Why Pilate?

[Giuseppe]

In another thread our Ben wrote:

What is "disturbing" for me is that, if I was in the position of these sectarian groups, I would place the (invented or real "Messiah") in the 70 (I think about our Frans's view about Jesus son of Saphat, here). Not 40 years before.

What comforts partially me is the theological value of the difference 70- 40 = 30 CE. But only that.

Why is that not enough for you? Every Jew would know that it took 40 years for the wilderness generation to die out.

This is not so clear in my view.

If the Gospel Jesus is merely the fulfillment of prophecies, then he has to be placed better in the 70 (the correct period of the prophecies).

If the Gospel Jesus fulfilled fully the prophecies only by predicting CORRECTLY the coming Parusia by the 70, then he can be placed under Pilate without problems. But obviously the Parusia didn't happen.

Evidence leads me to accept:

1) that the Gospel Jesus is merely a fulfillment of prophecies

But also to accept:

2) that the placement of Jesus under Pilate is less a fulfillment of prophecies than a placement of Jesus under Titus.

It's clearly a real dilemma, for me.

How do you resolve the contradiction ?

[Giuseppe]

I feel that there is surely something of 'true' and 'real' in the following words of Frans Vermeiren:

The horrible events in the war's final stage made it clear to the Essenes that the moment at which the Lord would pass his merciless judgement had arrived. And at that precise moment, something so spectular happened as to allow the Essene messiah hopefuls, for lack of anything better, to interpret this event as the divine intervention for which they had been yearning. Although the messiah did not show himself as the ultimate military victor, at least he had shown himself as somebody who achieved a timely symbolic victory over the hated enemy, the divinized emperor of the Roman empire. Also the requirement of the location for God's intervention, the holy city of Jerusalem, was met. This way, bizzarre and unexpted as it may seem, the Essene messiah expectation was still fulfilled. A messiah was foreseen and so a messiah was provided. A messiah does not simply appear out of thin air like a deus ex machina, he only presents himself to those fervently longing for him.

(from the ebook of Frans Vermeiren, A Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity)

According to our Frans, the placement of the Gospel Messiah under Pilate was part of the embarrassment about the historical Jesus son of Saphat.

Could the placement of the Gospel Messiah under Pilate be part of the embarrassment about the same idea of a Messiah exptected coming around the 70 ?

The Romans would have prohibited a priori any show of messianic apocalypticism as a potentially masked form of sedition (see the Pliny the Younger affair in Bitinia, IF authentic), even if tendentially 'pacifist' in nature.

So it was for embarrassment that the Christians placed Jesus under Pilate. But the collateral effect was that in this way the concept of Messiah becomes a enigmatic concept: who was the Christ crucified under Pilate, really, given the fact that no Messiah was expected under Pilate, but a lot of Messiah (and false messianists) around the 70 under Titus ? Space was open to further (Gnostic) speculation about the identity of that particular enigmatic Christ that no people had never seen.

[Giuseppe]

There would be really possible evidence in Josephus that even the pacifist Jewish scholars were suspected of sedition when they talked about the Messiah coming in the 70:

But now, what did the most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how,” about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.” The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.

Who were 'many of the wise men' who were 'deceived' by the apocalyptic hopes of the 70?

Could our ''Mark'' (author) be one of these 'wise men' ?