Drinkwater on Nero, Tacitus and early Christians: what he gets wrong

Nero: Emperor and Court by John F. Drinkwater
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book gets an overall three-star rating, which itself is a complex of three subratings and some downward rounding. (I was probably at 3.5 stars overall, but with every full review here on Goodreads going 5 stars and the total of all ratings at 4.5? Nope. Needed some evening out.)

 Update: This is why StoryGraph's fractional star ratings are good.

As promised in my review, I said I would address some parts of my review in more detail, as it was more than long enough for a Goodreads review as is. Per the header?

First, I give an easy 5 stars on his discussion of the Principate and imperial administration in the whole latter half of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. 

Second, what was actually part three of the review?

Part three is 3 1/2 stars.

I agree with much of Drinkwater’s revisionist history (which is not sui generis by any means on Nero but is part of a trend).

At some point, however, Drinkwater’s revisionist history becomes apologetics. In this, it becomes so after the Great Fire, and especially after the Pisonian conspiracy. 

Second in the review and the subject of the header? Something of close intellectual interest to me? Nero, the Great Fire, Tacitus’ chapter in the Annals, and just who may have been persecuted, or not. Drinkwater gets 3 stars here, and that may be generous. I agree with Drinkwater that the fire was an accident. I agree that Tacitus seems to have seen it that way. I disagree on who, if anybody, was scapegoated.

First, I had initial email discussions about this with Drinkwater after I got the book on interlibrary loan but before I started reading. It was clear then that we would disagree on some things, but I found more to disagree with after getting into the appropriate section of the book.

First, Drinkwater claims, riffing on the book of Acts, that “Christians” were first called such NOT at Antioch, but at Rome at this time. I strongly disagree, first on grounds that there probably were no more than 600 Christians in Rome at this time (Drinkwater seems to be in the general ballpark on numbers HE postulates, and offered no real argument when I mentioned this in an email) and so, out of a population of 600,000 could not even have been on Nero’s radar screen, and second on grounds that Christians weren’t separated from Jews at the time enough to be separately identified. Beyond that, he’s making an argument from silence, and not a good one, IMO, and he knows that it's an argument from silence, whether he thinks it's a justifiable one or not. I don’t accept that from Christian mythicists and I don’t accept it from him. Ergo, in 64 CE, there WERE NO "Christians" to be singled out by label.

Given what Tacitus writes, the word he uses for “Christ” being an itacism in Greek, and other things, plus what I mention above? There are two options besides Christians being persecuted. One is that Messianic Jewish rebels were blamed …. “a certain ChrEEstos” χρηστός (the itacism for Christos Χριστός) being “HaMosiach,” or Jewish Messianic rebels. Suetonius claims Claudius booted Jews because of this same person (CHREStus was also a name adopted by freedmen), and I find it laughable that, if there’s truth behind that, that Suetonius is referring to Christians, though Drinkwater appears to think he was. See paragraph above. (That said, the CHREStus name's backstory could be connected to the itacism by Suetonuis and Tacitus being deliberate. Under this idea of mine, they would be saying: "Look at these idiotic, disgusting Christians, making a god out of a freedman!")

There's yet more to suggest this first option is more likely than actual Christians.

First, beyond the likelihood that Christians were only 1/10 of a percent of Rome’s population at the time  Jews were probably around 3-5 percent. 

Second, both Josephus and Acts discuss Messianic pretenders at this general time. The Great Fire was two years after James was lynched by Ananus the High Priest, and just two years before the start of the Jewish Revolt.

Third, Suetonius claims Claudius booted the Jews from Rome, probably about 12-15 years earlier, if it happened. AND, he too uses the itacism CHREStos, which gets back to what I say Tacitus, that was writing about Jewish Messianic disturbances; Drinkwater still thinks they were Christians.

