ynquirer

Not to abuse Roman law but just to change his mind for the sake of appeasement:

Pilate, being sent by Tiberius as prefect to Judaea, introduced into Jerusalem by night and under cover the effigies of Caesar which are called standards.

This proceeding, when day broke, aroused immense excitement among the Jews; those on the spot were in consternation, considering their laws to have been trampled under foot, as those laws permit no image to be erected in the city; while the indignation of the townspeople stirred the countryfolk, who flocked together in crowds.

Hastening after Pilate to Caesarea, the Jews implored him to remove the standards from Jerusalem and to uphold the laws of their ancestors. When Pilate refused, they fell prostrate around his palace and for five whole days and nights remained motionless in that position.

On the ensuing day Pilate took his seat on his tribunal in the great stadium and summoning the multitude, with the apparent intention of answering them, gave the arranged signal to his armed soldiers to surround the Jews.

Finding themselves in a ring of troops, three deep, the Jews were struck dumb at this unexpected sight. Pilate, after threatening to cut them down, if they refused to admit Caesar's images, signaled to the soldiers to draw their swords.

Thereupon the Jews, as by concerted action, flung themselves in a body on the ground, extended their necks, and exclaimed that they were ready rather to die than to transgress the law. Overcome with astonishment at such intense religious zeal, Pilate gave orders for the immediate removal of the standards from Jerusalem.

(Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War 2.169-174)

Thanks. Just one more question: How old were the students put to test?

Julian

I am slightly pressed for time here so I will be a bit general. Jesus keeps his identity secret in Mark. He never really states his identity directly. It is out of character for him to suddenly flat out state that he is the messiah in an abrupt manner such as this. Also, the synoptics use the more vague statement when they generally have no reason to do so. It looks like a legacy from Mark, given the longer reading.

It is true that a caesarean attestation is somewhat weak but I don't have NA27 so Swanson is all I can rely on here but I would bet money on the fact that the read reading is also attested by Origen, but I have no way of checking this.

Julian

JoeWallack

JW:
"Mark" has no Explicit statement that anyone other than the Young Man Angel Believed that there was a Post Death Jesus. The Primary Implication from "Mark" is also that No one else Believed that there was a Post Death Jesus. For someone we agree was trying to promote Belief in a Post Dead Jesus it would be strange to give this presentation if he thought someone in the story did believe in a Post Dead Jesus. I would agree with you Ben that the Positive response towards Jesus by the Lesser characters gives some Implication that they Believed in Jesus but in a Way unspecified by the Author. However:

JW:
So the abundance of Contrivances in General makes it less Likely that a Specific one was Intentional. You are well read (Apologetics).

JW:
Lessee what we have here than. According to "Mark":

1) Most, possibly all people in the story, did not believe in a Post Dead Jesus.

2) Positive response to Jesus was Inversely proportional to how well you knew him.

Now 1) sounds likely historical but 2) Ben? Is 2) Likely to have a strong historical core? Is that The Way it usually Works? Or is what we have here a Failure to Communicate?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

TedM

What we have in Mark appears to be Pilate being unsure of any wrongdong by Jesus, but having knowledge of Jesus as a politcal problem, and Pilate wanting to satisfy the raging crowd. Why do you think you know Pilate well enough to conclude that under these circumstances he decided to NOT do the thing that is most convenient for himself as opposed to acting on his doubt about the man's guilt and taking a risk of further problems down the road? Why is a self-serving action on his part absurd to you?


Why should one be required? It is human nature to take convenient action to take care of an immediate problem. Do you have any reason whatsoever to think that Pilate has some level of respect for Jews in general? Doesn't the record in Josephus show him to not really be a fair man toward the Jews?

ted

pharoah

What makes you think that Mark quoted Exodus 23:20? It seems to me that he was quoting Malachi 3:1:

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts

Diogenes the Cynic

I was saying two things. One, that it makes no sense for the crowd to be angry about a charge that they themselves invented. It implies that they would have already had some bone to pick before the false charge or else they wouldn't have invented a false charge. If the Temple threat was not the reason (as Mark implies) then they must have been out to get Jesus for another reason. What was it?

