Phoenix From Ashes

I have addressed all of your valid points in detail. I am sorry that you grow tired of repeating yourself, but the error that causes it is not mine.

I have presented information from primary sources and have not received the same courtesy in response, merely insinuations and assertions that the information I have presented is somehow incorrect and lightly veiled ad hominem.

My views have been presented in full and, from my perspective, your points understood and addressed in full. I must, I'm afraid, agree to politely disagree at this point and allow others to form their own opinions.

Finally, I still detect a lack of in-depth knowledge of the primary historical sources from this time period and I suggest further study of them before putting forward unchecked assertions as fact.

aa5874

Trying to reconsruct the stories of the crucifixition of the people called Jesus Christ is an exercise of futility. The story of one of those people, called Jesus Christ, in the book called John, is of itself contradictory and cannot be confirmed by any credible source to have occured.

In John 18:31, 'Then said Pilate unto them, 'Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.

And now we moved forward in the so-called trial to expose the contradiction in John 19:6-7....Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.
The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God

In the book called John, the author claimed this character, Jesus, was tried in the presence of Pilate, however, in the book called Luke 23:6-16, we have a different story.

'When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself was at Jerusalem at that time.
And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad:.........Then he questioned him in many words and he answered nothing........And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe and sent him again to Pilate.

And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together; for before that they were at enemity among themselves.

So, we have, again and again, contradictions of the crucifixtion, it is plain to me that these stories are not credible. If, at the time of writing, the inconsistencies and contradictions were never resolved, I find it difficult to believe speculation would be able to do so, 2000 years later.

Koyaanisqatsi

No, you haven't as your post proves and you're still avoiding addressing the fact that blackmail can only work on someone who has something to hide.

Pilate did not.

:huh:

Koyaanisqatsi

I'd say you presented your own last words.

Now, I'll present mine: According to the historical record, Pilate was an infamous governor who was recalled to Rome due to complaints about his alleged brutality. He was not susceptible to any blackmail, did not fear any crowd and instead historically took anticipatory military action (according to his job description) against such uprisings.

Happy? Oh, that's right, you don't care about "the actual points."

Got it.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

you wrote:

Naturally priests would not enter places where Roman soldiers frequented. Soldiers worshipped pagan gods and had pagan symbols -- even the standards would have been considered pagan symbols because they often referred to the emperor or to gods. Leather goods, which were staple costume items for soldiers, could easily impart impurity and render priests unclean.

I don't know about the leather prohibitions. Please cite your source. Liturgical text found at Qumran was on leather strips. Phylacteries were Leather pouches containing scrolls with passages of scripture. As I recall, priests were required to wear.


Concerning purity laws, first read Josephus (Ant:18:2.2):
As the Jews were celebrating the feast of unleavened bread,
which we call the Passover, it was customary for the priests to open the temple-gates just after midnight. When,
therefore, those gates were first opened, some of the Samaritans came privately into Jerusalem, and threw about
dead men's bodies, in the cloisters; on which account the Jews afterward excluded them out of the temple, which
they had not used to do at such festivals; and on other accounts also they watched the temple more carefully than
they had formerly done

There are strict purity rules against contact with corpses. This is why the Samaritans used dead bodies. They were trying to stop the worship at the temple at Passover. Here, we find Josephus backing up the idea of purity laws that we find mentioned repeatedly in the Torah and Talmud against contact with copses. We do not find any such purity laws forbidding entering places with Roman Soldiers.

Now read this from Josephus (Ant. 20:5.3):

3. Now while the Jewish affairs were under the administration of Cureanus, there happened a great tumult at the city of Jerusalem, and many of the Jews perished therein. But I shall first explain the occasion whence it was
derived. When that feast which is called the passover was at hand, at which time our custom is to use unleavened bread, and a great multitude was gathered together from all parts to that feast, Cumanus was afraid lest some
attempt of innovation should then be made by them; so he ordered that one regiment of the army should take their arms, and stand in the temple cloisters, to repress any attempts of innovation, if perchance any such should begin; and this was no more than what the former procurators of Judea did at such festivals.But on the fourth day of the feast, a certain soldier let down his breeches, and exposed his privy members to the multitude


Here is Josephus telling us that a regiment (about 4,000) of Roman soldiers were inside the Jewish temple during Passover for days at a time and that this was something that not only Cumanus did, but that former procurators had done it too. If there was a purity law forbiding Jewish Priests from entering buildings with Romans then the Priests could not enter the temple without becoming unclean. But if the priests did not enter, how could Passover ceremonies take place?

We are aware of hundreds of Jewish purity laws. Yet there is no known text of a Jewish law forbiding priests from entering a house with Romans. If there were some secret heterto unknown purity laws against entering a building with Roman soldiers, why did this not cause an immediate crisis. Not only didn't it cause a crisis, but apparently having Roman soldiers in the temple itself during Passover was a normal and accepted occurence.

Apparently, we are to believe there was a law forbidding Jewish priests from entering into homes of Roman officials on Passover, but the law did not forbid Jewish Priests from entering into the temple with 4,000 Roman soldiers present on Passover.

I'm wondering what the Priests would have done, if Pilate had refused to come out early on that Passover morning and had invited them inside instead. After all, procurators normally lived in Caesarea, so Pilate just happened to be visiting that day before Passover. Would they have said, "Sorry, you and your Romans are unclean, and if we step inside a building with you, we will become unclean too. But we want you to put this guy to death for us, so get out here as quickly as you can. We have a big day of ritually slaughtering thousands of animals ahead of us, so we want you to do us this favor and hold a trial immediately."

