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

[Giuseppe]

John 19:16-37

16 Finally Pilate handed him over to them [the Jews] to be crucified.

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.

There is a strange anomaly here. If the Romans crucified Jesus, then why does Pilate give Jesus to the Jews?

Someone has suspected that ''John'' [redactor and gentile author] was merging various sources (one where Jesus is crucified by Romans and another where Jesus was crucified by Jews).

But I think that ''John'' - the Gnostic ''John'' (i.e. proto-John) was rather reacting against the his one source, that had the Jews - and not Pilate - in the fatidic act of the people who ''handed him'' to death.

This is supported by the fact that ''Judas Iskarioth'' means (ethymologically) ''Judas the Giver Up'', i.e. ''who gives up''.

Isa. 19:4 :

I will give over (sikkarti) Egypt into the hands of a cruel lord.

Obviously I assume (that the readers assume that) ''Judas'' allegorize the Jews.

So to say that the Jews ''give up'' Jesus is equivalent to say that the Jews ''handed him'' to death.

The Gnostic Gentile ''John'' couldn't accept the fact that the Jews ''give up'' Jesus, because that would be equivalent to recognize that Jesus comes from the Jews (contra factum that in proto-John, Jesus is enemy of the god of the Jews). So the gentile Pilate was introduced in the role of who ''gives up'' Jesus to death: in this way there is no more suggestion at all that Jesus came from the people who ''gave up''/''surrended'' him.


So this would be evidence that in the Earliest Gospel there was no Pilate at all, and that the Jews ''handed'' Jesus to death by the act itself of their rejection of the belief in Christ Jesus.

□

[Secret Alias]

The bountiful well that is "why Pilate?"

[Giuseppe]

So the introduction of Pilate in the Gospel tradition was made by someone (probably a gentile Gnostic Christian) who didn't like the theological fact that the surrendering of Jesus to death "by the Jews" was equivalent to recognize the previous possession of the Christ by the Jews (with the implicit - anti-Gnostic - corollary that Jesus had to be the son of the god of the Jews to be "given" by the Jews to the gentiles ).

This hypothesis has the great merit of explaining :

1) why the basic 'snapshot' regarding Pilate represents him in the act of a "donation" of Jesus to Jews.

2) why Pilate had "to give" Jesus more than "condemn" him to death.

3) why was introduced finally the Judas Iskarioth episode: to insist again and again, against the Gentile Christians, that the Jews and only the Jews (personified by the invented betrayer) were the real "givers" of Jesus to the gentiles.

[Secret Alias]

either that or Pilate was a historical person who the gospel writer thought or wanted to believe governed Judea at the time of the narrative.

[Giuseppe]

My hypothesis explains why a Roman governor had to be introduced to play the role of who "gives" Jesus to his killers, not why that Roman governor had to be specifically Pilate.

[Ben C. Smith]

either that or Pilate was a historical person who the gospel writer thought or wanted to believe governed Judea at the time of the narrative.

Come now; that would make too much sense. Not conducive enough to wild fantasies.

[Giuseppe]

either that or Pilate was a historical person who the gospel writer thought or wanted to believe governed Judea at the time of the narrative.

Come now; that would make too much sense. Not conducive enough to wild fantasies.

it is curious that Ben is saying so to someone who thinks that the source used by the Gospel of Peter (where the "Jews" crucify Jesus) is more old than our Mark.

[Secret Alias]

The question isn't what you believe but what you won't consider. Science is supposed to prefer the best explanation, the simplest explanation, the explanation that explains things in the easiest, least forced manner possible. 'Why Pilate?' is obviously best explained by the statement "because Pilate is real and the author of the gospel thought Jesus was real and that the two met on a particularly eventful Passover in Jerusalem." None of your 'why Pilate?' threads convince anyone of anything other than the fact that you realize that Pilate is a problem for mythicism and you are grasping at straws trying to make sense of his presence in the gospel if - as you suggest, want to believe - the story is a myth.

[Giuseppe]

Assuming that the my interlocutor is not a banal historicist but (at least) a Jesus Agnostic, then I may even concede him the fact that who introduced Pilate in the narrative did so because he was historicist. But, under a mythicist paradigm, if he was historicist then the reason is that he was persuaded by a previous gospel that euhemerized Jesus: a gospel where there was no Pilate.

So the question is: why was Pilate introduced (by a historicist Christian) in a Gospel where Pilate was missing?

[Ben C. Smith]

either that or Pilate was a historical person who the gospel writer thought or wanted to believe governed Judea at the time of the narrative.

Come now; that would make too much sense. Not conducive enough to wild fantasies.

it is curious that Ben is saying so to someone who thinks that the source used by the Gospel of Peter (where the "Jews" crucify Jesus) is more old than our Mark.

That is also what Crossan thinks. So what?