Stephen Dando-Collins
Den australiensiske historikern Stephen Dando-Collins, utkom i oktober i fjol med boken, The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City, vari han som titeln anger avhandlar Nero och branden år 64. Han behandlar då också de anklagelser som riktas mot de kristna för att ha startat branden och är minst sagt skeptisk till sanningshalten i uppgifterna.
I förordet på sidan 6 tar han upp Suetonius’ bok om Nero, och anser att omnämnandet av de kristna i Nero 16 (”De kristna, ett slags människor som ägnade sig åt en ny och ond vidskepelse, bekämpade man med dödsstraff”) förefaller lösryckt ur sitt sammanhang och att det nästan säkert kan avföras som ett fiktivt tillägg gjort av en kristen kopist till det Suetonius ursprungligen skrev:
“The question of veracity in the works of Roman authors brings us to the widespread modern belief that in an effort to find scapegoats for the fire, Nero martyred the Christians of Rome, a belief that has become embodied in Christian legend. Where did that belief originate? In Suetonius’ Nero, we find the brief reference in his description of Nero’s overall life and career: “Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief.” This lone sentence appears out of context and without any reference to or connection with the Great Fire and can almost certainly be dismissed as a later fictitious insertion in Suetonius’ original text by a Christian copyist.”
Han verkar också tämligen övertygad om att Tacitusomnämnandet av Christus på samma sätt är ett kristet tillägg; alltså meningen i Annalerna 15:44: ” För att alltså få slut på ryktet anklagade Nero och straffade synnerligen utsökt dessa för sina laster hatade, vilka hopen kallade kristna (eller: krestna)” Han fortsätter på samma sida:
“Surprisingly, Tacitus, in his Annals, claims that Nero specifically punished the Christians at Rome for the Great Fire, though the Annals can be regarded as an otherwise quite reliable work in terms of historical fact. As typified by the listing for ‘Nero’ in recent editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica, many modern-day historians believe that this tale of Christian persecution was apocryphal and was inserted in Tacitus’ Annals by a Christian copyist, centuries later.”
Att det skulle vara ett tillägg är enligt Stephen Dando-Collins inte så märkligt då inga av de romerska historikernas verk förekommer annat än i sena avskrifter. På sidorna 6 och 7 skriver han följande:
“None of the copies of the great Roman books such as the Annals that exist today are originals. All are later copies, often created centuries after the first edition, in the laborious, handwritten production process that all books went through prior to the invention of the printing press, making the insertion of invented interpolations simple and, unless a reader was in possession of the original text, undetectable. These copies of ancient Roman works were found, over the past several hundred years, in the libraries of Christian monasteries and institutions (the task of writing books by hand became the province of monks in Christian society) and in the private libraries of devout Christian aristocrats.”
Sedan listar han orsakerna till att betvivla att Tacitus verkligen har skrivit passagen
“One of the reasons for suspecting the authenticity of the Christian reference in Tacitus, and the reference in Suetonius, is that the term Christian makes no other appearance in Roman literature of the first century. Tellingly, neither Saint Paul nor Saint Peter, who are believed to have died during Nero’s reign, describe their followers as Christians in their Gospel letters. Neither does the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles, thought to have been written by Saint Luke. Many early followers of Jesus Christ, a Jew, were Jewish, like Paul and Peter. To the Roman masses, this religion based around the Nazarene was nothing more than a Jewish cult, and so its followers were, for a long time, labe1ed Jews.”
Termen kristna skulle således inte ha varit i bruk och använts av romare på Tacitus’ tid. Å andra sidan används termen av Suetonius och av Tacitus, fastän han synes ha brukat termen krestna.
Stephen Dando-Collins tar sig an Dio Cassius som skrev på 200-talet och det stycke där han beskriver kejsar Domitianus’ arrestering av ett antal personer år 95; att de som arresterades anklagades för ateism och att denna anklagelse riktades också mot andra som anammade den ”judiska riktningen”. Han säger att många kristna forskare antar att den ”judiska riktningen” avser kristna, men Stephen Dando-Collins avfärdar den tolkningen eftersom den är gjord utifrån antagandet om en parallell med en viss Manius Acilius Glabrio och dennes samröre med en viss kristen katakomb. Enligt Stephen Dando-Collins är det tveksamt om Manius Acilius Glabrio verkligen var kristen, den kristna katakomben hade vid den tiden ännu inte tagits i bruk och Dio kände till kristna och brukade termen varför det vore underligt om han inte skulle ha underlåtit att använda den också annars om han avsett kristna.
