andrewcriddle

The idea of pre-Pauline forms of full-blown Gnosticism doesn't seem to have any solid evidence to support it.

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle

Who mentioned full blown gnosticism? What happened to Pagels who argues Paul is a full blown gnostic? Where did Zarathustra go? What about the myriads of messiahs, essenes, whatevers? Is not Plato with the concept of the shadow and the real gnostic thought?

I said it was clearly part of the culture, a clear interaction between a new world of Greek ideas and surrounding cultures.

We have all the ingredients, a good fertile soil for something to grow in - and it did!

I have a strong argument to explain a phenomenon using what we know about the time and place. You seem to be returning to some form of big bangism.

Why?

rlogan

Hi Laura D. Welcome.

The process of peer review publication in historical literature has nothing to do with these kinds of "fears". I think maybe you took the statement that had no citation from GakusiDon and inferred this from it.

Historians, by definition, are not doing religious work - which is, however, what "Christian Historians" (oxymoron) are doing.


You might want to spend some time in the archives on the Testimonium Flavianum and the James passage. I see spin has already weighed in on Tacitus and there's some material there too in the archives.


It isn't until we get to Pliny's correspondence with Trajan that we are finally at a secure Roman source mentioning Christians.

Despite doing his best (including torture) to discern what this superstition is all about, he finds nothing worth writing regarding any Jesus. There is a "Christ" they worship, but again, nothing about lineage to some real personage.

heh. The apologists will of course rush in with the standard "there was no need to mention a Jesus". Of course not. He's only the most important thing in the whole religion, supposedly.

blastula

How does the documentation compare for other historical figures like say Caesar or Brutus? Or for a comparable religious figure who left behind no personal writings?

ynquirer

Actually, Wikipedia is a source open to whoever knows better than what is written down there on whatever topic. It is not a source based on the authoritative knowledge of such and such distinguished scholars but on the confrontation and rational discussion among different people. (BTW you ought to propose changes in the Wiki article referred by me so as to spare other people being misled.)

I don’t agree with the full contents of the article either. In particular, I wouldn’t say that “by definition the procurators were prefects” (see below), and I would qualify some statements. All in all, however, the article fairly well matches the standard knowledge on the issue.

I used to think Wikipedia was a source of sorts, especially in a forum like this where people dismiss before hand the most serious scholarship - an iconoclast approach I do praise. Yet if you ban it as a source, well - what is left? No scholarship, no Wiki, only your personal authority to state things with that self confidence that made someone say: “I absolutely love watching you slice through others arguments like a hot knife through butter!” Forgive me, but that is not much for me.

Well, I could agree with this. What I cannot agree with is the case you construe on such a generic statement, and the evidence - in accordance with the statement - you dismiss when it comes to contradict your case.

A prefect was a governor in subordinate position. His superior was either the emperor himself in a straightforward manner - as a “lieutenant,” as Philo say, since being a prefect a military appointee as he was, he was in the relationship of a lieutenant to the commander-in-chief - the emperor himself. Or else his superior was a legate - a commander of one or a few legions. You think the latter to be the only possible situation. This is the point in which you are wrong.

Romans were far more pragmatic than that. Prefects as a rule were members of the equestrian order - Knights - while legates were always members of the higher nobility - Patricians. An equestrian prefect so was twice the inferior of a patrician legate: once as a prefect, another in class-ranking. This was part-offset by the organization of procurators. Procurators were managers of property, this is correct. They were always members of the equestrian order, too. Every legate in charge of an imperial province - such as Syria - had attached a procurator in charge of such duties as collecting taxes; he managed the money. The Syrian procurator was by no means a subordinate to the Syrian legate; the former was accountable to the emperor himself - this is still true. Assuming ex hypothesis that you were right and Pilate the prefect of Judea was accountable to the Syrian legate and that the Syrian procurator was the prefect’s fellow equestrian, in normal provinces of the imperial description that would be enough. But not in especially troubling provinces. In such provinces, long distances imposed long delays to the supply of financial resources. If the prefect needed money, he might wait for months, and perhaps the business was urgent. In such troublemaking provinces the emperor bestowed on the prefect the powers of a procurator, that is, authority to use the imperial resources for political purposes, while freed him from subjection to a legate by having him be his lieutenant.

That was Pilate’s condition according to both Tacitus and Philo. Still Josephus says that prefect Pilate made use of money of the Temple to carry a current of water to Jerusalem, which caused much grievance. That sacred money - for the Jews - was of course imperial property. Yet, according to your own definition of a procurator, do you really think that Pilate would have dared to take the emperor’s money without the approval of a procurator hadn’t he been in such commission?

No fewer than three historians starkly say or at least quite strongly suggest that Pilate was entrusted the powers of a procurator, and you still maintain that he was answerable to the Syrian legate, that a prefect (military chief) was never a procurator (a property manager), and kind of such inventions? You only contradict yourself, for - what happened when Claudius appointed knights and freedmen as procurators? Was the military command (prefecture) taken away from them? Nonsense.

