What counts as a historical Jesus?

[JaysonR]

Just so that folks don't have to wonder.
I'm dropping out of this discussion.

There's good conversation in here, and I could keep going on the tangent regarding contemporary fiction for more time as well, but ultimately...my position is that I really, really don't care much about Jesus either way.

I'm more interested in the ancient Hebrew peoples as a whole, far more than I am interested in Jesus, and I don't really think this conversation has an ending (at least; I've never seen it end so far in my life).

Also, for the record for those who didn't like my points regarding the Contemporary Fiction; that matter is actually in contested debate in literary anthropology right now and is rather heated and opinionated.
There's a push to change the timeline based on Greek Novels, but there is resistance because Greek Novels are not seen to fit the properties of contemporary fiction as we understand it later. Yet, this is a heated debate in anthropology that will continue on over the decade I'm sure.
Just a piece of info to show that I don't think it's ridiculous, for the record.
I just think it's far greater of difficulty, especially considering the above mentioned feud going on - which means such a proposition would draw all eyes and heat on it from two academic fields afire.

At any rate; it's been a good discussion, and I do thank you all truly.
Jesus is only so interesting, and 'my cup runneth over', so I need to leave the bar.

 

[Brainache]

Just so that folks don't have to wonder.
I'm dropping out of this discussion.

There's good conversation in here, and I could keep going on the tangent regarding contemporary fiction for more time as well, but ultimately...my position is that I really, really don't care much about Jesus either way.

I'm more interested in the ancient Hebrew peoples as a whole, far more than I am interested in Jesus, and I don't really think this conversation has an ending (at least; I've never seen it end so far in my life).

Also, for the record for those who didn't like my points regarding the Contemporary Fiction; that matter is actually in contested debate in literary anthropology right now and is rather heated and opinionated.
There's a push to change the timeline based on Greek Novels, but there is resistance because Greek Novels are not seen to fit the properties of contemporary fiction as we understand it later. Yet, this is a heated debate in anthropology that will continue on over the decade I'm sure.
Just a piece of info to show that I don't think it's ridiculous, for the record.
I just think it's far greater of difficulty, especially considering the above mentioned feud going on - which means such a proposition would draw all eyes and heat on it from two academic fields afire.

At any rate; it's been a good discussion, and I do thank you all truly.
Jesus is only so interesting, and 'my cup runneth over', so I need to leave the bar.

Well, I for one would like to thank you for your sane, informed and educational contribution to this thread.
Thank you.

 

[maximara]

But the gospels say he was executed by Pilate. And - have we not established this? - Epiphanius of Salamis says too that Jesus was put to death by Pilate. I do not accept your view that there was ever a belief that Jesus was executed under Alexander Janneus.

What part of Jewish community did you not understand?

I pointed out before that last time this nonsense was brought up Epiphanius of Salamis is NOT the only arrow in this quiver; we also have "the Talmud, and the Toledoth Jeschu (dependent on second-century Jewish-Christian gospel)"

So we have three apparently INDEPENDENT SOURCES saying that Jesus was crucified in the time of Alexander Jannaeus with one of them supposedly going clear back to second-century...100 years before Epiphanius of Salamis was even born!

"The Jewish history-writers say that Joshua ben Perachiah was the teacher of Yeshu ha-Notzri [the Nazarene], according to which the latter lived in the day of King Janni [Jannaeus]; the history-writers of the other nations, however, say that he was born in the days of Herod and was hanged in the days of his son Archelaus. This is a great difference, a difference of more than 110 years." (Abraham ben Daud 12th century)

So you are basically saying Epiphanius of Salamis was Jewish history-writer?!?

"In the Jewish life of Jesus, entitled Sepher Toldos Jeschut probably of the second century, the birth of Jesus is placed under the king of Judaea, Alexander Jannaeus, about the time of Sylla's dictature." ((1827) The Correspondent - Volume 1 - Page 82)

If Jesus was such a well documented person WHERE is this belief in the Jewish community that Jesus was crucified in the time of Alexander Jannaeus coming from?

We don't see this with any truly well documented person of history. There aren't a small band of Mormans claiming Joseph Smith as killed in 1744, for example. So why is this happening with Jesus?

 

[davefoc]

Well I hope Piggy explains a bit more about this "Mark got his info from Peter" business when he gets to Mark's gospel, because I don't get how it is obviously wrong.

