On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Carrier Richard

Author:Carrier, Richard [Carrier, Richard]
Language: ara
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sheffield Phoenix Press
Published: 2014-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Two other authors used as ‘evidence’ for a historical Jesus provide no evidence for a historical Jesus. The first of these is Suetonius; the second, Thallus.103

As for Thallus, I have already demonstrated elsewhere that he never mentioned Jesus.104 The passage in the third book of the otherwise-lost Histories of Thallus, which was referenced by Julius Africanus (in another lost work, quoted by the medieval chronologer George Syncellus), almost certainly said nothing more than that for the year 32 ce, ‘the sun was eclipsed; Bithynia was struck by an earthquake; and in the city of Nicaea many buildings fell’, with no mention even of Judea, much less Jesus. For we can reliably deduce that we have this direct quotation of Thallus in several surviving fragments of Eusebius.105 Which means when Africanus connected this entry in Thallus to Jesus, he was making that assumption, not Thallus.

As for Suetonius, there are only two relevant passages. The first is a reference to Jewish rioters, not Christians: Suetonius says of the emperor Claudius that ‘since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome’.106 We have reason to doubt Suetonius has his story straight, since such an expulsion of all Jews from Rome would have been a near impossibility. There would have been tens of thousands of Jews in Rome at that time, complete with extensive real estate, synagogues, businesses, as well as countless Jewish slaves in both private and public hands that would have been indispensable to the urban economy, not to mention an enormous challenge to locate and drive out. In fact, we learn from Cassius Dio that

As for the Jews, who had again increased so greatly that by reason of their multitude it would have been hard without raising a tumult to bar them from the city, Claudius did not drive them out, but ordered them, while continuing their traditional mode of life, not to hold meetings.

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