Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Ben C Smith · 06-01-2009, 04:18 PM

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Originally Posted by Kapyong

I did even find one reference to the "Pilate of the ship", which makes up for all those "Pontius Pilot" references :-)

Ben.

Solo · 06-01-2009, 04:32 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

I do not see this as a nice piece of detective work. Detective work would involve actually finding that error in the Soviet Encyclopedia and tracing a copy of the Encyclopedia in question to a source where it might have been read by the sort of apologist under discussion here. Instead, GDon has floated a possibility that the Christian apologists were not lying because there was one such claim in an early edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and asked others to do the work of tracking down the evidence.

FWIW, I tracked down an online version of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia with an article on Pontius Pilate. Though I am not making any representations as to the year of the article, it is generally in keeping with the post-Stalinist style of socialist 'objectivity'. The only shocking thing I have found is the crediting of Testimonium Flavianum as genuine by the author, I.D. Amusin. Got one past the censors, I suppose.

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Большая советская энциклопедия←

→Понтий Пилат(Pontius Pilatus), римский прокуратор Иудеи в 26—36. Правление жестокого и коварного П. П. ознаменовалось насилиями и казнями. Налоговый и политический гнёт, провокационные действия П. П., оскорблявшие религиозные верования и обычаи иудеев, вызывали массовые народные выступления, беспощадно подавлявшиеся. Согласно Иосифу Флавию и новозаветной традиции, П. П. приговорил к распятию Иисуса Христа. По евангельскому рассказу, П. П. при этом "взял воды и умыл руки перед народом", использовав, т. о., старинный иудейский обычай, символизировавший невиновность в пролитии крови (отсюда выражение "умыть руки"). После жалобы самаритян на кровавую расправу, учинённую над ними П. П., в 36 римский легат в Сирии Вителлий отстранил его от должности и отправил в Рим. Дальнейшая судьба П. П. неизвестна. Согласно Евсевию Кесарийскому (4 в.), П. П. покончил с собой; по др. сообщениям, П. П. казнён Нероном. Первоначальная враждебность христианства к П. П. постепенно исчезает, и "раскаявшийся" и "обратившийся к христианству" П. П. становится героем ряда новозаветных апокрифов, а коптская церковь даже канонизировала П. П. и его жену. Образ П. П. нашёл отражение в художественной литературе (например, "Мастер и Маргарита" М. Булгакова, "Прокуратор Иудеи" А. Франса) и в изобразительном искусстве (например, "Христос перед Пилатом" Рембрандта, "Что есть истина?" Н. Н. Ге).

My translation:

GREAT SOVIET ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Pontius Pilate, Roman Procurator of Judea in 26-36 CE. The rule of the cruel and perfidious P.P. was marked by violence and executions. High taxes and political oppression, acts of provocation by P.P., his insulting attitude to Jewish religious and cultural traditions, gave rise to mass national unrest, which was mercilessly suppressed. According to Josephus Flavius, and the New Testament tradition, P.P. sentenced Jesus Christ to crucifixion. In a gospel story, while sentencing, P.P. “washed his hands before a crowd”, using an old Jewish custom which symbolized his innocence in the shedding of blood (whence ‘to wash one’s hands’). After a complaint by the Samaritans of a bloody assault, A Roman legate in Syria, Vitellius removed him from office and dispatched him to Rome. The fate of P.P. is unknown from that time on. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, he committed suicide; other sources claim he was executed by Nero. The initial hostility by Christians to P.P. gradually disappeared, and “repentant” or “converted” P.P. became a hero of a number of apocryphal works. The Coptic church even canonized P.P. and his wife. The image of P.P. found expression in fiction (e.g. Bulgakov’s ‘Master and Margarita’, Anatole France’s ‘Procurator of Judea’) and paintings (e.g. ‘Christ before Pilate’ by Rembrandt, and ‘What is Truth ?’ by N.N.Ge (?))

web page here

Jiri

Toto · 06-01-2009, 04:37 PM

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Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

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Originally Posted by Toto

He has, after all, contributed a chapter to a book by JP Holding.

Guilty by association, then?

Just a clue as to his motivation.

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Case in point. What I cannot fathom is how you can have somehow missed the unbelievably numerous statements on his part that his work on the second century apologists does not prove there was an historical Jesus. This is exactly what I was talking about. You are not reading GDon.

But his whole purpose appears to me to be to discredit Doherty's observations about the "sounds of silence." So, while he may not claim to be able to prove that there was a historical Jesus, he does appear to try to counter the evidence for a mythical Jesus. And what was the purpose of JP Holding's work?