Fourth? Drinkwater argues for Tacitus' religious knowledge and scholarship. Sure, he knew Roman religion, both the Olympians and other things like the Vestals, household gods, etc. He knew his Greek religion. How well did he know Judaism? And, given that his "knowledge" of Christianity is largely the repetition of scurrilous rumor, his actual knowledge was probably almost nonexistent.

The second option more likely to me than actual Christians is that Tacitus is repeating another scurrilous story, like the ones he repeats about Christians in his own time, and figures he can “bank shot” a smear of Christians and a smear of Nero for his barbaric ALLEGED executions making them look sympathetic all at once. (Remember, if there was no separate identification of Christians, there was no execution of them as such.)

Really, there's several issues going on here.

I’m not absolutely sure of Drinkwater’s take on all of them, though between the book and the exchange of several emails, I think I’ve got pretty good guesses, and I offer a mix of summary of the above and expansion of some areas.

1. Did Tacitus think the fire was arson or accident? 

2. Regardless of what he thought, did he see this as a tool to scapegoat Nero, Christians or both? 

3. Did Tacitus (and Suetonius, with his claim Claudius expelled the Jews due to instigation of CHRESTus) really understand Judaism in general that much, let alone Messianic strains, let alone Xianity to the degree it was starting to separate by the time Tacitus and Suetonius wrote? 

4. What actually happened, both on fire and scapegoating? 

5. COULD there have been enough Xns to be on Nero’s radar screen AS CHRISTIANS to even have been scapegoated?

Drinkwater and I will disagree a fair amount on some of this. Let’s dig in. 

1. I am not sure, but I think Drinkwater thinks Tacitus may have thought it was. I think he considered it plausible, I’ll put it that way. 

2. I say yes to both. It’s funny, because Tacitus was “pulling the ladder up” 2,000 years ago, elevated to senatorial class by the Flavians. What if Nero had lived and had done that himself? On the second, yes, I think both he and Suetonius were projecting backward the rumors they heard about Xns in their own day, such as “ritual cannibalism” (the Euchariast) wrapped inside an orgy (the larger agape feast.) More on Tacitus: If you read the Annuals, ch 45 after the famous ch 44 in book 15, it’s clear that he thinks Xns were reprehensible but Nero even more so in how savagely he treated them.

3. Drinkwater explicitly, in exchange of emails, cites Tacitus as a religious scholar. Maybe of Roman religion. And certain aspects of Greek religion. Of Judaism, or Greek, or larger Hellenistic/eastern Mediterranean popular religion? Color me skeptical. The CHRESTus / ChristOS itacism is one reason why. Roman religion had little to do with anointing. That was more common in Greek religion, which is why Latin doesn’t even have the word commonly used. Yes, “unctus” leads to “Extreme Unction,” but seriously, that just wasn’t a word of use in Classical Latin. That relates to CHRESTus being a name taken by freedmen, but not Unctus.

In addition, Tacitus has been accused of bias against Eastern religions.

Related? Many scholars talk about Tacitus’ careful investigation. But, his large-scale copying from Pliny the Elder for his own Germania without ever crossing the borders, and without even updating Pliny’s political descriptions, puts paid to that. No less than Syme notes this. His repetition of ethnographic stereotypes (shades of Hume!) in the Germania also raises issues.

4. What actually happened? Drinkwater and I agree on the fire being accidental. We agree that Tacitus claims Nero scapegoated Xns. We disagree on who, if anybody, Nero actually DID scapegoat. Now we’re at point 5. 

5. First, I reject Drinkwater’s claim of the first use of “Christians.” I listed most of this above, but here's more. If Jews were 3-5 percent of the population of Rome, and that may be mildly conservative, enough of THEM might have been riled up (witness the Jewish quarter of Alexandria, the Kitos War and other things) it could have been an issue. So, without starting the Fire, could riotous Jews have been blamed by Nero? Yes. Could Tacitus, through a mix of anti-Xn stance and ignorance of Judaism, piggybacked on this? Yes. Is this guaranteed to be what happened? Not at all. There may have been no disturbances. See option two above.

