I didn't make my point very well there. My point was that I don't think the fact that the Gospels mention Pilate is strong evidence in favor of the existence of Pilate because the author of gMark is a reliable historian that might have had independent knowledge of Pilate from primary or reliable oral sources. Rather I think it is evidence of the existence of Pilate because if the gMark author had just made up the Pilate character there might have been people living who would have noted the error and the credibility of his Gospel would have been reduced.
Dave - first, thanks for your comments. Secondly - I’m just asking these questions because I think everything about the Pilate Stone raises doubts so obvious that surely everyone should have immediately had the same concerns. Especially in the light of almost identical recent finds of inscriptions on the James Ossuary and other stone tablets.
Anyway, first re the above quote - I think there are quite a lot of assumptions needed if you think people would have noticed that g-Mark was talking about a person called Pilate who was not actually the governor they remember, or not even a governor whose name they recognised at all.
It would take several pages to describe all the assumptions that I think are hiding in your comment above, so just very very briefly -
First you have to be assuming that g-Mark was indeed written at the earliest date typically given by bible scholars, theologians and Christians, ie circa 75AD. I think that sort of date is probably too optimistic and that it’s safer to assume the actual date may be quite a bit later than that.
However, regardless of the date - few ordinary Christians at that time could actually read, and presumably even fewer (probably not a single one) would have access to seeing any first written copy of g-Mark anyway.
Presumably the first written gospels were commissioned either by a few church leaders, or else by a wealthy individual who wanted a written record of the wonderful story of Jesus. But that would not be freely available to the mass of believers on the streets of Judea.
In fact we might also ask - where were those first gospels written anyway? Was it actually in the region of Judea? Or was it actually much further field? Eg, in Rome or in Alexandria, in Syria, or where?
Also, would Roman officials or other officials care much about what Christians on the streets were saying about the crucifixion of a messiah of the distant past? Would they care enough to leave such copious written records that they would survive until today? I suspect not.
I realize that this is a theme of a lot of your posts and I am sympathetic to the idea, however I think you overplay this point. Anything is possible but there is a substantial body of historical documents from this period and it would be very difficult to make up something a thousand years after the fact and have it mesh with the other documentation in such a way as to make it not obviously just made up crap. In the case of Pilate apparently he is mentioned by other authors, there is the issue of who was the prefect if not Pilate and there is a plaque with his name on it that seems to be a genuine artifact.
Dave, this is not merely a "theme" of mine. It should be a “theme” of everyone’s!
In any other sphere of investigation, the idea of relying on what are in fact only a tiny handful of brief sentences about Jesus (and afaik not much more about Pilate) in copies made 1000 years after the events by Christians themselves (ie not at all independent parties), would be dismissed as absurdly unreliable and unacceptable. You would never be able to present evidence like that with any credibility in a court of law for example (ie in a jury trial), and for the exact same reason that the judge would either rule it out as entirely unacceptable, or else advise the jury to treat such claimed “evidence” with extreme caution.
IOW - a passage of time like that (1000 years!) after which all you have are copies made by Christians themselves, who by that time are known to have 1000 years of copying history in which they frequently "corrected" their copies with all sorts of alterations and additions ... that's just not credible as reliable evidence at all. And nobody should ever think it is.
Nor is that just a matter of “anything being possible”. On the contrary, afaik everyone agrees that it is a known fact that over the decades Christian copyists frequently made all sorts of “corrections” and alterations to documents they copied. Where later religious opinion meant that a particular idea was current, then they felt free to make that change to whatever the original texts had previously said.
That does not need entire passages to be re-written. Nobody is saying that. And that is entirely unnecessary. All that was necessary, and what in fact we know did actually happen in various parts of all that Christian copying, is that they just added a few explanatory words or changed a few words to better express what by that later date was believed to be the accepted story according to the church.
Next point, you say
“and it would be very difficult to make up something a thousand years after the fact and have it mesh with the other documentation in such a way as to make it not obviously just made up crap." I don’t think that is actually true at all. I don’t think it would be difficult at all. In fact I think it would be supremely easy.
For example - as just explained above, we are not talking about copyists changing 50% of the original writing of Josephus or Tacitus etc. We are only talking about a few tiny words added, deleted or altered (even mistranslated!) here and there in the few sentences that relate to what people believed as legendary stories of a messiah that none of them hade ever met.
