It was Tom Brady.
Since Fear appears disinclined to explain what he/she meant, is there anyone else who might be able to shed some light on what he/she said? Is there some joke I’m missing?
If it was just supposed to be an anti-Christian slam, then apologies for not being of the religious sort to be offended.
Explain posts #29 and #30 too, while you’re at it. In another thread, if necessary to protect the immaculate integrity of this thread.
Post 29 and 30 are nonsequiturs as part of an ongoing kerfluffle in ATMB. Ignore them - they’re stupid and have no bearing on this conversation.
I’m assuming Fear Itself was trying to make a joke. It plays on the idea that Mary was special and holy, so he’s commenting on the virtue of Mary’s mother. YMMV.
Can you give us a reliable source for this?
Correct. And the authors of those posts were given a gentle reminder my the Moderator (in Post #36) not to bring crap like that into this discussion.
Cecil’s assertions about Pilate’s indecisiveness and “Christian white-washing” in denying the Jewish mobs part and Pilate’s mind-set seem like latter-day white-washing to me. He offers no real evidence of this, and expects us to believe the rest of the Gospels as support for his answer, while gainsaying the sections which are inconvenient to his thesis.
I always found the narrative about Pilate petitioning the crowd on who to pardon, a supposed tradition during the holiday, to smack of verisimilitude. The mob is always impatient and mercurial, and when Jesus failed to deliver what the Zealots expected to be a heavenly army to deliver them from Rome, they turned on him and told Pilate to go ahead and crucify him.
Now, this is quite far from condemning the entire mass of humanity known as the Jews as Christ-killers, but it is an integral and quite believable part of the story, and I don’t believe Cecil did much but muddy up the water here. I’ll take the gospels over a decidedly mixed bag of wish-casting and tea-leaves reading on which the Straight Dope relied. Sometimes we can bend over backward trying to right old wrongs (the historical persecution of the Jews as Christkillers) and do history no good service.
The High Priest seems to have initiated the arrest and trial, he and his associates sent Jesus to Pilate for execution, Pilate, as the gospels tell, was aware he was dealing with no average felon or malefactor, was given pause in a way which was not typical in his dealings with criminals. Saying that Pilate’s treatment of Jesus as described in the Gospels is out of character with descriptions of Pilates other dealings assumes Jesus was just another man, which, whatever your beliefs, was obviously not the case. He was a quite extraordinary individual, by all accounts, and Pilate may have acted different in this one case.
Looking for a way out, perhaps thinking Jesus’ popularity with the masses would give him a reason to pardon him and avoid the guilt of executing him, miscalculated the fickleness of the mob and after they exhorted him to kill Jesus, was left with no choice but to carry out the execution, reluctantly. After all, killing someone doesn’t always end their power amongst their followers (as Jesus proved with a vengeance!) and Pilate risked making Jesus a martyr and a rallying point for other rebels.
So, to my lights, it seems very reasonable Pilate would have tried to find a way to avoid killing Jesus if possible, but his hand was forced.
Who deserves blame? If you follow Scriptures, everyone’s path was foretold thousands of years before and they all seemed to be mere pawns in God’s game, and only Jesus knew how it would all shake out beforehand. Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate, the mob, his Apostles and everyone else were merely players acting out parts laid out for them long since.
God killed Jesus, or Adam and Eve did, with their actions, goaded by Satan? The rest were merely agents, no more in control of their actions and fate nor more guilty than the tree that furnished the cross nor the ore from which the nails were forged.
I’m going with Mob Mentality. The MOB of HUMANS is ugly in all its forms, from lynchings and hangings to crucifixion. Sometimes humans want blood. Blood sport has entertained humans throughout history. Look at the MMA and all that. People just love to beat things to death. Especially beautiful and delicate things, or things they do not understand. You get one person who’s on a bender about something, that person gets more people involved…and the next thing you know they are killing a thing of beauty.
I see Jesus as a great teacher from history. Jesus had a beautiful way of looking at life and love. The teachings of love and care of others are wonderful, and that’s what I like about Historical Jesus.
One reason I like boards is that I can say what I honestly think without fear of physical repercussion. Jesus didn’t have the internet.
Just my humble opinion.
Actually I found this part quite unbelievable. Why would Pilate petition the crowd at all? That seems very out of sorts. Further, why would Jesus have been crucified to begin with? Crucifixion was generally reserved for high crime (treason), Jesus was not treasonous nor were the two thieves crucified along side him.
How was Jesus extraordinary? There were dozens of ‘messiahs’ running around at the time.
Why would Pilate have bent down towards Jewish law?
The author here makes a good point (granted, it’s an old point):
Exactly as said- Jesus was “no average felon or malefactor”, and Pilate knew the rabble could be roused by killing a religious figure. Happened before and after.
Complete non sequiter. Jesus wasn’t a Roman citizen, all those “courts that were models of order and fairness” , etc, applied only to Citizens.
What other so called messiah was crucified? The other messiahs who were caught leading insurrections were beheaded.
If that’s the case, then why was he presented to Pilate at all? That point makes the story make less sense, not more sense.
Also, why were the thieves crucified?
Could you expand on this? Looking at the Wikipedia page on Roman classes of citizenship, I can’t tell if Judeans were Latini, Socii, or Provinciales. That page isn’t particularly clear about rights in court but the indication is that some would exist.
What was the exact situation at the time?
*Socii *were autonomous tribes and city-states of the Italian Peninsula. Foederati were barbarian tribes such as the Franks. Iudaea was simply a Province, it’s residents had no citizenship.
