It was not my intention to provide a paraphrase for every entry of Bettenson. I hope to get back to reactions and comments to the historic texts, but for now it has seemed important to bring the translations up to date. The exercise seems to be good for me, however, as long as my readers understand I am striving more for the devotional value of the readings rather than for a scholarly and critical reading. But I do think you will find my paraphrases easier to understand than Bettenson’s original translations.

I also wonder what in the world Bettenson was thinking when he labeled Justin’s view of Greek philosophy as the ‘liberal” view, and calls Tertullian’s the “negative” view. Such designations are so misleading for these readings that I wondered for a moment if Bettenson actually read these selections. Taken in context their views do not contradict one another’s, although I have no interest in establishing a harmony of church fathers. There are plenty of illustrations in which fathers contradict one another, as Luther rightly pointed out. Still, in what sense does Bettenson mean liberal and negative?

Following is my paraphrase of today’s selection.

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (Tertullian), On the Prescription of the Heretics 7
“It is philosophy that informs the world’s wisdom. Yes, philosophy–that careless interpreter of God and what he has created. Now consider heresies. Aren’t heresies suggested by philosophy? Take the system devised by the gnostic Valentinus (100-160)with its ‘aeons’ and ‘forms’ and ‘trinity of man’ notions. All taken right out of Platonism. Marcion’s heresy has its locus in Stoicism with its idea of a ‘better god’ who is better by virtue of his ‘tranquility’. And how about these persons who teach that the soul perishes? This is taken straight from the Epicureans. And on it goes: Philosophers all teach that resurrection is poppycock; the stoic Zeno taught that matter is equated to God; Heraclitus pops up whenever there is talk about a god of fire.

“So heretics and philosophers address the same subjects in the same way. Do you see how heretics and philosophers always seem to carry on about the same topics? ‘Where did evil come from? Why evil? Where did man come from, and how did he come to be?’ Then it gets really ridiculous with someone like Valentinus. He wants to know ‘where does God come from?’ And he answers the question! ‘He comes from enthymesis and ectroma’!

“That wretched Aristotle! Blast him for teaching them dialectic–that art of building up and tearing down, so chameleon in stating the issues, so wildly speculative, so stubborn when there is a real difference of opinion, so good at creating arguments. They make themselves look ridiculous because they are always stirring up questions but never providing any answers. I ask you, what do Athens and Jerusalem have in common? (Nothing.) What does Plato’s Academy have to do with Christ’s church? (Again, nothing.) What do heretics and Christians have in common? (You know the answer.)

“To hell with all these projects to create a ‘Stoic’ or ‘Platonic’ or ‘dialectic’ Christianity! Jesus Christ has cured us of the addiction to subtle theories, and the gospel renders all mind-numbing conjectures useless.”

“Here is our response: First, Christ is the first-born of God and (as I have shown previously) he is the Reason (Logos) of which the whole human race partakes from the beginning. So then, all who live according to Reason are Christians, even though some may mistake them for atheists. I have in mind here persons like the Greeks Socrates and Heraclitus, and others like them.”

Justin Martyr, Apology II.13
“I laughed at their feeble trick and those who were suckered in by it. I refer to when I heard about the false report that evil demons spread as a disguise over the anointed Christian teachings for the purpose of turning people away. I prayed and strove to maintain a Christian attitude in this debate. It’s not that Plato’s teachings are diametrically opposed to those of Christ, but that Plato’s teachings are not like them in every way. This same could be said of others like the Stoics, poets, and prose-authors. Each of these spoke rightly where what they talked about were things that concerned Christianity because each of them are sharers of divine Reason, while those who opposed them did not live according to Reason and thus lacked wisdom and knowledge. Whatever has been rightly said by anyone in any place belongs to us Christians, because second to our devotion to God is our love of Reason which is from the self-existent and indescribable God. Because of us he became incarnate so that by sharing in our suffering he might also bring healing. For those teachers and authors of old were able to see the truth faintly through the seed of Reason which was implanted in them. For the seed of Reason and the attempt to imitate the Logos according to limited capacity are one thing, but far different it is to share in Christ himself, the sharing of whom and the knowledge that comes of that relationship is given according to the grace of God.”

