Basic reason why the name of Pilate was absent in the Earliest Passion Story extrapolated from Mark

[Giuseppe]

What else could Klinghardt claim?

even apart from Klinghardt, even under the Markan priority, I have to assume a proto-Gospel without the released Barabbas, and therefore without the releaser Pilate. In the place of the latter, an anonymous Roman "governor", traces of which are survived in Matthew (for example in Matthew 27:11: "Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him").

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

even apart from Klinghardt, even under the Markan priority, I have to assume a proto-Gospel without the released Barabbas, and therefore without the releaser Pilate. In the place of the latter, an anonymous Roman "governor", traces of which are survived in Matthew (for example in Matthew 27:11: "Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him").

No problem. That was the starting point of our little discussion. There is actually this “proto-Gospel” in Paul’s letters. I just asked what your reasons were for suspecting it separately in the form of a "Gospel" and you have already explained your reasons in a comprehensible way.

[Giuseppe]

There is actually this “proto-Gospel” in Paul’s letters.

I don't know if you insist in repeating this false claim because of ignorance or of indifference about the best mythicist paradigm that assumes demons as the original killers in Paul, and not Romans.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

There is actually this “proto-Gospel” in Paul’s letters.

I don't know if you insist in repeating this false claim because of ignorance or of indifference about the best mythicist paradigm that assumes demons as the original killers in Paul, and not Romans.

Eh, it was just about Pilate and Barabbas. And I said that I found your reasons understandable.

Regardless of all this, I am actually ignorant and indifferent about this "best mythicist paradigm". In GMark, people are often demonized and the demons act almost humanly. They were all already wondering and thinking about Paul's Archons back then! It's even in GMarcion.

Pity for the mythicists!

[davidmartin]

I'm glad to here it! I like to know why i'm confused
but it's not a feminist theory if you think that's what happened though and they all stole off her and didn't attribute, that happens. someone that opposes feminism isn't going to come up with a theory like that but it doesn't mean only someone that was a feminist would develop it they just wouldn't be in principle opposed to it

You're right, but without some kind of fondness for Mary or at least a specific interest one certainly wouldn't do that.

or a specific discovery to go along with an initial fondness!
Mary in John's gospel is contrasted favourably to the Song of Solomon. a fact ignored bluh bah blah "nothing to see here". but i don't ignore it
instead Mary's role as a witness can then be built upon with some more speculative evidences (eg the woman at the well) into quite a convincing picture (not to mention the non-canonical stuff) of a 'mary proto-gospel' in circulation or collection of sources

as for the gospels pre-dating the epistles, unfortunately certain mythicists have bolted themselves to Paul and rise or fall with him. thats their bad luck. over in the gospel primacy corner yes there are very traditional apologists but that's not all, also folk that just think 'damn, these must be earlier' based on various evidences.

i talked to ML about the proto-gospel in the epistles. i think there is the faintest hint of one but i do not care. the epistles explicitly deny and avoid anything to do with the historical Jesus by intention. so it means nothing to me there's not much in them to go on - precisely as expected and advertised. the epistles are just like the gnostic texts - avoid the historical jesus. we assume the gospels were widely accepted early on, i doubt that they were but not that they predate the epistles by a fair margin

the obsession with early dating Paul is a fad that will pass in time

[Joseph D. L.]

@Giuseppe

I was just thinking about this today.

If Pilate and Barabbas was symbolic criticisms of a certain belief of Christ, could not this also apply to Herod also?

I was thinking about his campaign to kill the infants would be a Marcionite idea of YHWH and the firstborn of Egypt.

Just a thought. What do you say about that?

I disagree. Herod works as the Jews: they are the bad guys, the Romans are the good guys. Diplomatic reasons: mere apology here.

But doesn't that make Herod a Marcionite polemic all the same?

[Giuseppe]

But doesn't that make Herod a Marcionite polemic all the same?

yes, but a late polemic (since hardly the Romans were added after). Barabbas was absent in proto-John but he is found in *Ev: a good example of how even an anti-marcionite interpolation was absorbed and ultimately accepted in a marcionite gospel. Hence I don't follow more the authors who assume the Jews (or a "king") as the original killers in a gospel. The exact reason I can't follow Enrico Norelli in his presumption that the "king" and the "sons of Israel" were found in the original layer of the Ascension of Isaiah.

[DrSarah]

If in a story (assumed to be symbolical for a lot of other reasons) it is said obsessively that "Pelet releases someone", then one can't fail to remember that "Pelet" means "deliverance" therefore (i.e.: not coincidentially) he is portrayed while he releases/delivers someone, as according to his name. [/quote]

Giuseppe, I think you’re focusing so much on tiny details you’ve picked out that they become exaggerated in your mind and you lose track of the whole picture.