As wiki sez “Provinciales were those persons who fell under Roman influence, or control, but who lacked even the rights of the Foederati, essentially having only the rights of the jus gentium” .
Wiki “Iudaea was not a Senatorial province, nor exactly an Imperial province, but instead was a “satellite of Syria”[8] governed by a prefect who was a knight of the equestrian order (as was Roman Egypt), not a former consul or praetor of senatorial rank.”
Note that Paul made a big deal (as it was) of being a “Free Born” Citizen of Rome.
And it’s ridiculous, anyway. Roman trials were basically debate-club contests. Whoever’s lawyer made the most impressive speech won; evidence just got in the way. Roman Law is indeed the root of all Western Law, but it needed many centuries of maturation yet.
True, good point, esp at the higher levels. Also, Jury bribing was rampant and not even considered all that reprehensible.
This is rather interesting and I read the following recently and now I’m beginning to think that the whole notion of a mob bringing Jesus to Pilate for judgment and getting it is absurd. It seems to me that the Romans took their “classes” seriously back then. Wouldn’t it be a scandle had Pilate done what he supposedly did in the Gospels?
Nope. Jesus was a nobody to Rome. No one who was Pilates superior would give a rats ass how many provincials he had executed as long as the taxes were paid and the province didn’t riot.
That cite goes on and on, mostly about the discrepency of Jesus’s birth date between the two Gospels. "* Because they can argue from “Herod was the procurator of Syria” to “Luke and Matthew don’t contradict each other on the year of Christ’s birth, contrary to what all you mean atheist harpies keep saying.”*
And, it does seem like either there’s a typo, some point of history we missed or one of the two was making shit up for a good story (or more likely heard the “good story” from someone who made it up or was just confused about the dates). Any are possible, certainly the Bible is not inerrant. Far from being a “big gaping historical error in the Gospels” it’s no big deal really. Even if we accept the Gospels were written by whom tradition sez, none of those were adults at the time Jesus was born, and they certainly weren’t there in person.
In fact that cite doesn’t refute the Pilate ordered Jesus killed- in fact it sez “*Which gets us back to that passage in the Annals where Tacitus says Christ was executed by Pontius Pilate “the procurator.” Tacitus was a consular senator who had held many imperial provincial governorships and nearly every other office in the land. He knew full well that Pilate was a prefect. He would not have had to check any records to know that. He also knew full well that Pilate, like all district prefects, was the private business manager of the emperor, a lowly money collector and landlord, a filthy procurator. He clearly chose to call Pilate a procurator and not a prefect in this passage as a double insult: on the one hand, his aim was to paint the Christians as pathetically as possible, and having their leader executed by a petty business manager was about as low as you could get (and Tacitus would never turn down a good juicy snipe like that); and on the other hand, he was always keen to remind the reader of his persistent protest against granting equestrians real powers, and thus calling Pilate here a procurator does that, by reminding the reader that the chief of police who executes criminals in Judea is a “fucking business manager” (“and what the hell is he doing with judicial powers?”). The fact that Pilate was also a prefect and thus had real constitutional authority is the sort of honest detail that would screw up Tacitus’ point. So he doesn’t take the trouble to mention it.”
*
No one would have given a rats ass that Pilate bent to a jewish mob, let a murderer go, and killed an innocent man?
What evidence do you have for any of this? Where is the precedent for this?
Yes, i’m not using the cite in order to argue anything, really - I’m using the cite in an effort to show how seriously the Romans took their classes.
Tacitus is not verifying history here - he’s simply reporting on what the Christians believed and reporting on it in a way to make a dig at Pilate.
I find the story hard to believe - what little research I’ve done seems to indicate that this is unique occurrence and contrary to what history would show. It’s only reported in the Gospels, which are decades after the fact. There’s no first hand accounts of it and the accounts we have are suspicious.
Where is there evidence of this sort of thing happening? Romans didn’t crucify thieves, which is another indication that this story is fabricated, IMO.
I mean, I suppose it could have happened, it’s not logically impossible, it’s just it’s contra to what was known at the time. The Romans didn’t crucify thieves, there is no evidence that the Romans let people ‘go’ on passover, much less convict an innocent man in the place of a murderer. All of this after various other messiahs had attempted to take the temple. I find it hard to believe that Pilate would have essentially bent over to this mob after a few Messiah’s had already attempted to reclaim the temple. I mean, if Pilate had reason to believe he was claiming to be the messiah, then he wouldn’t have found him innocent. He’d probably have just beheaded him and have been done with it.
That version of events would make more sense - a group of Jews saying something along the lines of ‘hey we got another person claiming to be the messiah’, Pilate executing the would-be messiah and that was that. I suppose I could see that happening. I could not see Pilate judging the man as innocent, letting a murderer go, then crucifying him between two thieves, and finally letting his body be buried in a tomb (because Joseph was concerned about maintaining purity - if that’s the case, then what about the two thieves?).
The story, while possible, just seems utterly unlikely as it’s written. I could see legendary embellishment occurring as time went by - which seems to be the case as the other Gospels embellished on Mark, eventually having Saints jumping out of their tombs, earthquakes, and worldwide blackness -their Messiah was killed and an empty tomb narrative develops four decades after the fact. I mean, stuff similar to that happens today - IIRC, there are still a few people who follow Bo, aren’t there? And this is a much more skeptical age with much better resources to educate the public.