Secondly, I was saying that the blasphemy charge is explicitly identified as being something that Jesus said before the High Priest so the temple threat (which isn't blasphemous anyway, although it could be a crime) doesn't enter into the blasphemy conviction. If the Sanhedrin felt that Jesus had threatened the Temple they had the right of summary execution just for that. They didn't have to invent a false blasphemy charge.
I don't think "goodness" is really the issue. They didn't necessarily have to be "good" but it is highly doubtful that they would carry out a trial which was so illegetimate in virtually every respect and in such a public way. If they were going to ignore all the rules (and go so far as to hold a trial on Passover) then there was no need to even pretend. Anyone they would have been performing for would have known the trial was illegitimate, so what was the point? The Sanhedrin was a serious legal body, not a bunch of mustachioed, cartoon villains. Believing Mark's trial is the euivalent of believing that the Supreme Court of the US would hold a hearing in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve at the home of the Chief Justice, spit on a witness and then declare a ruling without deliberating and which was clearly counter to the Constitution. You don't have to believe that each member of the Supreme Court is as pure as the driven snow, but the entirety of the allegations just beggars credibility.
Perhaps, but Josephus does not say that Ananus violated Jewish law in such flagrant and repeated ways as Mark's trial.
Josephus named several just from the 1st century. Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and an unnamed "Egyptian," to name a few. Josephus also implies that there were many more. Aspiring Messiahs seem to have been as common as dirt in Jesus' time. none of them were ever accused of blasphemy.
I don't believe that Matthew's audience was Jewish, so he didn't feel it was necessary. Remember, Matthew had no problem with misrepresenting Hebrew scripture and completely redefining the Messiah. If he had any fear of being corrected or called on misrepresentations of Judaism he was already plenty open just on his distortions of scripture and prophecy. Mark's trial didn't make much more difference and Matthew had an anti-Jewish polemic he wanted to push.
The Sadducees were in opposition the Pharisees as well. So were the Essenes. Yet the Sanhedrin wasn't holding kangaroo courts for any of them. Debate and verbal sparring was simply part of the religious culture. They represented rhetorical exercises, for the most part, not blood feuds. They were not unlike some of the discussions on this board.

Of course, we also have to stipulate that we don't know what Jesus actually said or didn't say so it's kind of hard to parse the effect of his sayings wthout knowing what's authentic.

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't follow this at all. Mark calls a John the Baptist a "messenger" so therefore Jesus must have spoken Hebrew to the High Priest? You're going to have to connect the dots for me there.
Probably not. Hebrew was no longer a spoken language in Palestine and especially not in Galilee. Peasants spoke Aramaic (or maybe some Greek). Hebrew was a language of scripture and written study only. Illiterate artisans from Galilee would have had no opportunity to learn Hebrew without some sort of formal training. A peasant knowin Hebrew would have been roughly the equivalent of an illiterate peasant from a rural village in 10th century France being conversant in Church Latin.
I don't have to be a time traveller to know that Aramaic was the spoken language of 1st century Jewish Palestinians.

Amaleq13

Pilate didn't change his mind for the sake of appeasement. He changed his mind because he realized that he, if he didn't, he would have to commit mass homicide. Everything about this story fails to support the Gospel fiction. Pilate was an asshole who totally disregarded Jewish sensibilities . He responded to resistance with violence and only conceded when placed in an untenable situation by the willingness of his "subjects" to die for their beliefs.

This story does absolutely nothing to make the Gospel fiction scene credible as history.

I've worked with students from around 2-3 to 22. Basically anybody in the public education system from pre-school to the last year of high school.

Amaleq13

We have Pilate finding no good reason to execute Jesus, treating claims of political aspirations as a joke, and having that joke confirmed by not only the absence of any popular support but a crowd eager to see him die. Despite all that, we have Pilate agreeing to free a convicted criminal (a seditionist no less if we believe Luke!) and agreeing to kill a man he considered innocent of any crime in response to an angry mob that sounds like it would have killed him themselves had he freed Jesus. What we have is bad fiction that only faith can make credible.

No, and that is why the notion of him offering clemency to convicted criminals for Passover and the notion of him agreeing to kill a man he considered innocent in order to appease the Jews are absurd.

Amaleq13

In fact, he implies that Ananus wouldn't have even tried to get away with his actions had the new procurator been in town.