You said it yourself:Kishkumen wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 4:11 pmOh, I think the fact that he has become a counter-apologist for hire is very much about his personal business. I do not agree that he is motivated by a respect for the discipline at all. He barely operates in the discipline. His treatment of the discipline is more akin to John Gee's, truth be told.dastardly stem wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 3:48 pmHold up...I didn't say he's all about the history. I suggested he's respectful in his work to the discipline of history. I think that's largely true. And I don't think his personal business argues well against that position.
Let me ask you this, stem: how many different provincial governors or Herodian rulers do you think were in charge of Jerusalem in the first century CE? Do you have even the foggiest idea? You say Pilate because you know the name, and then you assume that he must have been just as important and obvious to all the people of ancient Jerusalem as he is to you. You should test that theory.I grasped it, I just didn't think it carried the weight you thought it did. To a first century Greek speaking Jew, what other historic figure would have been behind it if not Pilate? That was my question, essentially. It seems to make sense to me that he would have been used, fitted into the story if it were made up. goddammit I'm doing it again. But seriously, if you in your expertise do not think a first century Jew would have felt it reasonable to include Pilate, I say, fine. That is genuine disagreement. I don't think the genuine disagreement amounts to anything near the conclusive claim of error though.
Moreover, do you think that the Gospels were written by people who lived in Jerusalem? How many people agree with you? What other views do they hold? Would you agree with the Fundamentalist Christians that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses? Or do you agree with Carrier that they were made up by people who really had no idea what was actually going on at the time, and thus they were forced to make it up?
So, if you agree with Carrier that they must have made all this Crap up, and perhaps threw in some history-ish tidbits to make people buy into it, then why pick Pontius Pilate? Why would we assume that these historical fiction writers would not pick someone else governing Judea under Tiberius, such as, say, Annius Rufus or Valerius Gratus?
The more arguments you make that suggest they did so for historical verisimilitude, the more you also add to the positive arguments for the likelihood these accounts are simply based on an actual historical situation.
I want to thank you for forcing me to think these things through more thoroughly. The more I dig into this, the less persuasive I find the argument that Jesus is a figment of someone's imagination, and, yes, that matters because his movement eventually developed into one of the world's dominant religious communities.
To get back to the topic, let's say for the sake of argument that Mark is the first Gospel. Mark provides no information about when Jesus was born. Moreover, I don't think he even mentions the emperor Tiberius. Tiberius is only mentioned by Luke. Now we are left to float freely and pick any procurator, equestrian prefect, or Jewish toparch who may have controlled Judea in the late first century BCE or first century CE.
Why pick Pilate? And why do the details about Pilate match his portrait in Philo and Josephus?
Take for example the little bit I quoted about the Tower of Siloam and the butchered Galileans from Luke 13. There we find out that Pilate butchered Galileans who were sacrificing. I love how this part is a lot more accurate in its depiction of Pilate in comparison with the governor who washes his hands of Jesus' death. The latter part is less believable. The butchery is absolutely believable.
You might say that the author of Mark had to have read his Philo. It is most unlikely that he read Josephus. Yet we have no good reason to believe that he had read Philo. So where is this interest in Pilate in particular coming from?
If you know he was a miserable governor who provoked and murdered Jews, then it's no stretch to think Jews in the first century knew he was a miserable governor who provoked and murdered Jews. I think we already went over this. They didn't need a high level royal person because they very well would likely already know there was a Pilate who "was a miserable governor who provoked and murdered Jews". His name could have lived in infamy for these Jews based on that alone.He was a miserable governor who provoked and murdered Jews.
I get that verisimilitude is often needed for history from that era, in that we simply don't have enough to connect enough dots...but I don't think it the best tool to claim strong evidence of something. Its difficult to even call it evidence. It seems far more logical to reason out, "the Jews of the first century knew, as we know now, there was a miserable governor who provoked and murdered jews names Pontius Pilate. Including him in the story seems reasonable"
Then to reason out, "since we know there was a miserable governor named Pontius Pilate who provoked and murderd Jews and the first century Jews wrote about him in the Jesus story, that that alone gives good evidence, strong evidence even, to think Jesus really lived".