Firstly, in the story we’re looking at, it’s not ‘said obsessively that “Pelet releases someone”’. It is said once that Pilatos releases someone. Not only that, but, in context, this is a) a minor part of the story and b) presented strongly as something for which Pilatos doesn’t even take responsibility. The actual story is about the execution of Jesus, presented with Pilate as unwilling executioner pressured into it by the Jews. The only reason the release of Barabbas is even presented within the story is as a way of showing that the Jews (with Pilate as their unwilling tool) could have had Jesus freed but deliberately chose not to.

Yet your claims would require an author to be trying to present this story as making this - Pilate’s minor action of freeing Barabbas, performed only under pressure – into his main trait. Your claims would require this to be such a key action in the author’s mind that he bases Pilate’s name on it. You’re claiming that, on the basis of this one secondary and unwanted action, Pilate is described not even as a ‘releaser’, but as a ‘deliverer’, which is a word which typically carries connotations of active rescue and help rather than just passively releasing someone in response to pressure. (While it’s hard to be certain of the extent to which that works in the Hebrew, the implication from the bits we’ve looked at so far certainly seem to be there.) And yet you’re also claiming that, despite finding this so important, this author also chooses the name on the basis of wordplay in another language that he knows most of the intended readership won’t even know.

And you’re insisting that this chain of events is not only plausible, but the only possible explanation, because you don’t believe that ‘three of the four consonants in this person’s name happened to coincide with a term of some tangential relevance in another language’ is feasible at all as a coincidence.

As parallel, consider the etymology of Judas’s nickname ’Iskariṓt(h): one can derive it from the Hebrew/Aramaic verb šāqar/šeqar (“to lie, deceive, slander”, sc. “to violate (a treaty, etc.)”, “to betray” [the latter meaning is attested in Samaritan Aramaic] therefore (i.e.: not coincidentially) he is portrayed while he betrayes/deceives someone, as according to his name.

But you and Secret Alias are claiming that Judas Iskarioth can't be rendered as "Judash the one who deceives/betrayes" because there is none prefix "h" that allows a reading of "šāqar" in the active sense and different from the meaning of "the one who is deceived/betrayed", with the comical result that legitimacy is given to the interpretation of Iskarioth as the victim (sic) and not the author of the betrayal.

Well, I wasn't claiming this because I’d never heard that interpretation previously; I’d heard theories that ‘Iscariot’ meant either ‘man from Kerioth’ or ‘knife-man’. But based on what you say, yes, I agree that the name doesn't seem to be referring to 'betrayer'. However, with this one at least you’re starting with a higher probability, in that betraying Jesus is Judas’s main function within the story, whereas ‘delivering’ Barabbas, if it can even be called that, is an incidental side-effect of what Pilate does in the story.

Hence the my point is that the context dictates the choice of the active sense over the passive sense, or viceversa. The immediate context decides that the "deliverance" read in Pilate must be interpreted in the active sense as "the one who releases", contra the opposed reading of "deliverance" in Pilate as "the one who is released by God".

No, because the ‘immediate context’ here is that Pilate’s main role of the story is the complete opposite of ‘deliverer’. His role in the story is a) to order Jesus’s execution and b) to object to the way those nasty Jews are making him do it.

Do you seriously believe that an author looked at that story and saw Barabbas’s release as the main thing for which Pilate should be named? And that that’s more likely than the idea that three consonants in Pilate’s name just coincidentally happened to correspond to something vaguely similar in another language?

[DrSarah]

Why would an ancient religious writer have transformed a myth into such a sober, brief, and seemingly historical account?

because the first need of the propaganda among gentile masses required that the original myth was understood in clear sober, brief and seemingly historical terms.

Why?

It's not like those 'gentile masses' didn't understand the concept of divine beings living in other realms; that was a fairly widespread belief. Why would that be regarded as such a complicated concept that Jesus's death had to be portrayed as having happened on earth?

And since when did spelling out myths in 'sober, brief and seemingly historical terms' make them more palatable? Myths get told as stories and embroidered for people to enjoy and appreciate. That's the normal way of passing them on, not a dry 'just the facts, ma'am' approach.

For two reasons the "dry 'just the facts, ma'am' approach" was necessary, a day:

• 1) The Romans were pragmatic people and if you want to address them, then a such kind of approach was someway necessary.

