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The Strange Afterlife of Pontius Pilate (2016)
- ggm 5y agoJust as the tally sticks of english tax records since 1066 wound up first stashed under Westminster hall and then burned in the parliamentary heating boiler fires, I like to imagine some late Roman functionary looking at all the internal staff tribunal records muttering there's possibly a thesis in this on failure rates in early Roman provincial management and them flinging them into a scroll pulping machine turning them into wallpaper, coffin liners, paper maché busts of Hadrian for kiddies... There must have been a tonne of records, of which less than 1% has survived. Arcanum, incanabula, stiffening for the spines of book binding, the bits of ancient paper which survive defy the reality of Marie Kondo through the ages. "This record of pontius pilates tribunal for stuffing up as governor does not spark joy" riiiiip
- baud147258 5y agoI would have though that the writing material at the time (especially in Judea) would have been papyrus and not parchment. Which makes the archive conservation situation even worse, as papyrus don't keep well outside of arid climate.
- ncmncm 5y agoI gather that serious historians consider the mystical writings of Paul as primary, followed much later by realization of the need to invent a figure of Jesus to have been heard to dictate doctrine; and then to invent apostles to have witnessed it; and finally invent a timeline of dictation events. Gospels would then have been variant versions of this timeline, preached at different jurisdictions, that then had to all be retained as each had already developed a regional constituency, with no one of them finally able to dominate.
- gregw2 5y agoInteresting. But Jesus being invented post-Paul to dictate doctrine just doesn't make any sense to me. First, Jesus and his resurrection is central to Paul's teachings, not an optional addon restricted to a few bits of text. Second, Paul is much more doctrinaire than Jesus. And third, parable-based teaching is probably not an ideal form for transmitting doctrine because previous writings weren't doctrinaire enough, right?
- Amezarak 5y agoYes, this is certainly not anything approaching the consensus of "serious historians", this sounds like a crank theory put out likely by a single individual who is publishing popular books on the subject. The Pauline epistles are indeed though usually cited as the works in the New Testament that were the earliest written down, but there's plenty of reason to doubt the academic consensus, which has shifted over time, and like all historical subjects, somewhat subject to fads. (After all, you can't gain notoriety or publish a new paper that simply says "yeah, what's written is likely true, or the closest approximation to the truth we're likely to ever have, and the people who came before me were right.) Take the Gospel of Mark, usually cited as the earliest gospel. One of the strongest held reasons that it's believed to have been written after 70 AD is because Jesus prophesies what sounds like the Siege of Jerusalem. That's it. It certainly doesn't seem crazy even from a one hundred percent secular worldview that Jesus correctly or even accidentally predicted the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans via one hundred percent natural means, given the contemporary political situation. If anything, you can understand how the 1 of 100 prophets who completely by chance made an accurate prediction would become more popular afterward. Or consider the gospel of John - one of the strongest held arguments against Johannine authorship is about the only biographical information we know about him is that he's a fisherman, and the author of John sounds like an intelligent Greek writer. That's it. I don't think it's radically implausible that he may have been employed at the time as a fisherman, and still had an educated background. Scholars usually call it "anonymous", even though the author clearly focuses on John and refers to him in a special way..and the ends the book by claiming that this is the disciple which testifies these things, and wrote these things. He also repeatedly humblebrags that John beat Peter in race...the kind of detail that doesn't seem like a religious community would find worth highlighting. It's also not surprising that different accounts of something that occurred over a long timespan contain differences or highlight different things. You see this all the time from eyewitnesses today and throughout history. I was just reading the Landmark Edition of Anabasis that just came out, and there's a whole appendix about how Xenophon and Cyrus's doctor narrate a battle differently and make different claims about how Cyrus was wounded. But they were both eyewitnesses, or the closest to it you could ever hope to get for an event that happened 2500 years ago.
- throw0101a 5y ago> realization of the need to invent a figure of Jesus There seems to be very little doubt in academic circles on the whether a Jesus of Nazareth existed: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus What you are espousing is referred to as "Jesus mythicism": * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory Tim O’Neill (an atheist) has an entire section of his weblog on the topic (and why it's generally non-sense): * https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/ https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
- infradig 5y agoThis Tim O'Neil? https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14324 https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14324
- anjbe 5y agoRichard Carrier is about the least disinterested individual one could cite on the subject of Jesus mythicism. His “celestial Jesus” view requires an ahistorical Jesus, which plausibly explains his vociferous attacks against anyone holding the mainstream (secular!) view that Jesus was a real person.
- infradig 5y agoI have no opinion on Richard Carriers's views. My comment was his opinion on Tim O'Neill's views since that was relevant.
