The usual way of doing history is to start with the ancient sources and move forwards. So for Christian origins we might start with the canonical gospels, sift out what is not plausible (e.g. rising from the dead), massage a little what seems plausible for the times of the story setting (e.g. a would-be messiah was crucified by the Romans and hallucinations about a dead person reappearing), add the epistles of Paul and Book of Acts to tell us that preachers went out preaching the gospel to the world, and bingo! Christianity is born. Today we have the gospels and letters from within a generation of Jesus and his apostles and we can study them to work out how things started out to explain what we have today.
But here’s another way of doing history.
Start with what we think we know, what we’ve learned, about the Gospels and Epistles of Paul. Start with our common understanding that these were among the earliest documents of Christianity. Start with our knowledge that the gospels were competing (or complementary) accounts of the historical Jesus, mixed with a bit of mythical embellishment. Start also with our notion of the common knowledge that Paul wrote letters to his early churches.
Then work back.
Okay, we are clear about what our beliefs about the sources are. Now let’s work back and see what others thought about these gospels and letters. Why do we think the things we do about them? Did we inherit our views from earlier writers? What did those earlier writers say? We can leapfrog over generations and go back to late antiquity and learn that the Church Fathers definitely assured their readers that the four gospels were “true” accounts of Jesus; and that Paul’s letters, as we know them, were indeed written by a first century Paul.
Okay, but let’s keep moving back in time though our mental time-machine.
We read now that Church Fathers protested that there were many letters of Paul doing the rounds and that many of these were outright forgeries! We further learn that some sects had shortened forms of the letters and that the only true letters were the larger, more wordy texts.
We learn that there were many gospels doing the rounds. But only four of these were genuine.
Let’s keep working backwards:
Let’s say the year is 140 CE. Some figure in Rome is declaring that he has a gospel and ten letters by Paul. That one gospel is anti-Jewish and the letters reject the idea that the Jewish Scriptures are authoritative. At the same time opponents to this figure are saying they have other gospels that are pro-Jewish and more than ten letters of Paul, and that all the letters of Paul respect the Jewish Scriptures.
So we have claims and counterclaims about authentic and false gospels and epistles. How is anyone to decide which is which?
Keep rolling back in time:
Nothing. Blank.
So how do we get further back in time? We can, if we want, return to the first option above. We can begin with what we think we know about the gospels and the letters.
We re-read the gospels and see that their story is set in the mid first century CE. The letters have Paul’s name on them so obviously they are written by the same Paul we read about in Acts. Let’s re-start there. Our beliefs, the traditions, must have come from somewhere. They must have had some basis in fact, yes?
To get back further in time, then, we assume that what the second century texts wanted us to believe about the origins of Christianity were true. Instead of asking, Why did the authors of these texts we read about in the second century want us to believe the gospel narratives were true, we ask, So given that we know these gospel stories have some basis in truth…..
They might have been “true” just as some factions in the second century believed. That’s where our beliefs come from, after all. But …..
How can we tell?
Should we do history forwards? Or backwards? Should we first examine our inherited beliefs about the sources? What happens if we set apart our beliefs and re-frame them as hypotheses to be tested?
Indebted to Markus Vinzent for the notion of “doing history backwards”.
- Vinzent, Markus. Writing the History of Early Christianity: From Reception to Retrospection. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
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Fascinating approach! Why choose one direction? Why not both to see of they meet in the middle?
Mark’s Gospel only wanted the “outsiders” to believe the text was true. But the Gospel wanted the “insiders” to understand the parable: Paul is the Sower who went out to sow in Asia and Antioch, but he was denied and betrayed by the Jews from Asia, and by the scribes, hypocritical Pharisees, Zelotes chief preists and Judas Sikariotes of his own Zelotes Jerusalem Way, both in Antioch, and on his last Passover up to Jerusalem.
Love this – and I hope there’s further posts along these lines; seems like it was just getting started when it ended!
