The Gospel embarrassment about the Roman Pilate killer of Jesus doesn't prove that Pilate killed Jesus, but only that in the oldest gospel
Pilate kills Jesus. There are not sinedrites behind Pilate.
My problem was how to harmonize the Roman responsability for the death of Jesus with the first gospel. Some had proposed the idea that Pilate was introduced because the Jews hated him and a Jew wrote the Earliest Gospel. But too much often a "Jew" is an anti-Gnostic Judaizer when there is question of the Christian origins. But what is there of "anti-Gnostic" behind the idea of a Pilate who kills directly Jesus?
The following reading of an extract from the Turmel's commentary of John (thanks Stuart to put it online) has really surprised and galvanized myself:
As Master of the world, the Devil is the source from whence emanates all political authority. To Pilate who boasts of the power of his will to put to death or to deliver him, the Johannine Christ replies (19:11) "You could have no power against me except it were given to you from above". Then he adds: "This is why the one who delivers me to you commits a greater sin". This answer contains two assertions. The first, we learn that Pilate holds his authority "from above", which is from a Being superior to men, from a Being to which he is a lieutenant and to whom he must do obedience. According to the second assertion it is this superior Being, this Being "above" who delivered the Christ to Pilate his lieutenant; and "this is why" the responsibility of Pilate in the death of Christ is mitigated. The great culprit is this Being "above", who placed his proxy Pilate in an inextricable situation. This Being "above" who is fierce against the Christ to the point of delivering him to Pilate, is "the Enemy", the Devil. He appears to us here as the sovereign holder of political authority of which he gave a parcel to the Roman governor. And it is in the logic of things, since "the whole world is in the power of Evil One" and that this Evil One is the prince of this world.
http://sgwau2cbeginnings.blogspot.com/p ... 5.html?m=0
(my bold)
And still:
We attend a duel between the God of the creation- who is also the God of Moses- and a different God represented by the Christ. The Creator, from whom Pilate holds his authority, is going to deliver to his proxy the Son of God with the command to put him to death. He is going to kill the Christ, as he kills all men, for he is "since the beginning a slayer of men" (8:44). But, despite this ephemeral victory, he will be overthrown. "You are of God, you, children, and you overcame them (the agents of the devil) because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1Jo4:4).
(my bold)
Hence the our Gospels replaced simply the demiurge with the sinedrites, as the true instigator of Pilate.
I am not saying that GJohn is the first gospel, only that it preserves that older tradition about the demiurge as direct instigator of Pilate in the place of the sinedrites. And the existence of that older tradition with only Pilate as killer of Jesus is proved (or at least, strongly suspected) independently by the Criterion of embarrassment.
Another enigma is resolved!