DaveFOC linked to something saying that Mark doesn't read as if it was cobbled together from sermons, but what if g-Mark was a talented writer? If he travelled with Peter for a long time and worked for years putting everything he heard about Jesus into his book... And he wanted to write the best book ever... He would have been familiar with Homer and other Ancient epics and he might have structured his book along similar lines.

OK that is a lot of ifs and maybes, but so is this entire topic...

You have lost me a bit here. I linked to this article:
http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/markauthor.html

The author places this summary at the top of his article:

• He [author of Mark] made mistakes about Palestinian geography that no native of Palestine would make.
• He [author of Mark] did not seem to know some Palestinian customs which would be impossible for a native of that region not to be aware of.
• These mistakes also rule out the idea that he [author of Mark] could have obtained information from Peter.
• Internal evidence shows that Mark's sources were isolated, self contained community anecdotes about Jesus which he strung together like beads into the gospel.

The first three points go directly to why the author of Mark was not a confidant/secretary of Peter assuming that Peter was the fellow that was supposed to have been an apostle of the HJ.

Even without those three points the notion that any of the Aramaic speaking, poor (according to Piggy), Jewish guys that were supposed to be the apostles of Jesus all of a sudden are writing in Greek, referencing the Greek version of the Old Testament (Septuagint), and publishing their stuff in a Gentile community seems like a pretty big stretch. But even without that where in Mark does it sound like something that was written with Peter's view point or by an associate of his?

There have been a lot of things discussed in this thread and there hasn't been a solid consensus on much but I would think if we are able to know anything about this we can know that an associate of Peter didn't write Mark or that we have a completely wrong view of Peter and perhaps Peter is just one more of the Jesus proselytizers out and about at this time who has a made up story about being an apostle created for him to improve his credibility. This possibility relates a bit to the Simon/Peter/Cephas stuff.

The last item in the summary above is perhaps what you were referring to but as I understand it the author draws nearly the opposite conclusion you state. He says Mark does read like it was a collection of anecdotes cobbled together. I thought that this was an interesting point. To a degree it could be seen as an argument for an HJ. Mark isn't just making stuff up, he's cobbling together what other people are saying and maybe the anecdotes from those people were based on some sort of tradition that goes back to the HJ. I doubt that the anecdotes go back to the HJ though. Mark does seem like a collection of anecdotes but it looks like a collection of fictional anecdotes to me and my guess is that the author of Mark was cobbling together the stories being created by some of the Jesus pushers that were active in his area.

 

[Craig B]

What part of <snip>

Yes I thought that's what you were up to. We've been through all this in another thread. I am referring to the plausibility of the belief that Jesus was executed by Pilate. My source for this is the gospel account. And please don't shout.

 

[HghrSymmetry]

"The Jewish history-writers say that Joshua ben Perachiah was the teacher of Yeshu ha-Notzri [the Nazarene], according to which the latter lived in the day of King Janni [Jannaeus]; the history-writers of the other nations, however, say that he was born in the days of Herod and was hanged in the days of his son Archelaus. This is a great difference, a difference of more than 110 years." (Abraham ben Daud 12th century)



"In the Jewish life of Jesus, entitled Sepher Toldos Jeschut probably of the second century, the birth of Jesus is placed under the king of Judaea, Alexander Jannaeus, about the time of Sylla's dictature." ((1827) The Correspondent - Volume 1 - Page 82)

If Jesus was such a well documented person WHERE is this belief in the Jewish community that Jesus was crucified in the time of Alexander Jannaeus coming from?

We don't see this with any truly well documented person of history. There aren't a small band of Mormans claiming Joseph Smith as killed in 1744, for example. So why is this happening with Jesus?

The earlier material (Tosefta and Mishna) doesn't even include the ha-Notzri.
Doesn't that only pop up in the much later Babylonian Talumd?

It looks more like a scribe reacting to Christianity and inserting the "ha-Notzri" after the older "Yeshu" pericopes that may have had nothing to do with the biblical junior.

As far as the Toldoth goes...yes it mentions Alexander Jannaeus. But why?
Well perhaps because it's a polemic/paraday and probably the Jewish community was familiar with a Jesus that was in fact executed at that time. Of course, it wasn't the biblical junior that was killed under Alex, but another unrelated Yeshu.
Maybe it was even a way to build in a little plausible deny-ability. Though the target audience knew what it meant.

Some scholars have floated the idea that Yeshu is the Hebrew abbreviation for "may his name be obliterated." In any event the Toldoth was written in the middle ages, but yes...it seems to have bits and peices of ancient material within it. It seems it was a long standing literary tradition over the centuries, but considering the subject matter, it's understandable why it may have survived in the shadows and not printed earlier.

