Christian Apologist “Secular Source Evidence” for Historical jesus #5: Suetonius

June 8, 2015

This is the 7th article of our 12 part research:

Debunking the Fraudulent christian Apologist List of Extra-biblical but non-contemporary, claimed “sources” used as jesus “evidence.” (Jewish, “Pagan,” Non-christian, “Secular”)

http://tmblr.co/ZkpfQtmt2ygH

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

When did he live?

(71-135 CE, livius.org)

(70-135, biography.yourdictionary.com)

(69-after 122, britannica.com)

I will average his birth to 70 CE, which means he was born 37 years after jesus supposedly died.

He is mainly remembered as the author of De Vita Caesarum—translated as The Life of the Caesars.

It is claimed that the ‘Lives of the Twelve Caesars’ was written in 121 CE (88 years after jesus supposedly died)

It is ironic that Suetonius almost wrote 20 books in his life and out of all those books, christian apologists try to claim that he wrote ONE SINGLE sentence about jesus:

“As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.” ~Life of Claudius 25.4

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Claudius*.html

Suetonius’ reference is not about any jesus – he says the “chrestus” in question was a real person living in Rome making disturbances. And again, not possibly an eyewitness to any real jesus, as he wasn’t alive.

The existence of people called Christians, does not prove that Jesus was the incarnation of the desert God Yahweh, any more than the existence of Harry Potter fans proves the existence of house elves. ~Hally M

~The oldest manuscript copy of Suetonius’ “Lives of the 12 Caesars” (820 CE)

This work is now lost but was used as a source by the anonymous autor of the Historia Augusta, a fourth-century collection of imperial biographies. Much later, in the ninth century, a courtier of Charlemagne named Einhard wrote a biography of his emperor, closely following the model of Suetonius.

http://www.livius.org/su-sz/suetonius/suetonius.html

Few perhaps are aware that it has reached us only in an incomplete form. The opening pages of the work are missing in all the handwritten copies that we now have. It seems that only a single copy from ancient times, now lost, made it into the 9th century

http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2011/11/18/the-lost-preface-to-suetonius-lives-of-the-12-caesars/

The oldest surviving text is referred to as M or Codex Memmianus (or Paris, lat. 6115), the oldest extant manuscript, written at Tours ca. 820 and apparently with no direct descendants. By direct descendants, it means that they are no other manuscripts that follow or descend from it.

http://blogs.transparent.com/latin/monthly-latin-spotlight-text-12-caesars/

The oldest surviving manuscript is the most important. It comes from the the early ninth century and it’s now in Paris (“Paris.lat. 6115”).

Traditionally it’s called “Memmianus” (M) from its sixteenth-century owner, Henri de Mesmes. M was written at Tours (France) about 820.(Although over 200 manuscripts are extant, “De vita Caesarum” seems to have survived into the ninth century in a single manuscript, since lost. The surviving manuscripts are traditionallyy diveded into two classes, usally designated X and Z (M is member of the X-family).

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.classics/5fD_26bk5k0

~DM Murdock/Acharya S

Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius: No Proof of Jesus

http://www.truthbeknown.com/pliny.htm

Does Suetonius refer to Jesus?

http://freethoughtnation.com/does-suetonius-refer-to-jesus/

Is Suetonius’s Chresto a Reference to Jesus?

http://www.truthbeknown.com/suetoniuschresto.html

~Kenneth Humphreys - jesusneverexisted.com

Nowhere in any of Suetonius’s writings does he mention ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Suetonius did write a biography called Twelve Caesars around the year 112 AD and of Emperor Claudius he says:

“As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.”

Jesus in Rome in 54 AD? Of course not. But the unwary can be misled by this reference.

'Chrestus’ does not equate to 'Christ’ in English but to 'the good’ in Greek (and for a definitive study of the manuscript evidence see here). It was a name used by both slaves and freemen and is attested more than eighty times in Latin inscriptions. Clearly, Suetonius was explaining why the Jews (not Christians) were expelled from Rome and is referring to a Jewish agitator in the 50s – not to a Galilean pacifist of the 30s. Yet even this report is questionable.