Hi there, thanks for the wonderful commentary. Good luck with your studies and cheers!!!
IMO, our ASSUMPTIONS make asses of all of us. Once we assume an assumptions [by faith?] we are “pre-programmed” to only see what our assumptions allow us to see and we don’t see what our assumptions don’t allow us to see.
It’s difficult, but we must proceed with “the don’t know mind”. This REQUIRES us to first IDENTIFY our assumptions (most of which are unconscious). Otherwise they will lead is ASS-TRAY.
To the credit of Markus Vinzent, his approach is based on the identification of the assumptions which are being made at any given time, then going back in time to see where those assumptions come from.
I was reminded very strongly of Richard Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale” as I read this piece.
je propose Enrico Tuccinardi (Barrabas) pour commencer…
For other readers here, the reference above is to https://www.academia.edu/14384134/Barabbas_dans_lHistoire — It is easy enough to copy and paste it and run it through an AI to translate it to English. (I have an English language copy but without Enrico T’s permission do not want to make it public. Happy to do so if Enrico sees this and gives the go-ahead.
“Let’s say the year is 140 CE… Keep rolling back in time: Nothing. Blank.’
Thank you for an intriguing book review. Ariadne’s thread suddenly just snapped.
I am irrationally sceptical of dates. The specific palaeographic
characteristics of the 2nd century are apparently less distinctive
than is usually assumed. Recent research suggests that P52 may even
date from the 3rd century.
Completely unrelated, but tracing the history of early Christianity
backwards in time might be just as exciting if we let go of all the
personal names we think we know and focus exclusively on
archaeological traces. There are many enigmatic inscriptions. The
earliest Christian art dates from around 250 CE, when the first
Christian catacombs were decorated. The house church in Dura Europos,
the world’s oldest church, dates to between 233 and 256. Very little
evidence suggests that any Christian movement existed prior to around
200 CE.
A visually appealing book on this subject is Ante Pacem (revised
edition, 2003) by Graydon F. Snyder.
Yet we do have Pliny’s letter to Trajan about the Christians and it would be very difficult to justify ignoring it despite the way it has been apparently elaborated by later hands. Difficult, too, to place Justin, Irenaeus post 200 CE.
it should be noted that Pliny( in 111-112), a scholar and learned person does not associate any writing with the incriminated christians..
Indeed. The Christians under interrogation appeal to no texts, yet observe a practice unknown from the letters of Paul or the gospels.
And we recall that in Acts the Holy Spirit commanded Paul to avoid going to that part of Asia Minor where Pliny met the Christians.
Spot on.
I am willing to consider that letter to be substantially modified, if not completely fabricated, because of its claim that before Pliny’s persecution, the temples were nearly abandoned. That is inconsistent with any other narrative about Christian growth and development.
For a good layout of the reasons against the letter being a forgery see Rene Salm’s post: https://www.mythicistpapers.com/2022/03/17/pliny-on-christians-ca-110-ce-authentic-my-view/
But for a good study indicating that the text of the letter has been redacted/interpolated, see Enrico Tuccinardi’s paper, discussed here: https://vridar.org/2016/02/17/fresh-doubts-on-authenticity-of-plinys-letter-about-the-christians/
Salm argues that Philo’s description of the Therapeutae mirrors Pliny’s description of the Christians: both groups would meet before dawn and form two choirs to sing hymns. The two descriptions have some similarities. But if we claim that this proves Pliny’s text is authentic, we are assuming that Philo’s Therapeutae were early Christians. They were not. The Therapeutae were ascetic Jews, not Christians. However, we do know that Eusebius and other Church Fathers identified the Therapeutae with early Christians, which was of course common knowledge by the time Book X was most likely written around 1500.
Therefore, the author of Book X may have used Eusebius as a source. This lends weight to the idea that Book X is a forgery from a later period.
Salm labels Detering’s secondary sources ‘outdated’, a feeble argument that one would otherwise link with Christian apologists.