Justin is attempting to deal with the value of the wisdom offered by Greek philosophers, so loved by many in the ancient world, and indeed loved by many Christians and seekers in Justin’s day. In the first section Justin overstates his case by declaring the peripatetics to be “Christians.” I think we can understand better what he is driving at if we focus on the latter part of today’s selection. Today we might say it like this: “all truth is God’s truth.” For example, whatever God says is true not because God said it, but God only says what it true. God does not require us to believe the Bible whether it is true or not, but tells us to believe the Bible because it is true. In the same way, Socrates taught many things that were true and Justin says that nothing that is true is in opposition to Christian teaching. In this way Socrates teaching is “Christian,” though Justin makes it clear that his chrisitianly teaching is given by a common grace of sharing in the Reason that is available to all who are bearers of the imago Dei. I think it apparent that there is a difference in Justin between “Christian” as an adjective, which can be applied to any true thing that Socrates teaches, and “Christian” as a noun, or one who has a relationship with God by the application of grace, in which God did for the Christian what he or she could not do for him- or herself.

I confess that when I meditated on this passage last April, I lost momentum as I tried to understand Justin’s words in context. I have jumped back into the game now, and I hope I can show some consistency. It is obvious I am not going to plow through Bettenson in a year, though there is still plenty of time!

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), “Letter to the emperor Trajan concerning the Christians in Bithynia,” Letters X.69.

“I make it my custom, Sir, to ask for your help when I find myself in over my head; for there is no one better than you to make clear what I should do and to guide me. Take the matter of these Christians: I have never witnessed a trial of Christians, so I am not sure what weight to give their offenses, or what sentence is appropriate, or how deep an investigation I should conduct. I don’t know if I should make a distinction based on their age. Does it make a difference whether they are minors or adults? Should I dismiss the case if they recant, or am I naïve to think they will truly give up their faith? Is the actual crime that one has become a Christian or do I only prosecute the crimes that follow from the profession of faith? I am confused about all these questions.

“So let me tell you what I have done in the recent trial: My opening practice was simply to ask them if they are Christians. For those who said they are, I repeated the question twice and informed them of the punishment for following Christ. If they still insisted then I gave the order for them to be punished. I reasoned that at the very least anyone who is obstinate and inflexible deserves to be punished. There were some brought to me who were bewitched in the same way, but being Roman citizens I had them sent to Rome (as was their privilege).

“Now, as usually happens when these kinds of cases come up, I received anonymous tips about several other people being Christians but when they were examined they denied the charge completely. These latter people were willing to repeat an oath to the gods, perform ritual offerings before your image and those of the gods, and even added the final touch of cursing the name of Christ. This is in contrast to real Christians who cannot be forced to do these simple things, so I dismissed the charges against these falsely accused.

“Of those I tried for being Christians because they were accused by someone who appeared in person, I had some who admitted it at first, but then denied it right away. I also had some of these accused who said that they used to consider themselves Christians (anywhere from three years to more than twenty years earlier) but did no longer. These latter also worshipped your image and that of the gods and cursed Christ. None of those who recanted ever admitted they engaged in malicious behavior even while confessing their participation in the common rituals of the Christians: assembling on a particular day before dawn, praying to Christ as God, promising never to defraud others, to steal, to commit adultery, to lie, or fail to return a deposit when it was asked for. They also confirmed that when these meetings were over they reconvened in another place to eat together. They reported that they quit gathering altogether when the edict you ordered me to issue, banning these meetings, was promulgated. This made me suspicious of what really underlay these so-called harmless meetings, so I tortured two of their women “deacons” but only got some wild superstition out of them. At this point, I decided to call a recess so that I could consult you.

“I don’t think it is a waste of time for you to think about this matter since the danger is growing. All classes and ranks are affected, and both men and women. This virulent superstition is not only an urban phenomenon, but has spread to small towns and rural areas. But I still think there is time to contain its growth for the following reasons: It seems like worshippers are once again frequenting the official temples, which once were practically deserted. There is renewed interest again in the sacred rites and an increased demand for the meat yielded by the animal sacrifices. The market for those commodities had all but dried up. These encouraging signs make it easy to imagine what could happen if we are lenient with those who are willing to recant the error of Christianity.”

Marcus Ulpius Nerva “Trajan” Traianus, “Emperor Trajan’s response to Pliny the Younger’s Letter concerning the Christians in Bithynia,” in Gaius “Pliny” Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Letters X.70.

“Dearest Secundus, you’re on the right track by looking into the charges against the alleged Christians who were brought before you. These cases are too complex to have a simple rule in dealing with them. My advice is to not go out of your way to find Christians, but if someone brings them up on a charge and a crime is proved they must suffer the consequences. Now if the accused denies he is a Christian and proves it by invoking our gods let him go free (unless there is cause for some further suspicion). Never admit anonymous information in any trial because it is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and is out of keeping with the spirit of our age.”