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Perhaps detective work is not the right term. Perhaps a nice hypothesis based on a nice piece of intuition.

Detective work is definitely not the right term.

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He said it was a possibility. He used the term might. But where did he stress that the apologists were not lying? ....

He didn't stress that, but why else is he trying to find an actual mythicist who claimed that Pilate was a myth? I think that you are the one who has read this as just trying to find an explanation for the obvious error. GDon has not said anything along those lines.

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When you noticed that aa___ seemed to have misread the statement in Luke about John the baptist jumping in the womb, were you arguing that aa___ was not lying? Was that your point? Or were you just tracing the source of his or her weird comments?

aa____ is a special case.

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GDon did not use the terms lie or lying in the post that you responded to; nor did he use any synonyms for lying. Why exactly are you assuming that not lying was his point?

Because he is actually looking for a mythicist who claimed that Pilate was a myth, not just an explanation for an obvious error. Roger Pearse has concluded from his speculation that there actually was such a claim.

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Is asking for help or information frowned upon on this forum?

I guess I found that request for help a bit disingenuous. Here's a wild speculation, is there any evidence to support it?

Ben C Smith · 06-01-2009, 04:39 PM

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Originally Posted by Steven Carr

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Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Who was that nutcase?

Ben.

Andrzej Niemojewski.

I was going by the title of the work, and his anti-Semitism...

I thought you might be referring to him, but, reading the snippet provided by Roger Pearse, I am inclined to suspect that not even Andrzej Niemojewski questioned the existence of an historical Pilate; rather, if the summary of his hypothesis by Drews is accurate, he saw Tacitus as having conflated a mythical Pilatus with the historical Pontius Pilate. IOW, unless Drews misrepresented Niemojewski, the list of known skeptics who questioned the existence of an historical Pontius Pilate is back down to zero.

Ben.

Ben C Smith · 06-01-2009, 04:50 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

But his whole purpose appears to me to be to discredit Doherty's observations about the "sounds of silence."

Yes. And that is just fine as a purpose. I am in full agreement that Doherty is way off base with regard to those particular silences. I am sympathetic to some kinds of mythicism (Wells mythicism, for example), but agree with GDon fully that the version Doherty has put into play does not pass muster. Nor does it take an historicist to notice that.

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So, while he may not claim to be able to prove that there was a historical Jesus, he does appear to try to counter the evidence for a mythical Jesus.

No, what he appears to do is to counter the evidence for the mythical Jesus as proposed by Doherty. He has stated several times that he thinks that the idea of Jesus mythicism is worth exploring; what he thinks is just plain wrong is Dohertian mythicism.

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He didn't stress that, but why else is he trying to find an actual mythicist who claimed that Pilate was a myth?

Does it never stop with you? Where did he try to find an actual mythicist who claimed that Pilate was a myth? His post did the exact opposite! It suggested that the whole notion that any mythicist ever claimed this sprang up from a misreading of Drews.

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I think that you are the one who has read this as just trying to find an explanation for the obvious error.

Here is GDon finding an explanation for the error:

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Originally Posted by GDon

So it might be that the thesis that "pilatus-man" was identified with an actual Pilate was understood by others as a claim that "there was no historical Pontius Pilate".

He even put the claim in quotes, man!

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GDon has not said anything along those lines.

Please read his own words above without your usual shaded spectacles. What does GDon mean when he says that the thesis that a pilatus man (in scare quotes) was identified with an actual Pilate (no scare quotes) was understood by others as a claim that there was no historical Pilate?

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Because he is actually looking for a mythicist who claimed that Pilate was a myth, not just an explanation for an obvious error.

GDon, were you actually looking for a mythicist who really made this claim that there was no historical Pilate?

Ben.

Toto · 06-01-2009, 04:59 PM

I got the impression that GDon is looking for a mythicist who misunderstood a claim in the Soviet Encyclopedia and stated that Pilate was a myth, rather than a Christian who misread that claim.

Roger Pearse seems to have read GDon the same way.

GakuseiDon · 06-01-2009, 05:14 PM

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Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Because he is actually looking for a mythicist who claimed that Pilate was a myth, not just an explanation for an obvious error.

GDon, were you actually looking for a mythicist who really made this claim that there was no historical Pilate?

No, and if Toto really felt that, then his response to my first post is bizarre: "Are you seriously contending that American evangelicals read the Great Soviet Encyclopedia? or Arthur Drews?"

GakuseiDon · 06-01-2009, 05:21 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

I got the impression that GDon is looking for a mythicist who misunderstood a claim in the Soviet Encyclopedia and stated that Pilate was a myth, rather than a Christian who misread that claim.

