Did Nero Persecute the Christians?

It's a common tradition that the Roman Emperor Nero was responsible for persecuting the Christians in Rome. However, after considerable research on the subject, I've decided that this probably isn't true. Rather, Nero probably undertook to persecute the Jews, but after the Great Fire the ethnic Jews, both Christian and otherwise, had fled Rome, so all he could get was the gentiles who had become Christians, then considered a type of Jew.

There are numerous Christian traditions regarding this persecution, but since they mostly originate during the second and third centuries, when such persecutions were common, they are highly suspect. The most important source, then, for scholars is the work of Tacitus, from whose Annals: 15:44 we have:

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, 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. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to torture-stakes, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.

Now this is pretty plain, on the face of it. However, like any historical document, it must be evaluated in context. Tacitus normally didn't name his sources, and he probably used many unreliable sources that he would then modify to correct for what he imagined their prejudices to be. Suppose, for example, that he had a typical Christian account. It's common in such accounts to include the brag that the more the Christians were persecuted, the more people converted to Christianity. If Tacitus, then, had started from an account detailing Nero's persecution and bragging how the more he persecuted the more people converted to Christianity, it's likely he would have considered this a gross exaggeration, and pruned it back sharply to the final "even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."

As for the feelings about the Christians, that was common in his time, about half a century later than the events described. However, it was very common that ancient historians didn't really perceive change with passing time, and unless they were just about slapped in the face with the fact of a difference, would assume things in the past were the same as in their own time.

But why did the Christians brag so much about the conversions? Did they actually happen? Probably, although maybe not in the numbers described. But my question is this: were the persecutions the cause of the conversions, or the conversions the cause of the persecutions?

Did the Persecutions Cause the Conversions, or the Conversions Cause the Persecutions?

There were valid reasons for people of Rome to dislike Jews, to the point of rioting against them, because the Jews generally would not participate in the regular civic sacrifices, which were seen as staving off various divinely caused misfortunes. Of course, we don't have anything like that today, no preacher would think of claiming that "the widespread practice of homosexuality 'will bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.' " Except, of course, Pat Robertson

Nevertheless, this was a common attitude in the first century CE, not regarding homosexuality so much as failure to make the proper sacrifices, which was thought to anger the gods and cause all sorts of disasters we consider natural ("acts of God") today. Since the gentile Christians also refused to participate in the sacrifices, they also got such anger.

But there was another issue involved, one which is too large to go into in detail, but I'll touch on: circumcision. This operation was not the sort of thing most adult males were interested in doing to themselves, and it served as a strong negative incentive to keep people from converting to Judaism. But "Saint" Paul, and many of his fellows, said that such was unnecessary for gentile converts to Christianity, which meant that converts could get the benefits of becoming Jews, including not having to participate in the sacrifices, without paying the cost. No wonder it angered the pagans surrounding them, who were already very unhappy about the way Jews weren't required to participate in the sacrifices. Now, converts didn't even have to take a knife to a precious part of their bodies to convert.

The bottom line is that whenever there were large numbers of conversions to Christianity, there would be a strong reaction from the pagan community, and there were likely to be persecutions. And if there was something about Rome at the end of Nero's reign that would make people want to convert to a religion that promised them a better life after their resurrection, it would hardly have been surprising if there were massive conversions. And, yes there was. Nero was a horrible emperor, and Rome went steadily downhill during the last 5-10 years of his reign. Many people probably saw the "end of the world" coming, and what actually came wasn't much better.

About the First Christians

I've said that the people were know as Christians were considered a subset of Jews at that time, but what about the name Christians itself? In Greek, it's "Χριστιανούς" ("Christianous": plural masculine accusative). Here's the claim for the earliest time Jesus' followers were called Christians (Acts 11:26 (New International Version)):

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

And here's the quote from the Greek (Perseus):

χρηματίσαὶ τε πρώτως ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ τοὺς μαθητὰς Χριστιανούς.

What does the word Christian mean? Many people think that "Christ" is part of Jesus' name, or a title he had during his ministry, however that's not true. He probably was called "Mašíaḥ", or in English Messiah. Both words mean "anointed", from Wiki:

The (Greek) Septuagint version of the Old Testament renders all thirty-nine instances of the Hebrew word for anointed (Mašíaḥ) as Khristós (Χριστός). The New Testament records the Greek transliteration Μεσσίας, Messias, twice, in John 1:41 and 4:25.

