Re-thinking Nero's fire

[Joanne98]

Since members of the Christian right are so evil and LIE constantly, I'm having to re-think anything the church has said. Maybe the Christian faith has been making stuff up all along. I never thought I'd be asking these questions but since the conservatives are showing us day after day the lengths they will go to get their way I'm really starting to wonder..

This is probably a trend. I don't see how the faith can survive with in-your-face pathological and evil liars in charge of it. I'm sure there are good Christians that care about their faith but they better start getting serious about taking it back from the bad guys cause even a slight look at historical spinning could throw the whole church into question.

The question has to be asked... "Was Nero telling the truth when he accused the Christians of starting the fire" If they were anything like the christian right then he probably was.

A big clue. Nero lost more than anyone. I'm going to assume if somebody burnt down your palace you probably has some idea who did it.



Nero’s Fire and the Christian Persecution?


That there was a fire in Rome when Nero was emperor is fairly certain; just about every emperor had one. It is mentioned in a few, very few, ancient references. The Tacitus reference is backed up by a contemporary of the fire, Pliny the Elder and by his own contemporary Suetonius. The legend, on the other hand, that Nero fiddled while Rome burned became a popular fiction.



The fire under Nero could not have been as extensive as Tacitus’ passage, and popular imagination, would have it. Historical and archaeological evidence somewhat diminishes the importance of Nero’s fire. His fire destroyed, at most, a tenth of the city. The important temples like that of Jupiter Captiolinus and Apollo, along with the major public buildings, private mansions and tenements survived. As did the Circus Maximus in the district where the fire started, which was in use nine months later. It had slight damage to the wooden upper story and stairs, but no major damage to the stonework. Nero’s recently completed palace was the major victim of the fire. He lost the most.



The Capitol and surrounding buildings survived to be burnt in the battle between the forces of Vitellius and Vespasian in December of 69 CE. The more serious fire, which burnt the Campus Martius and many major public buildings in the centre of Rome, happened in 80 CE, when Titus was emperor. The Christians were not blamed for this one.



According to Tacitus, alone, Nero blamed the Christians for the fire in Rome. Annals, XV. This passage is not referred to in any other pagan, nor Christian writings until 400 CE. The Fantastic details of the sufferings of the Christians - dressed in animal hides and torn apart by dogs, crucified, and used as human torches - fits the pornographic masochistic obsession of the early Church. The sordid details of flesh torn and blood copiously shed is repulsive to the modern mind. For some reason the early Church wallowed in graphic descriptions of virgins violated and gored to death by bulls, old men crucified suffering horrific tortures and not to mention the over-fed lions of the Colosseum. By the way, the Romans did not feed their lions exclusively on Christians, any old mal-content would do; and more often did.



Eusebius, when the Church was triumphant in the 4th century, after the ‘persecutions’ could only find 146 martyrs in the history. As we shall see, in Lactantius, between Domitian in the nineties and Decius in the late 3rd century there was a long peace where the Church was not persecuted. There was then a brief period of political persecution, especially under Diocletian, before his successor formed an alliance with them in the beginning of the 4th century. Constantine defeated his political opponents with the assistance of the Christians and recognized the fact when he held power. This period, of the Ante & Post-Nicene Fathers, knows nothing of Nero’s fire and its Christian victims.

Continued>>>
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/Nero.htm

Nero’s recently completed palace was the major victim of the fire. He lost the most.


I'd be interested to see a list of what the early Christians were accused of doing. It might expose methods that they are using to this day.

[Taverner]

1. I always thought they started that fire

Remember Rome was the new "Sodom"

It was a pagan state that made them honor laws over the "will of God"

So they start the fire, hoping to bring it down and rule in the ensuing chaos... at least that was the plan

[havocmom]

2. deja vue all over again ?

You two might be onto something.

[Joanne98]

6. That's what is sounds like to me.

[The Magistrate]

10. Imitative Magic, Sir: Attempting To Force The Hand Of God To Move The End Of Rome

[roguevalley]

19. there is a theory that they burned down the alexandrian library

during the roman rampage to rid the world of competing theory and theology.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. I always thought it was unlikely that Nero

would start a fire just so he could blame Christians. If he wanted to persecute Christians, he was already free to do so, with or without a fire.

[Warpy]

5. Plus, he had popular support among the ruling class to do so

His persecution increased after the fire, probably due to his suspicion that the Christians had started it, or more properly, them. Forensic archaeology has determined there were actually several contemporary fires, all of which were started in the poor, Christian areas and some of which showed signs of being re ignited once they'd been extinguished.

Nero's conduct toward Rome was actually quite good. He opened temples and palaces away from the fire to refugees and helped to coordinate fire fighting efforts.

Christianity will likely survive the current crop of Dispensationalist liars. After all, it survived the most corrupt age of the Roman church and its divine right kings, albeit with a schism into several competing sects.

There are two components to modern Christianity, the myth and the teachings. Organized religions and the state naturally gravitate toward supporting the myth and ignoring the teachings, which are contrary to the needs of power.

