Does "center" refer to christianity or refer to the city of Rome?

It refers to Rome.

Once again, i advise anyone reading here to keep in mind that this passage is an interpolation, and is patently false. As an example of how the text itself shows its falsity: ". . . Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea . . ." Prior to the reign of Claudius, a procurator was simply an imperial accountant or an administrator of private estates. It was not until the reign of Claudius that procurators began to take on some of the duties of a governor.

From Livius, a site devoted to ancient history:



Not only were there no governors holding the office of procurator in the time when the putative Jesus is said to have lived, we know from an inscription found by Israeli archaeologists that Pilate was a Prefect. It is literally carved in stone at a coliseum on the site of Caesarea Maritima, which was the capital of the sub-province of Iudaea, not Jerusalem. Tacitus was himself an imperial official--he knew better than that.

The site to which the OP links is christian propaganda, and it is false.

Being open-minded is important. The argument that the passage might be real is quite strong:

Tacitus is in error because he refers to Pilate as a "procurator" when in reality Pilate was a prefect. This means that he is unreliable, or that he probably did not consult written documents.

This objection is also favored by Wells [Well.DidJ, 10; Well.HistEv, 16; Well.JesL, 42]. However, as Chilton and Evans remark, "(t)his 'error' should not be taken as evidence that Tacitus' information is faulty" [ChilEv.Stud, 465]. Two reasons may be cited for this:

Evidence indicates that there was a certain fluidity in the usage of these terms.
Tacitus may have been anachronizing on purpose.
We should first consider the difference between these two titles. A procurator, as the word implies, was a financial administrator who acted as the emperor's personal agent. A prefect was a military official.

What evidence is there for the easy interchange of these terms? Meier notes [Meie.MarJ, 100] that in a "backwater province" like Judea, there was probably not much difference between the two roles. This assertion is backed up by literary evidence. Philo and Josephus were not consistent in the usage of the terms either: Josephus calls Pilate a "procurator" in Antiquities 18.5.6, the story about Pilate bringing images into Jerusalem. (It has not been suggested, but we may wonder if, in a backwater like Judea, Pilate may have held both titles!)

In practical terms, "both the procurators and prefects in Judea had the power to execute criminals who were not Roman citizens" [VanV.JONT, 48]. Practically, in this context, "A difference that is no difference, is no difference." Even a Sympathetic Atheist Agrees

The Secular Web's Richard Carrier, who has expressed sympathy for the mythicist position, has stated: "It seems evident from all the source material available that the post was always a prefecture, and also a procuratorship. Pilate was almost certainly holding both posts simultaneously, a practice that was likely established from the start when Judaea was annexed in 6 A.D. And since it is more insulting (to an elitist like Tacitus and his readers) to be a procurator, and even more insulting to be executed by one, it is likely Tacitus chose that office out of his well-known sense of malicious wit. Tacitus was also a routine employer of variatio, deliberately seeking nonstandard ways of saying things (it is one of several markers of Tacitean style). So, there is nothing unusual about his choice here."



Tacitus may have used an anachronistic term for his own reasons. The first reason may have been to avoid confusion. Sanders [Sand.HistF, 23] cites inscriptional evidence that the position held by Pilate was called "prefect" in 6-41 A.D., but "procurator" in the years 44-66, so he deduces that Tacitus was simply using the term with which his readers would be most familiar.
This is a far better point than we may realize: Being that Tacitus' readers were - like he had been - members of the Senate and holders of political office [Dor.Tac, 64], we must suppose that this "error" escaped not only Tacitus' attention, but their抯 as well. We may as well suggest that a United States Senate historian's error of the same rank would pass without comment.

The second reason for this use of terminology may be deliberate anachronizing on Tacitus' part. Kraus and Woodman [KrWoo.LHn, 111] note that Tacitus often uses "archaizing, rare, or obsolete vocabulary" and also "avoids, varies, or 'misuses' technical terms."

They do not cite the prefect/procurator issue specifically, but it is worth asking, in light of this comment, if the usage might not have been simply part of Tacitus' normal practice. (In fact, Harris [Harr.GosP5, 349] does indeed suggest a conscious [or unconscious] anachronizing)

All of the above, therefore - along with the fact that this is not cited by Tactiean scholars as a problem - shows that there is certainly no grounds for charging Tacitus with error or degrading the reference to Jesus because of the alleged procurator/prefect mixup.

