No, I haven't debated anyone on the issue, nor have I really looked into whoever else may have brought up the same point, as Tacitus was never really a point of interest to me as far as Jesus is concerned.
However, I just can't stand Turkel, so I had to comment.
If you want to use this thread as a point of reference, Tacitus writes the following in the Annals-
Quote:
First of all came the people of Ephesus. They declared that Diana and Apollo were not born at Delos, as was the vulgar belief. They had in their own country a river Cenchrius, a grove Ortygia, where Latona, as she leaned in the pangs of labour on an olive still standing, gave birth to those two deities, whereupon the grove at the divine intimation was consecrated. There Apollo himself, after the slaughter of the Cyclops, shunned the wrath of Jupiter; there too father Bacchus, when victorious in war, pardoned the suppliant Amazons who had gathered round the shrine. Subsequently by the permission of Hercules, when he was subduing Lydia, the grandeur of the temple's ceremonial was augmented, and during the Persian rule its privileges were not curtailed. They had afterwards; been maintained by the Macedonians, then by ourselves.
Quote:
The Messenians, on the contrary, alleged the ancient division of the Peloponnesus among the descendants of Hercules, in which the territory of Denthelia (where the temple stood) had fallen to their king. Records of this event still existed, engraven on stone and ancient bronze. But if they were asked for the testimony of poetry and of history, they had it, they said, in greater abundance and authenticity.
And here, Tacitus records the speech of Tiberius to the Senate, in which he places Dionysus, Hercules, and Quirinus on the same level of historicity as Augustus, in somewhat of an Evemerist position in regards to them-
Quote:
In as much as the Divine Augustus did not forbid the founding of a temple at Pergamos to himself and to the city of Rome...
The noblest men, it was said, have the loftiest aspirations, and so Hercules and Bacchus among the Greeks, and Quirinus among us, were enrolled in the number of the gods. Augustus did better, seeing that he had aspired. All other things princes have as a matter of course; one thing they ought insatiably to pursue, that their memory may be glorious. For to despise fame is to despise merit.
So why on earth is any of that any less "historical" than the one and only passage in all the writings attributed to Tacitus which concerns Christ?
Quote:
Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
How does that sound any more authoritative or authentic or historically reliable, etc., than any of the aforementioned passages?
Answer: It doesn't.
And on a side note, Tacitus had an interesting way of writing about Zeus in Histories-
Quote:
...with the grace of heaven on our side, if our sins would but let it, the shrine of Jupiter, the All-Good, the Almighty, that shrine raised by our ancestors with solemn ritual as a token of empire,...
Quote:
...Domitian removed the verger's cell, and raised on its site a small chapel in honor of Jupiter the Savior, and an altar wrought in marble bas-relief setting forth the legend of his own adventures.
Quote:
...a great number, again, recognize in him Jupiter, as being the omnipotent Lord,...
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