Pilate and Josephus

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Paul the Uncertain
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

maryhelena and rakovsky

First, thank you both for a mind-expanding conversation. I appreciate your respective takes on these crucial ancient records bearing on Christian origins.

My own personal views are more pedestrian. With respect to the received Testimony, I think there was a lapse in transmission. My best guess is that Josephus added a mention of late First Century Christians' self-description of their beginnings to his store of Pilate stories, but that his version has been considerably improved upon.

With respect to Paulina and Mundus, even if its location is chronologically explicable (i.e. the current consensus dating of Pilate's term starts too late, which could be), the tale is still spatially and thematically out of place. As with the Testimony, I see the possibility that Josephus made some brief mention of the Egyptian religionists' expulsion from Rome along with the Jews, and that whatever he wrote has been replaced with what we read at generous length today.

If so, then Josephus probably stated plainly that the Egyptian religionists were expelled and briefly explained the linkage between the two persecutions (simultaneity, location and maybe common corruption). That statement and explanation have gone missing. Their absence heightens the anomaly that a serious-seeming work about Jewish history is interrupted by a sex farce wherein intellectually challenged Gentiles behave outrageously, thereby meeting private and personal bad ends, with no group persecution.
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maryhelena
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by maryhelena »

Josephus places Pilate in a context of 19 c.e. Within that same context of 19 c.e. Josephus also places the TF. Using the Josephan chronology plus that of Acts of Pilate and the gospel of Luke, various Jesus crucifixion dates are possible. Additionally, the gospels give the age of it's Jesus figure as 'around thirty' and 'not yet fifty'. Hence, alongside the various crucifixion dates birth dates can be variously calculated:

A crucifixion story set in 19 c.e. with a Jesus figure about 30 years of age gives a birth narrative around 10 b.c. A 19 c.e. crucifixion story with a Jesus figure 'not yet fifty' would give a birth narrative around 31 b.c.

A crucifixion story set in 21 c.e. with a Jesus figure about 30 years of age gives a birth narrative around 9 b.c. A 21 c.e. crucifixion story with a Jesus figure 'not yet fifty' would give a birth narrative around 29 b.c.

A crucifixion story set around 30 c.e. with a Jesus figure about 30 years of age gives a birth narrative around 1 b.c. A 30 c.e. crucifixion story with a Jesus figure 'not yet fifty' would give a birth narrative around 20 b.c.

A crucifixion story set around 33 c.e. with a Jesus figure about 30 years old gives a birth narrative around 4/3 b.c. A 33 c.e. crucifixion story with a Jesus figure 'not yet fifty' would give a birth narrative around 17 b.c.

A crucifixion story set around 36/37 c.e. with a Jesus figure about 30 years old gives a birth narrative around 6 c.e. A 36/37 crucifixion story with a Jesus figure 'not yet fifty' would give a birth narrative around 13/12 b.c.

So...take your pick story for the Jesus historicists....

For those of the ahistoricist persuasion this collection of possible crucifixion and birth narratives indicate that the Jesus figure is a literary creation and not an historical figure. Yes, historicists can simply argue that accurate dating does not matter - Jesus lived and was crucified under Pilate. But faith in theological dogma can keeps minds from wandering....Fortunately, like all ideas, those of a theological nature are subject to devaluation. However cherished an idea might be it cannot be protected from intellectual progress. The benefit of putting old ideas to bed, of 'crucifying' an idea, is that a better idea can be 'born'.

The Jesus story read literally, is a story long past it's time. Read literally, the Jesus story has no moral value. That people have found comfort in that story is neither here or there - a placebo also has that power. If there is some 'power', some significance, in the Jesus story, then that significance cannot be in the literal reading of that story but in a philosophical sense. In other words, hanging a man on a cross has no moral value whatsoever - however hard theologians try to gain value out of a non-value. If the significance of the Jesus story is of a philosophical nature - then it's Jesus does not need to be - and could not possibly be - a real flesh and blood, crucified, historical figure.

So, two aspects of the Jesus story. 1) the history of the development of its philosophical ideas within the Jesus literature. 2) the history that grounds the origin of the Jesus story to place and time - and people.
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maryhelena
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by maryhelena »

One problem with a 21 c.e. crucifixion date for the gospel Jesus is a historical one. When did Herodias marry Herod (Antipas). If one assumes that this marriage took place prior to 21 c.e. then one must also assume that Aretas took 15/16 years to get around to avenging his daughter's divorce from Antipas. The scenario that best fits the Herodias, Herod (Antipas) and Aretas problem is a crucifixion story set around 36/37 b.c. i.e. Aretas wasted no time in seeking revenge against Antipas....