 

[maximara]

Also, for the record for those who didn't like my points regarding the Contemporary Fiction; that matter is actually in contested debate in literary anthropology right now and is rather heated and opinionated.
There's a push to change the timeline based on Greek Novels, but there is resistance because Greek Novels are not seen to fit the properties of contemporary fiction as we understand it later. Yet, this is a heated debate in anthropology that will continue on over the decade I'm sure.
Just a piece of info to show that I don't think it's ridiculous, for the record.
I just think it's far greater of difficulty, especially considering the above mentioned feud going on - which means such a proposition would draw all eyes and heat on it from two academic fields afire

I wish you had provided the papers looking at this because Anthrosource gave me a big fat zero under the exact term "Contemporary Fiction" so clearly they are not using that exact term or the search engine is not as good as it once was.

 

[IanS]

IanS


No, he didn't.

Galatians 1: 11

Now I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel preached by me is not of human origin.

The phrase "The gospel preached by me" does not imply that it describes all of the information about the subject available to him, and "not of human origin" does not imply that the only visions he consulted were his own. He discusses more than 500 other personal visions that he knows about elsewhere. It also does not exclude that he has adopted some of the others' views about which scriptures are relevant, and in what way.

And as I pointed out in the earlier post, Paul did not isolate himself from other sources of information before he had his first vision, nor does he portray himself as having done so afterwards, except to avoid visiting Jeruslem. Which is fine, because he runs into competitors away from Jerusalem, and his congregations do, too, and tell him all about it - apparently with annoying regularity.


Really? Where is that description? Letter, chapter and verse, if you would be so kind.

Surely you don't mean 1 Corinthians 15: 8

Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me.

That's as clear as mud.

Yes of course I do mean 1-Corinthians. And I just explained that and quoted the entire passage above.

I am not saying that Paul’s claims are true. What I am saying is that bible scholars and sceptical authors alike have generally (if not literally “always”) agreed that the passage has Paul saying that he had recently seen a vision of Jesus having risen from his grave, and where Paul says that this is in accordance with scripture which tells him that Jesus would rise on the 3rd day.

I am not sure what you think there is left to argue about there. And I’m certainly not interested in arguing all sorts of further speculations about any of this. The fact of the matter is this -


1. Bible scholars and Sceptics alike have all along agreed that Paul’s earliest letters pre-date the gospel writing. Do you disagree with that?

2. 1-Corinthians has long been interpreted by Bible scholars and sceptical writers alike to be Paul’s own first hand account of his vision of seeing the risen Jesus. Do you disagree with that?

3. Bible scholars and sceptical writers alike have long accepted that the vision Paul described was on the road to Damascus on a particular day around c.35AD. Do you disagree with that?


I am not saying any of the above are true and real events. I do not even know if Paul was a real person!

What I am saying, is that there is universal agreement between biblical scholars and sceptical authors, to say that Paul’s letters were written before the gospels, and that he himself says that he personally witnessed a vision of the risen Jesus around 35AD.


By the way, on the previous point about the gospel of John saying there was an eye-witness to the execution (if that’s what g-John says … I haven’t tried to check that). That’s not what is meant by an “eye-witness” giving evidence to an author. All the gospels contain loads of eye-witnesses like that, ie they say all sorts of people witnessed all sorts of things happening to Jesus. Eg, the disciples of Jesus are actually named, and are described listening to his preaching and seeing his miracles etc. …. Pontius Pilate is claimed to be a witness who hears the confession of Jesus …. and iirc, various soldiers are supposed to have pierced Jesus with spears whilst he was dying on the cross, etc. etc … there are countless “eye-witnesses” like that … but that’s not what is meant by testimony given to an author by a known eye witness …

… what “eye witness” means here, is that a gospel writer says that a particular named eye witness actually gave him the account of the reported events. And I don’t suppose that is what it says in John, is it??

The writing of Paul is very different in that respect, because it is written as a first hand account by the author himself describing what he himself says he saw, heard, said, where he went, who he met etc. That is presented as a first-hand primary account of the events as witnessed by Paul himself, at a time which pre-dates any of the gospels. That makes it quite different to much later anonymously written gospels recounting stories from unknown unnamed sources.

 

[maximara]

The earlier material (Tosefta and Mishna) doesn't even include the ha-Notzri.
Doesn't that only pop up in the much later Babylonian Talumd?