Then, there's the issue of whether or not Tacitus wrote this.

Drinkwater rejects that it's an interpolation, but the case isn't ironclad. A religions wiki notes the problems: Not cited by Tertullian, who otherwise regularly cites Tacitus. Apparently not cited by Celsus, as Origen doesn’t fire back at any such thing. Not cited by Clement of Alexandria or Eusebius, the first two compilers of pagan stories about Christianity. Sulpicius Severus, ca 400 CE, appears to be the first Christian to write about it, but his account is hugely suspect. It also notes, contra Drinkwater, Tacitus’ overestimation of the numbers of Christians in this time. And, it states that death by burning wasn't a Roman punishment at this time. (I hadn't heard of claims that it was an interpolation before reading a review of this and other recent Nero revisionism, but ... it's plausible. I have more in a separate post.)

Brent Shaw, in an academic journal, extracted and summarized here by Charles Mercier, has the details on the possibility this is an interpolation. (Mercier then has a Part 2, which frames Catholic touting of Neronian martyrs within Reformation hagiography.) Shaw, per Mercier's Part 1, doesn't totally agree with the Religion Wiki take on why this is possibly an interpolation.

No, finally finally a second side note. Drinkwater’s an academic historian, yet uses “AD” rather than “CE” (and when needed, “BC” rather than “BCE.” I had noted it earlier, but given how wrong I think he is about Xns and the Great Fire, it may just have been the tipping point down to a third star, inasmuch as I now wonder if it’s something related to his thoughts on Tacitus. OTOH, Adrian Goldsworthy does the same; maybe it’s imperial hubris of older British historians?

(Update: Per my review of a Melvin Goodman book, this isn't the only bit of suspiciousness from Sulpicius Severus, either.)

View all my reviews

So, Marcion fabricated the Pauline Epistles? Yeah, right

Since my "Sem exit" at the end of my studies for the ministry at a conservative Lutheran seminary decades ago, I've still kept up with major trends in critical Christian theology and exegesis. For example, though I don't agree with every take of every member of its core, I know what the basic tenets of the Copenhagen school of Tanakh / Old Testament criticism are.

That said, I had not, until earlier this month, heard of the Dutch Radical School of New Testament criticism. I came across it via Wiki's page on Jesus mythicism. And, it's not new or newish, unlike Copenhagen. It started nearly 150 years ago, under the influence of Bruno Bauer, which might say something.

One of its main claims, as explicated well in this piece, is that since Marcion appears to be the first person to attest the entire Pauline corpus, he must have created it! Yes, really.

I find this silly.

Further Googling showed me one of these Dutch critics' reconstruction of Marcion's version of Galatians. Here's the standard Greek, also translated into English. Comparing chapter 1 alone shows that claims that the "orthodox" version of Galatians is full of rough transitions is laughable; Marcion's version is far more abrupt on that. (That said, maybe some other Dutch Radical critics would then trot out the old text critical tool, "the more difficult reading is to be preferred," and use that to argue for Marcion being original.)

Now, that said, there IS one other interesting point.

Some of the Jesus mythicists who claim that Marcion did create the Pauline corpus point to the amount of Gnosis or proto-Gnosticism in Paul's letters. That's pretty obvious in Pseudo-Paul II/IIa, the author of Colossians. (Pseudo-Paul I is the author of 2 Thessalonians. The "II/IIa" allows for different authors of Colossians and Ephesians; Pseudo-Paul III of course wrote the Pastorals. That's my nomenclature.)

Anyway, just looking at Galatians 1, the amount of proto-Gnosticism there is pretty big. Galatians 4, with this interlinear to illustrate, is key. You've got the "στοιχεῖα" or "elements of this world," a key Gnosticizing term also found in Colossians. Then in the next verse, Jesus is born in the fullness of time, and "fullness" is of course that old Gnosticizing "πλήρωμα".