Därefter vänder sig Stephen Dando-Collins på sidan 8 till uttrycket prokurator och säger att Tacitus näppeligen skulle ha brukat detta ord om det varit han själv som skrivit meningen:
“Less important, perhaps, is that passages in the Annals refer to Pontius Pilatus (Pilate) as a “procurator,” a title always accorded Pilate in Christian literature. Pilate actually held the lesser rank of prefect in Judea, something that Tacitus, who had access to the official records at Rome’s Tabularium and frequently quoted from them in his Annals, should have known.
After explaining that there was a widespread “sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order” from the emperor, the Annals go on:”
Han citerar sedan ur Annalerna 15:44, den del som svarar mot följande i Cavallins översättning med min översättning av den fetmarkerade delen:
”För att alltså få slut på ryktet anklagade Nero och straffade synnerligen utsökt dessa för sina laster hatade, vilka hopen kallade kristna (eller: krestna). Upphovsmannen till detta namn, Christus, avrättades genom prokurator Pontius Pilatus när Tiberius regerade; och [fastän] undertryckt för stunden utbröt den fördärvliga vidskepelsen på nytt, inte endast i Judeen, detta ondas upphov, utan även i staden [Rom], där all världens gräsligheter och skamligheter flödar samman och förhärligas [eller: ivrigt idkas]. Alltså greps först de som erkände, därefter överbevisades på deras angivelse en väldig skara, ej så mycket om skuld till branden som hat till människosläktet. Och när de dödades gjordes de till åtlöje: de sveptes i hudar av vilda djur och hundar bet dem till döds; eller också korsfästes de och antändes för att när det kvällades användas som belysning. Nero hade upplåtit sin park för denna underhållning och gav också spel på Circus; klädd som körsven blandade han sig med folket eller stod på kuskbocken. Härav uppstod medlidande med hans offer, som visserligen var skyldiga och förtjänade de strängaste straff; men de förintades icke till allmänt väl utan för en enda mans vilda grymhet.”
Stephen Dando-Collins anser att uppgiften om ”en väldig skara” inte kan stämma in på de kristna emedan de omöjligt kan ha varit speciellt många i Rom vid den tiden. Han hänvisar till Paulus som inte namnger en enda inhemsk kristen i Rom och vidare Apostlagärningarna som enligt honom styrker endast att de fanns få kristna i Rom på 60-talet.
“That ‘an immense multitude’ was arrested is another cause to doubt that these people were Christians. Even the Christian Church acknowledges that the Christian community at Rome in AD 64 would have been quite small. The Apostle Paul, in his letters, usually listed the many leading Christians of the city or town where he was staying; in his letters from Rome of AD 6G-62, he named not a single local Christian. In a letter apparently written in AD 66, while he was incarcerated at Rome for the second time, he specifically named just three male and one female Christians living at Rome; from their names, those four appear to have been noncitizens, probably former slaves.
“That there were indeed Christians at Rome at the time is affirmed by Acts of the Apostles, which referred to a small party of Christians coming out of the city to meet Paul at his last stop outside Rome while on his way to the capital in the spring of AD 60. But for Tacitus to describe this small community as a ”class” at Rome does not ring true. The observation that some of these people were executed on crosses by Nero following the Great Fire tells us not that they were Christians, but that they were not Roman citizens. Crucifixion was the regular method of execution for noncitizens convicted of a crime throughout the Roman empire, for centuries before and after the crucifixion of Christ. The use of crosses for these particular prisoners’ executions was not a deliberate allusion to, or a mockery of, Christianity. It had nothing to with Christianity.”
Stephen Dando-Collins anser alltså att Tacitus’ hänvisning till kristna egentligen inte avsåg kristna. Han ställer sig frågan om hela det citerade stycket hos Tacitus är en förfalskning eller om stycket bara är lätt modifierat? På sidorna 9 och 10 skriver han följande:
“Was this entire section of the Annals text a forgery, as some believe? Or did the person responsible for the interpolation merely change a word here and add a sentence there to distort Tacitus’ original, for religious propaganda purposes? What if, for example, the original text had described those arrested and executed for starting the fire as followers of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and not as Christians? In that instance, all the interpolator had to do was replace ‘Egyptians,’ as followers of Isis were known, with the word ‘Christians.’”
