating a story told to him by contemporary Christians. Considering the inaccuracy in the passage, the latter is just as valid an explanation as the interpolation suggestion. Either way it puts us no closer to the historicity of Jesus because by the end of the first century the passion narrative, as told by Paul, was already well known."- James Still, "Biblical and Extrabiblical Sources for Jesus"
We have three specific objections:
The main page handled #2. We are going to our time mainly on #3 here. #1 we are going to summarily dismiss as pompous time-traveling mind reading. We don't know what Roman imperial documents would say in regards to Jesus. If we actually had some Roman records to look at in regards to Jesus, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Nonetheless, I do believe we can put together an argument suggesting the opposite of the claim made in #1, but that is not our purpose here. #3 will be our focus.
When Tacitus was writing his Annals, Christianity had spread far and wide. His friend, Pliny, had encountered some, and Pliny in turn asked Trajan what to do about the Christians. The thought is that it cannot be denied that it is at least a good possibility that Tacitus learned of Christ from Christians. Or, if he learned of Christ from Pliny, then it was Pliny that learned it from Christians, so that in either case, the ultimate source was Christians. (We'll just ignore the more obvious inference that Pliny gained information from Trajan- obvious if only because we actually have EVIDENCE for that inference). However, it is not impossible to test this 'good possibility.'
Neither Tacitus or Pliny ruled or resided in the region of Judea, and it is unlikely that my skeptical reader will want to admit that Christian traditions having the original apostles roaming the empire, so it is probably safest to merely point out that whomever these Christians were that provided the source material for Tacitus, they were probably second or third generation Christians. It can't be much more than that, because Jesus died in 33 AD, and Tacitus was writing not much more than 70 years after the alleged event starting the whole Christian movement. The message of the Christian movement would not have had much time to become corrupted, and we are aware of numerous Christian documents from the time in question. Those whom Tacitus gleaned his information from would have themselves gleaned their information from the first or second generation of Christians. Tacitus' passage provides us with two possibilities then:
Obviously, #1 depends in large part how #2 turns out. Since we do have so much early Christian documents available containing the message of Christianity, we can compare the details of Tacitus' remarks with the content of this material. If the content of this Christian material does not contain the information that Tacitus includes, the reasonable conclusion is that Christians were not the source for Tacitus at all.
We need to revisit the passage:
"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. 1. Christus, 2. from whom the name had its origin, 3. suffered the extreme penalty 4. during the reign of Tiberius at the 5. hands of one of our procurators, 6. Pontius Pilatus, and a 7. most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, 8. 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." Tacitus, Annals 15. [I have numbered sections for ease of discussion]
We have here a number of specific details given to us about whom this 'Christus' is. For one thing, we have his existence affirmed right off by mentioning his name in #1. But let's not belabor the obvious.
Of this section, what information do we think would come from the Christians? #1-6 clearly represent elements of the alleged Christian message.
I have an argument that 'Christus' itself is inconsistent with how Christians would describe Jesus, but I will not deal with that now. Assume that #1 would be part of the Christian message, and #2 a natural inference for Tacitus, even if Christians hadn't told him. #4 is indeed in the Christian literature, as is #6. However, #3 and #5 are not.
I did an exhaustive search through the Christian material available in search of any description of Jesus fate on the cross as 'suffering the extreme penalty' or Pontius Pilate as a procurator. You can look yourself by perusing this Bible study search tool: http://www.biblegateway.com
What does one discover when one abandons their fruitless search for the word 'procurator' in the New Testament and turns instead to a search for Pilate? I made my own collection from the NIV, which you can peruse here. The New Testament uniformly describes Pilate as 'governor,' NOT procurator. Before we go further, we need to establish a time frame. This site here contains a fairly exhaustive list of relevant Christian material, and serves another purpose: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ This site provides translations and interesting source material for most of the Christian documents available and known to exist. It includes, of course, the New Testament, and others. The other purpose I was referring to was the fact that it ascribes dates of authorship that tend to be ... shall we say... slanted to the liberal side. The clearest example would be Luke and Acts, which conservative scholars would definately put no later then 80-100 AD, the date the site gives for Matthew. Conservative scholars would argue for earlier dates for all of the Gospels, but as we will see as we go, if the notion that Tacitus gained his information from Christians fails miserably with a conservative dating of the NT, it fails even worse with liberal dating.
Tacitus is on this page, and the date of 115 AD is given. That means that the scope of our search for instances of either 'procurator' or 'extreme punishment' will be confined primarily to the Christian sources prior to that date. There simply is not a single reference. In fact, the NT, as I said, uses the word 'governor,' which is what Philo used, who wrote c. 40 AD. If Tacitus was going to get his information from Christian sources, then Christians would simply have told Tacitus that Pilate was a governor, not a 'prefect' or a 'procurator.' Thus, no matter how reasonable it may be to entertain such propositions, the uniform citation of 'governor' tells us exactly what the content of the Christian message was. This argues strongly that Tacitus did not gain his information from Christians.