I don’t see where Salm makes that claim. His argument for authenticity is entirely on other grounds: see https://vridar.org/2026/04/18/doing-history-backwards-and-discovering-christian-origins-or-not/#comment-363032
Have you seen book 10? Have you seen the studies addressing its literary features? What about the differences within Book 10 of Pliny’s letter re the Christians? The idea that book 10 was forged just to pass on a letter with singular stylistic features is most implausible.
Not so. An “outdated” argument is damning whatever one’s side of belief — and it is the apologists who are as a rule the “outdated” ones. Detering omitted serious work that would have prevented him from writing his piece had he known of it. Again, see the link to Salm’s page above.
I would strongly doubt that Salm could have persuaded Detering to change his conclusion. Of course, we must also assume that Detering was familiar with the work of Salm’s hero, E. K. Rand (1871–1945). It is high time that Detering’s book Falsche Zeugen was published in languages other than German.
Moreover: Arguments do not become obsolete simply because the author has been dead for a long time and is little known. J.L. Ussing (1820–1905), for example, was a Danish scholar who pointed out how laughable many of Trajan’s replies seem. He also made a number of thought-provoking and excellent observations. They are no less valid today. When I ordered a copy of this work from a Danish library, I received an original 1869 copy in the post with a note asking me to keep it. The Danes are clearly generous.)
Here are a couple of scattered comments:
(1) Salm glosses over large parts of Chapter 3 of Detering’s book, and it is unclear whether he is commenting on one of Detering’s sketches. Among countless other things, he fails to address the following:
“Soon after the first edition of the new Pliny letters was published, two more editions appeared: one from Beroaldus’s printing house and one from Catanaeus in 1506. The publishers must certainly have made a tidy profit from this newly discovered collection of letters. While the market for contemporary literature was stagnating, the sale of a newly discovered ancient classic always promised a good profit.
“Mistrust was warranted, if only on the basis of experience with similar cases. In any event, Catanaeus had to address contemporary sceptics who considered the correspondence to be a forgery in the preface to his edition of the letters (sunt qui non esse Plinii putant). They cited the style of the letters as evidence against their authenticity, arguing that they lacked the elegance of Pliny’s other letters and that the form of address ‘Domine’ for Trajan was only attested among the Severans in the later imperial period.” (Falsche Zeugen, p. 82)
(2) Salm writes: “In other words, the tenth century manuscript B originally contained all ten books of Pliny’s letters.”
As Detering writes:
“However, as the codex only contains the first six books, it is unclear what came after them. The only manuscript said to contain all of Pliny’s letters disappeared back into obscurity as suddenly as it had appeared in the humanist world at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It served its purpose for six years, and then all was quiet around it. Finally, it vanished completely.” (Falsche Zeugen, p. 85)
(3) Salm writes: “If Pliny’s letter (and Trajan’s reply) was later forged on the basis of Tertullian’s description, then we must answer the question: How did the Pliny-Trajan correspondence come to be included in the two collections of Pliny’s letters that survived c. 1500 CE?”
The things that Rand and others have speculated about and the things that we actually know are two different things. We must take into account that the mysterious codex discovered by Fra Giocondo in Paris has vanished without a trace.
This is not even the beginning of a critique of what Salm writes. However, I believe that the sceptics to whom Catanaeus referred in 1506 had the right instincts. Doing Detering justice would require a detailed and honest examination of Chapter 3 of his book.
If you want to convince someone and not just write for those who already are on your side of the discussion you will need to actually outline Salm’s criticism in the strongest way you can, and not just write as if one side is naturally correct and the other naturally wrong. Once you do that, THEN you can point out why you believe he has missed Detering’s core points and why you think Detering did not need to bother with Rand. You come across as having read tendentiously, not seriously or honestly.
I agree that an English edition of Falsche Zeugen is long overdue. That and Chris Palmero’s podcast Born in the 2nd Century have left me convinced that he Pliny letter is a forgery. Of course as a layman my opinion is worthless.