- anjbe 5y agoIn the first paragraph of the link you posted, Richard Carrier calls Tim O’Neill “an asscrank, a total tinfoil hatter, filled with slanderous rage and void of any competence and honesty.” Surely if Carrier’s opinion of O’Neill is relevant to whether O’Neill is a trustworthy opinion on the subject of Jesus mythicism, then Carrier’s own lack of neutrality on the topic is at least as relevant, as is the fact that his views on mythicism are considered far out of the mainstream by his own peers.
- DonaldFisk 5y agoJesus is mentioned by Roman and Jewish historians. See: https://strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-the-evidence-for-jesus-part-1-of-2/ https://strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-the... and: https://strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-the-evidence-for-jesus-part-2-of-2/ https://strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-the... and also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus which states: "Virtually all biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted"
- throw0101a 5y agoThe two Strange Notions articles are written by Tim O'Neill who has his own site: * https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/ https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThat's a cool source, do you happen to know of any biblical annotation sources that follow the same format (i.e. athiest, but confidently so, and so don't need to go further than the historical record at the time, and with the historical chops to give context).
- ncmncm 5y agoI am finding all the Tim O'Neill material tendentious. His slant seems to be that he desperately wants to be taken seriously by former and soon-to-be former Christians, so anything that would embarrass them cannot be allowed.
- throw__away7391 5y agoPilate is a critical figure to the marketing of Christianity to the Roman world, as in a couple of weird, awkwardly inserted passages completely absolves the Roman government of responsibility and solidly lays it all on the Jews. The TL;DR goes like this: Pilate: Guys, this Jesus dude is totally innocent. Jews: Kill him anyway! Pilate: OK, well how about this--between him and this notorious murderer, who should I pardon? Jews: Release the murderer! Kill Jesus! Pilate: Gee, ok fine, but this is all on you guys. Jews: Yes! His blood is on us and our descendants! Then least there be any doubt, he _literally_ asks for water to be brought and "washes his hands" of the decision. It's absolutely the stupidest thing you'll ever read. It is such an obvious after the fact fabrication, it sounds like it was written by a child, and yet this story has been used over the centuries to justify a great deal of violence towards Jews at the hands of Christians.
- Amezarak 5y agoThere’s nothing awkward about that “insertion” at all, Jesus repeatedly insists over the course of the gospels that the Jewish authorities are going to kill him, they actually attempt to stone him at multiple points, and he tells lots of parables to enrage them that also include this feature, such as the parable of the vineyard, where the keepers kill the master’s son, and then the master comes and kills them all. And he accuses them of killing all the other prophets too! And of course you end up having to change the whole narrative to sustain this, too - the charges of blasphemy, the betrayal of Judas, etc. The argument that the passages you cite are insertions just makes no sense, they are totally in keeping with all the rest. If you want to say it’s all inspired anti-semitism, fair enough and there’s probably some truth to it, but there’s no reason to think that those passages alone are fake. It’s probably also worth keeping in mind that the people who wrote this were probably also all Jewish.
- throw__away7391 5y ago> they actually attempt to stone him at multiple points Right, so they are also alleged to have killed others, and suddenly for Jesus it is claimed that they "don't have the authority" and need Pilate to do it. Written by a child.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoYou can only argue religion with atheists. Everyone else is a stakeholder. Something someone told me at university and it has been remarkably true.
- tomohawk 5y agoAtheism is itself a religion, and athiests are definitely stakeholders. Atheists have a definite belief about God - He does not exist. Atheists have a definite belief about the afterlife - it does not exist. These are metaphysical beliefs that cannot be proven by science or any other methods we know of. They must be taken on faith. Historically, when the communist atheists took over countries like Russia, they would hold debates with indigenous religious leaders to try to prove the superiority of their beliefs.
- pessimizer 5y ago> Atheism is itself a religion, and athiests are definitely stakeholders. Only if not having anything to drink is a type of soda.
- tomohawk 5y agoAtheism is not "nothing". There are definite metaphysical beliefs that make up Atheism. Atheism is not the empty set. An Atheist doesn't say "I believe in nothing".
- ncmncm 5y agoThis is one of those topics that practically defines "moot". But anyway, as a non-atheist, you don't get to say what atheists think. (Also, not capitalized.)
- city41 5y agoAtheism is a spectrum. For example, agnostic atheists do not "definitely believe" there is no god. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism
- dragonwriter 5y ago> I gather that serious historians consider the mystical writings of Paul as primary, followed much later by realization of the need to invent a figure of Jesus to have been heard to dictate doctrine; and then to invent apostles to have witnessed it; and finally invent a timeline of dictation events. Someone, somewhere may believe that, but it certainly isn't a shared belief of most serious historians (much less something most, or any, serious historians would consider strongly supported by historical evidence.) About the only part of that on which there is broad consensus is that, of the writings incorporated into the scripture, the Pauline corpus is most likely the earliest to have been written in its current form.