It would be very interesting to jump ahead and see how the Dispensationalists are treated by future historians, whether they'll be deodorized like the Christian thugs in Nero's day were or not.

[raccoon]

18. Christian thugs in Nero's day? Elucidate, my dear Warpy.

Maybe they were, but where'd you hear that?

[The Magistrate]

25. That Would Depend, Sir, On the Definition Given To Several Terms

'Christian', or something fairly similar, would have been a common usage for anyone 'zealous for the Messiah' in Rome at that time. This category would certainly have taken in some rough types. To Roman authorities, and the Roman populace, the strain of belief we have come to view as the antecedents of Christendom was just one more band of Jewish zealots calling for their god to end Rome in wrath and fire.

The first wave of believers in the resurrected Messiah were definitely a 'doom-folk', preaching that the end of the world was already begun, and that in only a short time Rome would indeed be destroyed in fire. Persons who joined the cult had to sever all normal social and familial relations, since these were inextricably inter-woven with religious practices they could no longer involve themselves with.

In a culture in which ritual cursing was still considered an actual and potent weapon, in which magic was taken to be real, and its improper exercise was a crime, the speech of believers in the resurrected Messiah would necessarily have been regarded as criminal, as seeking to harm Rome, its rulers, people, and imperium. It would not be taken as a light matter at all by the authorities.

[struggle4progress]

26. I'm not an expert on christian apocalyptic ideas, but I suspect they did not really become

popular until after Nero's death. The epistles do not seem particularly apocalyptic, and the epistle to the Romans, perhaps a decade before the fire, is certainly not a text calling upon the church in Rome to set fire to the city. The gospels (which are later) contain definite anti-apocalyptic elements, such as (in Matthew and Luke) It is a wicked generation that asks for a sign but the only sign that will be given them is the sign of Jonah -- a reference to the tale of a reluctant prophet who predicts the destruction of Ninevah, but with the result that Ninevah is not destroyed. The one obvious apocalyptic text is Revelation, but it dates from the post-Nero period: the beast (alternately numbered as 666 or 616 in old texts) is apparently a reference (using standard ancient alphabetic numerology with either Greek or Latin versions of the by-then-deceased emperor's name) to an expected reappearance of Nero

[The Magistrate]

27. Paul, Sir, Is Blitheringly Apocalyptic

His preaching is saturated with the idea that in only a very little time, the Christ will return and the End commence. That will encompass the destruction of wickedness personified by Rome. In this he was not unique, or separate from what was at the time the true center of the cult in Jerusalem. Thirty-odd years is a long time to wait, and it strikes me as quite possible some might have been moved to an attempt to 'force the hand' of the deity through magical practices. That is not a definitive statement 'Yes, Christians did set the fire', only a statement that is a possibility which has a ring of plausibility in terms of human psychology, and that is far from a baseless slander that could not possibly be true. It is certainly a possibility that could well have occurred, and in good faith, to Roman authorities at the time.

The fact that gospels of later production do contain some elements that can be taken as contraversalist material against apocalypticism is one of the surer indications that was a predominant early belief; there would be no need to 'correct' it later, otherwise. Rather like when you read a regulation of a reforming monastic order that young and old monks are not to be lodged together in the same cell, you may fairly infer that was a common practice hitherto. Domitian, by the way, is a much better fit for the subject of the Apocalypse of John.

[struggle4progress]

29. Of course, if you want Revelation to refer to Domitian, the conclusion is still the same I claimed,

namely, that Revelation postdates Nero, for Domitian is a later emperor. And the traditional dating for Paul put his death within a few years, one side or the other, of the fire in Nero's time. So the Epistle to the Romans is probably as authentic an indication (as one actually has) of the ideas admired by the early church in Rome around the time of the fire

Now you apparently want to take the view, that the Roman Christians expected the world to end soon and attempted to force this outcome by setting the city aflame. You don't provide any particular evidence for that view, so I have no way to assess your reasons for thinking this -- but it's certainly not what Paul was encouraging them to do, when he wrote to them in the decade before the fire. Even if one strips all his theology away, Paul, on my reading, says something worthwhile: he says something like All of us are assholes sometimes -- but maybe we could at least try to love each anyway, without being judgmental; when people are shitty to you, why not try being nice back? From Romans:

... 2:1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things ... 3:10 As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one ... 7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do ... 12:3 Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment ... 12:9 Love must be sincere ... 12:14-18 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone ... 12:20 If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink ... 13:9-10 The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law ... 13:11-12 And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber ... The night is nearly over; the day is almost here ... 14:13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way ... 14:19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification ...

[The Magistrate]

30. Apocalyptic Belief, Sir, Was the Ground: It Did Not Wax With Time, It Waned With Time

The entire development cannot be separated from the apocalyptic fervor of Judaism in the time of its origin. To proclaim a man the Messiah was to announce the advent of the End Times, and these were to be marked by direct supernatural intervention against the unholy and impious. The only difference between the sect that grew into Christendom and the rest was that this believed the Messiah had already appeared, been slain by the impious, resurrected, and would soon come again as the agent of this chastisement of the unrighteous, and exaltation of righteous believers over them. The general run still placed the advent of the Messiah in the immediate future, and expected that on arrival the Messiah would be this agent of chastisement and exaltation.