I think it was that title that I enquired about with its publisher to ask if I could make my translation public but was told, No, not allowed.
“If you want to convince someone and not just write for those who already are on your side of the discussion you will need to actually outline Salm’s criticism in the strongest way you can…”
Sure, but do you really want to hold these comments to the standard of journal articles?
I simply want to avoid diatribes and unfair arguments that do not present a fair picture of the differences. Just avoiding the common fallacies is all that is asked for.
“I think it was that title that I enquired about with its publisher to ask if I could make my translation public but was told, No, not allowed.”
Did you suggest providing an English translation for them to publish?
They have their own systems, policies, agendas …. they responded as they responded, letting me know my place. But it’s not difficult to copy and paste into an AI interface and ask for a translation, section by section.
Provided that the letter of Pliny and the commentaries of Tacitus and Suetonius are authentic:
Pliny, a cultivated lawyer and friend of Tacitus and Suetonius, notify ” the crime attached to the name” Christ, crime connected with the zealot movements of the 1 st century and with their repression, in which he himself took part. The role of Juda or John de gamala, John the baptist ,Barabbas (cf Enrico Tuccinardi),Theudas,… remains open to discussion.
His perplexity stems from the multiplicity of jewish and christianizing sects, some of which were to be repressed.
The text thus implies potentially criminal sects: zealot crimes, the nicolaitan agapes of Pergamon, Bithynia..(cf.the communal meals and the supposedly “innocent” food they claimed) to be distinguished from sects inspirated by the Essenes, Therapeutes, Qumran or possibly by a Jeshu ha Notsri in first century BC century (cf. Rene Salm)
The practice of this “christians” seems to be attested “jewish” in this time +”hymn to christ as to a god”… Judeo-christian practice.
Curiously, no text produced either by the prosecution (such as those provocativ of book of revelation ) or by the defense ( irenic evangelical verses) are mentionned, practice only.
Were such texts unknown in 111ce ?
If I understand you correctly, I am not sure that we can assume any link between Pliny’s Christians and the rebel movement in Jerusalem 40 years earlier. That seems to me to be too much of a leap. Is there any evidence for Pliny being confused by multiple sects?
The link between the christians really condemned in Pliny’s letter to Trajan ( not the sectarians of the”superstio prava et immodica”, at the end of the letter) and the rebel movements of the 1 early century appear established : it results from the association of pliny’s statement ( “the crime attached to the name” christian) and the statement of his friend Tacitus (Christ, delivered to punishement by pontius pilate ,annals 15.44).
Some christians or chrestians or gnostics “sects” preserve a link with the first movements as Thesis and Antithesis …
The problem I have with this scenario is this:
Tacitus says Christians are condemned because of following a despised superstition. There is no hint of an accusation of being rebels. He does not even say that Christ was crucified because of any kind of rebel activity or ambitions.
Nor is there any evidence that Christians known by Pliny and Tacitus had any links with any rebel activity in Palestine nearly a century earlier.
If the crime associated with the name “Christian” was actually sympathy for political rebel activity, it is inconceivable that Pliny or Trajan would have permitted any Christian association to meet or survive at all. Such people would have been suicidal to have met as Christians in a way that they could easily be discovered.
Besides, the only result from the Christian movement in Pliny’s time appears to have been others being converted and leaving their pagan temples. That’s religious interest and has nothing to do with rebel sympathies — which would have met with death immediately. The crime was surely belief of a superstitious nature and refusal to sacrifice to the emperor.
That idea — that later Christians descended from early first century Palestinian rebels — comes from modern interpretations of the gospels.
Those modern interpretations of the gospels are debatable. So the notion that the crime associated with the name Christian is speculative at best and meets contrary evidence that would need to be explained.
Thank you for your constructive criticism (this 22:13 GMT),which compels me to clarify or reconsider the proposed scenario.
Such exchanges help me (or both of us perhaps) to clarify our thoughts.