And if, as gMark and gMatthew suggest, Herodias was previously married to Philip prior to a marriage with Herod (Antipas) then the story in Slavonic Josephus suggests that a marriage to Herod (Antipas) followed the death of Philip - a death, re Josephus, that took place in the 20th year of Tiberius - 34 c.e.

Although the Acts of Pilate and it's 7th year of Tiberius crucifixion story (21 c.e.) is of interest it is not the focus of the gospel story. It's part of the history, part of the development of the Jesus story. Whatever else the Herodias, Herod (Antipas) and John the Baptist story is about it's inclusion in gMatthew serves to move it's birth narrative away from the time of Herod the Great. Unless of course one thinks, re gJohn, that the crucified Jesus was not yet 50....
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by Secret Alias »

Oh for God's sake
When did Herodias marry Herod (Antipas).
The gospels are irrelevant or almost irrelevant to the discussion because they just recycle Josephus. Josephus is a multi-layered text where the text closest to the historical Joseph is Life and Antiquities represents a polished work of 'assistants' who might have written on Josephus's behalf without his knowledge. Here are the relevant texts in Josephus:

Herodias was married to Herod, the son of Herod the Great by Mariamme the daughter of Simon the high priest. They had a daughter Salome, after whose birth Herodias, taking it into her head to flout the way of our fathers, married Herod the Tetrarch, her husband's brother by the same father, who was tetrarch of Galilee; to do this she parted from a living husband.

Herod and Herodias and Herod's First Wife and Aretas

Antiquities 18.5.1 109-115
(This paragraph immediately precedes the one about John.)

About this time Aretas, the king of Petra, and Herod the Tetrarch had a quarrel on account of the following. Herod the tetrarch had married the daughter of Aretas and had lived with her a great while; but once when he was on his way to Rome he lodged with his half-brother, also named Herod but who had a different mother, the high priest Simon's daughter. There he fell in love with Herodias, this latter Herod's wife, who was the daughter of their brother Aristobulus and the sister of Agrippa the Great.
This man ventured to talk to her about a marriage between them; she accepted, and an agreement was made for her to come to him as soon as he should return from Rome, one condition of this marriage being that he should divorce Aretas's daughter. So when he had made this agreement, he sailed to Rome; but when he had finished there and returned again, his wife, having discovered the agreement he had made with Herodias, and before he knew that she knew of the plan, asked him to send her to Machaerus, a place on the border between the territories of Aretas and Herod, without informing him of any of her intentions.
Accordingly Herod sent her there, thinking his wife had not perceived anything. But she had sent messages a good while before to Machaerus, which had been under the control of her father, and so all things necessary for her escape were made ready for her by the general of Aretas's army. By that means she soon came into Arabia, under the conduct of the several generals, who carried her from one to another successively; and soon she came to her father and told him of Herod's intentions.
Aretas made this the start of his enmity toward Herod. He also had a quarrel with him about their boundaries in the area of Gabalis. So they raised armies on both sides and prepared for war, sending their generals to fight instead of themselves. And when they had joined battle, all Herod's army was destroyed by the treachery of some fugitives who, though they were of the tetrarchy of Philip and joined the army, betrayed him. So Herod wrote about these affairs to Emperor Tiberius, who was very angry at the attempt made by Aretas and wrote to Vitellius to make war upon him and either to take him alive, and bring him in chains, or to kill him, and send him his head. This was the command that Tiberius gave to the governor of Syria

Whether or not there was a historical marriage between 'Herod' and a 'Herodias' aside the gospel's reuse of this passage from Josephus in the second century has little or no bearing on when the ur-gospel written before Josephus understood the ministry or activities of Jesus to have occurred. Some problem.
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maryhelena
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by maryhelena »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:45 am Oh for God's sake
When did Herodias marry Herod (Antipas).
The gospels are irrelevant or almost irrelevant to the discussion because they just recycle Josephus.
Really? How come then that the gospels forgot that Josephus has the daughter of Herodias married to Philip.....does not look like any recycling to me. The gospels state one thing Josephus another. Take your pick....