Paul had nothing to do with the recruiting of a body of believers of the sect at Rome, as his writing to an existing community amply demonstrates. Rome had, and had long had, a sizeable Jewish population, in good contact with Judea. Paul's letter to them was in controversy to the views of the leadership at the center of the sect in Jerusalem. When present at Rome personally, he could have little influence from his position as a newcomer under house arrest. Belief in the next century he had been a founder of the sect at Rome, or its Bishop, or held some other important leading role there, is simple invention, to justify retroactively the primacy he had come to hold in the sect's theology at that time.

Several things came to move apocalypticism from the center of the sect's beliefs. Simple self-preservation in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem certainly played a major role, as did the largely Gentile constitution of the surviving congregations. The passage of time without the event certainly eroded fervor, and this set in with peculiar force once it was impossible to believe anyone of the generation who had heard the original preaching remained alive. The Apocalypse of John was about the last flare of the original belief, rekindled by the proscriptions of Domitian. Like most such works, it is a commentary on current events rather than an honest attempt at foretelling things to come. Certain features of the law under Domitian tally nicely with the book, the 'Mark of the Beast' being one: one defended oneself against a charge of being Christian by engaging in worship of a Roman divinity, and on doing so received a certification of having done so, which protected against any future accusation.

[struggle4progress]

31. "... The earliest documents we have are Paul's letters ..."

INTERNAL SCHISMS AND THE DRIVE FOR UNITY
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

That seems to be an irreducible fact limiting the theories that can be attached to existing records

The word "apocalypse" has multiple meanings, and the meaning used for the purposes of textual criticism (something like "inspired revelation") does not coincidence with the meaning often intended in informal conversations ("catastrophic destruction"). To confuse these meanings will produce misunderstandings of scholarly references to "apocalyptic traditions." The Apocalypse of John is apocalyptic in both senses; it is also rather unlike the notions expressed by Paul in his letter to the Romans -- although Paul indeed believes that the present world (whatever he means by that) is passing away

You seem to believe the early church in Rome was apocalyptic in the second sense, expecting immanent "catastrophic destruction," and so you want to attribute to the Roman Christians at the time of Nero the idea that they could bring about the end of the world by hurling firebrands to set Rome alight. I am unaware of any such tradition: certainly the canonical gospels and their suppressed non-canonical cousins seem to paint a different picture of the religion in its infancy

[The Magistrate]

32. 'Christianity' In This Period, Sir, Was Simply a Strain Of Intertestamental Messianic Judaismal

There is no significant difference. The man in question was not founding a new religion, nor were his disciples; not even Paul conceived himself to be doing this. They were simply declaring that a cosmic event anticipated fervently for many years by the great preponderance of Jews was actually underway, and soon would be fully manifested. The coming of the Messiah in fullness of glory was a cataclysmic event, that would encompass the destruction of a world order opposed to righteousness, and see to the exaltation of righteous believers. That early Christian teaching was the arrival of the Messiah and the commencement of the End Times is beyond argument. Teaching this entailed the entirety of the package: there were no special meanings attached to the standard concepts, only a slight difference in schedule, with the elsewhere unanticipated detour to resurrection and bodily assumption into heaven. None of this is particularly controversial, at least outside circles where they award degrees in divinity instead of history.

That persons imbued with such beliefs might lose patience, and resort to the science of their time, namely imitative and ritual magics, seems quite unexceptionable to me. The tale of Ezekiel is drenched in this sort of thing; it is not outside the tradition. It is certainly something that might naturally have occurred to Roman officials. It is not my view that members of the sect certainly set fires in Rome that day, only that it is certainly a possibility, and that the charge can in no way be reckoned an incredible and slanderous impossibility, leveled against mild and inoffensive followers of The Prince of Peace. It is at least as likely a charge as that leveled against Nero. In fact, arson is hardly necessary to explain the event, and does not seem to me a likely explanation of it. It is, however, pretty natural for people struck by an awesome calamity to seek explanation for it, and in doing so to frequently fasten on some malicious human agency as the cause. So it is no great surprise that two unpopular things, a fop of an Emperor who had killed his mother and pretended to be a Greek artiste, and a sect preaching doom against Rome, should rise to the occasion as suspects in the popular mind.