This exchange of letters between Pliny, the imperial governor of the Roman province of Bithynia, and the Emperor Trajan around the year 111 are remarkable both for the assessment of the growth of Christianity and for the relative restraint in dealing with Christians. Pliny, already highly esteemed by the emperor who appointed him governor, was an old man himself but wrote to Trajan as to a father. He confessed his insecurity in trying Christians and related the classes of people he dealt with in those trials: Admitted Christians, falsely accused non-Christians, and apostates. Note that Pliny suspends the trials when he runs into a problem with the apostates: The accused admitted that they participated in Christian meetings and rituals, but denied that they took part in anything misanthropic (nor apparently witnessed any evil) while doing so. Pliny, whose only knowledge of Christians was second-hand, and who had believed something more sinister took place in these secret meetings of believers was apparently surprised by this revelation and decided to torture two women to get them to reveal something more. What they apparently revealed was theology, which sounded like mumbo-jumbo to Pliny, and did not help him in his quest for the dirty secrets. The last paragraph of the letter reveals his concerns about Christianity. It is growing in numbers of adherents. It has filled a gap in the spirituality of the Empire. It threatens the old order, so closely identified with what it means to be a Roman. Pliny’s optimism about stemming the tide of Christianity sounds comical in retrospect. Perhaps he was even more afraid after the trials when he saw the resolve of the faithful, and could not milk any dark secrets from the apostates.

Trajan’s terse response ignored Pliny’s alarm and went in a surprising direction. The emperor told Pliny not to hunt down Christians, and essentially only try them when you must, and never go to trial on the word of anonymous witnesses. Did Trajan believe Christianity would fizzle out? Did he believe that its growth was only spurred on by persecution? Trajan’s policy toward Christians was followed for the most part by later emperors (with some notable exceptions, like Diocletian). Most persecutions of Christians were local and regional, not empire-wide.

In this passage the historian Suetonius (75-160) gives a picture of the public conclusions Nero came to in the aftermath of the Great Fire of A.D. 64. The first has to do with the construction of buildings in Rome. Romans were shocked at how quickly the fire spread and how helpless were efforts to control it. We know from other sources that Nero had an interest in architecture and urban planning. He wanted to rebuild the city on a grand scale, but apparently addressed the danger of fire by building porches (L., porticus), extending the walls that protected the city 17 miles to Ostia, and building a canal that made the Tiber navigable for ships all the way to Rome. Whether, or how, the wall extension and canal construction had anything to do with fire prevention I am certainly not sure. I wrestled with whether they were related to fire prevention based on a contextual reading. I do know that Nero used ships to carry rubble out of the city from Rome after the fire, and that he both improved the water supply and widened the streets in the residential areas. Since I am calling for collaborators on this blog…are there any architects, city planners, or ancient historians out there who have any ideas on what these porches might have looked like, how they might have functioned, or how new walls or canals might prevent more fires? Share your ideas in the comment section.

More probably related to Nero’s theory of the cause of the Great Fire are the examples of new laws he enacted. The public events suggest luxury and excess, a brew which could lead to all kinds of dissipation that would disrupt the public order. Stoic critics of Nero’s regime such as Thrasea Paetus might have appeased by measures that insured public order. Chariot drivers and pantomime shows  (L., pantomimorum factiones) was prohibited for the mayhem they caused as well. What these had to do with the fire, if anything, is beyond me. The main interest of the passage for readers of Bettenson is the description of the despised Christians, a safe target for scapegoating. He calls them a “class of people given to a new and harmful superstition (L., genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae).” Contextually, the harm of the irrational beliefs was that it led them to stand apart as misanthropes, refusing to participate in the civic cultus. Such misanthropic behavior could lead them to arson or some other disorder.

“He [Claudius} allowed the people of Ilium [Troy] perpetual exemption from tribute, on the ground that they were the founders of the Roman race, reading an ancient letter of the Senate and People of Rome written in Hellenic to King Seleukos, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance only on condition that he should keep their kinsfolk of Ilium free from every burden. Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome. He allowed the envoys of the Germani to sit in the orchestra, led by their naive self-confidence…. He utterly abolished the cruel and inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls, which under Augustus had merely been prohibited to Roman citizens…He struck his treaties with foreign princes in the Forum, sacrificing a pig and reciting the ancient formula of the fetial priests [a group of twenty noble advisers on international relations who also maintained a religious function]. But these and other acts, and in fact almost the whole conduct of his reign, were dictated not so much by his own judgment as that of his wives and freedmen, since he nearly always acted in accordance with their interests and desires.”

