Paul and Jesus

5. Tacitus, the Roman historian, is our best source for this persecution. He is the first Roman writer to mention “Christus” (“Chrestus”) and his execution in Judea under Pontius Pilate. His account gives one insight into the attitude of the ruling class in Rome in the early second century A.D. toward this newly emerging eastern cult called “Christianity”: “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. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a cart. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.” Tacitus, Annales 15.44, translation by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, Complete Works of Tacitus (New York: Modern Library, 1942), pp. 380–81.

6. Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Claudius 25.4 and Acts 18:1–3.

7. John J. Gunther surveys the views of thirty-nine scholars who have proposed thirteen categories of identification. See St. Paul’s Opponents and Their Background: A Study of Apocalyptic and Jewish Sectarian Teachings (Leiden: Brill, 1973).

8. See Jeffrey J. Bütz, The Brother of Jesus, pp. 154–61, which offers a persuasive reconsideration of the correctness of F. C. Baur’s essential position.

9. A. F. J. Klijn and G. J. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish Christian Sects, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 36 (Leiden: Brill, 1973).

10. See Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, translated by Douglas R. A. Hare (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), for a summary of the basic Ebionite sources that survive and a discussion of their contents.

APPENDIX: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL

1. The Quest was given both its history and its name by Albert Schweitzer, whose groundbreaking book, published in 1906 with the nondescript German title Von Reimarus zu Wrede (From Reimarus to Wrede), was given the more provocative title in English, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by William Montgomery (London: A. & C. Black, 1910).

2. The beginning of the modern Jesus Quest is usually dated to around 1835 with the publication of David Strauss’s Life of Jesus. The full work, Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen, 1835–36), was published in English as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, 3 vols. (London, 1846), translated by George Eliot, the pen name of British novelist Mary Ann Evans. Baur’s major work, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre (Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Letters and His Teaching), was published in 1845. Strauss was a student of Baur at the University of Tübingen.