19/03/2012

Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or Chrestians?

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Augustus: the Roman Messiah

Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or

Chrestians?
By John, on May 25th, 2011
2

Trajan view ing the trophies of his soldiers (Trajan's Column). Trajan and Hadrian - his adopted son, according to Trajan's w ife - instigated the Second
and Third Jew ish-Roman Wars.

One of the reasons given commonly to justify belief in a historical Jesus Christ of the first century is that supposedly, there is
contemporaneous, or at least ancient evidence in support. This position has been undermined very considerably by our Catalogue of
Chrest . One of the few remaining textual sources left in support of an historical Jesus Christ Christianity in the first centuries even is
the correspondence between Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (62-c.115) Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan, the claim for
which we will now examine.
Our own studies, based on primary sources, first showed how there is much archaeology for a magical Jesus Chrest Jesus the Good
beginning to appear towards the end of the last century BCE.
We then examined the earliest codices of the New Testament, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, where we found no mention of Christ at all.
Instead, we found Chrest , various Greek titles such as Soter, and abbreviations. None of these are specifically and unambiguously
Christian. Rather, they belong to a Greek culture we have come to term Panhellenism belief in a God other than the Hebrew.
My interpretation of this Good is the great and the good in the sense of power and authority, both secular and magical, for the
name Jesus is being used magically to command events.
Many of the characters who appear in Christian tradition are represented in the historical record, though not as Christian. We have begun
to treat some of them, such as Saul kinsman of Costobarus in Josephus, the imperial chamberlain Epaphroditus, and elite Romans
such as Clemens and Pudens; there are many more and we have come to regard them as Chrestian .
In the first century of this era, Chrestians are the elite, the great and the good and not until the reign of Domitian, when Hadrian first
takes public office, or perhaps a little later, with his Antinous, is Chrest associated with those outside the elite circles of imperial power.
The life of Pliny encompasses the reign of a number of emperors, including Domitian, and letters attributed to him have been published
and republished very many times in the last 500 years or so. He is historical and few would doubt that the bulk of his correspondence
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Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or Chrestians?

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is

Piece of the marble slab that once adorned the public baths at
Comum, inscribed w ith the distinctions of Pliny the Younger.
Sant' Ambrogio church. (C.I.L. v. 5262)
There is no 'Christ' in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, the tw o oldest codices of the New
Testament.

genuine.
The tenth book consists of letters to and from the emperor
Trajan, mostly written during Pliny s governorship. In these

letters, he seeks rulings from Trajan on matters arising in his province.

This assumption has been made by scholars for centuries and is one of the few, apparently-effective arguments for the historicity of
Christianity in the first two centuries. They could make an effective antidote to our study of chrestic archaeology.

Pliny, Letters 10.96-97

Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
It is my practice, my lord, to refer to you all matters concerning which I am in doubt. For who can better give guidance to my hesitation or
inform my ignorance? I have never participated in trials of Christians. I therefore do not k now what offenses it is the practice to punish or
investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no
difference between the very young and the more mature; whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a
Christian, it does him no good to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated
with the name are to be punished.
Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these
as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment;
those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible
obstinacy surely deserve to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I
signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome.
Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous
document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they
invok ed the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this
purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be
forced to do these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it,
asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years.
They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day
before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit
fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their
custom to depart and to assemble again to partak e of food but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to
do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the
more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else
but depraved, excessive superstition.
I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially
because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank , and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the
contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and
cure it. It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established
religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few
purchasers could be found. Hence it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is
afforded.
Trajan to Pliny
You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not
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Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or Chrestians?