Secondly, afaik - one common criticism of the Jesus stories is that almost none of the contemporary writers of the time even mention him at all. And afaik, that also means all those same writers never mentioned anyone called Pontius Pilate either. Without checking, I’m willing to take a friendly bet that all mention of Pilate comes only in the writing that is also at that point talking about Jesus. That does not mean that I would be surprised to hear that Philo or Josephus wrote passages saying Pilate was a vicious cruel governor or whatever they wrote about him, and that those particular sentences did not inc. the name of Jesus, but my bet is that any such passages are directly relating to what the authors had just said about the execution of Jesus.
So afaik, there is nothing about Pilate in Josephus, Tacitus or Philo that has to “mesh” with any other contemporary writing at all. Because afaik little if any of that other contemporary writing mentions anyone named Pilate at all!
Also - we are in any case talking about non-biblical writing (Josephus, Tacitus etc.) which came after the first gospels had already claimed that Pilate executed Jesus. So it’s obviously possible that later authors such as Josephus and Tacitus were merely reporting what earlier Christians themselves had said about Pilate executing Jesus. In fact, we have to keep in mind here precisely what you above called my “theme”, ie namely - what we have as the writing of Josephus and Tacitus does not actually come to us from anywhere around the end of the 1st century, but sorry to say it yet again, it comes from 1000 years later!! That means - anything about Pilate appearing in stuff such as Josephus, Tacitus, Philo etc., has a whopping 1000 years in which the Christian copyists may have decided that the work lacked that useful info of Pilate doing various things at the time of Jesus.
I think there are two points in your paragraph above:
1. Somebody after the fact of the Gospels might have forged stories about Pilate to provide evidence of a character in the Gospels.
2. The Gospel writers included details they couldn't possibly have known in their stories.
On point 1: if your point is that anything is possible, so that is possible also, then you're right. But if your point is that there is a significant chance that somebody created to the Pilate character out of whole cloth to add credibility to the Gospels I think you're wrong. Absolute proof is rarely if ever possible for any kind of history, and that is especially true for what is knowable about the history of something that happened 2000 years ago. However, in the context of a discussion about the HJ, the existence of Pilate looks to be one of those rare things where something can be judged to be true with extraordinary confidence.
OK, well if you just “think” I’m wrong, that is merely a difference of opinion between us. But I’m not merely saying it because “anything is possible”. On the contrary I have explained in detail many times why gospel stories of Jesus are likely to be only mythical. And others have also explained that many times too, inc. almost every sceptical author who has ever published a book on this subject. So that is most definitely not just a case of “anything might be possible”.
Very briefly to explain those reasons again - authors like Randel Helms have shown with absolute clarity, and I think unarguable fact, that the gospel stories of Jesus were typically taken from what the authors believed to have been written in the ancient Jewish OT. So that is where the Jesus stories came from. That is the first overall point about the gospels (see Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions).
As far as the specific passage about Pilate is concerned - the letters of Paul are supposed to pre-date g-Mark by around 20-30 years. Personally I would not be surprised if g-Mark actually dates to the 2nd century and is perhaps much more than 20-30 years after Paul. However, I think it’s perfectly obvious form what Paul wrote about his vision of the Risen Jesus and his claim that Jesus must have risen on the third day, that later gospel writers may have understood Paul’s preaching to mean that Jesus had been executed at a time very close to Paul’s vision. And rightly or wrongly, those later gospel authors may have believed that the official in charge at that time was a man named Pilate.
However, they may, or may not, have been right about the name of Pilate as the governor.
And that takes us right back to the Pilate Stone again. Because that Pilate Stone appears to be the only actual evidence for the existence of Pilate …. but the inscription on that stone raises very obvious questions as to it’s authenticity and how any such claimed authenticity was verified. And I don't recall anyone yet having produced any kind of answer to that question?
On point 2, I am in complete agreement. The Gospels are written in a fictional style whereby the author just makes up stuff that he couldn't possibly know and for which a credible source seems very unlikely. However that obviously doesn't equate to the idea that everything in the Gospels is fictional.
I wonder why only coins from 29,30, and 31 are credited to Pilate. According to the WIkipedia article he was in power from 26 to 36.
As far as the date on the coins is concerned - I expect bible scholars and theologians are only interested in those dates that match their pre-conceived belief that Jesus was executed in 30AD.
But as I said before - the coins appear to be evidence of nothing at all re Jesus or anyone named Pilate.