I've often thought that 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul's creation (sic, "what I have received from the Lord [ie direct revelation, not James or Peter]) of the Eucharist is Gnosticizing, too. That's especially if the "παραδίδωμι" (exact form is "παρεδίδετο") of verse 22 is properly translated as either "arrested" or better "handed over" rather than "betrayed" and you forget the Judas story of the Gospels.

For more on παραδίδωμι see Liddell and Scott. In the NT, per Strong's, note that all translations of "betrayed" or "handed over" in other passages involve an agent, unlike here.

To whom was Jesus handed over? Well, maybe the "στοιχεῖα"? I know that "orthodox" critical scholars resist claims of Paul engaging in proto-Gnosticism. But, the language is clear in Galatians, either his earliest or second-earliest letter. And, while Colossians is indeed most likely a pseudopigraphic work, it's likely from no later than 80 CE, so a first-generation follower of Paul thought he was interpreting him correctly.

That doesn't mean that the mythicists are right that early Christians thought of Jesus as a "space being," contra the laughable claims of Mark Carrier that I skewered earlier. After all, a Gnosticized version of an "adoptionist" Christology is certainly possible, and while Paul says he doesn't really know any biography of Jesus, he DOES clearly state that Jesus was "born," and was a human being. Indeed, he said that in that same Galatians 4:4 where he talks about the "fullness of time"!

One other point undercutting the mythicists and the Dutch Radicals, and that's re the claim that Marcion fabricated the Pauline corpus. Traditional critical theology, especially in more modern versions, accepts that the Synoptic Gospels are dependent on Pauline thought. This would presume being dependent in some way on written Pauline thought.

If Irenaeus in 180 CE is explaining why "orthodox" Christianity accepts exactly four Gospels, and something quasi-canonical is already in place then, that leaves damned little time for three gospels, setting aside John, to be finalized, especially vis a vis the "Synoptic problem." It also ignores that Tatian's Diatesseron was even earlier.

Now, if one wants to go way out into Klaatu-land, I suppose one could claim the Synoptics have no dependence on a Marcion-faked Pauline corpus, but that's more laughable yet!

That Dutch Radical link I posted above engages in special pleading. I Clement and the Letters of Ignatius should also according to them not be considered genuine. That's not to say that Ignatius' letters don't have problems. But, even if they are spurious, it's still no direct support for claiming Marcion as the author of the Pauline corpus, and it still doesn't address Synoptic dating. I know Bruno Bauer put the Synoptics in the second century, but I reject that. And, what do you about the Didache, for which I accept a dating of no later than the end of the first century CE?

And claims that Pauline tropes like the ingathering of Israel in Romans MUST be dated after the second Jewish Revolt? As laughable as John A.T. Robertson claiming the entire New Testament canon had to be pre-70 because no books mention the destruction of the Temple.

Top blogging of July-September

Data is of early October. Not all posts were written in the past three months.

First was my hard-hitting modern religion piece on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and its multiple ethical failures and looming massive legal problems over the closure of Concordia University-Portland.

Second was my long-ago, but still relevant, libertarian pseudoskepticism pseudoscience piece about Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer.

Third was my not nearly so long ago, but even more still relevant, piece about Saint Anthony of Fauci and his telling of Platonic noble lie(s). (It eventually became plural, then Not.Even.Platonic.Or.Noble, to riff on Wolfgang Pauli.)

Fourth is from about 15 months ago, but getting new eyeballs when I retweeted it about the dreck that is this year's Dallas Symphony Orchestra schedule. I said the DSO had stepped backward in hiring Fabio Luisi as music director.

Fifth? Almost as old as my Dunning-Shermer piece, but also about classical music: Stravinsky vs. Prokofiev and what constitutes neoclassicism.

Sixth, a recent piece, about how Harvey Whitehouse seemed promising on new studies on the origin of religion, until he went way wrong on both that and a definition of what religion is.

Seventh? My burning take on the often laughable, usually conceited Mark Carrier thinking early Christians believed Jesus was a space alien.