- bjt2n3904 5y agoMarking to read later. I've always enjoyed reading, "What Pilate said to Gaius one night". Edit: Read it. Interesting to hear the historical traditions about Pilate and his guilt. Here's the link to the story I mentioned. https://aletheasmind.wordpress.com/2019/08/03/what-pilate-said-to-gauis-one-midnight/ https://aletheasmind.wordpress.com/2019/08/03/what-pilate-sa...
- throw0101a 5y agoPontius Pilate: the biography of an invented man by Ann Wroe is an interesting 'biography' on the figure: > The foil to Jesus, the defiant antihero of the Easter story, mocking, skeptical Pilate is a historical figure who haunts our imagination. For some he is a saint, for others the embodiment of human weakness, an archetypal politician willing to sacrifice one man for the sake of stability. In this dazzlingly conceived biography, a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize, Ann Wroe brings man and myth to life. Working from classical sources, she plunges us into the world of biblical Judaea under the reign of the erratic and licentious emperor Tiberius and lets us see the trial of Jesus, in all its confusion, from the point of view of his executioner. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/490449.Pontius_Pilate https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/490449.Pontius_Pilate Tries to reconstruct, using records about the lives other Roman governors and notable government types, what kind of person Pilate could/may have been.
- dpeck 5y ago| the defiant antihero of the Easter story That feels like quite a stretch. Pilate is an important figure in the story, but antihero? He largely is the state actor “just trying to keep the peace” and giving in to the religious leaders to make that happen. Seems more like a real politik type of character of his day than anything to my memory. Keep the tax revenue flowing, don’t require more legions to be brought in, keep your governorship.
- antognini 5y agoI've always found it interesting that the Nicene Creed, which is recited by millions of Catholics around the globe every Sunday, mentions only three people: Jesus, Mary, and Pontius Pilate.
- humanrebar 5y agoAdherents of the Nicene Creed also consider God the Father and the Holy Spirit to be people as well.
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- thinkingemote 5y agoToday is Easter Sunday, which many HN users may not be aware. It's the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ after 3 days from when Pontius Pilate (of the featured article) sentenced Jesus to death.
- kasey_junk 5y agoIn western church tradition. In the Eastern church it’s next week.
- tsimionescu 5y agoNote that this is true for the Catholic church and others who use their calendar. The Eastern Orthodox church has Easter Sunday next week. Also note that the Eastern Orthodox church is not the church of Russia, there are quite a few Orthodox churches who recognize each other as having the same creed, but who don't otherwise share leadership (with 14 Patriarchs - Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, Greece, Poland, Romania, Albania, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and a few others).
- pyuser583 5y agoIt’s Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church, which features Pilate heavily.
- nickpsecurity 5y ago
- canjobear 5y agoThe Passion of the Christ does a good job fleshing out the character of Pilate and his decisions. It comes across as a “banality of evil” type scenario. He sees that he is being forced to execute an innocent man, but what is on his mind the most is office politics: he needs to Judaea under control so that he won’t be recalled to Rome and look like a fool. When he asks “Quid est veritas?” he’s saying that truth doesn’t matter, all that matters is the politics of the situation. But the question also shows that he is deeply uncomfortable with the whole situation and doesn’t really know what to do.
- trhway 5y agoBulgakov's "Master and Margarita" has a worthy take on it too, a bit less about politics.
- MR4D 5y agoThe Roman emperor at the time would have been Tiberius, who was a rather cruel man, even among emperors. Throwing people off of a cliff was a particular punishment he seemed to enjoy, even for petty things. It is quite likely that Pilate feared for his life much more than looking like a fool. Under Tiberius those two might have been one in the same.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoHistory is written by the victors. Christians never claimed to be objective chroniclers of past events.
- tomohawk 5y agoFor several hundred years, Christians could hardly have been considered victors other than in the sense that they survived under often severe persecution by pagans and by the the Roman state. A foundational element of Christian faith is the the truth claims contained in what is now the Bible. If the Bible is not true, then there is no basis for Christian faith. You can probably read the New Testament within a week without trying too hard. If you do, you'll see several claims to be the objective truth of the matters it reports on.
- mc4ndr3 5y agoPilate wasn't the first or the last to commit evil acts and live a dandy life. There is often no justice, either earthly or divine. Christopher Hitchens points out that humans suffered alone among the elements, for aeons, before suddenly prophets began preaching the "goodness" of sky daddy. The enduring existence of evil provides a counterexample. Either he delights in evil, or he is incompetent to do anything about it. There's no justice, there's just us. It's worth noting that during the time of Jesus (I accept there may have been such a historical figure), there were reams and reams of prophets. It is remarkable that the state chose to steal his thunder by coopting that one. But decades before that political decision, Jesus was just another prophet among prophets. Nothing in the liturgical account of the trial makes sense, given how ordinary the case would have been against the wider background of similar cases.
