Why Pilate? Because of ''the Jews''.

[Giuseppe]

So what is the meaning of a titulum crucis put by the Roman soldiers? It makes only sense if it was put by the Jews.

But the Fourth Gospel insists that it was put by Pilate against the will of the pharisees. Again, this is a clue that ''John'' was reacting against a previous source where the titulum crucis was put by the Jews.

[Giuseppe]

There is also explicit evidence of the reason why ''John'' insists that the titulum crucis was put by himself and not by the Jews:


John 19:19-22 :

19 Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. 21 The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

As I have said before: this is pure proto-catholic universalism. The same reason why Pilate was only later introduced in a previous story (probably: the Earliest Gospel) where only the Jews crucify Jesus. Period.

[Giuseppe]

The strange friendship between Pilate and Herod in GPeter is clearly an item derived from our Luke. So the only original element of GPeter is the fact that the Jews crucify directly Jesus.

Pilate is not even necessary.

So Bob Price:

To me, the Gospel of Peter reads like a stringing together of bits and pieces from the four canonical gospels embellished with apocryphal, legendary elements like the friendship between Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, the heightened anti-Semitism, and the spectacular depiction of the resurrection. But John Dominic Crossan shows to my satisfaction that there is more to it. He makes an intricate but powerful case that Peter and the canonical evangelists made use of a “Cross Gospel”, a bare-bones crucifixion account consisting largely of Old Testament “testimonia”, commonly used proof-texts supposedly predicting the sufferings of Jesus. “Peter”, Crossan argues, fleshed out this skeleton with passages from the canonical gospels, and, later still, other scribes added apocryphal embellishement. If Crossan is correct, the only pre-gospel source underlying the Gospel of Peter is this Cross Gospel, which looks to be a collection of the Old Testament building blocks that were rewritten as gospel episodes, i.e., not historical information about Jesus.

https://books.google.it/books?redir_esc ... te&f=false
(my bold)

Where prof Price is clearly mistaken is when he considers the only-Jewish-crucifixion [i.e., the fact that only the Jews crucify directly Jesus] in GPeter as mere late ''eightened anti-Semitism''.

I don't think so. That element is just the earliest element of the entire Gospel tradition.


A story where only the Jews crucify X couldn't disturb the Romans, given the assumption that X is not a Roman. So no need of an apology at all.

[Giuseppe]

The point remains that the Crucifixion was a Roman penalty even if the killers were only the Jews.

So the cruel irony of the Earliest Gospel is that just the people who was "crucified" in the real History not one, but a thousand of times, well, just that people, crucified his same Christ.

This is by definition the most hateful riotous act of human beings against their same god.

If the author of that story wasn't a Gnostic (an enemy of the god of the Jews), then surely he helped the later Gnostic propaganda: only ask yourself, how can you love a god when his hate is so directly proportional to the offence brought to his presumed Son? Surely the doubt was thrown on the his real paternity of that Son.

The way to Marcion is open.

[Giuseppe]

A modern optimal example may be the following: some reports the notice that Muslim immigrants kill Christian immigrants in order to have more space in their ships through the Mediterranean sea, even if a storm will kill all them. So the killers of the innocent are in turn killed by a greater power by the same kind of violence used by the former against the innocent: drowning at sea.

Idem for the irony of the Crucifixion. Who will be crucified by the Romans is just who crucified the Christ.

[Giuseppe]

Clearly the report above, even if real, may be accused easily of islamophoby. But so equally the Jewish crucifixion of Jesus (Jews who become "Romans" for a moment against their same Christ) may be considered easily an anti-Semitic story.

But the "embarrassment" of a story, even if only a story, is often evidence of the his being more old.