Solo

Hi PJ,
there is littke doubt that John, at a greater length than any other gospel, tried to clear Pilate of a charge of wrongdoing in the condemnation of Jesus. I am ok with that. But is this a historical account ? Or is it John's phantasy of Jesus' moral victory ?

Quite frankly, I consider the accounts of Pilate's words and his reluctance to do away with Jesus a psychobabble whose only purpose was to inculpate the Jews (as "a nation", 18:35) in an act of deicide. That it would have been the Jews (and not Pilate's own legal counsel) pointing out to him he had the obligation to act against someone accepting the proclamation of himself as "a king of the Jews", betrays a childish grasp of actors and issues. John apparently suffered from the idee fixe that Pilate would have understood and accepted that Jesus "kingdom" was not of this world, and therefore his kingship was, from administrator's point of view, a matter of idle chitchat ('quod est veritas').

I don't agree with what you say about John's motives for whitewashing Pilate. For John to hold such a view he needed no text asserting that Pilate decided on killing Jesus without as much as blinking an eye, or some such. All he would have needed is a generalized, abiding dislike of the Jews, and resolve to broadbrush them as vile Christ-killers.

I am also somewhat surprised that you hold that Mark knew of John's version of the Easter events. That is not an idea that I am familiar with. It is generally accepted that Mark's gospel is several decades older than John.

Cheers,
Jiri

IamJoseph

The Plausibility of the Crucifixion Chronology of the Gospel of Mark.


The real plausability is surely elsewhere.

There was a decree of heresy hovering over Judea - and millions of Jews perished by crucifixion and other means by it, with no regard for age or gender: how would one Jesus have escaped this decree?

There is no record of a trial outside the Gospels - nor did Rome release Barabus, who was a Bin Laden type figure to them. The report of Jews with beedy eyes and sniggering over another Jews' death, ala Mad Mel's passion of 2000 lashes per frame - is perhaps the most grotesque dead giveaway absurdity ever made into a scripture possible - even transcending the Protocols of Zion and the blood Libels. Your kidding, no?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Jiri,

In regards to John not needing a text in front of him declaring that Pilate found Jesus guilty, I agree that it is not necessary, but I think it highly probable.

Here is how i arrive at that deduction. The gospel is too complex for John to be making it up or reporting oral traditions. Therefore he had a text in front of him. That text contained the idea that Pilate either found Jesus guilty or innocent.

If the earlier text had a statement that Pilate found Jesus innocent, there would be little need to do anything but to copy it. John might embellish it a little by adding a second time or even a third time that Pilate found him innocent, but there would certainly be no need to repeat it five times. On the other hand if the text before him had one or several mentions of Jesus finding Jesus guilty, John (or anyone) would need to emphatically emphasize that it did not happen this way. He would want to emphasize that Pilate did not find him guilty by repeating it over and over again. Since John does emphasize this point so much, we may presume that it is to counteract the opposite point which must have been in the text before him.

This thesis also allows us to speculate further about the origin of the Bar Abbas name. The play on words in the name is a typical folklore meme best typified by Odysseus claiming to be Nobody.

We may assume that Pilate did not speak Hebrew and did not know that the name Bar Abbas means son of the father. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how the non-Hebrew speaking Pilate could trick the Jewish priests in this way. It is more likely that in the earlier version it is the priests who are using the name to trick Pilate into releasing Jesus. It would have been something like this.

We may also propose with the same logic that in the original version, it was Pilate who handed Jesus over to the Jews to be put on trial. They found him innocent and Pilate took him back.

As far as John being earlier than Mark. This was the accepted view I believe up to the time of David Strauss' Leben Jesu in 1833. Strauss believed that Jesus was an historical person whose life had been increasingly made legendary by the gospel writers. It made sense to him that the gospel that portrayed Jesus in the least human and most fantastic manner would be the last.

While Strauss' biography has been discounted, his idea of John being the last gospel written has become standard.

I have yet to be persuaded by any arguments that it was composed later than Mark, although I think it is probable that a final revision to make it acceptable to early Third century Christians probably was later than Mark.

The external evidence, oldest manuscript fragment and earliest commentary suggests that it was earlier than the synoptics.

If one believes that Jesus the Christ began as a myth then it makes sense that John's more fantastic gospel would come earlier than the more realistic synoptics.

One may think of it in terms of the difference between the plays of Euripides and the poetry of Homer. The heroes and heroines of Homer (8th or 7th century B.C.E.) are a lot more fantastic than the heroes and heroines of Euripides (5th century B.C.E.). So this is a case of mythology being stripped of its more fantastic elements and being made more realistic over a period of time.