Suetonius famously confirms the expulsion as a consequence of “disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus” (a phrase often paraded as one of the classic “evidences for an historical Jesus”!). But the Suetonius reference is suspect. The historian, Cassius Dio gives a more convincing report of the same Claudian “expulsion”:

“As for the Jews, who had again increased so greatly that by reason of their multitude it would have been hard without raising a tumult to bar them from the city, he did not drive them out, but ordered them, while continuing their traditional mode of life, not to hold meetings.” – Roman History, 60.6.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/greek-odyssey.htm#claudius

It is also said that Suetonius, in his Life of Nero, described Nero’s persecution of the Christians:

'Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief …’ (16.2)

We have moved from 'rebellious Jews’ to 'mischievous Christians’.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE:

Christians in Rome during the reign of Nero (54-68 AD) ?

Would (could) Nero have made such a fine sectarian distinction – particularly since there was no identifying faith document (not a single gospel had been written) – so just what would 'Christians’ have believed?

Even St Paul himself makes not a single reference to 'Christians’ in any of his writings.

The idea that a nascent ‘Christianity’ immediately faced persecution from a cruel and bloodthirsty pagan Rome is an utter nonsense. For one thing, it is only in the last third of the 1st century AD, that Christ-followers emerged as a separate faction from mainstream Judaism. Until then they remained protected under Roman law as Jews. The irritation they caused to their more orthodox brethren meant nothing to the pagan magistrates. Says Gibbon:

“The innocence of the first Christians was protected by ignorance and contempt; and the tribunal of the Pagan magistrate often proved the most assured refuge against the fury of the synagogue.”

Early Christ-followers called themselves 'saints’, 'brethren’, 'Brothers of the Lord’ and their critics used various names: Nazoreans, Ebionites, 'God fearers’, atheists. The Jewish association remained strong throughout the first century and when Christian sects got going in Rome in the second century they were identified by their rival leaders – Valentinians, Basilidians, Marcionites, etc.

So little were Christ-worshippers known in the Roman world that as late as the 90s Dio Cassio refers to 'atheists’ and 'those adopting Jewish manners’. Christians as a distinct group from the Jews appear only late in the 1st century, not long before the Jewish curse on heretics at the council of Jamnia (around 85 AD). The label 'Christian’ itself only appears with the 2nd century Acts – with the story that the term 'began in Antioch’ (11.26).

Equally odd, is that *Suetonius’s isolated sentence* appears in a section on Nero’s 'good points.’

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/corinth1.html#refugee

It should also be noted that Suetonius does not associate punishment of the Christians with the fire that swept Rome, a crucial part of the later myth.

Quite simply, the reference is a Christian forgery, added to Suetonius to backup the work of the 5th century forger Sulpicius Severus, who heavily doctored the work of another Roman historian – Tacitus – with a lurid tale of brutal persecution ('torched Christian martyrs’) which immortalized Nero as the first Antichrist in the eyes of the Christian church (the second Antichrist being the reformist Luther).

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/josephus-etal.html

~Rosa Rubicondior

Nowhere does Seutonius mention Jesus by name and never refers to Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ. Some Christians have claimed, with no basis whatsoever, that 'Chrestus’ was a mistake and meant 'Christ’. Crestus is a name which simply means 'good’ and was in common usage at that time in Rome, but even if it wasa mistake, 'Christ’ could have meant the expected Messiah of the Jews of Rome.

Suetonius also recorded that the body of Caesar Augustus rose bodily into heaven when he died. Few historians regard that as factual, least of all Christian ones.

As historical proofs go, this is a great example of something that, well… isn’t.

http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-historical-evidence-for-jesus.html#Suetonius

~Scott Oser

In his The Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius, writing around 120 CE, states:

“Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Emperor Claudius in 49 CE] expelled them from Rome.” (Claudius 5.25.4)

Occasionally this passage is cited as evidence for Jesus’s historicity. However, there are serious problems with this interpretation:

“Chrestus” is the correct Latin form of an actual Greek name, and is not obviously a mispelling of “Christus”, meaning Christ.

The passage seems to imply that there was actually someone named Chrestus at Rome at the time. This rules out a reference to Jesus.

Even if Suetonius is referring to Christians in Rome, this only confirms the existence of Christians, not the existence of Jesus. There is no doubt that there were Christians in Rome during the first century CE–this of course does NOT imply that Jesus actually lived during the first half of this century.

