How do we know the ancient Romans didn’t destroy most of the evidence for Jesus?

[DCHindley]

This is actually a pretty serious issue.

I am pretty sure that in Antiquities 18 the events in the governorships of Valerius Gratus and Pontius Pilate have been tampered with (the lengths of their respective periods of office were changed, and probably events removed) in order to remove any possibility that the "Memoirs of Pilate" (Acta Pilati, purporting to be excerpts of P. Pilate's personal Commentarii(sp?), or note-book in which all good Roman public officials with juridical powers recorded their official acts and edicts as they happened, and published by flatterers of the Caesar Maximinus Daia in Asia Minor somewhere around 305 CE, could be authentic.

Those Memoirs, whether truly or falsely, specifically dates the events pertaining to Jesus to 19 21 CE. So, by changing chronology which originally limited Gratus' rule to 15-19 CE before being replaced by Pilate around 18-19 CE, making them each have 10 or 11 years of governorship, the redactor of Ant. 18 made it impossible for Pilate to have been the governor in 19 21 CE.

Since these memoir-books were not public documents but the governor's personal property, the question has to be asked: Could Maximinus' flatterers have actually obtained access to them to copy out excerpts? Pilate had been sent into exile Gaul around 37 CE. His family would likely have inherited any wealth he may have been allowed to retain from his period of governorship, but the surviving records do not tell us anything about his household after the exile. That area was under the command of the Augustus or Caesar of that region.

The rulers of the Tetrarchies were always at war with one another, coming and going, with the boundaries of their fiefdoms changing constantly as they pushed their way around to impose control, forming all sorts of alliances reaching across the empire. While free trade between quadrants was guaranteed by the Tetrarchy system, and seems to have been respected by all parties with few exceptions, it would be hard for political operatives to have worked openly to seek out stuff like Pilate's memoirs. AND, to make it more bizarre, Eusebius suggests that Max.'s flatterers also claimed to have got a copy of Jesus' own memoirs, as if he was a royal contender like the Hasmonean prince Antigonus II was when he rebelled against Herod's appointment as a Roman client king. Whatever these memoirs are purported to have said about Jesus, they were apparently not very flattering (in Roman terms).

But if they didn't, or couldn't, find the household and talk their way into a look at them, Max.'s flatterers could then just as well fabricated them to justify a crack-down on Christians in Max.'s quadrant of the Tetrarchy at that time. Christians were then what Muslims are today in the minds of the prejudiced - mindless or worse yet scheming fanatics who want to destroy "proper" society as it stood in Asia Minor & Syria, Max.'s Tetrarchy. Of course(tm) Christianity had long before then morphed into the mystery religion we know and love today, but it seems that they were upset by the charges that they were at heart revolutionaries with a radical social agenda.

Either way, to redact the text of the works of a published writer and pass it off as the unaltered version, I think would have required the authority and resources of Constantine himself once he claimed the regions of Rome and Gallia in 313 CE., or perhaps the entire empire around 324 CE. I mean, the support of Christians like Eusebius of Caesarea was that important for him.

That is pretty heavy stuff!! I figure that if someone could go to that extent to make something historical (or at least legendary/mythical) just "go away" then anything in the rest of Josephus' works that describes/dates events related to how Christians wanted their origins to be perceived, is open for question.

DCH

Edit, the date that the Acta attribute to Jesus' death was 21 CE, not 19 CE. 19 CE is apparently the date when Pilate was appointed governor in the unedited text of Josephus.

[Giuseppe]

This is actually a pretty serious issue.

I am pretty sure that in Antiquities 18 the events in the governorships of Valerius Gratus and Pontius Pilate have been tampered with (the lengths of their respective periods of office were changed, and probably events removed) in order to remove any possibility that the "Memoirs of Pilate" (Acta Pilati, purporting to be excerpts of P. Pilate's personal Commentarii(sp?), or note-book in which all good Roman public officials with juridical powers recorded their official acts and edicts as they happened, and published by flatterers of the Caesar Maximinus Daia in Asia Minor somewhere around 305 CE, could be authentic.

Seriously? Was The Acts of Pilate a threat so great against proto-orthodox belief to make it necessary an alteration of Josephus ? Not even Marcion had the great honour of being tampered in the Pagan sources (and even he would be Peregrinus according to Detering).

[Ben C. Smith]

This is actually a pretty serious issue.

