I don't think Nero Persecuted Christians

Few Extra-Biblical traditions of Early Church History seem as unquestionable.  Nero's supposed Persecution of Christians is treated as the next chapter of Church History right after the narrative of Acts ends.  Hollywood movies depicting it are classified as Biblical Epics, and I will continue to enjoy those movies in-spite of how fictional I now view them to be, but there were also certain things I always felt they got wrong.

The thing is, the closer to Biblical History a tradition is, the more likely it is evidence in The Bible itself could work against it.  I already did a post arguing that Peter never went to Rome, which included my deconstructing the assumption that the Ascension of Isaiah was talking about Nero at all.  (And now I have this follow up post.)  I even already there questioned the assumption that Paul was Martyred in Rome, though he certainly did go there.

Here is a fact that is somewhat little known, the Trail before Caesar (we know Nero was Caesar at the time because it's after Felix's time as Governor of Judea ended) Paul was awaiting when the narrative of Acts ended, is kind of recorded in Scripture elsewhere.  2 Timothy 4 verses 16-18, often considered the last of Paul's Epistles to be written.

At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.  Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.  And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The implication of these verses is clearly that Paul was acquitted.

Now plenty of scholars are aware of this.  But some insist Paul returned to Rome a second time later and was killed then, by the very same Emperor who had acquitted him before.  Sometimes specifically saying 2 Timothy 1:16-17 refers to this second imprisonment, but to me the context of the letter clearly makes that the same imprisonment he records the resolution of quoted above.

Now some have interpreted the above verses as being about Paul's escapes recorded in Acts. But the way he says "out of the mouth of the Lion" makes me think he's referring to The Seat of Caesar, to the Beast that yes I do still view as being in a sense the Roman Government.  I've also seen it argued that what Paul said elsewhere in that chapter is implying he's about to die.  Well he could have been dying of old age, especially if it's true the Pastorals were written in the 90s.

The only authentic Epistle of Clement of Rome says in chapter 5 that Paul went to the "Extremity of The West" (or "limits of the west" in Bart Ehrman's translation).  Many strangely quote this passage as backing up Paul being martyred in Rome when in my view it does not, it seems on it's own without bringing our assumptions into it, to be saying the "Extremity of the West" is where Paul met his fate.

Now "extremity of the west" is an expression used in Secular Pagan Roman writings to refer to Spain, so this can be read as just confirming Paul fulfilled his stated desire to go to Spain from Romans 15:24&28.  I point this out because there is easily a temptation to see this as backing up fanciful theories that he went to Britannia or the New World.  I'm not against Paul in Britain theories, plenty of other popular claims about the Early Church in Britain I think are false, but I haven't read Paul in Britain yet so I can't firmly pass judgment on it.

I do however feel convinced that the Claudia and Pudens of 2 Timothy 4:21 are the same as the ones from Marital who are linked to Britain.  Some argue the Marital reference is too late for them to be the same as Paul's.  But there are other reasons people have for placing the letters to Timothy and Titus in the 90s, though I disagree with the aspect of that based on thinking the Pastoral Epistles support Monarchical Church Structure, the men those letters are named after are just the contacts those churches had with Paul.  That date is viewed as conflicting with Paul being the author only because of the assumption Paul died in 64 or 67.  But I can also say in response to another objection to this view, that 2 Timothy may have been written before they were married and so that's why they're not quite listed right next to each other.

Maybe if Paul was martyred by a Roman Emperor it was a later one.  The second Emperor tradition says persecuted Christians was Domitian.  And sometimes people use against the Domitian persecution the same argument I'll bring up later against Neronian persecution, that Christians and Jews weren't distinguished in Roman law yet.  However that ignores that Suetonius records Jews being persecuted under Domitian, and unlike many other things Suetonius talks about this he was an eye witness to.

An overarching theme of the Book of Acts is that the Roman Governmental authorities under Claudius and Nero are the good guys during this era, Christian Persecution came from local mobs, which in Judea were often riled up by the Sadducees.  Tradition has chosen to vilify a Caesar that Paul was confident would rule in his favor.

Under the Flavians, as well as the following emperors, it served the new Dynasty to vilify Nero for the same reason it served the Tudors and Stuarts to vilify Richard III during the time of Shakespeare.  And meanwhile during this same era and later many "Early Church Fathers" were trying to appeal to these same Roman Emperors (or their successors) and the people who supported them, often addressing their Apologies to them directly.  So at some point I think Christians like Tertullian wanted to pin the blame on Nero for the illicit legal status they had, and then Suetonius and (a redactor of )Tacitus listed persecuting Christians among the things they attributed to Nero because Christians were saying it, it was just another story going around.