Eighth, and also recent, my philosophical take on an ambulance-chasing journalist's experience with PTSD after his own car crash, and a psychologist discussing the issue with bad takes on free will and control.

Ninth and also nearly a decade old, like No. 2 and No. 5? My take on reviews of books by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter.

Tenth and trending probably due to a tweet by my to blogging friend Tales of Whoa? My poem about the death of friend Leo Lincourt, "Sitting Shtetl for the Living."

Deconstructing David Graeber's and David Wengrow's new book

If late friend Leo Lincourt, a lover of Graeber, were still alive, he'd surely disagree with me.

But, from what I first read on the Atlantic's review, and now at the Guardian excerpt?

I think it's oversold.

That starts and ends with the title and subtitle: "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity."

It's overarching, and oversold.

I've read multiple books that have already touched on how the old archaeological and anthropological paradigm of a straight,  permanent, line from hunter-gathering  to farming is wrong. Against the Grain covered this four years ago. Five years ago, John Wathey offered up new ideas on the development of early religion and spirituality, which this pair don't appear to cover at all.

Note: I have now given it a MUCH more thorough deconstruction at Goodreads, with a 2-star review.

Or, via Academia.edu, while not discussing the early "civilizations" of Southwest Asia, here's a paper FROM 1998 about the Fremont culture of today's Utah, discussing a mix of part-time foragers/part-time farmers, full-time foragers, full-time farmers, farmers who flipped to foraging and foragers who became farmers. (Unlike in the Old World, pastoral nomadism wasn't an option in most the New World before Columbian contact, due to lack of domesticated livestock.

So, the pair aren't saying anything new, they're building on others, and right there, it's not a new history, and it's not complete, so not "everything."

It also smacks of me of trying to build on the reputation of Graeber, who died in the last year. Now, he could have been a great capitalist within his anarchism; anarcho-capitalism is a thing, complete with its own Wiki page. But, from what I know of Graeber on my own and via Leo? Uh, no. He would have shuddered to be in the same breath (I think) as Murray Rothbard. (Per the Guardian extract, that's why it's funny for the duo to talk about capitalists talking about social connections at Christmas WITH the implication that they're doing that INSTEAD OF capitalism rather than as a marketing adjunct.)

Update, Nov. 5: At the New Yorker, Gideon Lewis-Krous also appears to give it a fluffy review.

Now, to some specifics, via a trio of (unanswered, Twitter, natch, low signal to noise ratio) Tweets to the author of the Atlantic review.

First, I noted the pair were by no means alone, per the above.

An interesting review of David Graeber's posthumous book. That said, Graeber is nowhere near alone in research & writing challenging the "conventional narrative" of human origins, agriculture, etc. 1/x .@WDeresiewicz https://t.co/0brHaL7Z8j

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 21, 2021

Second, I noted that the HIGHLY sympathetic reviewer, William Deresciewicz, undercut himself in links in his piece, one in particular, in the claim that "towns" existed long before a permanent shift to agriculture (note that I also tagged Wengrow, also unresponsive):

2nd, if sites like Nebelivka weren't inhabited year-round, or in many cases even close, arguably anachronistic at best 4 Graeber & .@davidwengrow (& others to call them cities, or to present the case 4 what they were as "settled"; the review link itself says "up in the air" 2/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 21, 2021

Finally, I said that, at least per what the review says and more importantly, doesn't say, it's NOT about "everything."

3rd, the review says nothing about new considerations on the development & cultural evolution of religion & metaphysics, that go hand in hand with new ideas on agro-humanity etc., or whether David Graber and David Wengrow tackle that issue. 3/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 21, 2021

OK,

Now, off to the Guardian excerpt, since I saw that later.

First, the pair are right that just about all of us, including our African Homo sapiens ancestors before leaving Africa, have DNA and mitochondrial DNA from other species within us. Nonetheless, that's yet more dilute than the bits of Neanderthal and / or Denisovan DNA that the typical non-African has. Ergo, the concept of "DNA Adam" and "mitochondrial DNA Eve" is still a good working theory and Graber-Wengrow come close to strawmanning. (The pair actually had a chance of tackling residual racial bias in human population genetics, that said, but at least here, appear to take a pass.)