Thus, Suetonius fails to confirm the historicity of Jesus.

http://infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hojfaq.html

~skeptically.org

In his Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius, writing around 120 CE, states:

Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Emperor Claudius in 49 CE] expelled them from Rome.’ (Claudius 5.25.4)

Occasionally this passage is cited as evidence for Jesus’s historicity. However, there are serious problems with this interpretation. 'Chrestus’ is the correct Latin form of an actual Greek name, and is not obviously a mispelling of 'Christus’, meaning Christ. The passage seems to imply that there was actually someone named Chrestus at Rome at the time. This rules out a reference to Jesus. Even if Suetonius is referring to Christians in Rome, this only confirms the existence of Christians, not the existence of Jesus.

There is no doubt that there were Christians in Rome during the first century CE but this of course does not imply that Jesus actually lived during the first half of this century. Thus, Suetonius fails to confirm the historicity of Jesus.

(2) Suetonius

In the case of 'Chrestus’ mentioned by Suetonius in Life of the Caesars, the word is not, despite the claims made, another spelling of Christus. 'Chrestus’ means 'The Good’ in Greek, while 'Christus’ means 'The Messiah’. Chrestus was not an uncommon name in ancient Rome. Since Jesus was admittedly not in Rome instigating the Jews, we are almost definitely talking about someone other than Jesus here. I should mention that the entire relevant quotation from Suetonius which is involved here reads as follows: ’;As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome’. The 'he’ is Claudius. No Christian will suggest that Jesus was at Rome in 55 CE, when this incident is alleged to have occurred. It is also difficult to see why Jews would be led by Jesus. That is pretty strong evidence that this passage does not refer to Jesus of Nazareth at all, and so is irrelevant to the discussion of whether Jesus ever lived. We can, however, add the lack of a mention of Jesus in Suetonius to our list of 'negative’ evidence for the existence of Jesus as an historical person.

http://www.skeptically.org/newtestament/id22.html

~Jeffery Jay Lowder: Josh McDowell’s “Evidence” for Jesus, is it Reliable?

It is unclear that Suetonius knew of Jesus. Suetonius, the Roman historian and biographer formerly known as Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, wrote several works, including his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, which is an account of the lives of the first twelve Roman emperors. In his Life of Claudius, he writes:

As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.[109]

In order to use this as a reference to Jesus, McDowell must assume that this 'Chrestus’ was Jesus. Thus, in He Walked Among Us, we find McDowell and Wilson declaring that “Chrestus was probably a misspelling of 'Christ’ (Greek 'Christus’).”[110] Quoting France, McDowell and Wilson argue that 'Chrestus’ is a misspelling of 'Christus’ because (i) 'Chrestus’ is a Greek name; and (ii) the meaning of 'Christus’ would be unfamiliar to a Gentile audience. Furthermore, McDowell and Wilson argue (iii) that Christian witnessing to the Jews in AD 49 (similar to that recorded in Acts 18) “probably resulted in the hostilities which led to the expulsion of all Jews from Rome.” This, they argue, would have led to the writing of a Roman “police report” which in turn would have attributed the violence to 'Chrestus’ (a familiar name).[111]

I find these arguments unconvincing. Indeed, while stating that it is possible that this passage is a misspelled reference to Jesus, France nevertheless dismisses (i) and (ii). According to France, the claim that 'Chrestus’ is a misspelling of 'Christus’ “can never be more than a guess, and the fact that Suetonius can elsewhere speak of 'Christians’ as members of a new cult (without any reference to Jews) surely makes it rather unlikely that he could make such a mistake.”[112] McDowell and Wilson never offer any reasons for rejecting France’s argument on this point. As for (iii), this is so speculative as to be laughable. There is no evidence of such a police report and there is no evidence that Christian preaching to the Jews led to hostilities which in turn led to the Jews’ expulsion from Rome. In sum, then, McDowell and Wilson have been unable to show that this passage even refers to Jesus.

McDowell also quotes Lives of the Caesars–where Suetonius mentions Nero’s punishment of Christians–though his reference is incorrect. (McDowell lists the passage as originating in 26.2; the passage is actually found in 16.2.[113]) The passage reads as follows:

Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.