[struggle4progress]

33. Of course, you are correct to read early Christianity as a Judaic sect, though there are

certain curious features that would require examination and explanation for any serious interpretation

There is, for example, the following problem with the idea that in Paul's later life the church expected the world to end quickly. We have by now seen many sects that expected the world to conclude soon, with the righteous suddenly swept up safely and the rest of humanity lost, and typically such sects isolate themselves in their orthodoxy to anticipate their own salvation. But the churches to whom Paul wrote were curiously heterodox: with their claim, that the prophets had been vindicated by the appearance of the messiah in the form of an executed peasant from Nazareth, came simultaneously a tolerance of all manner of violations of then-traditional religious law, such as a relaxed attitude towards observation of the Sabbath and a certain indifference to circumcision. Paul has an elaborate theology of this, but indications of this view of the law also appear in the gospels, and it parallels another curious feature: the tendency to universalize. The indifference to established categories appears in Galatians (neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female) and Colossians (there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free), as well as in stories such as the good Samaritan, and it is also reflected in the fact that the early texts appear in Greek, then perhaps the universal language of the rational and educated world, so their message is not restricted to (say) Aramaic. If the gospel of Mark appeared somewhere between 50 and 70, the proto-gospel Q known only through its reconstructions must date from sometime before or around the time of the fire -- and people do not record their favorite stories for posterity if they expect the world to end soon. Meanwhile, Paul is busily advising the Roman Christians not to make a big deal of then-orthodox Jewish practices and telling them to try to get along with everybody -- advice which would be very odd if he expected some sudden rending of the fabric of the universe

Regarding magical beliefs, it is difficult to assess the ancient mindset, since a number of different views coexisted, ranging from superstitious ritual to skeptical Greek rationalism. Unlike some contemporary practices, where one sacrified to specific gods in the hopes that certain specific benefits would result, the early Christians (rather awkwardly) preached that the followers of Jesus could expect to be crucified. These Christians had, perhaps, a certain "magical" belief in the Eucharist and the sign of the cross, but this "magic" was not employed with any specific promise that it would keep one's mortal hide intact, as made abundantly clear by the stories about the crucifixion of Peter or the beheading of Paul: it must have aimed at something else. Such magic was not exactly the standard magic of the ancient world, and I suppose it can be read in diverse ways: I prefer to read it as an early version of ideas popularized more recently by Gandhi and MLK -- go preach to the empire universal love and non-distinction between people, but be ready for the possibility that the Establishment will kick back. It would, of course, be very surprising, if absolutely everyone who professed to believe in these notions actually lived as if they believed them

[The Magistrate]

34. Nothing Particularly Curious About Any Of That, Sir, Taken On Its Own Terms In Its Own Times

Paul's theologies were not even too peculiar, though the bulk of them need not concern us here, since the aspects important to this discussion are those concerning the recruitment of Gentiles to the sect. It is not generally appreciated today that Judaism in the period between Alexander and the destruction of the Temple was a proselytizing faith, as that element has almost completely dropped away in the Christian era. Isaiah closes with a stirring invocation of the deity of the Jews extending a universal sway over Gentile as well as Jew, a verse much taken to heart in the period when the Jews became enclosed in first the Hellenist and then the Roman world. There was a certain apparent over-lap between the monotheism of late Grecian philosophy and the monotheism of the Jews, which exercised some attraction in both directions. One result of this was that Jewish intellectuals sought to bring the latest ideas of philosophy into their theological structures, in much the same way as Christian thinkers today will try and reason modern science into some fit with Biblical verses. Another was that some Gentiles would be attracted to Judaism as an ancient school of philosophy that had anticipated modern views, giving rise to class of 'hangers-on' about the synagogues in Anatolia and Egypt and Greece and Italy, who recognized the Jewish idea of the divine, and adopted some Jewish practices, but did not follow the whole of the Mosaic law, particularly in regards to diet and circumcision. Somewhat analogous to modern Westerners taking a few Yoga classes, or dabbling in Zen.

Paul felt his peculiar mission was to bring Gentiles into the sect, and that a certain number of these had to be brought to belief on the Christ before the Son of Man could return, and the new divine order be put in place. His initial converts were mostly people of this 'hanger-on' sort, already somewhat familiar with Jewish ideas and texts. However, full adherence to the Mosaic law remained a stumbling block for them, and Paul naturally enough found a way to make this unnecessary, at least in his view, to full membership in the sect. The actual leadership of the sect in Jerusalem did not really agree with Paul on this point, but if we are to take Paul's writing as true, a compromise was worked out, rooted in the existence of a divine covenant with Abraham before the appearance of Mosaic law. Thus, Paul taught that adherence to the Mosaic law was not required of Gentiles joining the sect (though it certainly was of Jews who were members of the sect), but only a sort of stripped-down 'natural law' involving keeping the Sabbath, refraining from eating blood, refraining from worshiping idols, and a few other items. This was a much easier 'sell', and expanded the circle to which the preaching could appeal.

People who feel they must recruit as many persons as possible to a belief, and feel that the best way for them to do it is repeating sayings of the person who convinced them, will certainly transcribe these as aide memoires to the work of convincing others. The Gospel of Mark is certainly composed after the fall of Jerusalem to Titus, for it contains a prediction of the Temple's destruction, at the start of the 'Little Apocalypse' comprising its thirteenth chapter, and the book is clearly a statement that the end is indeed nigh, and to be watched for and awaited eagerly. It marks the high point of apocalyptic faith among the sect's members. The successively appearing further Gospels, and the fabricated letters of Peter, among others, testify to the ebb of belief in the end actually being imminent within the sect, at least among its leadership and intellectual cadre. The business of the texts becomes one more of careerism than anything; of keeping the thing going, minimizing offense to the authorities, gaining intellectual respectability, being able to gain converts who have some funds, some property, some position in society. And, of course, making sure no one mistakes the sect and congregations for Jews.