I am pretty sure that in Antiquities 18 the events in the governorships of Valerius Gratus and Pontius Pilate have been tampered with (the lengths of their respective periods of office were changed, and probably events removed) in order to remove any possibility that the "Memoirs of Pilate" (Acta Pilati, purporting to be excerpts of P. Pilate's personal Commentarii(sp?), or note-book in which all good Roman public officials with juridical powers recorded their official acts and edicts as they happened, and published by flatterers of the Caesar Maximinus Daia in Asia Minor somewhere around 305 CE, could be authentic.

Those Memoirs, whether truly or falsely, specifically dates the events pertaining to Jesus to 19 CE. So, by changing chronology which originally limited Gratus' rule to 15-19 CE before being replaced by Pilate around 18-19 CE, making them each have 10 or 11 years of governorship, the redactor of Ant. 18 made it impossible for Pilate to have been the governor in 19 CE.

May I take it that these are the Acts to which you are referring?

Eusebius, History of the Church 1.9.1-3: 1 The historian already mentioned agrees with the evangelist in regard to the fact that Archelaus succeeded to the government after Herod. He records the manner in which he received the kingdom of the Jews by the will of his father Herod and by the decree of Caesar Augustus, and how, after he had reigned ten years, he lost his kingdom, and his brothers Philip and Herod the younger, with Lysanias, still ruled their own tetrarchies. The same writer, in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, says that about the twelfth year of the reign of Tiberius, who had succeeded to the empire after Augustus had ruled fifty-seven years, Pontius Pilate was entrusted with the government of Judea, and that he remained there ten full years, almost until the death of Tiberius. 2 Accordingly the forgery of those who have recently given currency to acts against our Savior is clearly proved. For the very date given in them shows the falsehood of their fabricators. 3 For the things which they have dared to say concerning the passion of the Savior are put into the fourth consulship of Tiberius, which occurred in the seventh year of his reign [= AD 20 or 21]; at which time it is plain that Pilate was not yet ruling in Judea, if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed, who clearly shows in the above-mentioned work that Pilate was made procurator of Judea by Tiberius in the twelfth year of his reign.

Do you have references for them having been published by flatters of Maximinus II?

[DCHindley]

This is actually a pretty serious issue.

I am pretty sure that in Antiquities 18 the events in the governorships of Valerius Gratus and Pontius Pilate have been tampered with (the lengths of their respective periods of office were changed, and probably events removed) in order to remove any possibility that the "Memoirs of Pilate" (Acta Pilati, purporting to be excerpts of P. Pilate's personal Commentarii(sp?), or note-book in which all good Roman public officials with juridical powers recorded their official acts and edicts as they happened, and published by flatterers of the Caesar Maximinus Daia in Asia Minor somewhere around 305 CE, could be authentic.

Seriously? Was The Acts of Pilate a threat so great against proto-orthodox belief to make it necessary an alteration of Josephus ? Not even Marcion had the great honour of being tampered in the Pagan sources (and even he would be Peregrinus according to Detering).

And yet it appears to have happened. If Jesus was a rebel who was caught in 21 CE, then the proto-Christian picture of him as a pacifist in the 30's CE is pretty much exploded. I'm not saying the Acta Pilati and Acts of Jesus are genuine or not. Eusebius thought they were fakes, but why wouldn't he, even if they were truly related to a rebel named Jesus in 21 CE? It may not be "our" Jesus. There could have been many Jesuses among rebel groups in the 1st century that we don't even know about, because they were classified as "bandits" and nobody thought it necessary to preserve for history records of every single bandit caught and crucified.

But yes, I think that Constantine desperately needed Christian support, and these Acta were perceived as a threat to them. Maximinus's flatterers were rounding up Christians for deportation to who knows where and expelling them from the Greek polities (cities with constitutions) in Asia Minor. There was talk of even more severe measures in Syria and Egypt once Diocletian, who imposed an edict of toleration in 305, dropped dead in 312 CE. "All bets are off!" and they felt they could do what they wanted with impunity.

After all, Constantine was the only staunch champion for Christians among the Augusti & Caesars of the Tetrarchy, but at first he only controlled the provinces of Gaul (ca. 306 CE), then Spain & Britain (307), took Africa from Domitius Alexander (311) and finally Italia from Maxentius(312). Meanwhile Maximinus was feeling pretty safe in his niche since becoming appointed as a Caesar in 305, with a territory stretching from Taurus to Egyptus (307-310 CE), and after being appointed an Augustus in 310 he was supposed to be in charge of the entire eastern empire (the Oriens), although the Augustus Licinius, occupied Thracia et Pontus (the northern fringes of Maximinus' territory) around 311 CE, to "help" him. Maximinus went to war with Licenius, but was beaten and committed suicide in 313.