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possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a k ind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and
proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it that is, by
worshiping our gods even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted
accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous k ind of precedent and out of k eeping with the spirit
of our age.
The question arises, from our point of view: what is the primary source of this published correspondence? That is, are they based on the
letters themselves? The short answer is no , they are not based on his letters.
This translation is based on the text of the letters edited by R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1963), which is faithfully reproduced in
the Loeb edition (ed. B. Radice, 1969). It rests on three separate manuscript traditions, which Mynors labels alpha, beta,
gamma, and which are popularly known as the Nine-book, Ten-book, and Eight-book versions.
The Nine-book tradition is represented by two ninth-century manuscripts M and V, and V does not survive after V 6, leaving
M as the sole representative of this tradition for V 7 to IX. The Ten-book tradition (beta) provides the sole evidence for
Book X; no manuscript survives after V 6, so that we are dependent on printed editions for the rest. The Eightbook version (so called because it does not contain Book VIII) has no complete surviving manuscript, and provides the least
reliable readings of the three. Mynors helpfully prefaces his edition with a book-by-book survey of the available evidence
from the three traditions. The section numbers of Mynors text are given in the margins. The existence of the letters as we
have them is attributable to the heroic endeavours of the Italian and French humanists. They assembled them from widely
dispersed texts of the three traditions. There is an enlightening brief account by Reynolds in L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts
and Transmission (Oxford, 1983), 316-22. (Pliny the Younger, Complete Letters, A new translation by P.G. Walsh, OUP
Oxford 2009)
From an earlier, classic collection:
Sources of the Text
For the first nine Books, we have three distinct sources, viz. (a) MSS. containing Books I.-V., of which the best are R
(Florentinus Ashburnhamensis R. 98 olim Riccardianus), tenth century, F (Laurentianus S. Marci 284), tenth-eleventh
century; (6) MSS. containing Books I. -VII. and IX., all of the fifteenth century, of which D (Dresdensis D. 166) is
representative; (c) MSS. containing nine books, of which the best is M (Laurentianus 47. 36). V (Vaticanus 3864) is closely
akin to M, but contains only Books I.-IV. The text of Book X. depends on a lost MS. which contained also the first nine
Books. While this was still extant at Paris, copies of it by different hands were used by Avantius of Verona for his edition of
1502, and by Aldus in 1508. But while the Aldine edition gave the tenth Book entire, the first forty Letters are for some
reason missing in that of Avantius. A MS. of these Letters has been discovered by Hardy in the Bodleian Library, which
appears to be the actual copy from which Aldus printed.
In France Giovanni Giocondo (c. 1433 1515) a Dominican priest, claimed to have discovered a manuscript of Pliny the Younger s letters
containing copies of his correspondence with Trajan. Two Italian editions of Pliny s Epistles were published by Giocondo, one printed in
Bologna in 1498 and one from the press of Aldus Manutius in 1508.
The earliest letters are medieval and we do not know what
exactly Pliny may have written Chrest or Christ.
Such is the case for all texts claimed in support for early
Christianity: they either use Chrest, an abbreviation, or they
do not exist and belong to a Christian textual tradition,
rather than history. By understanding their context, we may
learn something useful.
If we are to find any value in the Testimonia, the many texts
for which no primary source material exists, such as Pliny
and Justin amongst others, it is by studying them within
their archaeological context.
The term used in the artefactual evidences of the early
centuries is Chrest/Good not messiah and Jesus the
Good, and that is the context within which the missing
primary source material should be interpreted.
If the Pliny-Trajan correspondence is genuine, then we may
consider the term used was not Christian, but Chrestian.
This method of interpretation applies also to the earliest
codices of the New Testament.
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May 25th, 2011 Tags: Antinous, Archaeology, Bithynia, Chrest, Chrestian, Christianity, Clemens, Codex Vaticanus, deaconesses, Domitian,
Epaphroditus, Hadrian, historicity, historiography, history, Jesus Christ, Josephus, messiah, New Testament, Nicomedia, Paul of Tarsus, Pliny
the Younger, primary sources, Pudens, religion, Roman Empire, Saul, Testimonia, Trajan Category: Archaeology, chrestology, Roman Empire
The History of Antiquity Edit this post

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Edward
And that's just the thing: we HAVE to interpret the literary evidence in light of the archaeological evidence, because the Christians
seem to have conveniently "lost" the original writings!
I did this sort of thing with the subject of crucifixion and it turns out the ancients were talking about, as far as the Roman
methodology was concerned, a method of compulsory self-impalement! A most wicked, cruel, shameful and disgusting form of
execution.
And there's the issue of forgeries! For example, contrary to the scholarly consensus, I am firmly convinced that Josephus'
Antiquities 18.3.3 and the Jamesian passage in 20.9.2 are forgeries, likely committed by Eusebius. What else did they forge???
9 months ago

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