Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Justin70 · 03-16-2003, 08:37 PM

Prefect - An official who was appointed by a Magistrate for a fixed period and a special task. Only the emperor was allowed to appoint Prefects.

Procurator - Roman official appointed by a Magistrate or the emperor.

Pontius Pilate is stated in an inscription to be a Prefect yet in other writings I see him labeled as a Procurator.

Question: Which is he? And can these terms be used interchangably?

(Doing some research to define a few terms and came across this so I thought you guys could help me

)

Justin

Secular Pinoy · 03-17-2003, 02:37 AM

From this webpage:

Quote:

(i) Doherty repeats Wells' mistaken claim that "procurator...was the title of [Pilate's] post in Tacitus' day, but in the reign of Tiberius such governors were called prefect" (p. 202). A few years ago, correspondence with Wells on this point inspired me to thoroughly investigate this claim, and my findings will eventually be published. But in short, this sentence is entirely wrong. It seems evident from all the source material available that the post was always a prefecture, and also a procuratorship. Pilate was almost certainly holding both posts simultaneously, a practice that was likely established from the start when Judaea was annexed in 6 A.D. And since it is more insulting (to an elitist like Tacitus and his readers) to be a procurator, and even more insulting to be executed by one, it is likely Tacitus chose that office out of his well-known sense of malicious wit. Tacitus was also a routine employer of variatio, deliberately seeking nonstandard ways of saying things (it is one of several markers of Tacitean style). So there is nothing unusual about his choice here._ But despite being wrong about this, Doherty's conclusion is still correct: it is inconceivable that there were any records of Jesus for Tacitus to consult in Rome (for many reasons, not the least of which being that Rome's capitol had burned to the ground more than once in the interim), and even less conceivable that he would have dug through them even if they existed (just imagine an aristocrat rifling through literally tens of thousands of barely legible documents on a wild goose chase for a mere digression). It would simply be too easy to just ask a Christian--or a colleague who had done so: Pliny the Younger was Tacitus' friend and governed a neighboring province in 112 A.D. when we know Pliny interrogated Christians; they met and corresponded regularly, and there can be no doubt that what Pliny discovered was passed on to his friend and neighboring magistrate. (On Thallus and Phlegon, whom Doherty rightly dismisses on p. 203, see my " Thallus: An Analysis ").

03-16-2003, 08:37 PM	#1
Justin70 Regular Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Vancouver, WA Posts: 314	Prefect and Procurator Prefect - An official who was appointed by a Magistrate for a fixed period and a special task. Only the emperor was allowed to appoint Prefects. Procurator - Roman official appointed by a Magistrate or the emperor. Pontius Pilate is stated in an inscription to be a Prefect yet in other writings I see him labeled as a Procurator. Question: Which is he? And can these terms be used interchangably? (Doing some research to define a few terms and came across this so I thought you guys could help me ) Justin

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