McDowell and Wilson think this “verifies” that Christians were “being put to death” for their Christian beliefs.[114]

However, Suetonius “verifies” nothing of the sort. Suetonius only says that Christians were punished, not that they were “put to death.” Moreover, Suetonius does not say that the Christians were punished simply for being Christians; indeed, Suetonius does not specify their crime at all. As the Christian New Testament scholar R.T. France, who McDowell quotes repeatedly in his 1988 work, notes

The great fire of AD 64 is not mentioned in this connection, and indeed the punishment of Christians is included in that part of the book (up to section 19) which deals with Nero’s good acts, before he turned to vice and crime. (The fire is not reported until section 38, where it is unconditionally blamed on Nero himself.) Nor does Suetonius even so much as mention the 'Christus’ from whom their name derived.[115]

In short, this passage is not independent confirmation of the historicity of Jesus. As Wells argues, this passage “tells us nothing more than what we already know about this from Tacitus and nothing about Jesus himself.”

http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/chap5.html

~Metro State Atheists

The Roman writer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (ca. 70-ca. 140) practiced law in Rome and was a friend of Pliny the Younger. He published a book Lives of the Caesars, which covers the lives and careers of the first twelve emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian.[viii] In the fifth section of Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius reports how emperor Claudius treated several people during his reign. The quote claimed to support Jesus Christ is as follows, “He (Claudius) expelled the Jews from Rome, since they were always making disturbances because of the instigator Chrestus.”

VanVoorst claims that “Christus” often found confusion with “Chrestus,” by non-Christians. Furthermore, the Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century) spells Christian with an -“eta” in all three New Testament occurrences of the word (Acts 11:26, 26:8; 1 Pet 4:16). In particular, “Christians” were also referred to as “Chrestians.” I find VanVoorst most convincing for the possibility of the connection to Jesus Christ when he claims that ‘Chrestus’ “does not appear among the hundreds of names of Jews recorded by the Roman catacomb inscriptions and other sources, yet was a familiar Gentile name. He concludes that this opens the door to the possibility that Suetonius may have confused Christus for Chrestus.” On the contrary, Bart Ehrman notes that Suetonius is probably referencing an individual “Chrestus” and Jesus’ followers, since Jesus of the Gospels was executed twenty years prior to the riots. My conclusion rests on the possibility of a reference to Jesus Christ here, however advances no farther than speculative evidence.

https://metrostateatheists.wordpress.com/tag/gaius-suetonius-tranquillus/

~Michael Nugent

A fourth independent record of the possible existence of Jesus was written in about 120 AD by Gaius Suetonius, who was a Roman historian who worked for Pliny and various Emperors. His many works ranged from the academic Grammatical Problems and Lives of the Grammarians to the more populist Greek Terms of Abuse and Lives of Famous Whores.

In about 120 ad, in his major work, Lives of the Caesars, he says of the Emperor Claudius that:

As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.

Now, Chrestus may be a misspelling of Christus, but it is also the correct Latin version of a different Greek name. So this passage means one of two things: either

There were Christians in Rome at the time of Claudius, causing trouble in the name of their Christ, whose name was misspelled by an expert in linguistics; or

There was a Jew in Rome called Chrestus, directly causing trouble.

Either way, the passage proves nothing about the historical accuracy of Jesus as a person.

http://www.michaelnugent.com/2008/06/30/did-the-historical-jesus-exist/

~ R.G. Price - Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ

First let us tackle the reference in the work by Suetonius.

3 He forbade men of foreign birth to use the Roman names so far as those of the clans were concerned. Those who usurped the privileges of Roman citizenship he executed in the Esquiline field. He restored to the senate the provinces of Achaia and Macedonia, which Tiberius had taken into his own charge. He deprived the Lycians of their independence because of deadly intestine feuds, and restored theirs to the Rhodians, since they had given up their former faults. He allowed the people of Ilium 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 Greek to king Seleucus, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance only on condition that he should keep their kinsfolk of Ilium free from every burden. 4 Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome. He allowed the envoys of the Germans to sit in the orchestra, led by their naïve self-confidence; for when they had been taken to the seats occupied by the common people and saw the Parthian and Armenian envoys sitting with the senate, they moved of their own accord to the same part of the theatre, protesting that their merits and rank were no whit inferior. 5 He utterly abolished the cruel and inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls, which under Augustus had merely been prohibited to Roman citizens; on the other hand he even attempted to transfer the Eleusinian rites from Attica to Rome, and had the temple of Venus Erycina in Sicily, which had fallen to ruin through age, restored at the expense of the treasury of the Roman people. He struck his treaties with foreign princes in the Forum, sacrificing a pig and reciting the ancient formula of the fetial priests. 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.
- The Lives of the Caesars (The Life of Claudius); Suetonius, 120

