That's nonsense. Plenty of persecution is well-documented.
Nero had Christians torn apart by dogs (though not in the Coliseum), there was the torture and persecution of the martyrs of Lyon, Diocletian enacted his “Great Persecution” in 303, etc.
yeah but none of those had happened yet at the time that this story is nominally set in
that said, if a dude is going around knocking over tables in the temple, proclaiming himself the king of israel (and in most versions also the sole begotten son of god himself), telling people influential religious authorities have everything backwards, supposedly raising the dead, telling rich people to give away all their possessions to the poor instead of giving their children an inheritance, etc., there's guaranteed to be a fair bit of persecution directed his way
> yeah but none of those had happened yet at the time that this story is nominally set in
The gospels were written later, by disciples. Of course they would showcase the messages from Jesus that were most relevant to the people then. This doesn't require any backwards causation, or even distorting any messages, they just have to showcase the sayings that are most relevant there & then when they're writing them down.
And persecution happened quite early, Paul himself admits to doing it in his former life, so there are stories already in the Gospel, not to mention Paul's entire appeal to Caesar.
The gospels were not, in fact, written by disciples. They were all written well after any disciples would have died.
But we know how they were written. Whoever wrote "Mark" made up things for his Jesus to say based on Paul's opinions, cribbing plot elements liberally from the Septuagint and from Homer. "Matthew" cribbed from Mark and made up whatever he liked. Luke cribbed from Mark and Matthew, and made up more stuff. John did a full-on rewrite cribbing from Mark, Matthew, and Luke for theme and plot.
If there was a living, breathing Jesus, we have no hint of anything he said while he lived. Certainly Paul writing in the 50s and the authors of 1 Clement writing in the 60s never heard of any Jesus having said anything they found meaningful enough to mention. Paul is very clear that every single thing he knew about Jesus came from ancient scripture and visions, period. 1 Peter also offers no hint that he ever met a live Jesus.
None of the early 2nd & 3rd century Christian writers, Ignatius, Justin, Origen, etc. had ever heard of Nero slaughtering Christians. Pliny the Younger, who had a personal copy of his uncle Pliny's detailed history of Nero's reign, and spent his life in the justice system, also had no clue about anybody executing Christians for anything but illegal assembly. So the best evidence says that the early Roman persecutions were forged later.
> They were all written well after any disciples would have died.
Depends on who you count as "disciples" (e.g. only the 12) and what exact form you count as the "Gospels," but it's true that the books we have today are built on earlier sources. The more skeptical accounts of the dating seem to assume that the first fragment we have is the original document, never mind if it's a Coptic translation found far afield. One might be forgiven for thinking that some accounts of the dating all but assume that the scribes ran off to translate their works into every language and made it to Egypt in a week or two, as if scribes were easy and cheap.
> If there was a living, breathing Jesus, we have no hint of anything he said while he lived.
Yet the gospels agree on this to the point where it's hypothesized that there's a sayings source and we have so many copies of books that show rather little variation. This is one of the things where people always try to have it both ways, any variation in the story is presented as invention, any commonality in the story is presented as copying a single source. So a lot of accounts with minor variation are pushed one way or the other to serve whatever argument is being made at the time, rather than being seen as imperfect people trying to keep an accurate account.
> Paul is very clear that every single thing he knew about Jesus came from ancient scripture and visions, period.
I see that you're ignoring Paul meeting with Peter & co. at the Council at Jerusalem, which is attested in both Acts & Galatians. One might think they compared notes when discussing what rules Gentile converts had to keep, given that they ended up with something like a variation on the Noahide laws. You'll say he didn't meet Jesus, other than the Damascus road, but c'mon, he was studying under Gamaliel, it's not like he wouldn't have been completely out of the loop about things going on in Jerusalem.
> None of the early 2nd & 3rd century Christian writers, Ignatius, Justin, Origen, etc. had ever heard of Nero slaughtering Christians.
This is a really odd argument to make, given that they didn't personally live through those particular persecutions. And if we did point to something, it'd be easily dismissed because you just can't trust Christian sources...
Meanwhile, you blithely ignore Tacitus' account, which is especially odd given that he was not a Christian and is writing about things that happened during his own life.
> 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.
And Pliny the Younger is another odd citation, you forget to mention that he does reference Jesus as a historical person (contrary to your "if" there was a Jesus). And you really can't think of any reason he might want to downplay things that made Nero look bad? Nothing at all?
> His guardian and preceptor in charge of his education was Lucius Verginius Rufus,[7] famed for quelling a revolt against Nero in 68 AD.
There is, in fact, no scant breath of evidence that any gospel was written based on any such lost source; their anonymous authors cited none. People can "hypothesize" a "sayings source" all they like, but any conclusions based on it are worth as much as the hypotheses: garbage in, garbage out. Nowhere else in history does making up imaginary sources pass muster. The synoptic gospels do not, in fact, agree, neither among themselves nor with the literally dozens of others omitted. They blatantly contradict, instead, despite that each author visibly had all the previous texts ready to hand. Contradicting earlier texts was the whole point of writing it.
Paul insists, as I said. He probably lied, but neither he nor anyone else writing before Mark reports a live Jesus ever saying anything. All of Paul's elaborate logical arguments supporting what he clearly identifies as his personal opinions could have been cut short if only he could have cited Jesus having said the same thing. He also never answers anybody else citing Jesus, either to concede the point or explain why what that Jesus had said didn't apply.
If Ignatius et al. had claimed Roman persecution, we could reasonably suspect later forgery, and their testimony would be moot, but their not asserting it when it became so central to later doctrine speaks volumes. Do you pretend that if it had happened, none of them would have heard of it? The lack of mention is a hard nugget of fact we cannot doubt, and that demands explanation.
Tacitus manuscripts were in the hands of the Church for many centuries, where they could insert anything they liked, just as they did in Josephus. (We even know precisely who inserted the TF into Josephus.) We have zillions of examples of them doctoring things so ham-handedly as to make it undeniable. Anywhere they were more careful, we don't know about.
Pliny's mention of a historical Jesus is reporting hearsay from (former) Christians. If he had known anything about Nero slaughtering them, he would not have been so visibly at sea about why any were executed.
Is it possible that early Christians were comprehensively persecuted? Sure, nothing is certain. But the balance of reliable evidence indicates not. If we were to take the persecution as given, we would then have no explanation for the wholesale forgery of myriad transparently false cases. Those were, recall, what we started out trying to understand.
Amazing. The one time the monks perfectly inserted something into every copy of Tacitus, without leaving any evidence for you to point at, is that part where he says something inconvenient for you.
How many ancient copies of Tacitus do we have? 3rd-century Christians show no hint of awareness that Tacitus wrote that. So very evidently the Tacitus manuscript our copies are based on was doctored after theirs.
Why would Tacitus care that it was some obscure procurator Pilate who nailed up Jesus? But Christian interpolators considered it critically, indeed creedally, important to mention.
Nero had Christians torn apart by dogs (though not in the Coliseum), there was the torture and persecution of the martyrs of Lyon, Diocletian enacted his “Great Persecution” in 303, etc.