As for Marcion, I think you and others have invented a "super Marcion" exerting a bigger influence on the development of proto-orthodox beliefs than he probably did in real life. The textual "seams" that suggest that someone tampered with Josephus book 18 regarding the periods of rule for the governors Gratus and Pilate are there to see. Constantine basically wiped them away by erasing any rival claim to the nature of Christian origins. I am not being a conspiracy theorist here. I think that once he took control of Rome in 312, he made an effort to neutralize what Maximinus had allowed his flatterers to claim about Christian origins. Apparently whatever was claimed in the Acta were consonant with things Josephus had said about Judea in the period 19-26 CE, so Constantine simply lopped the head off the hydra introduced by Maximinus' flatterers by excising these portions and changing the chronology to make it impossible for the Acta to be correct about Jesus. It was historical revisionism, sure, but history is written by the victors.

Eusebius was tasked with promoting this new version of Antiquities, which was at that time fairly obscure. Now that Christians had a sanitized Josephus, they could and did boldly claim that Maximinus were "liars" by citing Josephus, "if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed," as he says in Church History 1.9.3. Eusebius knew it was not the original text.

DCH

[DCHindley]

This is actually a pretty serious issue.

I am pretty sure that in Antiquities 18 the events in the governorships of Valerius Gratus and Pontius Pilate have been tampered with (the lengths of their respective periods of office were changed, and probably events removed) in order to remove any possibility that the "Memoirs of Pilate" (Acta Pilati, purporting to be excerpts of P. Pilate's personal Commentarii(sp?), or note-book in which all good Roman public officials with juridical powers recorded their official acts and edicts as they happened, and published by flatterers of the Caesar Maximinus Daia in Asia Minor somewhere around 305 CE, could be authentic.

Those Memoirs, whether truly or falsely, specifically dates the events pertaining to Jesus to 19 CE. So, by changing chronology which originally limited Gratus' rule to 15-19 CE before being replaced by Pilate around 18-19 CE, making them each have 10 or 11 years of governorship, the redactor of Ant. 18 made it impossible for Pilate to have been the governor in 19 CE.

May I take it that these are the Acts to which you are referring?

Eusebius, History of the Church 1.9.1-3: 1 The historian already mentioned agrees with the evangelist in regard to the fact that Archelaus succeeded to the government after Herod. He records the manner in which he received the kingdom of the Jews by the will of his father Herod and by the decree of Caesar Augustus, and how, after he had reigned ten years, he lost his kingdom, and his brothers Philip and Herod the younger, with Lysanias, still ruled their own tetrarchies. The same writer, in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, says that about the twelfth year of the reign of Tiberius, who had succeeded to the empire after Augustus had ruled fifty-seven years, Pontius Pilate was entrusted with the government of Judea, and that he remained there ten full years, almost until the death of Tiberius. 2 Accordingly the forgery of those who have recently given currency to acts against our Savior is clearly proved. For the very date given in them shows the falsehood of their fabricators. 3 For the things which they have dared to say concerning the passion of the Savior are put into the fourth consulship of Tiberius, which occurred in the seventh year of his reign [= AD 20 or 21]; at which time it is plain that Pilate was not yet ruling in Judea, if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed, who clearly shows in the above-mentioned work that Pilate was made procurator of Judea by Tiberius in the twelfth year of his reign.

Do you have references for them having been published by flatters of Maximinus II?

Yes. I have saved a Word file about this to a PDF file, and attached below:

(Hindley, David) The Acta Pilati & the dates of Pilates governorship.pdf

(118.16 KiB) Downloaded 215 times

DCH

[Ben C. Smith]

This is actually a pretty serious issue.

I am pretty sure that in Antiquities 18 the events in the governorships of Valerius Gratus and Pontius Pilate have been tampered with (the lengths of their respective periods of office were changed, and probably events removed) in order to remove any possibility that the "Memoirs of Pilate" (Acta Pilati, purporting to be excerpts of P. Pilate's personal Commentarii(sp?), or note-book in which all good Roman public officials with juridical powers recorded their official acts and edicts as they happened, and published by flatterers of the Caesar Maximinus Daia in Asia Minor somewhere around 305 CE, could be authentic.

