Note 41 — II THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS

“Consulting the archives has been but little customary among ancient historians; and Tacitus has bestowed but little consideration on the Acta Diurna and the protocols of the Senate” (“Handb. d. klass. Altertumsw.,” viii., 2 Abt., Aft. 2, under “Tacitus”). Moreover, the difficulties of the passage from Tacitus have been fully realised by German historians (H. Schiller, op. cit., 449; “De. Gesch. d. röm. Kaiserreiches unter der Regierung des Nero,” 1872, 434 sqq., 583 sq.), even if they do not generally go as far as to say that the passage is completely unauthentic, as Volney did at the end of the eighteenth century (“Ruinen,” Reclam, 276). Cf. also Arnold, “Die neronische Christenverfolgung. Eine historiche Untersuchung zur Geschichte d. ältesten Kirche,” 1888. The author does indeed adhere to the authenticity of the passage in Tacitus, but as a matter of fact he presupposes it rather than attempts to prove it; while in many isolated reflections he gives an opinion against the correctness of the account given by Tacitus, and busies himself principally in disproving false inferences connected with that passage, such as the connection of the Neronic persecution with the Book of Revelation. The conceivable possibility that the persecution actually took place, but that at all events the sentence of Tacitus may be a Christian interpolation, Arnold seems never to have considered. ↑