Though maybe part of the desire of later Christians to see Nero as their Enemy came from how much they inherited from certain Stoics.  In the first century AD Musonius Rufus sounds like a modern American Evangelical on Sexual morality more so then any New Testament author.  He was part of the Stoic opposition to Nero but later the only Philosopher Vespasian allowed to stay in Rome.  And Stoic criticism of Nero was continued by Epicetus.

The villainous reputation of Nero largely comes from Roman Historians of the Senatorial Class (chiefly Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio), who loved to slander the Julio-Claudians as depraved because of their semi-plebian origins, but loved Vespasian-Titus and the "Five Good Emperors" because they came from their class and so were good to them.  Thing is the common people of the Empire were oppressed by heavy Taxes under those Senatorial Emperors.

There is plenty of evidence however that the common people were happy under Nero.  Even the Christian source John Chrysostom acknowledged that.  Plutarch in his allusions to Nero is also more favorable, as well as Lucan.  The biography of Appolonius of Tyana also records how Nero was loved by the Greeks in the Eastern Provinces.  And the Talmud has a favorable memory of Nero also.  In fact one reason many later Christians started thinking the Antichrist would be Nero resurrected somehow was because before them those who liked Nero had started believing he would come back to save them from Flavian oppression, he became Greco-Rome's King Arthur.

One purely modern detail of the traditions about Nero's persecution is the tying it into the bad reputation of Poppaea Sabina his second wife, it seems the Hollywood versions feel they need a Jezebel/Delilah figure.  Poppaea was depicted as a scheming Femme Fatale by those senatorial sources.  But Josephus who actually knew her personally paints a very different picture in his autobiography.  Josephus depicts her as practically a Proselyte and mentions among her Jewish friends an actor Nero was a fan of.

Now some have suggested Poppaea's Jewish associations are why her influence would have been against Paul.  But that would be the case only if the Jews who had her ear were Sadducees.  But based on Josephus being a Pharisee, and that I think his shipwreck was the same as Paul's, I doubt that. Plus Gentile Proselytes might have been inclined to like Paul's message even if they didn't fully become believers in Jesus and The Gospel.

Some histories are confused by how Josephus could possibly be talking about the same woman the other sources are, even if one or both is exaggerated to suit their bias.  I say just look at Anne Boleyn, to the Catholics of Tudor England she was explicitly compared to Jezebel, but Protestants sometimes paint her as a saint in for example the film Anne of the Thousand Days.

Acte was a mistress of Nero, archaeology has shown there were Christians in her household as either slaves or freedmen, leading some to speculate she herself may have been one.  Modern fictionalizations often place her in conflict with Poppaea, wanting to make her the Betty to Poppaea's Veronica.  But politically they were on the same side when trying to influence Nero, both being pro-Seneca and anti-Agrippina.  So for all we know they could have had a threesome.

Also the Gallio in Acts 18 was Seneca's brother, so that's further evidence Senaca's influence would have been against persecuting Christians or convicting Paul.

Some secular scholars have already questioned the historicity of the Neronian persecution.  But in a way they're not going as far as I am here, as they do think something happened, but distinguish it from a systemic persecution.

One of the arguments they do bring up is the lack of legal distinction between Jews and Christians before the time of Trajan. The early second century correspondence between Pliny and Trajan clearly show there was no prior policy on what to do about Christians, surely the Neronian persecution and accusation they tried to burn Rome would have been relevant to bring up here?  And the Roman persecution they did face before was a product of persecutions the Jews suffered under Domitian.  But since the evidence from the Talmud and Josephus show The Jews had it good under Nero, there is no reason to think Nero killed any Christians.

And these Secular critics have also pointed out that Tacitus account must be derivative of something he heard from Christians and not Roman legal records since he got the kind of Governor Pilate was wrong (he said Procurator when Pilate was a Prefectus).  And Suetonius was certainly willing to record things based on pure rumor.  His account of the death of Caligula and Claudius becoming emperor is clearly based on Josephus's account (he mentioned Josephus so was aware of him) but the differences are all the tabloid style scandals he spices it up with.

Why am I talking about this on the Prophecy blog?  Well for one thing it effects Preterism.  In one sense not that much since a lot of their arguments focus on Vespasian and Titus.  But Nero is the only of these Emperors where any plausible way to make their name's Gemetria equal 666 exists, and even that is tortured since it uses Aramaic not Greek.  But also the assumption that Nero persecuted Christians is necessary to make it possible that John's exile to Patmos was under Nero, yet even the traditional view of the Neronian persecution makes it local in Rome only.  All the facts I laid out above make John's exile far more plausible under Domitian's Jewish persecution.

Persecuting Christians isn't the only evil thing attributed to Nero that I think is slander.   But he is someone who became ruler of the world at a young age, and so could have cracked under the pressure a few times thus been by no mean perfect. I think Poppaea probably died of a miscarriage and the claim Nero kicked her to death was probably another of Suetonius's tabloid rumors.  