Firstly, while I’m not a historian, what I’ve read is that rhetoric was actually considered the appropriate method of convincing others in the Hellenistic world. From McGaughy, Dewey, Hoo-ver & Schmidt, ‘The Authentic Letters of Paul’:

It is crucial for a reader of ancient writings to recognize the influence and pervasiveness of rheto-ric. For the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world rhetoric was the heart of formal education. […] Ancient writings, such as Galatians, were composed and delivered aloud according to such ancient principles. […] Rhetoric is the type of discourse by which a speaker or writer attempts to persuade the audience to accomplish his or her purposes. This is effected through the treatment of subject matter, the use of evidence, argumentation, the control of emotion, and the choice and arrange-ment of words. […] One would draw upon various forms of evidence to establish one’s own credi-bility (ethos) before the audience. There would also be a variety of ways in which the speaker played upon the emotional reactions of the audience (pathos). Finally, through either inductive or deductive argument the speaker would advance his position (logos).’

So, not a ‘just the facts’ approach, then.

But a bigger problem is that, according to your argument, the author of the trial scenes was pre-senting something that was the opposite of ‘just the facts’; you’re claiming that this scene was completely invented. Not only that, but you’re claiming that the entire idea of Jesus having lived on earth had been invented. So, once again: what is the motivation meant to have been for this? Why were people supposedly so keen to invent a crucified Jesus who had lived on earth?

• 2) after the 70 and until to 135 there was a recrudescence of militant messianism in Judea and in the Diaspora: in the same period, the early anti-demiurgist communities started to proclaim that Jesus was the Son of an unknown Father who was not YHWH. If Jesus was not the son of YHWH, then Jesus was not the Messiah of YHWH, therefore he couldn't compete with the messianic claims made by real messianists in Judea. As reaction, the dry 'just the facts, ma'am' approach becomes necessary in order to explain in clear terms that Jesus was the Messiah of YHWH even if he was crucified, indeed, just because he was crucified! So in the same time "evidence" is given to prove that Jesus adored YHWH as supreme god and was his messiah and not the envoy of an alien god.

I don’t even know where to start with this. How would inventing a trial and sentence that didn’t happen have anything to do with proving that Jesus was the Messiah or the son of YHWH?

[Giuseppe]

It seems to me that your resistance to the argument is due mainly to a wrong premise. I list all the occurrences of a such wrong premise in your quote:

Firstly, in the story we’re looking at, it’s not ‘said obsessively that “Pelet releases someone”’. It is said once that Pilatos releases someone.

[...]

Yet your claims would require an author to be trying to present this story as making this - Pilate’s minor action of freeing Barabbas, performed only under pressure – into his main trait.

[...]

However, with this one at least you’re starting with a higher probability, in that betraying Jesus is Judas’s main function within the story, whereas ‘delivering’ Barabbas, if it can even be called that, is an incidental side-effect of what Pilate does in the story.

[...]

Do you seriously believe that an author looked at that story and saw Barabbas’s release as the main thing for which Pilate should be named?

Now read again the my post that derived the attention of Kunigunde in this thread:

Now I come to the affair of the "coincidence".

Is it a coincidence the repeated emphasis on the verb "to release" in Mark:

Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7 A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8 The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9 “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, 10 knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
12 “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
13 “Crucify him!” they shouted.
14 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
15 Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

My point is that the insiders would have realized easily the irony. If for 4 times the verb "to release" is repeated, then by induction it would occur with a good probability also a fifth time by reading it behind "Pilate".

Even in Acts 3:13 there is the same emphasis:

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go.

...even if I don't claim that the author of Acts was aware of the irony (he was not an insider).

Sic stantibus rebus, have I the right to deny the possibility of a mere coincidence?

The Kunigunde's first reaction was the following:

Nice overview! I agree with you that it is not a coincidence. Mark repeated the verb several times and clearly wanted to emphasize it.

Hence, dr Sarah, while agreeing with you that the release of Barabbas is "an incidental side-effect of what Pilate does in the story", the point remains that Pilate is the guy in the story who wants, or would have wanted, the release of Jesus, beyond if a such release was towards freedom or towards death.
See in particular Mark 15:15:

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

Hence the main trait of Pilate is his will of releasing Jesus [note: Jesus, not Barabbas], beyond if he ended to release the rival of Jesus, i.e. Barabbas. And beyond if he ended to release Jesus to his final executioners ("to be crucified").

The function of releaser for Pilate is reiterated in Mark 15:45, where Barabbas is completely absent but the idea of a "release" survives yet:

Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. 45 When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he released the body to Joseph

Hence I am fully justified to reduce Pilate to the Releaser, just with the same high probability I have already reduced "Iskarioth" to "Betrayer" or "Judas" to "Judaeus".