The Ancient Evidence for Jesus (Pt 4)

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these. Not that big a deal, again, it’s for my benefit. I’ve come across some new (to me) stuff almost by accident. So I’ll be talking about it at some point in the near future. Probably. Unless I run out of steam here and just drop the whole thing.

I don’t think I will, but you never know. This really helps me think. Yay for blogging. But some of this new stuff doesn’t really apply to the topic of this post, which is Pliny the Younger!

I can almost hear sweaty palms at the mere mention of the name.*

So, yeah, the sweaty palms things sent me spiraling for a bit. Where was I? Oh, I’ve been, when the spirit guides me, laying down my thoughts on the extra-biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus. I think I’ve mentioned my flirtation with mythicism in one of my previous posts. I feel like I need to interject here that I’m specifically looking for EXTRA-biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus. That means that the earliest written documents we have I’m discounting for this exercise (that would be the uncontested letters of Paul – and maybe the book of Hebrews). So, I am aware that there are lines of evidence that I’m not considering here. I do want to look at the bible, the Gospels, the epistles and other letters of the NT and discuss at some point.

The original text

But that’s outside the scope of this series,  I mean, it’s right there in the title. I’m looking outside the bible. Mainly for references to Jesus within 100 years or so of when most people think he was crucified.

I’m working my way down a list I’ve sort of laid out.


The Claim: The Pliny the Younger wrote a letter requesting advice on how to handle Christians. 

And that's pretty dead on accurate, I think. As I mentioned, I’m up to Pliny the Younger. My take on it, right off the bat. This claim is rock solid. However, I have to say that I believe (I dunno, maybe I’m wrong) that it’s safe to say that the younger of the Plinys offered nothing in the way of evidence for Jesus actually existing. He does, however, attest that there were Christians at this time, and maybe can offer a teeny little insight into how they thought and believed.

I have to also mention that I’m actually excited to talk about this. Mostly because Pliny’s uncle (the Elder) was a pretty interesting person in his own right. Moreso, I think, than the Younger was. And he has a passing point of interest for me and my quest for discovering the historical Jesus as well, just nothing worth mentioning in its own post.

Pliny the Younger did grow up under the tutelage of his uncle. And as a child of privilege in a world where there weren’t tons of those types, he knew, and was friends with, Tacitus (who will come up later in this series (and maybe in this very post… so exciting)). By itself that’s nothing, but the two people are intertwined, so I figured I’d bring their relationship up now.

So, Pliny the Younger’s letters that he wrote throughout his life were collected, more or less in chronological order, and published. They covered some pretty boring stuff, like gardening and the minutia of governing. But he did, there towards the very end, have something to say about a particular legal issue he was having regarding Christians. Pliny said the following in Book 10, letter 96:

“It is my custom, Sir, to refer to you in all cases where I do not feel sure, for who can better direct my doubts or inform my ignorance? I have never been present at any legal examination of the Christians, and I do not know, therefore, what are the usual penalties passed upon them, or the limits of those penalties, or how searching an inquiry should be made. I have hesitated a great deal in considering whether any distinctions should be drawn according to the ages of the accused; whether the weak should be punished as severely as the more robust; whether if they renounce their faith they should be pardoned, or whether the man who has once been a Christian should gain nothing by recanting; whether the name itself, even though otherwise innocent of crime, should be punished, or only the crimes that gather round it.

"In the meantime, this is the plan which I have adopted in the case of those Christians who have been brought before me. I ask them whether they are Christians; if they say yes, then I repeat the question a second and a third time, warning them of the penalties it entails, and if they still persist, I order them to be taken away to prison. For I do not doubt that, whatever the character of the crime may be which they confess, their pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy certainly ought to be punished.   There were others who showed similar mad folly whom I reserved to be sent to Rome, as they were Roman citizens.   Subsequently, as is usually the way, the very fact of my taking up this question led to a great increase of accusations, and a variety of cases were brought before me. A pamphlet was issued anonymously, containing the names of a number of people. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians and called upon the gods in the usual formula, reciting the words after me, those who offered incense and wine before your image, which I had given orders to be brought forward for this purpose, together with the statues of the deities - all such I considered should be discharged, especially as they cursed the name of Christ, which, it is said, those who are really Christians cannot be induced to do. Others, whose names were given me by an informer, first said that they were Christians and afterwards denied it, declaring that they had been but were so no longer, some of them having recanted many years before, and more than one so long as twenty years back. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the deities, and cursed the name of Christ. But they declared that the sum of their guilt or their error only amounted to this, that on a stated day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak and to recite a hymn among themselves to Christ, as though he were a god, and that so far from binding themselves by oath to commit any crime, their oath was to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, and from breach of faith, and not to deny trust money placed in their keeping when called upon to deliver it. When this ceremony was concluded, it had been their custom to depart and meet again to take food, but it was of no special character and quite harmless, and they had ceased this practice after the edict in which, in accordance with your orders, I had forbidden all secret societies.  I thought it the more necessary, therefore, to find out what truth there was in these statements by submitting two women, who were called deaconesses, to the torture, but I found nothing but a debased superstition carried to great lengths. So I postponed my examination, and immediately consulted you. The matter seems to me worthy of your consideration, especially as there are so many people involved in the danger. Many persons of all ages, and of both sexes alike, are being brought into peril of their lives by their accusers, and the process will go on. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only through the free cities, but into the villages and the rural districts, and yet it seems to me that it can be checked and set right. It is beyond doubt that the temples, which have been almost deserted, are beginning again to be thronged with worshippers, that the sacred rites which have for a long time been allowed to lapse are now being renewed, and that the food for the sacrificial victims is once more finding a sale, whereas, up to recently, a buyer was hardly to be found. From this it is easy to infer what vast numbers of people might be reclaimed, if only they were given an opportunity of repentance.”