I have mentioned 'extreme punishment' but I haven't expanded on it. I have actually come across one silly person that thinks, apparently, that it requires demonstration that 'extreme punishment' refers to crucifixion. But that is neither here nor there for our purposes. The question is how Christians would have described it, in order for Tacitus to have used it. I again point you to the texts in question. You will see that the Christian material is quick to point out that Jesus died on a cross through crucifixion- and it does this often. Of course "It's possible" that Tacitus heard 'crucifixion' and then translated it for his own purposes (which I suppose would mean that any silly person who thinks that 'extreme punishment' might not mean crucifixion could not at the same time think that Tacitus heard 'crucifixion,' and then translated it. Gotta pick one.). If the contention is that Tacitus is borrowing from the Christian message, however, this deviation is telling on it's face. We are to suppose that Tacitus parrotted the Christian message on 'procurator' but deviated on 'exteme punishment.' Such logic is not logical at all. I could turn around and say that Tacitus deviated on procurator, but parroted with 'extreme punishment.' If such speculations are allowed to roam free, then we lose any hope to think that there is any real basis for the claim that Tacitus was borrowing anything from Christians. Pick a story and stick to it, or abandon it.
At anyrate, the NT material does not contain references either to 'extreme punisment' or 'procurator Pilate,' and in fact is not silent on those topics, but uniformly substitutes their own language for those topics instead. Tacitus does not use that language, but uses other language instead. Obviously, the conclusion is because he did not gain his information from the Christians.
Now we return to the liberal dating problem mentioned above. The Gospel of Mark is conceded by all as being of early dating. No later than 80 AD, but conservatives and others entertain 45-50 AD. Matthew and Luke are said to have borrowed from Mark, but John appears to be independant. All three of these are listed by liberal scholars as not being written until the decade near when Tacitus was writing. Thus, if their dating is correct, then these Gospels, the primary expressions of the Christian message, represented the sort of content that Christians who might have interacted with Tacitus were familiar with. In this vein, it isn't even helpful to argue that Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark, because it is agreed that John is independant of the synoptics, and John also refers to Pilate as a governor. Given the liberal dating, it simply is no longer tenable to think that Christians were talking of Pilate as a procurator, since (given the liberal dating!) they are on record at that very specific time referring to him as a governor! At least with a conservative dating one might argue that later Christians had possibly become cloudy on the exact title of Pilate (baseless, of course), but the liberal dates show that if they were cloudy, they were at least agreed on Pilate's title as 'governor.'
If someone wants to reject the liberal dates, they do so at the cost of having to favor the conservative dates, which make the writings earlier and closer to the time in question, and therefore more credible all the way around. I don't know what the skeptic will do with this terrible set of choices. I take that back: they'll simply deny that they are forced into any such choice, and favor the liberal dating AND deny the significance that this has in relation to Tacitus's information from Christians, running around talking about 'governors' and not 'procurators.
I searched through all of the NT and most of the books listed on www.earlychristianwritings.com in search for any reference to Pilate as anything other than procurator. I only found one, and I'm afraid it doesn't help the person wishing to pin Tacitus' statements on Christians. Justin Martyr indisputably argued c. 150-160 AD, which is long after Tacitus' Annals were written. In his First Apology, we read:
"Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove."
The pattern is very similar to what we saw in Tacitus, but coming some 35 years after Tacitus wrote himself, we can make Tacitus one of Justin's sources. Or, there is always the possibility that no one at the time ever thought to dispute that Pilate was a procurator in the first place, and so Justin's citation of Pilate as a procurator rather than a governor, like the rest of the Christian material did, represents some research by Justin. It certainly doesn't help skeptics to take a position where any suggestion is made that a person actually did research, because that indicates other sources that were available, and skeptics really don't like that idea. You see that clearly in the Tacitus passage in particular, where even though Tacitus was known to use imperial sources, in this ONE case, its intolerable to draw the natural conclusion that he did in that case, as well.
Note, too, the unambiguity about the nature of Christ's death given to us by Justin Martyr compared to how Tacitus described it.
In conclusion, the absence of the description of Pilate as 'procurator' and Jesus death described as suffering the 'extreme punishment' in Christian literature at the very time when Tacitus was writing and allegedly getting information from Christians familiar with the very same Christian message that spawned that literature, completely undermines positions that Tacitus actually learned this material from Christians. There is no hint in the Christian material of the time, or earlier, or for another 35 years, of knowledge of Pilate as anything other than 'governor.'
Thus, #3's objection above is untenable. #2 is being refuted here, and that only leaves #1, but #1 was a weak argument in the first place.
Now, the other side of this is that the NT references to Pilate as a 'governor' is completely acceptable and consistent with other descriptions of the leadership in the region at the time. As mentioned before, Philo's statement that Pilate was appointed governor illustrates that this term was perfectly acceptable to use at the time. Thus, arguments that people writing at the time would have used the proper term, and thus the NT is disqualified, is itself disqualified, as 'governor' was in fact a proper term! If the view is that the Gospel's credibility decreases if, for example, they had described Pilate as a procurator rather than a prefect, as alleged by some, he was, then it ought to increase if the Gospels do NOT use the term, and in fact do use a proper term. I say this in response to this correspondence discussed here, where an atheist asserted that the Gospels describe Pilate as a procurator- which is clearly discoverd as false. (That's the sort of pit fall you fall in when you only read the writings of others and don't dig into the primary sources yourself). In the same correspondence, that the Gospels use the word 'governor' rather than 'prefect' as this atheist would expects, indicates to him that the Gospel authors were out of touch with the proper designation of Pilate. As the Philo passage shows (among others), it was perfectly appropriate to call Pilate a 'governor.'
All in all, then, this argument has allowed me to simultaneously bolster the credibility of Tacitus' passage in Annals 15, but also the credibility of the Christian material itself.