I’m Not Interested in Tacitus, Mr. Lundahl, Deal with Carrier (2014) Like I Asked You to Do
Kevin R. Henke
October 27, 2022
In Henke (2022bh) and Henke (2022b), I stated the following:
“Mr. Lundahl fails to realize that ancient histories by themselves cannot be trusted, especially if they were written centuries or millennia after the supposed event that they are describing or if the documents are copies of copies of copies of copies... and not the originals Even if an ancient history happens to be an original copy describing an event that occurred at the time that the document was written, unless a claim in an ancient history is confirmed with independent external evidence, either in another manuscript or from archeology, there’s no reason to accept it as reliable history. There’s a big difference between an historical claim and a reliable historical claim.” [my original emphasis in italics; my emphasis in bold]
In Lundahl (2022t), Mr. Lundahl makes the following comments about my bolded phrase:
“This is a very fine way to handle juridical documents in recent history, but it is over the top, unrealistic, when it comes to ancient texts.
We do have a discipline that compares text versions, it does very much not favour the general assumption that a text copied and recopied is like plasticine being molded and remolded.
Mr. Henke showed off the kind of very selective scepticism which the exact same "problem" somehow doesn't elicit about Tacitus.
The first 6 books of the Annales survive in a single manuscript, now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, where it is MS. plut. 68.1. Since this is the library of the Medici prince, Lorenzo the Magnificent, it is naturally called the Codex Mediceus, or M for short.
This MS was written around 850AD in Germany. The distinctive type of script suggests the event took place in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Fulda, and this is supported by an explicit reference to Tacitus in the Annales Fuldenses for 852 (Cornelius Tacitus, scriptor rerum a Romanis in ea gente gestarum) which seems to show knowledge of Ann. 2,9.
https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/tacitus/
This account is taken primarily from L.D. REYNOLDS, Texts and Transmission: A survey of the Latin Classics, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1983), ISBN 0-19-814456-3. Tacitus occupies page 406-411. The pages on the major works are by R.J. TARRANT; those on the minor works by M. WINTERBOTTOM. The references are also from this volume, except where indicated, but I have only reproduced a few of them. Anyone at all interested in the transmission of the classics should read this volume. It is in print, and available from Amazon. The only downside is the price - $150 - which will exclude most people.
So, why so little scepticism on what Carrier get's from Tacitus?”
In Henke (2022iz), I previously replied to the two unbolded sentences at the beginning of this quotation from Lundahl (2022t). In this essay, I’ll respond to Mr. Lundahl’s above bolded comments about the works of Tacitus.
Before this essay, my only statement about Tacitus in this entire debate was in the following single paragraph in Henke (2022gn), which I wrote in response to some irrelevant comments in Lundahl (2022r):
“For “Carrier on Tacitus“, Mr. Lundahl provides Richard Carrier’s source as “Fishers of Evidence Gets Confused about Math” In this discussion on Tacitus, both Mr. Lundahl and Dr. Carrier mention some things about the Gospels, but still this is not a good enough substitution for Carrier (2014). Carrier (2014) contains hundreds of pages of arguments and references that Mr. Lundahl should be studying and concisely summarizing in a critique. Now, I don’t expect Mr. Lundahl to write an extensive commentary on Carrier (2014). However, if he could point out a few examples of Carrier’s blunders and provide some 21st century archeology or other relevant 21st century evidence to back up his criticisms of Carrier (2014) that would be very helpful.”
Here are some more details on this situation. Because the reliability of the Bible is a major issue in this debate, I wanted Mr. Lundahl to read Carrier (2014, pp. 387-509), where Dr. Carrier argues that the Gospels are works of fiction pretending to be history. Instead of reading my recommended section, Lundahl (2022r) cites a largely irrelevant essay that he did about Dr. Carrier and the Roman historian Tacitus. Now, I really have no interest in going off on a tangent about Tacitus. Also, as can be seen in the above paragraph from Henke (2022gn), I never took a side in Mr. Lundahl’s dispute with Dr. Richard Carrier on Tacitus. Instead of complaining in Lundahl (2022t) about my supposed “very selective skepticism” or “so little skepticism” about Tacitus, Mr. Lundahl needs to realize that I showed no interest at all one way or the other about Tacitus. On Tacitus, I would further simply state that just like the claims in the ancient histories of Alexander the Great (Henke 2022a and Henke 2022b), any claims in Tacitus must be taken with skepticism until they are demonstrated to be accurate with external evidence. Otherwise, I don’t care about Tacitus. Furthermore, I certainly disagree with Dr. Carrier about mythicism. So, no one should assume that I would automatically side or agree with him on any dispute that he may have about any topic.
As I indicated in Henke (2022gn), the views on Dr. Carrier and Tacitus in Lundahl (2022r) are not suitable substitutions for Mr. Lundahl’s failure to obtain and read Carrier (2014) so that he could properly respond to Dr. Carrier’s claims about the Gospels being works of fiction. The reliability of the Bible is a major issue in this debate.
Reference:
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.