If the Tacitus passage on Nero, the Great Fire, and Christians is an interpolation, why?

I addressed week before last week how John Drinkwater handles the infamous passages from Tacitus' Annals about Nero's ALLEGED cruel punishment of Christians after the Great Fire. Beyond what I already knew about the Great Fire, about Tacitus in general, and about the Greek itacism and other problems with the specific issues in the passage, I also relied on this piece from a religion Wiki (warning: friendly to Jesus mythicism) which gave me more food for thought.

Tertullian and other Church fathers cite no such passage, and it appears not to be referenced by any Christian before 400 CE.  Sulpicius Severus, ca 400 CE, appears to be the first Christian to write about it, but his account in his "Sacred History" is hugely suspect. It's basically a "blown-out" version of Tacitus. It also gets many other things wrong, starting with claiming there was a massive number of Christians at that time, then that Nero outlawed Christianity along with starting the persecutions. Clement I, especially if one goes by "traditional" date and provenance, would have readers who would have remembered this, had it happened. He doesn't mention it. Celsus surely would have flung this issue at Origin, had he known of it, and of course Origen would have found some way to try refute it. He doesn't discuss it. Tertullian, who cites Tacitus a fair amount, doesn't mention it. Nor Eusebius, the first Christian historian.

And, some early writings actually explicitly counter Tacitus' claim. 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. As noted, if the passage IS genuine, the best and most we can derive from it, in my opinion, is that Tacitus was doing a bank shot to smear Nero by saying his torturous deaths were so cruel that Christians got sympathy. (I'm not fully ready to commit to it being an interpolation, as that's an argument from silence, and to do otherwise risks petard-hoisting. That said, [motivated reasoning alert?] the idea that there are degrees of silence would nuance that.)

But, what if it IS an interpolation? Why?

Let's say that Christians of 300 CE or later read Suetonius, and took his account that Claudius expelled the Jews who were engaged in Messianic disturbances (sic on my interpretation of ChrEEStos) and instead took that to be Jesus. 

So, why extrapolate from there to Nero?

Per my big piece about the differences between "antichrist," "man of lawlessness" and "666/The Beast," and John Chyrsostom chiding Christians of his time for visiting synagogues? At 400 CE, Christians still would have known enough Hebrew and/or Aramaic to know that the "666" was Nero. (As I note there, "Nero Caesar" in the Hebrew alphabet is נרון קסר‎ NRON QSR, which when used as numbers represent 50 200 6 50 100 60 200, which add to 666. See the link at the top of the paragraph for more detail.) They would not have know that this could have come from a disciple of John the Baptist who wrote the non-Christian core of Revelation, so they asked, "WHY is Nero the Beast"? And, they created the answer. There may also be angles related to Constantinople as the New Rome and other things.

That said, that leads to a third theoretical option besides Tacitus being true here. That is that there were messianic disturbances at this time, tied to the precursor of the revolt and the First Jewish War in Judea. We have Claudius' previous expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Tom Holland, in his book "Dynasty," notes that, according to Valerius Maximus, the first Roman expulsion of Jews happened way back in 139 BCE. That would have been just after the establishment of the Hasmonean kingdom. And, while the Christian population of Rome at this time (setting aside the issue of them counting themselves separate from Jews or not) was only 1/10 of 1 percent, Jews made up around 5 percent of Rome's population, as the past expulsions had in general not been permanent and Jew/non-Jew and Jewish/non-Jewish, to get at both culture and religion, differences weren't as sharply noticed as in Christian Europe, making returns easier.

But, how likely is that? Suetonius had mentioned the expulsion of the Jews under Claudius; surely he would have mentioned this, too, one would think. Tacitus and Suetonius would have used more explicitly anti-Jewish language, as both were writing after the First Jewish War. And, after the "separation" started, Christians would have cited this among anti-Jewish polemics.

Of the three, an interpolation seems more likely. The double bankshot seems less likely. The Jewish Messianic revolt seems not much more likely than Tacitus telling the truth here.

Update, May 26, 2024: A person at r/AcademicBiblical, in chat with me about a main comment of hers there, where she claims that 1 Clement, stripped of legendary accretions, is about Peter and Paul being killed by fellow Christians, nonetheless, in response to me, claims that the Tacitus is not an interpolation. 

I offered as a sidebar the Option B, that, if genuine by Tacitus, it's still a double-bankshot smear, projecting back from his own interactions with Christians, of what was a non-event, so that he could smear Nero even more than Christians.