Several comments are in order in this passage. First, Bettenson sees the name “Chrestus” as a variant of the name “Christus,” which we saw in the previous passage by Tacitus. Thus, something was happening within Judaism at Rome that was divisive and presumably involved Christ and his followers there. Bettenson adds the note that this probably represents disagreements between Jewish and Christian teachers that characterized the differentiation phase of first-century Christianity. The editor also offers a biblical cross-reference to Acts 18:2. In this passage, Luke records the first meeting of Paul, and Priscilla and her husband, Aquila at Corinth. Priscilla and Aquila were living in Rome during the time of Claudius’ decree that expelled all Jews. In a letter to the Alexandrians written at the outset of his reign, Claudius addressed rioting that involved Jewish residents of that city and exhorted Gentile Alexandrians to tolerate the Jews in their midst. At the same time he warned the Alexandrian Jews that if they pressed issues too far he would “take all measures against them as awakening a disease affecting all the world.” here is the gist of the letter:

“As for the question , which party was responsible for the riots and feud (or rather, if the truth be told, the war) with the Jews, although in confrontation with their opponents your ambassadors, and particularly Dionysios the son of Theon, contended with great zeal, nevertheless I was unwilling to make a strict inquiry, though guarding within me a store of immutable indignation against whichever party renews the conflict. And I tell you once and for all that unless you put a stop to this ruinous and obstinate enmity against each other, I shall be driven to show what a benevolent Prince can be when turned to righteous indignation. Wherefore, once again I conjure you that, on the one hand, the Alexandrians show themselves forebearing and kindly towards the Jews who for many years have dwelt in the same city, and dishonor none of the rites observed by them in the worship of their god, but allow them to observe their customs as in the time of the Deified Augustus, which customs I also, after hearing both sides, have sanctioned; and on the other hand, I explicitly order the Jews not to agitate for more privileges than they formerly possessed, and not in the future to send out a separate embassy as though they lived in a separate city (a thing unprecedented), and not to force their way into gymnasiarchic or cosmetic games, while enjoying their own privileges and sharing a great abundance of advantages in a city not their own, and not to bring in or admit Jews who come down the river from Egypt or from Syria, a proceeding which will compel me to conceive serious suspicions. Otherwise I will by all means take vengeance on them as fomenters of which is a general plague infecting the whole world. If, desisting from these courses, you consent to live with mutual forebearance and kindliness, I on my side will exercise a solicitude of very long standing for the city, as one which is bound to us by traditional friendship. I bear witness to my friend Barbillus of the solicitude which he has always shown for you in my presence and of the extreme zeal with which he has now advocated your cause; and likewise to my friend Tiberius Claudius Archibius.”

The conclusion, then, is that we cannot be sure what the central issues were in the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, but that if it was similar to what happened in Alexandria it may have had to do with property rights and citizen privileges. Writing in Romans 13 at a later time, Paul exhorted the Roman Christians to obey the civil authorities, perhaps wanting them to not press too stringently for their rights– remember the earlier expulsion that could happen again! At least we can be sure that the Roman authorities still did not clearly differentiate between Jews and Christians during Claudius’ reign.

Another interesting point is that Claudius, according to Suetonius, was not his own man but acted in a people-pleasing manner. This raises an interesting question about the early Christians. Is there any evidence of any of Claudius’ wives or advisers having a grudge for, or fear of, the Christians? Notice that Claudius made a policy to wipe out druidism in Gaul, so he was willing to take extreme measures when religion threatened the civil peace in some way.

By the way, Claudius’ sentimental honoring of Troy is related to the belief that the founders of Rome were descended from the Trojan warrior Aeneas, who escaped the destruction of the Trojan War and emigrated west to found a colony on the Italian peninsula. This myth related to Roman origins fit in well with the typical Roman xenophobia regarding Greeks that strangely led to a sort of cultural inferiority complex on the part of the Romans. One may observe this in Roman art, which usually supplies a poor imitation of their Greek predecessors.

“After the conclusion of the [Roman Quinquennial] games Poppæa died from a casual outburst of rage in her husband [Nero], who felled her with a kick when she was pregnant. That there was poison I [Tacitus]cannot believe, though some writers so relate, from hatred rather than from belief, for the emperor was desirous of children, and wholly swayed by love of his wife. Her body was not consumed by fire according to Roman usage, but after the custom of foreign princes was filled with fragrant spices and embalmed, and then consigned to the sepulchre of the Julii. She had, however, a public funeral, and Nero himself from the rostra eulogized her beauty, her lot in having been the mother of a deified child, and fortune’s other gifts, as though they were virtues.”