The original head of the sect was destroyed along with Jerusalem and the Temple, and its Jewish followers greatly reduced and scattered with the rest. This left the congregations elsewhere in the Empire the chief element in the sect, which they had not been before. Most of these people were not of Jewish descent, and the letters of Paul in particular were of great political use, since they mostly counseled obedience to Roman authorities, and could be presented readily as something far from the usual conceptions of Jewish practice, and even hostile to it. The Gospel of John reflects the full fruition of this trend, and a great deal of assimilation of standard Neo-Platonic philosophy into the doctrines of the sect.

Magic, the idea that mental power, properly applied and enabled, occasionally by certain physical items or acts, is the most ancient 'religious' belief of human-kind, and extends far beyond the things you have restricted it to. It was the water in which the ordinary minds of the time swam: omens, charms, auguries, curses, blessings, filled the imagination, and were taken as powerful realities. They were certainly considered real enough that their employment to do harm was strictly illegal, and the prohibition was of long standing. There are two complete lines in the original Twelve Tablets of Roman Law forbidding malignant magic, and these are a pretty compact code, with no wasted words. In both mentions, it is a capital offense. One means by which magic pretty much everywhere has been deemed to work is by imitation, by performing in miniature some action which will, properly potentized, cause a much larger instance of the same thing at a distance, whether in space or time or both. Acts of both Ezekiel and Jeremiah are perfect examples of this sort of magic ritual, and could serve as a sorcerer's text-book for cursings.

[struggle4progress]

35. Since Nero died in 68 and the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the destruction of

the temple cannot yet have had any impact on Roman Christian attitudes at the time of the fire that occurred during Nero's rule. Tradition dates Paul's death to Nero's era, so the destruction of the temple seems unlikely to have influenced people while Paul was still corresponding with them

You may be right about the attraction of Gentiles to Judaism in the Roman empire, but perhaps the analogy of "modern Westerners taking a few Yoga classes" is off-the-mark. The empire was largely administered by competent slaves, and their position would have been awkward: they would have been educated people, obligated to serve due to circumstances beyond their control. Judaism had a ready-made story for people in that position: it was the story of Joseph in Egypt, which finally leads to the exodos narrative. Quite plausibly, the slave-administrators of Rome found such stories attractive, and they may have provided a natural class of 'hangers-on'

... on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet ... Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked ... So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him ... Then Philip began with that very passage ... As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?" ...

[The Magistrate]

37. One Hardly Knows Where To Begin, Sir

It is your belief, apparently, that belief the end was near, and would be a cataclysmic destruction of Rome by divine hand, only became a feature of the sect which became eventually Christendom after the fire in Rome during the reign of Nero. This ignores everything known about the cult of Messianic advent and the End of Days within Judaism in the period around the beginning of the Common Era, the milieu from which this sect, and its beliefs and its members' identity as believers in a Messiah, originated. It is my position that these beliefs, derived from that body of thought, predominated in the early days of that sect, and waned with the disappointments of time as the End of Days failed to materialize. That Paul preached the imminence of the End of Days is undeniable, and not unique to him within the sect; it was preached by the man the sect grew up around, on the available evidence. That the End of Days meant the supernatural over-throw if Rome, pronounced by any Jew of the period, is similarly a solid, established fact. To be the Messiah, to be the one who fulfilled the prophecies of the Messiah's advent, was to proclaim the End of Days was beginning.

To state that 'Paul was still corresponding with the Romans' in any period of Nero's reign is to run very far in advance of anything that can be considered known fact. Paul wrote, apparently, one letter to the congregation at Rome; if we believe the account in Acts, which we are under no obligation to do, as there are certainly propagandist elements in that work, so that it cannot be taken as anything like wholly and un-varnishedly truthful, he was, at an indeterminate date, brought to Rome for trial of some offense, and lodged in not too distressing circumstances, permitted visitors. We do not know when he died, or for that matter of what; he could just as easily have caught pneumonia off a bad cold as been executed by the authorities, and we have not a scintilla of a clue as to the date of his demise, which could as easily have occurred before the fire as after it. Tradition is utterly unreliable on the subject. We have no warrant whatever for believing Paul exercised any great influence on the congregation at Rome, during his life-time, however convenient he may have become to it in later years.