It looks more like a scribe reacting to Christianity and inserting the "ha-Notzri" after the older "Yeshu" pericopes that may have had nothing to do with the biblical junior.

As far as the Toldoth goes...yes it mentions Alexander Jannaeus. But why?
Well perhaps because it's a polemic/paraday and probably the Jewish community was familiar with a Jesus that was in fact executed at that time. Of course, it wasn't the biblical junior that was killed under Alex, but another unrelated Yeshu.
Maybe it was even a way to build in a little plausible deny-ability. Though the target audience knew what it meant.

Build in a little plausible deny-ability?

The Gospels story itself has that as they have Jesus crucified not stoned a punishment normally reserved in that time for Roman high crimes. If anything the involvement of the Jewish Priests and Jewish mob is being used to give plausible deny-ability to the Romans as well as an excuse to have Jesus on the cross for a few hours rather then left on display as a warning to future trouble makers.

More over the Jews could point to Tacitus who expressly stated "suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus." ie the Roman procurator not them killed Jesus.

Instead they use a story where they directly stone "Jesus" to death as a way of distancing themselves from it?!?

Some scholars have floated the idea that Yeshu is the Hebrew abbreviation for "may his name be obliterated." In any event the Toldoth was written in the middle ages, but yes...it seems to have bits and peices of ancient material within it. It seems it was a long standing literary tradition over the centuries, but considering the subject matter, it's understandable why it may have survived in the shadows and not printed earlier.

Had to look that up and it seems to come form Michael H. Cohen's A Friend of All Faiths pg 42

"In Hebrew school, one of my teachers had explained that Yeshu (Hebrew for Jesus), rather than meaning "Saviour," in fact was an acronym that stood for yimach shemo ve-zichrono: "may his name and memory be erased""

Yimakh shemo is "May his name be obliterated"


However we have an Aramaic name (Yeshua) coming from the Hebrew (Yehoshua) which is translated into Greek as Iesous which is re-translated back into Hebrew as Yeshu which is actually an acronym. A Rube Goldberg machine is simpler.

Never mind that Flavius Josephus refer to at least twenty different people with the name "Jesus" so either there were a bucket load of people the Jews wished their name and memory were erased or this is the kind of retroactive silliness seen with the program Wine (originally WINdows Emulator but now Wine Is Not an Emulator)

That makes the whole tap dancing to make the Matthew and Luke birth stories look sane!

 

[Brainache]

You have lost me a bit here. I linked to this article:
http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/markauthor.html

Yes sorry. The confusion was mine, I didn't read it carefully.

The author places this summary at the top of his article:

He [author of Mark] made mistakes about Palestinian geography that no native of Palestine would make.

So g-Mark wasn't a native of Palestine. Does he have to be? He might have been a bilingual Hellenised Jew from Antioch or Corinth or somewhere employed as an interpreter.

He [author of Mark] did not seem to know some Palestinian customs which would be impossible for a native of that region not to be aware of.

See above.

These mistakes also rule out the idea that he [author of Mark] could have obtained information from Peter.

I'm not sure why this rules out Peter as a source. Just because g-Mark doesn't know everything that Peter knows, doesn't mean Peter didn't teach him something.

Internal evidence shows that Mark's sources were isolated, self contained community anecdotes about Jesus which he strung together like beads into the gospel.

You mean like a collection of independent vignettes that might be more easily memorised by a preacher and told as sermons to new converts? Like a collection of some old Evangelist's Sermons? Maybe g-Mark got it all from a bloke named Kevin, but I doubt it...

The first three points go directly to why the author of Mark was not a confidant/secretary of Peter assuming that Peter was the fellow that was supposed to have been an apostle of the HJ.

I disagree with that conclusion based on those points.

Even without those three points the notion that any of the Aramaic speaking, poor (according to Piggy), Jewish guys that were supposed to be the apostles of Jesus all of a sudden are writing in Greek, referencing the Greek version of the Old Testament (Septuagint), and publishing their stuff in a Gentile community seems like a pretty big stretch. But even without that where in Mark does it sound like something that was written with Peter's view point or by an associate of his?

Don't forget about all of those Greek-speaking Jews in 1st Century Palestine, there were a lot of them, rich and poor.
As for Peter's viewpoint: How the **** would I know? I'm just part of the peanut gallery, maybe Piggy will touch on that when he gets to Mark. (By the way, I'd just like to say I hope Piggy keeps going with his posts, I'm enjoying this thread immensely)

There have been a lot of things discussed in this thread and there hasn't been a solid consensus on much but I would think if we are able to know anything about this we can know that an associate of Peter didn't write Mark or that we have a completely wrong view of Peter and perhaps Peter is just one more of the Jesus proselytizers out and about at this time who has a made up story about being an apostle created for him to improve his credibility. This possibility relates a bit to the Simon/Peter/Cephas stuff.

