Pilate = 'the man with Pillars' ?

[Giuseppe]

I see a curious coincidence, reading the list of Roman governors of Judaea:

http://www.biblestudy.org/roman-empire/ ... syria.html

Only Pilate has a name resembling a military term: "armed with javelins" or "spears in hand".

According to Gunnar Samuelsson, the stauros would be a pole or a stake, that would make Jesus more precisely an impaled man. Is there some link with the ethymology of Pilatus? This is only a very modest conjecture.

I read:

An identical word pila — but this time short for pigla, taken from the root pig-, hence the verb pango, meaning to fix or set firmly — means pillar and is synonym of the word columna, from whence comes our English word "column". The related adjective pilatim means "with pillars", and see our article on the name Stoics for a possible significant association.

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Mean ... -ys8CQpo6w


If the ''so-called Pillars'' are represented allegorically by ''the scribes and pharisees'' in the pauline Mark, then, by allowing the crucifixion of ''Jesus''/Paul, Pilate is posing as literally ''the man with the Pillars''.

Was Pilate introduced by ''Mark'' only in virtue of the simbolic meaning of his name?

To think otherwise would have the same probability that an historical Judas Iscariot existed, under the coincidence that his epithet “Iscariot” seems to denote either Ish-karya (Aramaic for “the false one”) or a pun on Issachar, “hireling” (Miller, p. 65), thus one paid to hand Jesus over to the authorities.

[Giuseppe]

I translate from here:

the commentator of Virgil gives thus, in the first part of the note, basically
two possible explanations of the term used by Virgil: the first, which leads
Pilatus to Pilum, interprets it as "armed with javelins," while
the second, which leads it to Pila, reads like a military technical term
having the sense of "thick", "dense" and "disposed to column'.

...

the sintagma pīlatum agmen indicates a strategic arrangement of troops where
the soldiers, without the beasts of burden, are grouped in an array
elongated and compact (in the shape of pila) useful to cross the narrowed places, such as the city doors.

Therefore Pilate is very a ''Pillar'' figure.

[Giuseppe]

Note that other scholars have already pointed out somewhere that the reluctance of Herod to condemn JtB is the same reluctance of Pilate to condemn Jesus, and if my interpretation above is correct, is the same reluctance of the PILLAR Peter to quarrel with Paul (in Gal 2).

[MrMacSon]

.
Arthur Drews, in The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, wrote -

a remarkable hypothesis [was] put forward by Andrzej Niemojewski in his work, Gott Jesus im Lichte fremder und eigener Forschungen samt Darstellung der evangelischen Astralstoffe, Astralszenen, und Astralsysteme (1910).

According to this, the Pilate of the Christian legend was not originally an historical person; the whole story of Christ is to be taken in an astral sense, and Pilate represents the constellation of Orion, the javelin-man (pilatus, in Latin), with the arrow or lance-constellation (Sagitta), which is supposed to be very long in the Greek myth, and appears in the Christian legend under the name of Longinus, and is in the Gospel of John [as] the soldier who pierces the side of Jesus with a spear (longche, in Greek). In the astral myth, the Christ hanging on the cross, or world-tree (i.e., the Milky Way), is killed by the lance of “Pilatus”. Hence, according to Niemojewski, the Christian populace told the legend of a javelin-man, a certain Pilatus, who was supposed to have been responsible for the death of the Saviour.

... the procurator 'Pontius Pilate' plays a part in the gospels so singularly opposed to the account of the historical Pilate, as Josephus describes him, that we can very well suspect a later introduction of an historical personage into the quasi-historical narrative.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Witn ... /Section_2

[Giuseppe]

I hope that the reader recognizes easily the difference between the my interpretation and that of Andrzej Niemojewski. It is my precise point of pride to distance myself from any astro-theological interpretation.

Note that Adamzczewski already says that Herod is the Peter of Gal 2. I say that also Pilate is the Peter of Gal 2, not only in virtue of the similar reluctance before the condemnation of a just person (resp. JtB and Jesus), but also because PILATUS means ''in form of Pillar'' (and Peter is called Pillar in Gal 2).

What I am saying is that ''Mark''' inserted Pilate in his Gospel only because ''Pilatus'' means ''in form of Pillar'' and for no other reason.

[MrMacSon]

I hope that the reader recognizes easily the difference between the my interpretation and that of Andrzej Niemojewski. It is my precise point of pride to distance myself from any astro-theological interpretation.

Sure. I found Drews reference to Niemojewski's idea among some of my notes on Pilate that I was looking through, and thought it was worth posting (for posterity). It is noteworthy that pilatus also means javelin-man. It's also noteworthy that (i) the name Longinus had been given to "the centurion present at the Crucifixion, who testified "This man certainly was the Son of God" (Matt 27:54; Mark 15:39); (ii) is "found in the pseudepigraphal Gospel of Nicodemus that was appended to the apocryphal Acts of Pilate"; and (iii) that "The name is probably Latinized from the Greek lonche (λόγχη), the word used for the lance mentioned in John 19:34." - via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Longinus.

• "Christian legend has it that Longinus was a blind Roman centurion who thrust the spear into Christ’s side at the crucifixion. Some of Jesus’s blood fell upon his eyes and he was healed. Upon this miracle Longinus believed in Jesus."
  
  Godwin, Malcolm (1994). The Holy Grail: Its Origins, Secrets & Meaning Revealed. Viking Penguin. p. 51. ISBN 0-670-85128-0.

Note that Adamzczewski already says that Herod is the Peter of Gal 2. I say that also Pilate is the Peter of Gal 2, not only in virtue of the similar reluctance before the condemnation of a just person (resp. JtB and Jesus), but also because PILATUS means ''in form of Pillar'' (and Peter is called Pillar in Gal 2).

What I am saying is that ''Mark''' inserted Pilate in his Gospel only because ''Pilatus'' means ''in form of Pillar'' and for no other reason.

Sure, but the Gospels are so convoluted, it seems equally likely that their background is as convoluted.