- krapp 5y agoGod(s) made more sense when they were constructed as reflections of nature and the human condition, as petty, cruel and arbitrary as the mundane aspects they portrayed. No one questions the brutality of the God of war, of the fickleness of the Goddess of Love. But the God of the Old Testament being a God of perfect love, perfect wisdom and absolute power is so cognitively dissonant that an entire heretical religion (Gnostics) could only square that circle by claiming that God must have really been the actual God's moustache-twirling evil twin all along.
- nickpsecurity 5y ago"The lack of a suitably grisly fate for Pilate put Christian apologists in a quandary..." It looks like they speculated on more than actually read the Bible. There is a pattern of God blessing obedience and punishing disobedience. This happens on two levels: being held accountable for our actions on Judgement Day with eternal consequences (definite); what happens in this life leading up to it (varies). Psalm 73 and the Prophets (esp Habakkuk) show God in His sovereignty lets the wicked succeed to use them as instruments for His will. Job shows even the most righteous man on earth might suffer if it leads to the greatest good. He's an intelligent and sovereign being who dispenses grace (or not) as He sees fit. Just a few verses tell you what matters about Pontius Pilate: "I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment." (Matt. 12:36) "I saw a great white throne, and him who sat on it... I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and they opened books. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works... If anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. 20:11-15) "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. " (John 3:16-18) "Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life." (John 5:24) "If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified (sins paid for), and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved." (Romans 10:9-10 NIV) God exercising wrath during the earthly life is optional, varies, and usually isn't recorded. What is clear are Pilate's options when facing Jesus Christ the next time. Pilate is a sinner who also killed the Son of God. He'll face judgement for his sins with eternal punishment. If could and did repent, Jesus' death absorbs God's wrath against him via substitution on the cross (Romans 3:21-28). One of those two things happened. The authors of the Gospels are more interested in what you will decide once they've shared the Gospel with you. I'll link it one more time: GetHisWord.com. Before you is life and death. Eternally. Choose wisely. Put faith in and surrender your life to Jesus Christ. Then, live this one with He who knitted you together in the womb, has a plan for your life, and works all things for the good of those who walk with Him. I pray more of you experience the peace I was given back in 2020 by making that decision. It's been an adventure, HN! I struggle but I'm never bored!
- pessimizer 5y agoIt's strange to cast Christian antisemitism as a result of the depiction of Pontius Pilate as an innocent stooge (or alternately a secret pious Christian doing God's work in executing Christ.) It's not the result, it's the cause. The reason Pilate is painted as anything other than guilty is because the Jews must be guilty, and the method of the Jew in destroying all that is good is to sneakily take advantage of the innocent non-Jew. Non-Jewish, and later Roman state Christianity, required an orthodoxy. As part of that orthodoxy, Jewish Christians had to be demonized and/or converted, and Jewish claims that Jesus was not the messiah and the messiah had yet to come had to be painted as evil. This was one of a hundred ways that was done. edit: the extratextual antisemitism that largely still exists in various Christian orthodoxies (but isn't actually in the books) should probably be considered a kind of Christian Talmud. Protestantism was partially a reaction motivated by a perception that the Roman church had grown soft, and too lenient on the Jews. The authoritarianism and corruption of the Catholic church was preventing believers from adequately punishing the Jews who refused to, or who pretended to, convert.
- Amezarak 5y ago> The reason Pilate is painted as anything other than guilty is because the Jews must be guilty, and the method of the Jew in destroying all that is good is to sneakily take advantage of the innocent non-Jew. Do you have any evidence of this? All the earliest available historical evidence depicts the event in essentially the same way, which also makes logical sense - why would Pilate otherwise care about some random Jewish mystic? Secondly, it seems like we need to overcome the pretty big hurdle of explaining why a population of mostly Jewish people who largely continued to identify themselves as Jewish during the period in question would write books in a way that painted the Jews as guilty because of their antisemitism rather than because it was an accurate reflection of what they actually believed happened, or, most charitably, because they were afraid any anti-Roman sentiment would bring down the hammer.
- dc-programmer 5y agoThere is a theory that there were two competing early Christian factions: one, led by Jesus’s brother (or kin), viewed the movement as a continuation of Judaism; the other following the vision of Paul who wanted to proselytize the gentiles. The theory goes Paul made the religion decidedly not Jewish to increase its appeal. I guess adult males did not want to get circumcised. Paul’s Hellenized vision was clearly the one that won out in this scenario. I couldn’t tell you how widely accepted this theory is however (or the motivations of its progenitor). Biblical studies seems like an area where the orthodoxy is constantly shifting.
- vintermann 5y ago> The apocryphal Gospel of Peter, thought by many scholars to be among the earliest Christian texts Oh I see, we're in BBC Horizon Easter Special territory