The one line in bold above is the only potential reference to “Jesus Christ” that we get from Suetonius. This is a passage talking about the treatment of foreigners in Rome by the Emperor Claudius. Of this, one line deals with the Jews, whom Suetonius says were expelled from Rome in 49 CE by Claudius. As “evidence for Jesus” this passage is fraught with problems. First of all, we can only assume that Suetonius is talking about “Jesus Christ” by the use of the name “Chrestus”, which corresponds to nothing and is not a proper Latin translation of the Greek Christos, though it is a proper Latin name. Secondly, this passage implies that these Jews were being instigated by someone in Rome in 49 CE, which would be impossible for the Jesus of the Gospels since he was supposedly already dead by then.

Of course it is possible that some Jews in Rome in 49 CE were making disturbances “in the name of Jesus Christ”, but if that is what this is indeed talking about then that certainly isn’t evidence for the existence of Jesus, it’s only evidence for people doing things in the name of a god or hero figure, which was not at all uncommon. Importantly, however, if this did actually refer to Christians in Rome in 49 CE then this reference alone would be evidence of the earliest existence of followers of Jesus in Rome. All of these things make it highly unlikely that this is even refereeing to “Jesus Christ” at all. The majority of Jews didn’t believe in the Jesus stories, thus it would be unlikely that “the Jews” would get expelled for disturbances on behalf of Jesus because the majority of the Jews in Rome wouldn’t have participated in such an event in the first place.

Some Christians try to claim that the name Chrestus by itself could only being talking about “Jesus Christ” because that is the only person that would have been well known enough that a single reference to his name could have been self-explanatory, but as we have already seen Jesus Christ was certainly not well known at this time at all, thus this argument fails.

Even if this were referring to “Jesus Christ” it’s obviously nothing more than a hearsay comment being made in 120, it’s hardly “evidence” for the existence of Jesus.

http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm

Suetonius is Weaker evidence, but still worth addressing. He makes one statement regarding “Christ.” “As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.”

A second quote does not mention Jesus, but refers to Christians being persecuted under Nero.

Does this passage really refer to Jesus?

J.P.Holding:

This is the key objection to using this passage. “Chrestus,” as Suetonius spells it, is the correct Latin form of a true Greek name, so that some would say that it does not refer to Jesus Christ. Benko, for example, has suggested that “Chrestus” was some kind of Jewish agitator who had no association with Christianity, perhaps a semi-Zealot reacting to plans by Caligula to put a statue of Zeus in the Jewish Temple; as for the spelling issue, he points out that Suetonius spells “Christians” correctly, so it is unlikely that he misspelled “Christus.” [see Benk.EC49, 410-3] . (On the other hand, one oddball author suggested that the reference was to Jesus Himself - still alive, and visiting Rome in the 40s AD!) Mason [Maso.JosNT, 166] , on the other hand, believes that the reference is to Jesus, but that Suetonius altered the name he heard to that of a common slave name. Harris [Harr.3Cruc, 22; see also Harr.GosP5, 354] notes that the substitution of an “e” for an “i” was “a common error in the spelling of proper names” at the time; he also says that because Suetonius did not say, “at the institution of a certain Chrestus,” the historian expected that his readers would know the person that he was referring to - hence, this “Chrestus” could not have been merely a Jewish agitator, for there was only one possible “Chrestus” that Suetonius could have been referring to that would have been so well known at the time he was writing (120 AD). It may be that Suetonius wrongly presumed from one of his sources that Chrestus had at some time in the past personally delivered His message to Rome, and that is why he seems to indicate that Chrestus was directly behind the agitation. [ibid., 356] Harris also explains, in an amusing footnote, that to Greek ears, the name “Christos” would have sounded like something drawn from medical or building technology, meaning either “anointed” or “plastered”! (The Romans who heard these Jews talking about “Christus” assumed that, perhaps, another type of “plastering” was going on!) So, they switched it to the more comprehensible “Chrestus,” which means “useful one.” Harris further indicates, via a quote from the 4th-century Latin Christian Lactantius, that Jesus was commonly called “Chrestus” by those who were ignorant.