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Interesting. In popular search results you always read Pontius Pilate as a “governor” but in fact he was a Praetor? At least that makes way more sense if you re
by prox 3y ago
Interesting. In popular search results you always read Pontius Pilate as a “governor” but in fact he was a Praetor? At least that makes way more sense if you read this blog and what his duties were.
> Note that the praetor in his province doesn’t take over day-to-day garden variety law and order issues; those are still handled by local governments, according to local laws.
- churchill 3y agoHistorical sources (even outside the Bible) use procurator/governor interchangeably.
- qwytw 3y agoProcurator is not quite the same as praetor, it was technically not even a public magistracy. Legally Procurators were more like personal agents of the emperor. The empire was technically split into 'senatorial' and 'imperial' provinces (the latter were generally close to the borders and had legions stationed there). The senatorial provinces were governed by ex-magistrates of senatorial rank. IIRC it's likely that Pilate was actually a 'prefect' but this title was changed to 'procurator' several decades later which is why Tacitus used it instead.
- Archelaos 3y agoTo expand on this: We have a fragment of an inscription from Caesarea[1] that says: ...S TIBERIÉVM / [PO]NTIVS PÌLATVS / [PRAEF]ECTUS IVDAE[A]E / ...É... This hints that his contemporary title was "preafectus" and the title "procurator" from Tacitus "Annales" (15,44) is not accurate. It is even disputed among experts whether the passage containing this note is a younger Christian interpolation into the "Annales" and the title itself is a backward translation of the Greek ἡγεμονεύοντος (hegemoneuontos ~ "ruler") that the gospel of Luke uses as a title for Pilate (3:1) as well as for Quirinius/Cyrenius (2:2). [1] Here an image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caesarea_maritima_BW_5.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caesarea_maritima_BW...
- churchill 3y agoAre you a historian? Your username sounds somewhat... familiar. And the level of detail into the Tacitus/Gospel mix is quite deep.
- Archelaos 3y ago> Are you a historian? Not quite, but almost. Just follow the links in my profile page to learn more about me and my projects. My username is a literal translation of my first name into Ancient Greek. > And the level of detail into the Tacitus/Gospel mix is quite deep. Actually, it is not so difficult to dive a little deeper. The basic question ist: What are the sources of our knowledge? Bret Devereaux's blog is really excellent in demonstrating how it is done. If a topic catches your attention, my first advice is, to find out what the most important sources for our knowledge are. And then look at the sources. Even if you are not trained in Latin or Ancient Greek you can still dive a little deeper with the help of a dictionary or an encyclopedia. Therefore my first advice to anyone interested in ancient Mediterranean history is to learn the Greek alphabet. You should already know most of the letters from mathematics and physics anyway.
- agarsev 3y agoIf I understood correctly, Pilate lived during the empire, a few centuries after the system described in the blog post (middle republic).
- prox 3y agoAh I see, so titles and functions probably changed by then. Gonna have to wait for that blogpost!