Really? The sole fact you do have is a text in Tacitus’ Histories, which is apt to a different interpretation, as I showed in my previous post.

This is the way the mythicist argues. He or she sticks to an inconclusive evidence to deny probative force to no matter how many coincident historical sources. Tacitus says that Pilate was a procurator in the same paragraph in which he provides us with evidence of Christ’s life? That must be a forgery. Philo says that Pilate was the emperor’s lieutenant, so suggesting that he was independent from the Syrian legate and, as a consequence, in charge of military command and economic administration all together? He is welcome to his opinion, but ignores facts. Josephus reports that Pilate administered economic resources in a polemical manner? Well, you probably have something to say to dismiss Josephus’ testimony.

Tacitus’, Philo’s, and Josephus’ testimonies is what history is made of. This all too clearly discloses the mythicist’s purpose, viz. to put the whole historical discourse in disarray so as to have free hand to write it anew, as an anti history. Surely every age has a right to rewrite history as it pleases to fit in its own tastes?

Nice going.

gurugeorge

All good points, but it seems to me that "the son of" thing looks like a kind of semi-formal literary or religious convention Josephus is using when he refers to high priests (or looking retrospectively at people who later became high priests). (He seems to refer to high priests with the "son of" title a lot.)

PhilosopherJay

Hi GakuseiDon,

The statement does not give an example of the criteria Grant is talking about, nor an example of a "pagan" personage whose reality would be put in question by such critieria. Therefore the statement is nothing but rhetorical hyperbole.

What is the evidence that Grant was, in fact, an atheist?


Warmly,

PhilosopherJay

spin

(That would mean that I would have to take note of the material in a more substantial way.)

I gave several other facts that weigh on the matter.

I have already said that a prefect was a generic military administrator. This could mean a person in charge of military matters in a camp, in charge of food supplies, in charge certain Roman festivals, or the fire brigade. A few were given charge of minor provinces. One was even given charge of three legions in Egypt for historical reasons.

A few prefects were provincial governors.

The prefect of Egypt was a special case. Due to historical reasons the position of Egyptian administrator was given to a prefect. This prefect had control of legions, unlike any other prefect. One reason for the prefect's position here was that Egypt was the principal grain source for Rome, it was the praefectus annonae who had control of food supplies, and it was an ex praefectus annonae who usually became the prefect of Egypt.

I'm sure you'll find the internet materials on prefects will tell you this.

All you need to do is demonstrate your conjecture, not in the special case of Egypt, but in a case like the Judean context.

You can see that, while Judea and its finances were under the control of Syria, the situation didn't stop Pilate from looting the qorban to pay for an aqueduct. That a prefect could grub for money doesn't make him a procurator.

You are not dealing with the problem. All you are trying to do is blur the boundaries between the two positions, one a bookkeeper until 53 CE and the other an administrator.

I showed that the mention of freedmen in the administration of Judea plainly contradicted your interpretation.

Rubbish. Philo was not Roman, nor was he well-versed in Roman administration as Tacitus had to be, having been a consul, the highest administrative position in Rome. You are just badly trying to poison the well by your silly talk of mythicists. It will get you nowhere fast.

The text after Tacitus had dealt with Nero refers to Pilate erroneously as a procurator. This is an error that Tacitus, who was well-versed in Roman administration and its history, would have trouble making. You start with the evidence not your interpretation.

What does Philo's unclear phrase actually mean?? What was the original phrase in Philo's Greek, so that we can look at the exact meaning of this phrase? Why does someone, a non-Roman, writing in Alexandria, not as up with Roman administration as Tacitus, get dragooned into being an expert on the matter?

This is absurd.

But when this tumult was appeased, the Samaritan senate sent an embassy to Vitellius, a man that had been consul, and who was now president of Syria, and accused Pilate of the murder of those that were killed; for that they did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans, but to escape the violence of Pilate. So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews. AJ 18.4.2

Pilate is obvious subordinate to Vitellius. This is not under discussion.

The material in the Annals 15.44 is what is in question, so your usage of it here is simply inappropriate. The Philo reference is slim and apparently not relevant, except when loaded with your hype. And Josephus clearly disagrees with your attempted use of him.


spin

spin

First, I cannot reject Jesus as never having existed just because I reject the gospel material as not historical. Second, using the literature attributed directly to Caesar, the "Gallic War", one can use the information to reconstruct the battles and understand how the tactics worked in the context of the topography. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence for the battles referred to. The events certainly happened. The best one can try to do is say that maybe Caesar wasn't involved. That's not very helpful, when other writers say he was. We have a startling amount of physical evidence for Caesar. Brutus less so, but we do have a few coins and a lot of secondary material about him from very close to the era.

I can't really give much evidence for other religious figures of the past. That is not one of my interests. It doesn't come into the category of history as I know it.


spin

Amaleq13

I've read few sentences more in need of a smilie.

It requires no boldness nor daring to recognize that one is well-advised to seek external confirmation for anything one finds there.