The phenomenon of semi-converts among the Gentiles long predates the Roman Imperium; it pre-dates even the Maccabbee's relations with the latter Republic, and many of the places where it occurred earliest were not even under the sway of the Republic when it commenced. The idea that it was comprised in any great proportion of secretarial slaves of the Imperial household, or of the various governors, is simply unsupportable; the very example you give is of a functionary in a court independent of Rome, and the account of it makes no mention of the story of Joseph, but of his reading isaiah. In any case, there were hardly enough of these people to predominate in any milieu; the thinness of its bureaucratic element was a great weakness of Roman rule. And of course, such persons had pretty decent prospects, generally: their positions in many cases gave them opportunities to wax prosperous and buy their freedom, just as good service gave the prospect of freely given manumission. Association with heterodox elements was a thing persons in their position could easily do without; association with subversive elements they certainly could do without.

[struggle4progress]

39. History, sadly, is not an account of what happened but -- like many other subjects -- merely

the attempt to produce an account based on the available evidence, which will frequently be less than one would want

So, for dating Paul, the evidence one has is largely that recorded later as being traditional: one would prefer, if one had it, something better, but one does not have anything more definitive. If you wish to cite some detailed argument for dating Paul's death differently, you are of course free to do so: I have no particular stake here, though I am interested in the case that can be made

For better or worse, the earliest direct evidence of the sect comes from the Pauline letters. It is indeed possible that this fact results from later specific editorial decisions, but again some argument from some specific evidence would be needed to suggest what might have happened in that regard -- and the evidence available for any such argument must be culled from still later documents, which themselves may involve even more editorial filtering

Roman civilization, like the other great ancient civilizations, was steeply pyramidal: the masses were poor, and across the empire the fruit of their labor was expropriated from them under threat of force, often indirectly as taxes collected for the client rulers of Rome's vassal provinces, from which tribute flowed to the city of Rome. Captives for slavery went along. One might distinguish, I suppose, between those who were legally slaves and those who subsisted in some exploited serfdom -- but in many cases, this would be a distinction in name only. Rome became increasingly dependent on its non-citizen population to manage not only ordinary household affairs or building projects but also administrative matters. The position of slaves may have depended on their availability: one has accounts of them being executed in the course of plays to add realism to the plot, but when conquests slowed and the empire began to contract the position of some may have improved, since they occupied essential positions

Let us now turn to that Jewish Horatio Alger tale of Joseph, the subsequent story of captivity in Egypt, and the passover/exodos narrative as potentially meaningful to the oppressed population of the Roman world. You want to dismiss the account of the Ethiopian charioteer as irrelevant here. For my purposes, it does not really matter how accurate the account is, but rather the attractions it may have held for some people living under the Roman yoke. Whatever the difficulties of Strabo as a source, he tells us Rome had fought the Candace

The Ethiopians ... attacked the garrison, consisting of three cohorts, near Syene; surprised and took Syene, Elephantina, and Philæ, by a sudden inroad; enslaved the inhabitants, and threw down the statues of Cæsar. But Petronius, marching with less than 10,000 infantry and 800 horse against an army of 30,000 men, first compelled them to retreat to Pselchis, an Ethiopian city. He then sent deputies to demand restitution of what they had taken, and the reasons which had induced them to begin the war. On their alleging that they had been ill treated by the nomarchs, he answered, that these were not the sovereigns of the country, but Cæsar. When they desired three days for consideration, and did nothing which they were bound to do, Petronius attacked and compelled them to fight ... Part of the insurgents were driven into the city, others fled into the uninhabited country; and such as ventured upon the passage of the river escaped to a neighbouring island, where there were not many crocodiles on account of the current. Among the fugitives, were the generals of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians http://artflx.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusGreekTexts&getid=1&query=Str.%2017.2.2

The Candace, according to Strabo, then successfully sued for peace, though since the Romans had just shown an ability to win, one might wonder whether that peace brought some obligations towards Rome. The Ethiopian charioteer is, in any case, a good template of the Roman slave-administrators: he manages the treasury but this responsibility is not a matter of pure joy for him, since somehow in the course of obtaining his position he has been castrated, which can be read either literally or metaphorically. Although the text in Acts only says that Philip interpreted for him a passage from Isaiah as a reference to Jesus, the Pauline letters show that by this time the theology of "Christ our passover" was already available, so from early times the discussions of Jesus were associated with the exodos narrative. Whether he is mythical or not, why should one expect the Jewish texts to appeal to such a person as the Ethiopian charioteer? The alleged critical event in that religion is escape from slavery

[The Magistrate]

40. All That Can Be Said Concerning The Date Of Paul's Death, Sir

Is that it probably occurred sometime in the latter years of Nero's reign. Tradition cannot be taken as factual regarding its circumstances or character. Those retailing the tradition are too self-interested, and have too great a reputation for telling lies, to be taken as truthful in any particular, especially any particular which might serve their politico-religious interests. Magnifying Paul and ascribing martyrdom at Nero's hands to him in unjust expiation for the fire does just those things. Since Paul's writings preach the immanence of the End of Days, they do not in the slightest argue against my view of the primacy of End Times preaching being the root belief of the early members and leadership of the sect he worked to spread.