The last item in the summary above is perhaps what you were referring to but as I understand it the author draws nearly the opposite conclusion you state. He says Mark does read like it was a collection of anecdotes cobbled together. I thought that this was an interesting point. To a degree it could be seen as an argument for an HJ. Mark isn't just making stuff up, he's cobbling together what other people are saying and maybe the anecdotes from those people were based on some sort of tradition that goes back to the HJ. I doubt that the anecdotes go back to the HJ though. Mark does seem like a collection of anecdotes but it looks like a collection of fictional anecdotes to me and my guess is that the author of Mark was cobbling together the stories being created by some of the Jesus pushers that were active in his area.

To reiterate, I think it is possible that these independant anecdotes that you mention are the "Sermons of Peter The Rock" to which the tradition refers. This opinion of course comes with the usual disclaimers of Historical uncertainty.

 

[IanS]

Yes I thought that's what you were up to. We've been through all this in another thread. I am referring to the plausibility of the belief that Jesus was executed by Pilate. My source for this is the gospel account. And please don't shout.

Craig - I really (truly!) do not want to prolong this discussion about Pilate any longer. Because frankly it is becoming quite absurd, and now rather heated and emotional. However...

... I am really surprised that you continue to believe that the gospels are historically reliable on any claims about Jesus. Including the claims about Pilate.

Keep in mind that before the 4th century, all that is known for any of the canonical gospels, is (apparently) just various fragments and quotations. And I don't suppose you are getting your references to Pilate from just fragments, are you?

All that I am saying to you about Paul’s letters, is that they really have to be preferred to the gospels as a source for any writing about Jesus, because they are universally agreed to pre-date any gospels, and also in particular because they are presented as a first hand personal eye-witness account from Paul himself describing what he saw, what he did, who he spoke to, what he said to all sorts of people, where he went etc. etc.

Now I am not saying that Paul’s letters were really written by anyone named “Paul”, or that his accounts of his visions etc, are true. Afaik, Paul himself may never have even have existed. But the point is that bible scholars and sceptical authors alike have typically not disputed that these letters are genuinely the earliest writing, from someone writing as Paul himself, giving his own first hand accounts.

That places Paul’s letters in a far better evidential category than any later anonymous hearsay Christian copies of gospels.

On that basis, I think you should logically prefer Paul’s letters to any gospels. And where in fact the gospels are in any case, next to useless as reliable factual evidence anyway.

 

[eight bits]

IanS

And I just explained that and quoted the entire passage above.

Thank you for answering my question. There is no survivng passage where Paul clearly describes his vision of Jesus, contrary to your claim.

1. Bible scholars and Sceptics alike have all along agreed that Paul’s earliest letters pre-date the gospel writing. Do you disagree with that?

No.

2. 1-Corinthians has long been interpreted by Bible scholars and sceptical writers alike to be Paul’s own first hand account of his vision of seeing the risen Jesus. Do you disagree with that?

Yes, of course I disagree. Paul doesn't describe his principal vision in any of his surviving writing. I don't know any Bible scholar, or sceptical writer besides you, who disputes that.

3. Bible scholars and sceptical writers alike have long accepted that the vision Paul described was on the road to Damascus on a particular day around c.35AD. Do you disagree with that?

No, I do not disagree about the acceptance, but what is accepted is that the source for a near-Damascus setting for the principal vision is not Paul, but Acts. Paul doesn't say where he was when the vision occurred. Paul's remark at Galatians 1: 17 that he "returned" to Damascus is consistent with Luke's account, but doesn't imply that the vision occurred there. CE 35 is fine as an inference from Paul's text, and its apparent approximate time of composition.

I haven’t tried to check that

I gave the verse. Do I need to give a link as well?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john 19:35&version=NIV

That’s not what is meant by an “eye-witness”

The issue I addressed was whether the idea that there were eyewitnesses was original with another poster here. The idea is not original with another poster here.

An eyewitness need not be named for an author to assert that he or she relies on an eyewitness. We see reliance on unnamed eyewitnesses all the time, for example in journalism.