As for said person's claims rejecting the interpolation idea? They note that the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca mentions the Great Fire earlier. Two counterpoints: First, on a late dating, only about 20 years earlier. So, it's in the same milieu, even if earlier. Second, the 11th letter of said correspondence is generally believed to be by a second forger than most other letters. Severus himself? Third counterpoint? As mentioned above? Tertullian regularly cited Tacitus, so why not here?

Finally, if you've read both, Severus just reads a lot like Tacitus.

Said person does reject an actual persecution, so they're solid there.

I raised the Tertullian and Celsus issues, and got pretty much a handwaving response.

That one is rather easily explicable. The Annals does not look like it was ever completely finished by Tacitus, or did not receive the full editing required, and so it also wasn't distributed nearly as widely. In fact, Tacitus' works in general were largely ignored, and the Annals was probably just in disrepair. So this isn't surprising nor indicative of much.

We'll agree to disagree. As I said in response, at the time of Severus, Jerome references all 30 books of Annals plus Histories. And, Tertullian wrote no more than a century later. And, got more handwaving in return:

Handwaving, half-truths and more.

Jerome is also writing after Sulpicius, so the Annals were at that point becoming known to Christians, so Jerome isn't surprising or pertinent there. 

And as we know, from the late second century to the early fourth century, Tacitus' works were actually in disrepair and the Annals was not read either by Christians or by Greco-Roman authors. It was just a text almost entirely unknown until there was a revival effort to try and bring his works into public eye (by pagans specifically). Read more

First, Jerome is relevant because it shows he knows them all, and he was enough of a historian for that era to probably have looked at all of them. And, ergo, it directly refutes the "and as we know" of the second paragraph.

I had debated about direct-quoting, even with the first exchange, but this confirmed in me to direct quote both. Especially because it gets even worse after that:

No, actually it doesn't. It shows that from Tacitus' writing, until 250 years later, there is no knowledge the Annals even existed.

And as a case in point, you can read Anthony Barrett's book Rome is Burning, which specifically notes a Roman emperor actively went out of his way to rejuvenate Tacitus' works because they had fallen into disrepair and obscurity. This was the Emperor Tacitus (reigned in 275 CE to 276), who specifically ordered Tacitus' works be revived.

As Barrett notes, even in the sixth century, Cassiodorus still refers to a "certain Cornelius [Tacitus]", using distanced terminology that implies his readers probably would have no familiarity, again speaking to Tacitus' poor reception.

Both Sulpicius and Jerome are writing *after* Emperor Tacitus' attempt to revive his ancestor's work. So no, nothing here is incorrect and is in perfect alignment with the historical record. The Annals were a habitually neglected source, and it was only after Tacitus' reputed descendant the Emperor Tacitus revived his reputation that the Annals started coming to people's attention. Thus, around 70 years later, Sulpicius finally reads the Annals and sees that passage, and Jerome finally knows of them later.

OK, an Emperor who is in the middle of the The Imperial Crisis, aka The Decline of the Third Century and reigns 6 months really has time to puff his namesake? And, certainly doesn't have the reign to make it happen, even if he ordered it? And, the Anthony Barrett who barely touches 4 stars with one book, and can't crack 3.5 on most? And, a handwaving interpretation of what Cassiodorus meant, while continuing to reject my comment about Jerome?

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

Anyway, I promised Crissy the last word. On Reddit, not here.

And, here's why I think that Correspondence piece can't earlier than 380 CE on the 11th letter. Yes, Christianity was legal before that under Constantine. It didn't become the state religion until 380 CE, under Theodosius I's Edict of Thessalonica.) Obviously, despite failings here and there, the Correspondence knew better than to reference a comment from Tacitus if a legitimate one existed.) Before that, no Christian writer would have felt safe blaming Nero. But, once the gloves were off, people besides Severus could simply have reference Tacitus without creating an interpolation, if the actual Tacitus had written something.

And, this leads to me offering further thought on the WHY.

After making Christianity the state religion, Theodosius launched the first attacks on paganism. A Sulpicius Severus would have written his own piece, as well as "dropping a dime" inside Tacitus as alleged proof, in support of these attacks.

"Look at the old Rome! Since the start of Christianity, it has persecuted us!"

Rather than the approach of the biblical gospels and Acts, to have gloves fully on vis-a-vis Rome, it was now time to take the gloves off in service of the New Rome.