It is certainly true the Roman economy depended on slaves in the imperial period, and it is known that a portion of the sect's converts were slaves. This is very different from asserting or assuming that a good portion of those Gentiles attracted to Jewish ideas were highly placed slaves employed by the government, drawn by the tale of Joseph. Certainly freeing slaves in the present had no part of the sect's teaching, whatever might be expected to happen once the Messiah returned to destroy wickedness and exalt the righteous. Paul explicitly tells slaves who are members of the sect not to seek manumission, and even tells members of the sect who own other members of the sect not to free them. This is sensible enough, of course: a group preaching slaves should be free would have been stamped down with a ferocity that would have made Titus in Jerusalem look like a man dealing out love-pats to the rump of a cherished concubine. The more general conditions of slavery, however, argue powerfully for an attraction to the picture of the calamity that would befall the world order when the Messiah returned.

The tale of the eunuch in Acts states specifically that he was reading Isaiah, and that Stephen offered to explain the book to him. Isaiah, you will recall, contains the assertion the deity of the Jews will hold universal sway over Gentile and Jew alike eventually. Obviously, no particular detail can be trusted as a description of fact in reporting a real incident, but a leading point of the story is to emphasize precisely this universal claim of the deity to worship by not only Jews but Gentiles, for which purpose introduction through Isaiah is most apt. The other leading point of the story is to show a sort of ultimate Gentile coming readily to belief on the Christ, even as leading Jewish authorities actively refuse such belief, thus illustrating the separation of Christians from Jews that was so important a part of the former's propagandas in the period when Acts was contrived. That Christian belief was solidly established in Ethiopia at a fairly early date, at a time when Jude was considered canonical, is a fact, but there is no reason to treat this particular story as a factual account of how that came to be. Certainly the long presence of sizable Jewish communities in Ethiopia, and a long history of trade down the Red Sea, suggests more regular routes for the belief to travel hither. The description of this person as a eunuch is no symbol, it was a common practice in the upper reaches of the Nile, and certainly remained so into the early twentieth century.

Ethiopia had full political independence from Rome at the death of Augustus. Rome never extended military power very far up the course of the Nile; it lacked the technical capability.

[struggle4progress]

36. With regard to magic, one is in double danger of simultaneously over-estimating and

under-estimating the ancients. Rome was an extremely cosmopolitan place at the height of the empire: it was filled with people from across the known world, and they had various beliefs. The empire itself insisted on some official obedience to Roman gods, but some of that demand was simply official statecraft, and across its span the empire was tolerant of local ideas, provided Rome was respected. The Greeks, after the execution of Socrates for the impiety of viewing of the Sun and Moon as natural objects, happily attempted to calculate the distance and relative sizes of the Sun and Moon, so that the old impiety charge against Socrates eventually had no force: they knew some religious ideas might be nonsense. The Judaic attitude was that all gods were false but one, which again means that they thought some religious ideas were nonsense. Certainly the usual pre-scientific hopes in various omulets and omens and curses had force with many people; but attitudes towards other people's beliefs plausibly ranged from fear to respect to tolerance to indifference to outright incredulous skepticism. It is difficult to sort out the threads here, but it seems likely that various Romans, including various Roman Christians, recognized magical ideas as mere superstition, though such ideas may sometimes have been expressed cautiously, in order not to offend other people too much. So Paul explicitly discounts the efficacy of pagan religious ritual; he does not, however, propose any substitute magic. And by the second century, it is clear that the church taught witchcraft and divination were not to be practiced, and also that witchcraft could have no effect on believers

The ancients, of course, knew two millennia less of world history than we do -- and so seem like children to us -- but in fact their reasoning skills were not inferior to our own, and one expects that intellectually honest ancients could spot a logical contradiction as well as anyone now can, provided they were inclined to search for such contradictions.

[The Magistrate]

38. Doubtless Some Did Consider It Mere Superstition, Sir

But that is not the general case, and was almost never the way people were raised to believe and experience the world. Under stress, people tend to fall back on earlier attitudes, Disappointed hope is quite a stress, and this sort of thing can crop up in many ways. It would only have taken one persons, convinced he had heard the call to prophesy, and to do so by setting a blaze that would be the sign of inauguration for divine wrath, and possessed of sufficient force of personality to impose upon a handful of fellows to follow the example, to get the thing into being. There is no reason whatever to suppose such a thing would necessarily be traceable at the time, let alone survive into historical fact at a remove of years. There is little record of anything, and virtually none of anyone in particular, in the slums of Rome. Here and there there are some graphitos that have weathered the years, and that is about it.

Again, none of this is a definite statement this is what occurred, only a statement that it is plausible to suppose it may have, and that the charge is certainly not an incredible slander. Deep study of history will get you accustomed to the idea that there is good deal that cannot be recovered, that can never be known for certain, and the cause of the fire in Rome during Nero's reign is clearly one of those things.

[Warpy]

28. PBS boiled it down nicely some years ago

and the video is available: http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Dead-Great-Fire-Rome/dp/B000K15W2A

[imdjh]

14. No, he started the fire because he wanted to build on the land.

Then he went looking for someone handy to blame. I could ahve sworn he blamed the Jews, but back then Christians were Jews , so it probably doesn't matter much.