Those Memoirs, whether truly or falsely, specifically dates the events pertaining to Jesus to 19 CE. So, by changing chronology which originally limited Gratus' rule to 15-19 CE before being replaced by Pilate around 18-19 CE, making them each have 10 or 11 years of governorship, the redactor of Ant. 18 made it impossible for Pilate to have been the governor in 19 CE.

May I take it that these are the Acts to which you are referring?

Eusebius, History of the Church 1.9.1-3: 1 The historian already mentioned agrees with the evangelist in regard to the fact that Archelaus succeeded to the government after Herod. He records the manner in which he received the kingdom of the Jews by the will of his father Herod and by the decree of Caesar Augustus, and how, after he had reigned ten years, he lost his kingdom, and his brothers Philip and Herod the younger, with Lysanias, still ruled their own tetrarchies. The same writer, in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, says that about the twelfth year of the reign of Tiberius, who had succeeded to the empire after Augustus had ruled fifty-seven years, Pontius Pilate was entrusted with the government of Judea, and that he remained there ten full years, almost until the death of Tiberius. 2 Accordingly the forgery of those who have recently given currency to acts against our Savior is clearly proved. For the very date given in them shows the falsehood of their fabricators. 3 For the things which they have dared to say concerning the passion of the Savior are put into the fourth consulship of Tiberius, which occurred in the seventh year of his reign [= AD 20 or 21]; at which time it is plain that Pilate was not yet ruling in Judea, if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed, who clearly shows in the above-mentioned work that Pilate was made procurator of Judea by Tiberius in the twelfth year of his reign.

Do you have references for them having been published by flatters of Maximinus II?

Yes. I have saved a Word file about this to a PDF file, and attached below:

(Hindley, David) The Acta Pilati & the dates of Pilates governorship.pdf

You rock. Thanks.

[Ben C. Smith]

I am not being a conspiracy theorist here.

Exactly what one would expect a conspiracy theorist to say....

[DCHindley]

I am not being a conspiracy theorist here.

Exactly what one would expect a conspiracy theorist to say....

Then I wave away the conspiracies, and declare the truth ... Through history, events regularly get sanitized and redacted. Look at the former Soviet Union. We had whole units of the CIA reading between the lines and looking for the tips of well polished shoe-tips belonging to figures whose bodies had been cut out of photos (the original photos were available in older archived materials, so we know this sort of thing happened).

What about the events we were not privy to? How much of Soviet history was excised by Stalin? Even when he forced political prisoners to "confess" they praised him to the sky. Example is that of Bukharin: https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukhar ... rial/3.htm Bukharin was the author of the Soviet Constitution, but he was executed along with many many others in 1938, even though he had praised Stalin's leadership and admitted that his accomplishments proved that he was the best possible leader of the Soviet people, better than himself, Trotsky or the Mensheviki.

DCH

[MrMacSon]

[DCHindley]

It is a well known factoid that the Soviet Union invented butter, not to mention Jiffy Pop popcorn upon which it is drizzled.

The secret is, a special agent of the yet to come perfect Communist utopia volunteered to go back in time, using a time machine yet to be invented in order to plant maize kernels developed in a lab in their "skunk works," into the Americas, thus changing history. For until then, barley ruled the roost in the Soviet utopia, and all bread was coarse, of course, and formed a staple of their diet so important that the introduction of maize into the Americas, intended to cause native Americans gastronomical distress, thus producing greenhouse gases that would raise the world's temperature to that of a hothouse to grow crops to feed the booming utopian population, had unintended results.

Yet it was not realized that the natives had a slightly different genetic makeup than Soviet Utopians, and the native Americans prospered. In fact, in the northern half of the Americas the corn fed population unintentionally bred the maize such that it became compatible with the digestive tracts of Euro-Asians, who prospered when they swooped in to take over the land. Another unintended consequence. However, the biggest unforeseen consequence for the future Utopians, was that this upset the balance of power and the new North Americans, who with the help of other nations, put such pressure on the Soviet state that it collapsed in 1991 before the Soviet Utopia could be established, and the Utopia at that point simply vanished, because it had been rendered impossible.

But they say, nothing is impossible with gawd.

Speaking of impossible, see this post: http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 117#p60117

DCH