Theos-Talk Archives (August 1996 Message tl00325)

In message <18AFE07708@serv.peb.ufrj.br>, ABRANTES@serv.peb.ufrj.br
writes
>Tacitus, moreover, describes some of the horrible torments to which Nero
>subjected the Christians (Ann., XV, xliv). The Roman writer confounds the
>Christians with the Jews, considering them as a especially abject Jewish
>sect; how little he investigated the historical truth of even the Jewish
>records may be inferred from the credulity with which he accepted the
>absurd legends and calumnies about the origin of he Hebrew people
>(Hist., V, iii, iv).

Tacitus may have made this assumption, and it might well have been a
common perception in his time.  Certainly Nero seems to have seen the
Xtians as a sort of Jews.  This kind of testimony supports my notion
that Christianity as an *entirely separate* religion from Judaism did
not emerge until around the time of the earliest received and surviving
texts (ie, the actual documents, not the stories they contain).

Alan
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