A similar phenomenon may be observed by looking at comicbook superheroes. The first superhero, Superman (1938), is much more fantastic than the relatively more realistic Spiderman (1963) superhero who came 25 years later. Superman lives in an imaginary city - Metropolis, while Spiderman lives in New York. Superman received fantastic powers by traveling hundreds of light years through space as a baby in an experimental rocket launched from an exploding planet. On the other hand Spiderman was simply bitten by a radioactive Spider. When we consider the problems of space travel, Superman's story seems even more fantastic today, on the other, since we know that many major league baseball players have broken records through the use of steroid drugs, the idea of how Spiderman received his powers seems even more realistic today.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

IamJoseph

Not so if it is regarded a European document. Consider the blood libels, the Protocols - these are false documents made with an astonshing expertise to appear true, and believed in by the masses for centuries; and the Holocaust - how these were perprated and the masses either accepted it or claimed they were not aware. Consider the archives of Pre-christian Europe, namely of Greek and Roman charges, which contains 1000s of false reports [Jews drink Greek's blood in their temple; etc] - now proven retrospectively false.

The question in a trial by Rome can apply only to the decree of Heresy enacted, which culminated in the mass murder of more than 2 million Jews. All else becomes meaningless as a discussion point here - else it says that Jesus was the only Jew where Rome's decree did not apply to. :huh:

grog225

First, I am not opposed to contemplating that the passion story was originally a play or derived from some sort of a play. I think Paul testifies to the existence of such:

Gal 3:1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.

Although I think that portrayed may be more referencing an argument than a play. However...

What of the argument that Mark makes more sense as a literary work not as a play or script but to read aloud. I think the Markan sandwiches don't work well as a play and only work as document to read or written.

See: Markan Sandwiches. The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives Author(s): James R. Edwards Source: Novum Testamentum, Vol. 31, Fasc. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 193-216

Here are examples from the passion narrative:

11:12-21 A Cursing of the fig tree, vv 12-14 B Clearing of the temple, vv 15-19 A Withering of the fig tree, vv 20-21
14:1-11 A Plot to kill Jesus, vv 1-2 B Anointing of Jesus at Bethany, vv 3-9 A Judas's agreement to betray Jesus, vv 10-11
14:17-3119 A Jesus predicts his betrayal, vv 17-21 B Institution of the Lord's Supper, vv 22-26 A Jesus predicts Peter's betrayal, vv 27-31
14:53-72 A Peter follows Jesus to the courtyard of the high priest, vv 53-54 B Jesus' inquisition before the Sanhedrin, vv 55-65 A Peter's denial of Jesus, vv 66-72
15:40-16:820 A Women at the cross, vv 15:40-41 B Joseph of Arimathea requests Jesus' body, vv 15:42-46 A Women at the empty tomb, vv 15:47-16:8

I don't know that these make sense as part of a play or even a liturgy, but work better as a literary narrative meant to be read.

Anyway...

PhilosopherJay

Hi IamJoseph,

Perhaps I used the wrong terms here. I simply meant that he was not the source of the material. I am making no judgment here if the source is a real trial or a fictional trial. There is a certain reactive quality to the writing that suggests that he is consciously shaping written material. Compare his writing to other ancient writers who are reporting oral reports or creating material from eye-witness accounts (see Cicero's writings for example). One can sense the difference between someone creating a story and someone rewriting a story. I am merely asserting here that John is rewriting a previously written story.

Please remember that no matter how people have used John's writing for their own purposes, we can not blame him. I should like to think that if he knew that even one person would be harmed as a result of his writings, he would have preferred to burn every word he wrote. I have no evidence that he ever wished anybody harm by these writings. And even if it was the case that he wrote desiring harm to people he considered his enemies, he and they are no longer around for us to bring to court.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

IamJoseph

I agree. The issue is not with christian belief, which is obviously genuine and well intentioned. The problem is that there is a suspicion the writings subscribed to apostles may have been written by Greeks and Romans much later, reflecting their own past behavior rather than anything which actually occured with Jesus, and that it has no connection to history or reality. Indeed it appears antithetical to history and reality.

From a dfferent view, it is a comendable thing not to assciate Jesus with the Gospels - if he was a Jew: a cursory study of the medevial church's history affirms this. It simply does not come across as authentic that a Jew would subscribe to a trinity, image worship, negate any Mosaic laws- or that his own kin would revel in his death. The 'WHAT IF THESE REPORTS' in the Gospels is not true - is an undeniable factor, while all debates seem to rest on why these reportings are legitimate and correct.

The evidence lies against the claims of the Gospels, while if the gospels reports are true and correct, then big time wrongs were done to one Jew. To raise this further than this point is a stretch: Jews have no history or tradition of alligning with the Gospel charges - while Europe does. Jews have a notorious history of awaiting a Messiah - not killing one. They have more revered prophets than anyone else - 55 - and all are totally cherished. In 70 CE - five candidates were touted as potential Messiahs. The Gospel math does not add up.

spamandham

He wouldn't have. But neither would he have received a trial (other than a summary trial) or been shipped back and forth between Pilate and Herod in an elaborate attempt to shift the burden around. If there was a Jesus who was executed in a general Jewish "solution", we can still be reasonably assured the gospel story did not happen as stated.