[damntexdem]

4. Actually, today's Xian right is more similar to Nero than to any Xians of Nero's time.

But we could reconsider the lion's meals in the arenas. ;-)

[Joanne98]

7. It sounds like they made up the stuff about the lions.

[whosinpower]

8. somewhere I read

There is nothing wrong with a belief and faith in God. His fan club however.......leaves much to be desired.

I'm not sure if Christianity can survive within the context of rabid right-wingers who pervert the teachings of Christ. Same could be said with Islam.

But, the void will be filled with something. What that is remains to be seen.

[Joanne98]

9. I was thinking the same thing. Something to fill the void but what.

The New Ager's are out. All they care about is money.

[Odin2005]

11. The notion that Nero fiddled tunes while Rome burned is a myth.

IIRC he wasn't in Rome at the time and rushed back when news of the fire reached him (this was during a stretch of sanity, of course).

[imdjh]

13. But the urban renewal and his designs for it (his motive) were not a myth.

[imdjh]

12. And all these years it should have been called Christian Lightning. nt

[struggle4progress]

15. Here's a link to Tacitus Book XV:

http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.11.xv.html

It dates from only about forty years after the fires (Tacitus says there were several), and contain a great deal of detail about matters such as popular rumors (the fire was deliberately set, y'know! Nero went on stage to sing a song about the destruction of Troy while Rome was burning, y'know!), which Tacitus plausibly learned first hand from people who lived through the period in Rome, since he served a while there as a Senator a few years later. Some of his descriptions of Nero are quite unflattering, and he does not think very much of the Christians either, so he can scarcely be accused of propagandizing for the church:

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. 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. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, 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. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired

[Why Syzygy]

20. I happened to read that same passage

at wikipedia. Contrary to what has been claimed an infinitum, doesn't that seem to be *proof* that Jesus was historical and crucified?

[struggle4progress]

21. The early church seems to have been indifferent to the historical value of its texts:

it was concerned with a certain reading of the prophets emphasizing interpersonal justice, a certain indifference to the official niceties associated with the state and religious authorities, and a certain fearlessness justified by the doctrine of the Resurrection. The gospels make clear that the Word preached by Jesus offended the ancient Establishment in Judea. The Tacitus and Suetonius texts show that the ancient Establishment was similarly offended in Rome, decades later, by that Word and its later elaboration of the Jewish assertion that the official Roman gods were mere idols by the addendum that a minor trouble-maker (who had been executed many years before by the Roman occupation in Jerusalem) was actually the true King of the Universe

[Why Syzygy]

23. All true ..

but what I meant was, isn't Tacitus Book XV an historical document that does validate the story of a "Christ" being crucified in Jerusalem? I've heard many times that there is no historical validation.

[struggle4progress]

24. Tacitus is writing decades later, far from Jerusalem. He doesn't even qualify as a

direct witness to Nero as an emperor. It seems unlikely to me that many of the people in Rome, during the time of Nero's fire, had firsthand knowledge of events in Judea thirty years earlier. Tacitus certainly knew people who remembered Rome in the Nero era and probably gives a credible second-hand report on the events of that period based on what others told him. So if he says there were Christians in Rome then, he's probably a good source -- and independent from any church records on the topic. But since the gospels don't suggest that the early Christians were much concerned with producing an accurate historical record of the origins of Christianity, they must been attracted by something else in the Word they followed

[struggle4progress]

16. The claim "Nero lost more than anyone" is idiotic. Nero as emperor was the most powerful

person in the known world. He pretty did whatever he wanted, and if a palace of his burned down, it didn't affect him much

[struggle4progress]

17. Here is a link to Suetonius on Nero:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html

Suetonius is a bit younger than Tacitus but similarly has good connections in Rome: he knew the Senator Pliny; he managed the archives under Trajan; and served as a secretary to Hadrian. Like Tacitus, he could not have witnessed the fire, but he was in a position later to read now-lost first-hand accounts of it and to hear from Romans what views of Nero and the fire were commonly accepted

Suetonius portrays Nero in a mixed light, finding him in some ways praiseworthy and also regarding him as a cruel and murderous individual. So he reports, without reference to the fire, as among the good deeds of Nero, that Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition -- and after cataloging the good deeds, he writes I have brought together these acts of his, some of which are beyond criticism, while others are even deserving of no slight praise, to separate them from his shameful and criminal deeds, of which I shall proceed now to give an account, which is followed by various ugly tales, including the fire, of which Suetonius says under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city.

Thus, Suetonius, who does not like the Christians, does not hold them responsible for the fire but finds Nero's actions against them laudable, whereas he describes Nero as a man with both good and bad traits, who torched Rome

[struggle4progress]

22. The sweeping and unreferenced claims about "historical and archaeological evidence"

showing "fire destroyed, at most, a tenth of the city" may be debatable: a quick websearch yields widely varying estimates from different people who appear to have appropriate scholarly credentials