Stephen Dando-Collins föreslår alltså att passagen ursprungligen handlade om att Nero anklagade de egyptiska Isis-anhängarna för branden och att någon kristen helt sonika ändrat i texten så att det i stället kom att åsyfta de kristna. Han fortsätter skriva på sidan 10 att dyrkarna av Isis inte bara var många utan också illa sedda. Man kan betänka Josefus’ berättelse om hur kejsar Tiberius lät korsfästa Isisprästerna och förstöra Isistemplet till följd av vad en viss Mundus gjorde mot Paulina.
“The worship of Isis was among the most popular of the religious cults followed at Rome by noncitizens during the first century. The first altars to Isis appeared on the Capitoline Mount early in the first century BC. Destroyed by the Senate in 58 BC, they were soon replaced by a temple to Isis, the Iseum, which was leveled on Senate orders eight years later. The so-called First Triumvirate, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus, had a new temple to Isis and her consort Serapis erected in 43 BC—the Iseum Campense—on the Campus Marrius, on Rome’s northern outskirts. Other large Isea, or temples to Isis, would eventually be built at Rome—one on the Capitoline Mount and another in Regio III, with smaller ones on the Caelian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills.
“Isis, who was seen as a caring goddess welcoming both men and women, rich and poor, and who promised eternal life and aid with her followers’ earthly woes, soon had thousands of followers among all classes at Rome, but particularly among the lower classes. The cult of his involved certain mysteries, which Isiacs were not permitted to reveal to nonbelievers. There were even a number of similarities between the cult of Isis and the later Christian faith, not the least being initiation by baptism in water, the belief in resurrection, and the adoration of a holy mother and son-Isis and Horus. Later statues of the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus Christ heat a striking resemblance to the earlier statues of Isis nursing her son Horus, which may well have inspired them.
“By AD 64, the cult of Isis had been in and out of favor at Rome for a century. In 21 BC, Augustus’ efficient right-hand man, Marcus Agrippa, forbade the rites of the cult of lsis to be practiced within a mile of Rome. In AD 18–19, during the early years of the reign of the next emperor, Tiberius, four thousand ‘Egyptians’ and Jews, all of them freedmen of military age (18 to 46), were rounded up at Rome and sent to repress brigands on the island of Sardinia.”
Stephen Dando-Collins försöker leda i bevis att beskrivningen hos Tacitus stämmer bättre in på Isisdyrkarna än på de kristna. På sidan 13 tar han upp att Isisanhängarna sägs ha dyrkat djur och att de som Nero ska ha dödat ”sveptes i hudar av vilda djur och hundar bet dem till döds”, då för att förnedra dem.
“Other evidence hints at the identity of those who were executed on Nero’s orders after the Great Fire. Look again at what the Annals say about them: ‘Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished.’ Consider also that followers of Isis were seen by Romans to worship animals, and that Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, had the head of a dog. Conversely, the priests of Isis eschewed all contact with animal products, which were considered unclean, and wore linen garments and sandals made from papyrus. For all these reasons, the mockery to which Tacitus refers-with the condemned made to wear animal skins as they were torn to pieces by dogs—strongly suggests that these people were followers of Isis.”
Stephen Dando-Collins tar också upp att eld utgjorde en viktig del i Isisreligionen.
“There was one other connection: As Nero would have known, fire played a key part in Isiac religious observances. This made the burning to death of some of the prisoners another mockery of the cult, just as it would have made the connection between the worship of Isis and the Great Fire credible to Romans at the time. It is not impossible that followers of Isis were indeed guilty of either spreading the fire, to ‘cleanse’ Rome, or of possibly setting the second-stage blaze in the Aemilian property.”
Därför föreslår Stephen Dando-Collins att Tacitus ursprungligen skrev något liknade detta:
”Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, followers of the cult of lsis, called Egyptians by the populace, which had taken root at Rome, where all things hideous and shameful find their center and become popular.”
Någon kristen bytte sedan ut Isiskulten och egypter och lade till de kristna delarna. Han skriver också att Isiskulten under de kommande åren undertrycktes men sedan återkom, vilket därmed skulle tyda på att det var Nero som lät undertrycka den.
“All the indications are that the cult of lsis was subdued over the next few years after the Great Fire, before one of the first three of the four emperors of the tumultuous year of AD 68–69—Galba, Otho, or Vitellius—again permitted the worship of Isis.“
Roger Viklund, 2011-05-29
Signaturen ”Den andre BB” har bemött Stephen Dando-Collins argument och hans bemötande finns publicerat som ett eget inlägg: Ett bemötande av Stephen Dando-Collins förslag att Suetonius och Tacitus är förfalskade.
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