I didn’t go through and bold certain sections, like I’ve done previously, because I feel the whole letter is relevant. And so there you have it. A pretty interesting letter, and the first one I’m aware of outside of the NT that openly and unambiguously discusses Christianity. I haven’t consulted much by the way of scholarly commentary on this (only reading what others have said in the books of doctors Richard Carrier and Robert E Van Voorst).

Does he look like a guy that tortures ladies for info?
Both agree that while not mentioning Jesus directly, it is clear that Christians of the time were around and prayed to Christ as if he were a god (a translators note in one of the links above mention there is some ambiguity on what that should mean, it could have said Christ AND God, but close enough, this isn’t theology) . And if the letter is to be believed, that by this time, remember we’re more than a decade into the second century, the faith was starting to spread – and that Pliny thought an effort to spruce up the old places of worship might make people leave that (Christian) superstition and come back to the gods of old.

Also, it’s hard not to notice his casual mention of taking two Christian ladies, and torturing them to find out more about the faith. Geez.

Regardless of the casual brutality mentioned (and feel free to read Trajan’s response, in letter 97, if you’re interested… again, you can find it in the link above as well), Carrier does go into some detail in his book, On the Historicity of Jesus where he finds some of Pliny’s letter odd if the historical Jesus (or the first decades of Christianity) was anything at all like what was described in the Gospels and Acts.

He notes (and I’m tempted to do another extended quotation, but I’ll try to paraphrase and hope I don’t muddy the point in doing so) that Pliny had been governor of this region for more than a year, and prior to that served as consul to Trajan (that made him the highest official in all of Rome, after the emperor), spent decades as a lawyer, was the praetor of Rome, and was a top legal advisor to Trajan for years… but he’d never seen a trial involving Christians before. And knew almost nothing of what they believed (remember, he had to torture the clergy to find out) or what crimes they were guilty of.

And that is weird, the mythicist’s take that Carrier endorses make the case that is what we’d expect if Christianity really started to blossom around the beginning of the second century, with the belief in Jesus (only referred to as Christ in this letter, I’d point out) being sort of formulated out of more fluid set of beliefs and legends, then it makes sense that Pliny the Younger is just now starting to learn about the faith.

On top of this, Pliny the Elder becomes relevant again, so I’m about to take a very long digression, which I hope will tie back in to this later. The Elder of the Plinys adopted the Younger, (Pliny the Younger’s father died, his mother (The Elder’s sister) and son were taken care of by Elder, got it?) and the Younger greatly admired his uncle. The elder died, if the Younger’s account (You should read that link, it’s a letter to Tacitus (Again with that guy) and is a pretty great read) is accurate, trying to rescue survivors of the eruption of Vesuvius and shouting "Fortune favors the bold!" as he led the naval vessel he commanded into the plume of smoke and ash that killed him. Upon his death, his works were handed down to his nephew, the Younger.

Pliny the Elder produced Natural History, which was sort of the encyclopedia Britannica of its day, it
Pliny the Elder... actual photo
was a monumental work. He also completed a (now lost) history or Rome, which covered, among other things, the reign of Nero.

What’s weird about that, is that Nero’s persecution of Christians is legendary. The burning of Rome and it’s blame on the Christians is what Younger’s good friend Tacitus is famous for writing about (That's not technically true... don't worry about it, I'll get to it later when I do a post on Tacitus).

So for the Younger to be like, ‘I never heard of these guys before,’ is really, really weird. As is always the case, there are a thousand things I don’t know about why that could be the case. But for a man, in the Elder, that spent the entire reign of Nero in hiding (more or less, I mean, hiding is an exaggeration, but he wrote almost exclusively about grammar during Nero’s reign, presumably to avoid getting on the man’s legendary bad side), for his nephew, who knew his uncle’s work intimately, to have never heard of Christians until just before he died as an old man, that is the sort of an oddity that begs for an answer, because it does not fit with how we’d expect someone to act if their adoptive father wrote a book that should have explained who they were and what they believed.

I dunno, this gets me confused, somewhat. But I’ll pick it back up in more detail when I get to Tacitus later. Until then, I’ll keep scratching my head.

 But to reiterate my larger point. I do think the passage is legit.** I don't think it sheds any light on the historical Jesus. And his Uncle's detailed history of Nero's rain (which, if what I read about the lost book is correct - contained a whole volume dedicated to the year Nero blamed the Christians for burning the city) seems to make Pliny's ignorance of Christendom a mystery. This raises a few questions, for me at least.

 *I have no idea what that sentence means. It's a glimpse into the gooey insides of my mind, I guess. 

**  In an effort to bring up as much relevant information that I can on the topic, I feel I must point out that I have come across the opinion that the entire letter (and Trajan's response) are forgeries in their entirety. I dismissed the argument without much consideration, they did have a point or two to make, but overall I felt it was simply too unsupported for me to take seriously. Now, I sorta want to go back and review that argument, but I cannot recall where I read it, and I really check as many sources as I can before I write anything (despite how poorly sourced these rants are) and I only hang on to stuff I think is important. 

Comments

Post a Comment