Second, since cultural evolution is not evolution, unless the pair are slaves to evolutionary psychology, this is largely irrelevant to cultural evolution, contra their claims. So, without reading the full book? Lost a star.

Third, they do next admit previous recent study of places like Göbekli Tepe, so a kudo of sorts back. That said, I see it as like Pueblo Bonito and the whole Chaco Canyon structures. We still don't know for sure what THAT was — permanent settlement, religious site with sparse permanent inhabitation, some mix of that, or something else.

Fourth, it may be true that inequalities of various sorts were actually worse before a permanent transition to agriculture and a permanent transition to settled cities. Or it may not be. Right now, there's just not enough evidence to say that. We do have enough evidence to say we should get rid of old paradigms, but not enough to create new ones. Contra cheap versions of hot takes on Thomas Kuhn, paradigm shifts as in not just abandoning an old one but immediately replacing it with a new one, just aren't that common.

Update: On to a New Yorker fellation of Graeber and the book by Molly Fischer. Fischer does remind me of Graeber not only being the "intellectual voice" behind Occupy, but a supporter of Black Bloc types, including their property destruction, which this leftist of some sort has long rejected. It also reminds me of the lies told about Occupy in general and Occupy New York in particular being "leaderless," which it was not. Fischer starts with New York City's Direct Action Network, a predecessor of Occupy NY that got a new round of prominence after the Black Bloc destructiveness at the Seattle WTO event in 1998. 

I should note that this is why, other than what I've called the pretentiousness of the name, I don't identify with the so-called "antifa": their Black Bloc roots.

With that, per Fischer's piece, I wonder if Graeber, with the Malagasy and others of his anthropology work, while being right on them being anarchist in not having formal governments, nonetheless had leadership structures that he either flat missed, or ignored by de-emphasis, or else willfully turned a blind eye to. I say that because of his claim that Occupy "worked," a claim rejected by many people who, like him, were involved with it.

Re what I said above about their work, the Graeber-Wengrow for the book, not being new? Fischer reports that professional colleagues said at first, on their first journal submission, that it was insufficiently new. They should have stuck with that.

Via Fischer leading me to a Brad DeLong Tweet, I see The Nation has some skepticism about the book, too. Daniel Immerwahr nails it, which is why DeLong Tweeted the link:

(H)e was better known for being interesting than right, and he would gleefully make pronouncements that either couldn’t be confirmed (the Iraq War was retribution for Saddam Hussein’s insistence that Iraqi oil exports be paid for in euros) or were never meant to be (“White-collar workers don’t actually do anything”).

Yep.

Just before that, Immerwahr noted a tendentious reading of Mayan ruins by the pair.

The latter third of the review raises a big-ticket item. Accepting that late Neolithic humans did indeed "experiment" with sedentary farming, state structures, etc., for 2-3 millennia or more, at some point, they "locked in" and we became "stuck." This is definitely true in most of Eurasia plus North Africa, and also true, albeit at a lower level of hierarchy and without firm territories, in the Americas and much of sub-Saharan Africa pre-Columbian contact. And, Immerwahr says they never answer why this happened, at least not in satisfactory fashion. 

Since they can't construct an overarching narrative for that? He says that makes the book a "scrapbook" as much as anything.

==

Update: My Goodreads review is now up; it's a 2-star. He's actually not bad on some American Indian things, the Maya aside. But, he doesn't even discuss the Puebloans, or their Anasazi ancestors. And, there are lots of "shoulds," as well as, yes, a fair amount of strawmanning. And, the book desperately needed an editor. And, for someone(s) who present as having studied ancient cultures, there's lots of ignorance. Also, discussions of colonialism and imperialism are often Eurocentric. It's like China doesn't even exist.