Bottom line here is that Josephus has Herod (Antipas) married to Herodias. The gospels also have Herodias married to Herod (Antipas). Josephus places the war between Herod (Antipas) and Aretas just prior to the death of Tiberius, 37 c.e. Now you can assume that the marriage between Herodias and Herod (Antipas) took place prior to 21 c.e. - an assumption that necessitates a very long time, 15/16 years before Aretas decides to avenge the divorce of his daughter by Herod (Antipas). Or one can assume the normal reaction of a father when his daughter is rejected - seek immediate action against the man who rejects his daughter for another woman.

As I say, take you pick which seems the more logical manner for a father to support his daughter.
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by Secret Alias »

Really? How come then that the gospels forgot that Josephus has the daughter of Herodias married to Philip.....does not look like any recycling to me.
Again was the text of Josephus a stable one ? As Origen demonstrates, it was an unstable one. The idea that Luke used Josephus is pretty much an acknowledged position within New Testament scholarship. As Carrier notes:
Steve Mason has reviewed the arguments [1] and in summarizing the evidence concludes that, besides generic parallels of genre and form and the use of identical historical events, which are inconclusive as proofs, the "coincidence ... of aim, themes, and vocabulary ... seems to suggest that Luke-Acts is building its case on the foundation of Josephus' defense of Judaism," and therefore that Luke is consciously and significantly drawing on Josephus to supplement his use of Mark and Q and to create the appearance of a real history, a notable deviation from all the other Gospels which have none of the features of a historical work.
I acknowledge was on good terms with Mason when he taught at York University and was in his classroom. He's a big deal and I think Carrier's point here is correct.
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by Secret Alias »

The point then is that it doesn't matter whether or not Luke says this or that about Herodias and Herod.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by Secret Alias »

And I think the ending tacked on Mark 6:17 was added to harmonize with Josephus:

ὅτι αὐτὴν ἐγάμησεν

There is something puzzling about the narrative:

or Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. 18 For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19 So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, 20 because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was amazed; yet he liked to listen to him.

Herodias's anger at John doesn't make any sense to me.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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maryhelena
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by maryhelena »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Mar 28, 2018 11:09 am The point then is that it doesn't matter whether or not Luke says this or that about Herodias and Herod.
The point is that the gospels of Matthew and Mark use the Herodias, Herod (Antipas) and John the Baptist story. If the Herodias story does not suit ones 21 c.e. Jesus crucifixion position one can always turn to the gospel of John which does not have this story - hence one could place a Jesus crucifixion story anywhere during the rule of Pilate - albeit having a Jesus not yet 50 years old...The synoptic gospels use the Herodias story. Consequently, the dating of a marriage between Herodias and Herod (Antipas) is relevant to the gospel crucifixion story i.e. in the story they are married prior to the Jesus crucifixion. Josephus has Herod (Antipas) and Aretas at war at the end of the rule of Tiberius.

About this time Aretas, the king of Petra, and Herod the Tetrarch had a quarrel on account of the following. Herod the tetrarch had married the daughter of Aretas and had lived with her a great while......he fell in love with Herodias.......one condition of this marriage being that he should divorce Aretas's daughter.........Aretas made this the start of his enmity toward Herod...

So....Aretas cooled his anger for 15/16 years - or - raised his army to give that so and so of a son-in-law a beating he won't forget.....

That's the Josephan story. Whether or not it's actual history is possibly debatable. However, the gospel story about Herodias is also debatable..Consequently, the issue becomes: which scenario is the more plausible one regarding dating a marriage between Herodias and Herod (Antipas)....
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Re: Pilate and Josephus

Post by Secret Alias »

The Greek in this section is very different than what happens before or after it. The anarthrous 'subject' changes from Herod to Herodias. And the entire narrative seems to explain - or attempt to explain Herod believing Jesus to be John come back to life. There are no present indicatives in the narrative of this episode. It's not really part of the main story but a massive effort to explain Herod’s reaction to Jesus (6:16).

But we know already that the idea that Jesus might have been John resurrected and that John might have been Elijah resurrected is the original 'concept' which is being avoided - some would say deliberately so - by the introduction of Herodias digression which I think is certainly secondary.

It's a distraction on the part of an orthodox editor not to allow Herod's supposition that Jesus is John resurrected or what that might mean.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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