Josephus, in the version that we have, put Gratus appointment chronologically together with Getmanicus' death, as I believe one of the earlier thread messages noted.DCHindley wrote: ↑Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:48 pm
I am not so sure I understand what you mean there.rakovsky wrote: ↑Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:13 amNot only that, but this hypothesis would demand that there was a Christian "depolator" who took out from the text the account of Gratus' appointment in 15 ad, because currently Gratus appointment is mixed with events if 19 ad, Germanicus' death in that year.
Plus, the "depolator" must have taken out the true account of Pilate's removal if it did not happen under vitellius as mentioned.
So the hypothesis creates more problems if it were true.
(( After him came Annius Rufus, under whom died Caesar, the second emperor of the Romans, the duration of whose reign was fifty-seven years, besides six months and two days (of which time Antonius ruled together with him fourteen years; but the duration of his life was seventy-seven years); upon whose death Tiberius Nero, his wife Julia's son, succeeded. He was now the third emperor; and he sent Valerius Gratus to be procurator of Judea, and to succeed Annius Rufus.))
In reality, Tiberius succeeded Germanicus in 15 ad before the latter's death in 19 ad. Furthermore, as I inderstand it, other events in the context or neighboring padsages occurred in ad 19. Thus, Josephus puts Gratus' appointment in with events of 19 ad.
What it looks like to me is that Gratus' appointment and Pilate's appointment are both mixed together narratively with events of 19 ad, even though Josephus's explicit remarks on their dating would put them in the time frames listed in your table above.
So:
1. Josephus here seems to be telling Gratus' and Pilate's stories chronologically, and thus the nonchronological order is not strong evidence favoring Schwartz's thesis of a 19 ad appointment.
2. If one supposes that the chronological order is determinative, eg 19 ad, and the explicit dating, eg c. 10 years from 15 ad and c. 10 years from 26 ad is interpolated, then why would the interpolator have put Gratus' appointment in chronologically with events of 19 ad, such as making it look like Tiberius' accession was on the emperor's death in 19 ad? Lacking a good answer to such a question, we can't find the chronological order determinative.
3. Schwartz's theory raises lots of problems, other problems being why Christians would have had a need to make it look like Pilate took power in 26 and not 19? Just to make the pagan Acts of Pilate with their 19 ad date for Jesus' death look false? But even if Pilate was appointed in 19 ad, that year still would not have been his 4th consultancy in Judea. Further, if the Christians in the early 4th century have switched Josephus's text to make this argument, wouldn't it's falsity be detectable to the Romans of the time who had other copies of Josephus and likely other records of the year of Pilate's appointment? Why would the gospels have said Jesus was killed in c. 33 AD when it would have been clear to their to their readers in c. 70 ad that He was killed in c. 19? Why haven't any of the apologetics or polemics like those of Celsus that remained to today mentioned this dating issue before Eusebius' time? Even if one can find answers to these questions, Schwartz's thesis does create these kind of issues.