It seems unlikely that Christians had invented the content of the "interpolation."
It is judged on the criterion of embarrassment: The "interpolation" says that Christianity is "pernicious superstition" - such words are most likely unbearable by a real Christian; and besides, the "interpolation" says that Christianity is among things hideous and shameful in Roma and in this world - such description is strongly refuted by Christian God.

When you copy and paste like that, it would be helpful if you provide a link to the citation. How do we know the provenance of your citation otherwise? It could well also be christian apologetics, and the originally linked source describes itself as apologetics.

On the one hand, your copy and paste attempt at justifying the text speaks highly of Tacitus' accuracy as an historian, to establish the veracity of the interpolation. It then, however, quibbles about his accuracy with the use of the title procurator, implying that it was an easily made error on his part, and that he may have used the terms procurator and prefect interchangeably. It seems your source wants to have it two ways. That he is a highly accurate and reliable source when he says what the author likes, but not so much when one can impute an error to the text.

Tacitus held a position equivalent in rank to a Legate in the last two decades of the first century, and was the governor of the province in Asia in the early second decade of the second century. It is a bit much to suggest that he would not have know the difference between a prefect and a procurator. (Don't bother going to the Wikipedia article on Tacitus, it has been vandalized by christians, with the last modification date being July 11th, 2013.)

It is more than a bit naïve to suggest that someone writing an interpolation in a text by a pagan would not have used a pagan perspective on christians in a bid for authenticity. Certainly someone with an ounce of sense hoping to counterfeit a pagan history would have used dismissive terms to describe christians as one would expect a pagan source to do. That argument is so silly that i'm surprised that anyone would be taken in by it.

Two early church writers who would have snapped up this interpolation if it had actually existed in their day were Origen and Eusebius. Neither of them mention the passage. Eusebius mentions what is now known as the Josephus interpolation, and may have himself been the source of the interpolation. He would have been on safer ground producing an interpolation in an obscure history of Jews than in attempting to forge a passage in a popular history (n this days) by a popular writer. Yet Eusebius does not mention any such passage in Tacitus. Louis Feldman of Yeshiva University, arguably the most respected Hellenistic scholar today, and an expert of the writings of Flavius Josephus, wrote, in Josephus and modern scholarship, 1937-1980 that more than 80% of modern scholars consider the Josephus passage to have been in part or entirely an interpolation. Unfortunately, no such study has been made about the Tacitus passage. Nevertheless, a great many modern scholars consider this to be an interpolation.

By the way, at that time, even christians didn't call themselves christians. Roman authorities just considered them to be a different flavor of Jew. This is another reason the passage is suspect.

Well, I got the same impression of Christian vandalism of wiki contents when reading its entry "Historicity of Jesus."

The interpolations in Josephus' Antiquities of Jews are obvious, which, ironically, were written in a style that greatly favors Christians. That, as you pointed out, is very naive because Josephus was not supportive of Christianity at all.

But be frank, all these debates will boil down to the fundamental question: Did Jesus exist in history?

If you have any reliable sources to disprove the very existence of Jesus, I will appreciate it.

It is too late here (passed midnight), so I have to call it a day.

One would say "past midnight," not "passed midnight."

First of all, suggesting that someone should prove that Jesus did not exist is requiring them to prove a negative, which is unreasonable. However, i don't assert that the putative Jesus never existed, simply that there was no contemporary, non-christian corroborative evidence for the existence of Jesus. Christian scholars know that this is a weakness in their historical claims, and they are, therefore, eager to "prove" that there was contemporary, non-christian corroborative evidence. A good deal of this eagerness is in an effort to substantiate the gospels as reliable accounts. The gospels are full of historical errors and contradictions--all the more reason to attempt to establish them as reliable. No copies of the "new testament" exist which are any earlier than the fourth century of the current era. Three hundred years is time enough to work great changes in any text. More importantly, no gospel is alleged even by christians to have been written in the life time of the putative Jesus--even the gospel of Matthew, the allegedly oldest gospel, is not claimed to have been written any earlier than 37 CE, by christian "scholars," and that's eight years after the putative Jesus was allegedly executed. The so-called gospels are dubious as sources, and that is made even more doubtful by the fact that more than two hundred years passed before they were written up in the "final" form which is found in the oldest copies (which date from the mid-fourth century of the current era).

I don't really care if the boy existed or not. I do care that people would pervert historical documents with interpolations, especially to promote a religious superstition.