Aside from further confirming Nero’s cruelty, even to members of his own family (and perhaps a violent impulsivity), Tacitus gives us a glimpse into Roman culture. Though Poppæa’s body was embalmed and placed in a sepulchre, the standard Roman practice was cremation. Apparently, Nero wanted to preserve her beauty. Christians and Jews did not practice cremation because burning the body was considered disrespect for the body God had created, and which he would glorify in the resurrection of the dead. In the second century, a growing Christian community in Rome began to dig catacombs in the soft tufo beneath the city as repositories for the bodies of their dead. Non-Christian Romans also increasingly buried their dead as well. The practice was called inhumation, a burial of ashes. For centuries the catacombs were forgotten, until they were accidentally rediscovered in the sixteenth century. Today more than forty catacomb sites have been identified in Rome, and there may be many more.

Notice also that the historian Tacitus discounts the stories that Nero poisoned Poppæa. He believes the premeditation of poison paints a more sinister picture of Nero that was motivated by chronicler’s hatred for the Roman Emperor. Some modern historians take Tacitus’ observation a step further: in their revisionism they raise doubts as to whether Nero was all that bad because the reports about him were controlled by those who hated him. At the very least these revisionists hold that we cannot be sure of the accuracy of all these negative reports. We know Nero did have his fans in the eastern part of the Empire (just not many in Rome). Tacitus is a good example of an ancient historian who brings a critical eye to his reports. He does not accept all the negative reports about Nero, but still includes enough evidence to show that Nero was a better ruler early in his reign and became increasingly unstable and cruel later in his reign. Let’s don’t be too quick to give Nero a clean bill of health. At the same time, he probably didn’t fiddle while Rome burned.

Christians were an easy target: they refused to take part in acts of public piety, which to Christians amounted to idolatry but to most Romans was a demonstration of patriotism. General charges of misanthropy were common. They were seen as secretive and wild rumors grew about  their love feasts, seen alternately as incestual or even cannibalistic due to their declarations of love for one another and the celebration of the Lord’s Table. Christians originally experienced some protection with the perception that they were a Jewish sect, but apparently by Nero’s time they were treated as a separate, foreign, and illegal entity.

If Tacitus’ understanding of the events is accepted, there was probably some healthy skepticism about Nero’s claims among the informed and well-educated. At any rate, Nero’s tactic did not deflect the growing hatred toward him among the Roman people for long. In less than four years the cruel ruler would be dead from a knife through the throat by his own hand, an act of desperation while awaiting the justice of a military coup.

Here is today’s passage from Tacitus:

“Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. 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 Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center 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 car. 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.”

According to Tacitus, some first confessed to being Christians and then ratted out other Christians. There is good reason for thinking that this was the official report, so we do not know whether the confession was extracted by torture. It is interesting that though Tacitus thought Christians were pretty loathsome, he nevertheless thought even they did not deserve the tortures that Nero devised for them.

The book opens with an enigmatic passage from the Roman historian Tacitus (56-117) concerning a prominent woman of the gens (family that share the same name from a common ancestor) Pomponia, a gens that was famously Christian in the second and third centuries:

“Pomponia Graecina, a distinguished lady, wife of the Plautius who returned from Britain with an ovation, was accused of some foreign superstition and handed over to her husband’s judicial decision. Following ancient precedent, he heard his wife’s cause in the presence of kinsfolk, involving, as it did, her legal status and character, and he reported that she was innocent. This Pomponia lived a long life of unbroken melancholy. After the murder of Julia, Drusus’ daughter, by Messalina’s intrigues, for forty years she wore only the attire of a mourner, with a heart ever sorrowful. For this, during Claudius’ reign, she escaped unpunished, and it was afterwards counted a glory to her.”

Tacitus does not directly say Pomponia is a Christian, only that she was accused of a “foreign superstition.” Eusebius and other early Christians believed this accorded well with the Roman understanding that Christianity was a sect of Judaism, and that it was subsequently considered misanthropic. Justice applied would be the duty of the husband as the patriarch of the family in consultation with a family tribunal, and the result of the examination was that she was found innocent. So was she really a Christian if she was found innocent of the “superstition”? Perhaps her husband Aulus Plautius, who accompanied Claudius on his British campaign, was either a secret believer or believed her virtue as a wife outweighed the dangers of a religion that lay outside the Roman pantheon. Apparently, her kinswoman Julia did not escape Claudius’ wrath and Pomponia openly mourned this persona non grata, yet the latter escaped punishment for a show of defiance only to have her bravery honored at a later time. Her mourning continued for forty years. Perhaps, as Bettenson’s embedded note implies, she mourned because things didn’t get much better for Christians in the subsequent regimes that included the infamous Nero. In the next selection, Bettenson will expand on Tacitus’ observations about Christians during the reign of Nero.