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=1596

John claims to have had a primary source for at least two events he reports, one of them being the crucifixion. He does not claim to be a primary source himself. Luke claims that others had primary sources, but not that Luke consulted primary sources or was one himself. Acts contains the "we" passages for some of Paul's adventures, but it is unclear whether or not that actually was meant to claim that Luke was an eyewitness to those.

So, finally, yes, Paul is a primary source for several things, including that he had a vision which conferred apostolic status upon him. The contents, sensory modalities, and whereabouts of that experience come to us from other sources, however. These are not primary sources, but specifically the narrator of Acts, along with first-person public statements attributed to Paul elsewhere in that book, but without any description of how these statements came to Luke.

 

[Brainache]

A little further to that point about g-Mark not knowing Palestinian Customs, I assume it means details of Jewish Religious Rituals, It could be that before hooking up with "Peter's Travelling Circus of Apocalyptic Fun" g-Mark was not very religious.

Apparently a lot of Jews then, as now, didn't take the religion all that seriously. We know this because of the amount of space the surviving Religious Texts devote to telling us how wicked these people are. I imagine them as more like the Jews I see on TV or meet in everyday life...

In fact, I wish someone would make an Historical Jesus movie; casting all Jewish Actors... Preferably Commedians... I can see Larry David as Paul, Jerry Seinfeld as Peter and Adam Sandler as g-Mark. (Jesus = Seth Rogan or Jonah Hill).

I'd buy that for a dollar!

 

[Craig B]

... That places Paul’s letters in a far better evidential category than any later anonymous hearsay Christian copies of gospels.

On that basis, I think you should logically prefer Paul’s letters to any gospels. And where in fact the gospels are in any case, next to useless as reliable factual evidence anyway.

Then if Paul's letters, as you say, also tell us that Pilate killed Jesus, then that's all the more evidence that he did. I have no problem with that.

 

[Belz...]

Yes I thought that's what you were up to. We've been through all this in another thread. I am referring to the plausibility of the belief that Jesus was executed by Pilate. My source for this is the gospel account. And please don't shout.

Yeah but how reliable is Mark, really ? We've been through this already. We seem to have no source except Mark on this, and we have no clue if he made it up, or which source he had.

 

[Belz...]

Then if Paul's letters, as you say, also tell us that Pilate killed Jesus, then that's all the more evidence that he did. I have no problem with that.

I thought it was said that that was one of the fake letter. Did I read that wrong ?

 

[Craig B]

Yeah but how reliable is Mark, really ? We've been through this already. We seem to have no source except Mark on this, and we have no clue if he made it up, or which source he had.

Indeed. It is however more reliable than the sources maximara has cited, or at least referred to.

 

[maximara]

Then if Paul's letters, as you say, also tell us that Pilate killed Jesus, then that's all the more evidence that he did. I have no problem with that.

This point was already addressed in post #3457:

Actually we don't know that. The majority of modern scholarship says that First Timothy, Second Timothy and Titus were not written by Paul and are late 1st century to mid 2nd century creations ie later then the Gospels. (Collins, Raymond F. (2004) 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 4 ISBN 0-664-22247-1)

This means that the idea that Pilate was involved with the crucifixion of Jesus came after Paul's supposed martyrdom c67 and before the writing of the first Gospel, Mark sometime after 70 CE...we don't when and some have suggested as late as 85 CE for it.

----

Also it should be mentioned the epistles are NOT as Paul originally wrote them. Many are several letters woven together into a more cohesive text by an editor and the first reference to them is in regards to Marcion c140 CE bible. Somebody has even suggested that Marcion was the editor in question.

Furthermore P46 (175-225) is the earliest copy of Paul's Epistles and the seven missing leaves at the end (14 pages) are not enough to cover the missing Epistles: remainder of 2 Thessalonians (estimated 2 leaves or 4 pages); 1 Timothy (8.25 pages), 2 Timothy (6 pages), Titus (3.5 pages) and Philemon (1.5 pages).

So the key work that definitively has Pilate killing Jesus are not even in the oldest copy of Paul we have and there is not way to fit the Paul we know today into the missing space. So there is no way to know if the Pilate killing Jesus reference was even part of Paul's original writings.

 

[Craig B]

Maximara

You'll need to take that up with IanS. I don't think Paul gives an account of Jesus' death at the hands of Pilate either. But if he does, then it's further evidence in favour of the crucifixion story

 

[Belz...]

Indeed. It is however more reliable than the sources maximara has cited, or at least referred to.

How is it more reliable without corroboration of any kind ? Please explain.