Toto, my second post explains what I was saying:

"... probably what happened is that people on both sides of the argument repeated comments like Drews' "the Pilate of the Christian legend was not originally an historical person", and that is how the idea grew. Given the comments I quoted above, I suspect the place to look is in publications coming out of the Soviet Union of that time."

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Originally Posted by Toto

He has argued very strenuously in favor of the idea that the lack of mention any details about a historical Jesus in the second century somehow excuses any mention of historical details in earlier works and proves that there was a historical Jesus.

Here is the link to the thread I created on this. Please retract the ridiculous comment that I was claiming that this "proves that there was a historical Jesus". Here is the FIRST paragraph in my OP in that thread:

I suspect that the lack of historical details regarding Jesus in Paul's letters is a major part of what convinces many that there is something to the ahistoricist position. And maybe they are correct. It's a good point, and I can only guess at reasons why Paul wrote this way. It isn't something I can readily explain away.

(ETA) I've reported Toto's behaviour of constantly questioning my motivation to the moderators, so I won't comment further on this, and ask others to do the same. Let's concentrate on the topic at hand.

Ben C Smith · 06-01-2009, 05:37 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

Are you seriously contending that American evangelicals read the Great Soviet Encyclopedia? or Arthur Drews?

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Originally Posted by Toto

I got the impression that GDon is looking for a mythicist who misunderstood a claim in the Soviet Encyclopedia and stated that Pilate was a myth, rather than a Christian who misread that claim.

If you thought GDon was looking for a mythicist who had read the Soviet Encyclopedia, why did you ask him incredulously if he was serious about American evangelicals reading the Soviet Encyclopedia?

Ben.

Toto · 06-01-2009, 06:06 PM

GDon was not as clear as he could have been. It appeared to me that GDon thought that the Soviet Encyclopedia contained such a claim, or a statement that could be interpreted that way. This could be the mythicist claiming that Pilate was a myth, and so I wondered how American apologists would have read this encyclopedia. The other possibility was that a mythicist had misinterpreted the Soviet Encyclopedia, but we seem to have no evidence of that.

GDon said "... probably what happened is that people on both sides of the argument repeated comments like Drews' "the Pilate of the Christian legend was not originally an historical person", and that is how the idea grew. Given the comments I quoted above, I suspect the place to look is in publications coming out of the Soviet Union of that time."

Perhaps I am overreacting to what I regard as a totally ridiculous, bizarre suggestion - that the Soviet Union would have been the source for a claim like this. Seriously - it this red baiting? Do you know anything about America? And where is there any evidence that this idea "grew?" It did not grow except by apologists repeating each other's claims.

As to whether GDon claimed that he had proof that Jesus existed, that was just a bit of what I thought was obvious hyperbole on my part, but I will take it back if you are so upset about it. But it is clear that GDon wants to disprove the idea that "there is something to the ahistoricist position," and I haven't heard him arguing for agnosticism - which leaves only one position.

So GDon - what are you claiming?

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06-01-2009, 04:59 PM	#36
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	I got the impression that GDon is looking for a mythicist who misunderstood a claim in the Soviet Encyclopedia and stated that Pilate was a myth, rather than a Christian who misread that claim. Roger Pearse seems to have read GDon the same way.

06-01-2009, 06:06 PM	#40
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	GDon was not as clear as he could have been. It appeared to me that GDon thought that the Soviet Encyclopedia contained such a claim, or a statement that could be interpreted that way. This could be the mythicist claiming that Pilate was a myth, and so I wondered how American apologists would have read this encyclopedia. The other possibility was that a mythicist had misinterpreted the Soviet Encyclopedia, but we seem to have no evidence of that. GDon said "... probably what happened is that people on both sides of the argument repeated comments like Drews' "the Pilate of the Christian legend was not originally an historical person", and that is how the idea grew. Given the comments I quoted above, I suspect the place to look is in publications coming out of the Soviet Union of that time." Perhaps I am overreacting to what I regard as a totally ridiculous, bizarre suggestion - that the Soviet Union would have been the source for a claim like this. Seriously - it this red baiting? Do you know anything about America? And where is there any evidence that this idea "grew?" It did not grow except by apologists repeating each other's claims. As to whether GDon claimed that he had proof that Jesus existed, that was just a bit of what I thought was obvious hyperbole on my part, but I will take it back if you are so upset about it. But it is clear that GDon wants to disprove the idea that "there is something to the ahistoricist position," and I haven't heard him arguing for agnosticism - which leaves only one position. So GDon - what are you claiming?

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