In this case, "Anointed" refers to anointed by God, which means God made the appointment, which was celebrated by a ceremonial anointing. To quote Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (via Wiki):

The Hebrew word for “Messiah” is “Moshiach” The literal and proper translation of this word is “anointed,” which refers to a ritual of anointing and consecrating someone or something with oil. (I Samuel 10:1-2) It is used throughout the Jewish Bible in reference to a wide variety of individuals and objects; for example, a Jewish king (I Kings 1:39), Jewish priests (Leviticus 4:3), prophets (Isaiah 61:1), the Jewish Temple and its utensils (Exodus 40:9-11), unleavened bread (Numbers 6:15), and a non-Jewish king (Cyrus king of Persia, Isaiah 45:1).

Thus, we can see that any group of people who were named "Christians" were named after the Messiah. And that, in turn, means that there's no reason to assume that among the millions of Greek-speaking Jews in the Roman Empire, only the believers that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah were called Christians. Any messianic Jew would properly be called a Christian.

This has bearing on the first purported mention of "Christ", early during the reign of the emperor Claudius, by Suetonius: Claudius:25:

Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.[J. C. Rolfe tranlation]

Here's another translation (by Alexander Thomson.):

He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus.

I don't like either. Here's the latin text, from Perseus Suetonius: Claudius:25 section 4 (Latin):

Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit.

By calling up the link and clicking on each word, you can get the case and meaning, listed here:

- Iudaeos (no info)
- impulsore (noun sg masc abl) one who incites, an inciter, instigator
- Chresto (noun sg masc abl/dat) A Jew at Rome under the emperor Claudius (?)
- assidue (noun sg masc voc) common talk/(adv)/(adj sg neut/masc voc) by the busy anvil
- tumultuantis (part pl pres part act masc/fem acc)/(part sg pres part act masc/fem/neut gen) to make a disturbance, be in confusion, storm, rant, talk at random, etc.
- Roma (noun sg fem abl/nom/voc) Rome, the mother city
- expulit (verb 3rd sg perf ind act) to drive out, drive away, thrust out, eject, expel

There's no info regarding the case of "Iudaeos", it has probably been borrowed from the Greek. But it's hard to believe that it's in the accusative. In fact, the only word that's even possibly in the accusative is "tumultuantis" a present participle that means something like "making disturbances" or "ranting". While I'm no Latin scholar, I would (loosely) translate this as "He banished from Rome the constant Jewish disturbances over 'Chrestus'". Or perhaps "He banished from Rome those who were constantly making Jewish disturbances over 'Chrestus'".

The biggest controversy is whether Chrestus referred to Jesus (Christ), but IMO if it referred to Christ it meant Messiah, and not necessarily Jesus. There were many other claims for who was the Messiah, as is demonstrated by the (probably ex post facto) prophesies in Mark (and parallels in Mathew and Luke):

At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

Thus, I would say that most probably, the expulsion during Claudius' reign was of Jews arguing (and likely rioting) over the identity of the Messiah, Jesus may have been one of the contenders, but likely not the only one.

Separating the Christians from the Jews

We've seen that the Jews were unpopular, there were often riots against them when some major misfortune occurred, and that the "Christians" were generally considered a subset of the Jews. The key question for whether Nero undertook to persecute "Christians" was whether anybody made the distinction in his time. Here, I'm on a little more shaky ground, but IMO the best time to set the separation is during the reign of Domitian. According to Wiki, "A tradition based upon 4th century writings by Eusebius of Caesarea maintains that Jews and Christians were heavily persecuted toward the end of Domitian's reign." There's no mention of persecution of Christians by Suetonius, although he does mention that:

Besides the exactions from others, the poll-tax on the Jews was levied with extreme rigour, both on those who lived after the manner of Jews in the city, without publicly professing themselves to be such, 1 and on those who, by concealing their origin, avoided paying the tribute imposed upon that people. I remember, when I was a youth, to have been present,2 when an old man, ninety years of age, had his person exposed to vitw in a very crowded court, in order that, on inspection, the procurator might satisfy himself whether he was circumcised.

There are Jewish traditions, however, that it was about this time that many "heretics" were "expelled from the synagog". In my reconstruction, what happened was that the general unhappiness over Christian proselytizing and taking converts without requiring circumcision resulted in a demand by the emperor that the Jewish authorities in Jamnia define doctrinal or procedural borders around their religion, excluding the gentile Christians and any other "heretics" who didn't require circumcision.

If this is true, then in Nero's day the Christians would not have been distinguishable. When the Great Fire broke out, the ethnic Jews would have known a persecution was coming, and fled Rome before it could start. Only the Gentile Christians converted by Paul and his associates wouldn't have known to flee, or would have decided to stay, trusting in God. Thus, only they would have been available for Nero to persecute. They would have carried stories forward, orally at first, then written, providing Tacitus with his source(s) for the statements that eventually supported the Church's claim that Nero had persecuted Christians.