In my opinion the unknown Jewish purity law of forbidding priests from entering homes with Romans in them on Passover is as fabulous as the idea of a Roman Custom allowing the Jews to free one prisoner at Passover.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spin

It's not the leather itself but the working in leather. People who wrote scrolls, tephilin (phylacteries) and mezuzot were of professions which would never bring "a sign of blessing" (b.Pes. 50b Bar.). Tanners were a despised profession (b.Kidd. 82a Bar.) along with herdsmen and butchers (M.Kidd. 4.14).

Soldiers were supposed to wash their garments, Num 31:20, which included "every article of skin". Not doing so meant that the person was unclean and would impart impurity. Roman soldiers not being bound by such laws would be in a constant state of impurity.


(Still using that online Whiston source with its errors.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay ...there happened a great tumult at the city of Jerusalem, and many of the Jews perished therein. But I shall first explain the occasion whence it was derived. When that feast which is called the passover was at hand, at which time our custom is to use unleavened bread, and a great multitude was gathered together from all parts to that feast, Cumanus was afraid lest some attempt of innovation should then be made by them; so he ordered that one regiment of the army should take their arms, and stand in the temple cloisters, to repress any attempts of innovation, if perchance any such should begin; and this was no more than what the former procurators of Judea did at such festivals.But on the fourth day of the feast, a certain soldier let down his breeches, and exposed his privy members to the multitude

To clarify, the soldiers were inside the temple precinct and not the temple proper. No-one other than priest were allowed in the temple. The soldiers were in the cloisters of the temple, ie cloisters surrounding the court outside the the temple proper. Being outside the temple, priests could avoid them, and even ordinary Jews could safely negotiate entry and exit without coming into contact with the soldiers.

Things suddenly got out of hand when one of the soldiers dropped his breeches.

This is a strawman. No-one is talking about having no communication with Romans per se, but about avoiding risks of loss of purity.

But then no-one claimed there was. The entry into a place where Roman soldiers were stationed put priests at risk for reasons already explained.

The source passage does not allow you to claim that it was either normal or accepted. You might make a case for it being tolerated on this occasion.

Rubbish, PhilosopherJay. That is an extraordinarily unperceptive analysis for reasons already given in this response.

My comment was about the reasonable representation of purity concerns, not about your adherence to the narrative tradition that you seem to be acknowledging.

Persistently off the matter from beginning to end. Where did you get this notion of "entering Roman homes" from? Definitely not from anything I said. PhilosopherJay, we were dealing with ritual purity. Risk of impurity was avoided in those days. You avoided houses with menstruating women, with dead bodies, with unclean meat (ie from the wrong animals), and you avoid people who are ritually unclean, which would normally include Roman soldiers who were at the lowest purity level with the 'am ha-'aretz, the people of the land, those who do not recite the Shema every evening. Jews concerned with ritual purity would necessarily avoid Roman soldiers because of the likelihood of impurity through ignorance.

The Roman soldiers in the temple would have been a grave attack on the cultus for adherents, but as long as they could be tolerated proceedings could go on. Had a soldier touched someone they would probably have been considered unclean. One avoided places where Roman soldiers were wherever possible, so the priest refusing to go into the praetorium is quite reasonable, as the priests were by necessity concerned with ritual purity, for the loss of purity meant exclusion from performing the cult ritual.


spin

NatSciNarg

Hi Koyaanisqatsi,
Just wanted to add my tuppence worth to try to keep this debate on a civilised level and on the point...

I'm sure spin is more than capable of fighting his own corner on this, if he wants, but it seems to me that there are two problems with your post:
1) You appear to be taking spin's words out of context. Surely the 'actual points' refers to your comment
about which spin does not appear to disagree with your position, but rather shows a lack of any interest:
...
So, since neither appear to be arguing that Pilate could fear blackmail, perhaps the two of you could let it lie and you (Koy) can concentrate your fire on this against Phoenix From Ashes, who does argue that position.


2) The point where spin does seem to disagree with you is over the extent to which Pilate was any more infamous or brutal or whatever than other governers of the day. I don't have sufficient knowledge to argue either way, but I was confused by something in your post:

If it would have been part of the 'job description' of someone like Pilate to carry out anticipatory military action to quell any possible uprising, and from that we can infer that he wouldn't be the kind of person that would bow to the wishes of the mob, how is Pilate any different to any other Roman governer faced with possible insurrection? Surely, if is part of the 'job description' then not just Pilate, but any Roman governer, would not be blackmailed in this way. Thus, there is no need to argue that Pilate was one of the most brutal, infamous tyrants (or whatever) in order to point out how silly the blackmail idea is.

Best wishes,
Matthew

Dargo

You'd think if Pilate really believed Jesus to be innocent and was trying to appease the masses he could have chosen a less painful execution method like beheading. Crucifixion was used only for insurrectionists and escaped slaves.

Didn't Josephus write that the Jews didn't lose the right to perform executions until after the revolt in the 60's?

Koyaanisqatsi

NatSciNarg, Spin took issue with my use of hyperbole (in his opinion) regarding my describing Pilate as "one of the most brutal governors."

Nothing else about his sidetrack had any bearing on anything we were discussing as he conceded, so you may wish to ask him why the derail?

Koyaanisqatsi

The gospels claim that two attempts at stoning Jesus had already previously occurred, so apparently so.