I don't think Sporus was actually Castrated agaisnt their will (if at all), I suspect she was in fact what we'd today call a Trans Woman.Tthe part about her resembling Poppea and Nero calling them by her name doesn't show up till Casisus Dio even Suetonius doesn't report that and he certainly would have if the story was already around.

If the rumors of the Incest with Agrippina were true, he'd be the victim in that case, he was probably still a minor by modern standards when that started since he was only 17 when he became Emperor.  However a book called Women of the Caesars (I'm not sure which book on Amazon with that title was the one I read, it came in Red) argues for a more positive portrayal of Agrippina, but it did so supporting the negative portrayal of Poppaea which I view as wrong.

So I feel there is a lot of evidence to re-evaluate how we view Nero.

Update October 2018:  The History for Atheists Blog has a post defending the authenticity and reliability of Tacitus accounts of the Fire and Persecution in which context he makes his reference to Jesus.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/09/jesus-mythicism-1-the-tacitus-reference-to-jesus/
That defense of Tacitus remains the main weakness to my thesis here.  Though uncritically accepting Tacitus still doesn't change that we can't prove Paul was martyred in Rome, in fact it becomes odd that Tacitus didn't mention Peter or Paul if there were prominent leaders of this new religion killed here.

Still as much as I agree with this blog on many subjects regarding the Historicity of Jesus, I still view Tacitus as problematic.  The issue of being dependent on one very late manuscript and getting the kind of Governor Pilate was wrong I can't so easily write off.  And O'Neill's argument that people who just assumed Nero set the fire wouldn't mention Scapegoats I can't really buy either, his falsely blaming others for it would only make his tyranny look worse. I mean I get why Christian sources maybe wouldn't want to remind people they were accused of this, but the Pagan Roman sources shouldn't be leaving out such a vital detail.  And in my opinion the early Christians would not have been that afraid of it.  

The fact is the earliest traditional dates for Paul and Peter's deaths are in 67 AD, not the same year as the fire.

Update June 2019: Brent Shaw

 I became aware of this Article thanks to Religion For Breakfast on Twitter.
https://www.academia.edu/26841558/The_Myth_of_the_Neronian_Persecution

There are differences between his view and mine, he does still think Paul was executed in Rome in the 60s, I think regardless of where Paul died he lived into the 90s and had been to Spain before then.  And arguing the term "Christian" didn't exist yet I view as wrong since I believe Acts to be true History. But it's still an interesting article.

April 2020 Update:  More on the burning

Thersities the Historian has talked about how many Roman Persecutions are exaggerated.  Saying only the Diocletian (really Galerian's) persecution was as extreme as the Christians imagined the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century persecutions to be.  Many Emperors were labeled persecutors when really it was local persecutions that happened during their reign.  Tertullian who was a contemporary says Severius was well disposed to the Christians.

And the thing is, it's possible even the idea of Christian persecution being linked to being blamed for a fire has it's origins in the Galerian persecution because there was a fire in Nicomedia (which was Diocletian's capital in the east) that Galerian blamed on the Christians.

No account of the Neronian Persecution that can be proven to have existed before the 300s links it to the Fire of 64 AD.  Tacticus is the only one really even claimed to have existed that far back which does, and our oldest manuscript for Tacticus is Carolingian, and all younger manuscripts are known to go back to that one.

Another fact I should further emphasize here, I think most of the Paulain Epistles that secular scholars don't think Paul actually wrote he simply wrote later then when tradition allows him to have lived, when he was in some ways thinking differently and used different reciters.

The traditional dates for Paul and Peter's martyrdom also predate them ever being linked to the fire since they were 67 AD.  Which interestingly is a year in which Nero wasn't even in Rome, he was touring Greece at that time.

February 2023 Update: Here is another Article from an Atheist Website deconstructing the arguments in defend of the Tacitus account.

https://vridar.org/2022/01/13/rome-burning-the-christian-problem-in-the-annals-of-tacitus/

September 2023: Here's a link where you can read Lactantius's Of the Manner in which The Persecutors Died.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0705.htm

The text in the later part of chapter 2 asserts that Nero persecuted Christian, I still believe idea emerged in the 2nd Century maybe even late first, but he doesn't tie it to the Fire or anything like a Fire.  

Later in chapter 14 and 15 he is one of our main contemporary sources on the role the Fire in Nicomedia played in the Diocletian Persecution, he was a contemporary and had been in Nicomedia while writing this book.  If the idea that Nero's Persecution was tied to Christians being blamed for that Fire already existed you'd think he's mention it, the Biblical way he's trying to present all this would be well served by pointing out ways in which History was repeating itself,  but he doesn't.