Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 10:29 pm
So the possibility is not so implausible, that Matthew has preserved here the original anonymous "governor" while "Mark" has removed it, just as "Mark" has preserved the old expression "called king of the Jews" while Matthew has replaced it with "called Christ".
Luke, when has expanded *Ev, felt obliged to add "when Pilate was
governor of Judea" in the original incipit, hence
emphasizing even more that the "governor" was "Pilate", as if these two items, "Pilate" and "governor", had been still remembered, even then,
separated one from the other, as two free electrons.
Hence at the moment I am inclined to think that the author of Mark, or the author of *Ev, were mere
beautifiers of the original narrative with the very short epilogue mentioning only an anonymous "governor".
There are many reasons why I don't think this is how things happened. But we may need to take a few steps back. Might there be a version of the Gospel narrative that does not name Pilate and instead uses governor? Yes. BUT that narrative wouldn't look like what you first proposed.
Was this ever a thing:
So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to the governor.
He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
16 The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium). 20 Then they led him out to crucify him.
24 And they crucified him.
Jesus breathed his last.
No.
But was this a thing?
15 Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to the governor.
2 “Are you the king of the Jews?” asked the governor.
“You have said so,” Jesus replied.
3 The chief priests accused him of many things. 4 So again the governor asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”
5 But Jesus still made no reply, and the governor was amazed.
6 Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7 A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8 The crowd came up and asked the governor to do for them what he usually did.
9 “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked the governor, 10 knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have the governor release Barabbas instead.
12 “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” the governor asked them.
13 “Crucify him!” they shouted.
14 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked the governor.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
15 Wanting to satisfy the crowd, the governor released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
Maybe, but I'd say that your interesting points about PLT = 'deliverance' work against such a proposition. However, I think my reconstruction of the opening of the First Gospel may open a door here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11542&sid=b682a9486 ... abc15b8c59
The result of that reconstruction is that Herod can be removed from the narrative. Herod is not the killer of John "the Baptist", so Herod has no need to be in the narrative at all. If we remove Herod we may have cause to remove Pilate as well. What we have in Mark then is a narrative that is not set in a particular time.
As for this:
the author of Mark, or the author of *Ev, were mere beautifiers of the original narrative
This is a complex issue to address for many reasons. Firstly when we talk about "Mark" who are we really talking about and what layer of revision are we talking about? I'm quite confident at this point that Canonical Mark was conformed to Matthew by the editor of the four Gospel collection. So yes, some layer of revision took place when "Mark" was added to the four Gospel collection. But it is doubtful that Pilate was added at this point, because Pilate exists in so many other Gospels, including non-Canonical. However, I do think that the naming of Jesus' mother as Mary was done at this point because the mother of Jesus is unnamed in core Luke/*Ev and John.
So I think that there is a "most recent" layer of Mark (not counting the even later additions of the longer ending and some other changes) that was created by the editor of the four Gospel collection, but the modifications made by this editor are relatively modest.
There were also, however, more significant modifications made prior to this. There were likely a few different modifications made. But the original narrative is the one that was heavily driven by scriptural references and the Pauline letters. So when we see narrative elements that are derived from scriptural references, like the Crucifixion and Psalm 22, that is the original narrative. There was no narrative prior to the narrative that was concocted from scriptural references. Prior to the narrative based on scriptural references there was only the Pauline letters and perhaps similar unwritten claims. "Jesus was Crucified by the archons in weakness and raised in glory" etc. But there was no
story. The first
story was the story that was invented based on Elijah/Elisha, etc. Prior to that we had mini-narratives, like the Christ Hymn from Philippians, which is a very small narrative of sorts, but that was about it.
The thing about what we have in the Gospel of Mark is that it is like a jigsaw puzzle. There are many pieces of it that MUST fit together, they have to go together and they all had to have been created by the same person as part of a single cohesive narrative. The thing about this narrative is that #1 The author of this narrative had to have a lot of freedom to invent what he/she wanted, so they were not constrained by any prior story. #2 Every other Gospel writer used this narrative as the base for their story, which shows that there was no other prior narrative to use. Everything traces back to a single narrative, not two or three sources, there is only one source. John does not come from multiple sources, it's new material is invented in response to the first narrative and other interpretations of the first narrative. The new material in John is specifically reactionary. For example the "miraculous signs narrative" in John is reacting to the claim in "Mark" that "no signs would be given". The writer is starting from that statement in the first narrative and then inventing a counter to it. The writer isn't working from some pre-existing separate narrative that talking about Jesus preforming signs.
So there are parts of Mark that all had to have come into existence simultaneously, they couldn't have been built up over time. I will grant that it is possible that the name Pilate could have been added later, BUT, as I said, the writer of the original narrative was a sophisticated user of hidden meaning, secret codes, symbolism, allegory, etc., and what you are proposing about the use of the name Pilate fits exactly to this writer's M.O.
I definitely think Barabbas was part of the original narrative, created by the person who invented the story based on the Elijah/Elisha narrative. The word play in the name Barabbas and its connection to "Abba, Father" in Mark 14 indicate that the person who put Barabbas in the narrative is the same person who wrote other elements of the story based on scriptural references and the Pauline letters.
Not one single other Gospel writer displays this type of sophistication or use of symbolism. All the rest are crude imitators.