Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The problem for Eusebius was the dating of the passion in the Acts of Pilate. Eusebius says that Pilate was not in Judaea in the 7th year of Tiberius. End of story - Acts of Pilate a forgery. But of course it's not the end of the story. The Eusebius theory has Eusebius placing the TF within a conte...

I have argued instead that it is more likely that Eusebius composed the text himself for use in his own work and it was only later carried over into the manuscripts of the Antiquities: On the Eusebian TF forgery theory, one question that I have is this: wouldn't Eusebius have been concerned about g...

The dating of Pilate's governorship in Judea from c. 26-36 CE is securely established by the text of the Antiquities (Ant. 18.35, 89, and, to a lesser extend 18.177). Best, Ken That Pilate was in Judaea late in the time of Tiberius is supported by Josephus, re the connection with Vitellius. That Pi...

Just as an aside: (b) Deliberate misplacement? A second approach to the discrepancy between dating the Roman events to 19 CE and Josephus’ placing them in the framework of Pilate’s tenure admits that Josephus’ arrangement is wrong, chronologically, and suggests that, if not simply due to error, it m...

So the text of the Antiquities say that Pilate spent 10 years in Judea when Vitellius sent him to reply to the accusations of the Samaritans before the emperor, but Tiberius had died before he arrived. As Tiberius died in March, 37 CE, Tiberius probably left Judea in late 36 or early 37. If we take...

Steve Mason, probably the most prominent living Josephus scholar, wrote about the Testimonium Flavianum: First, one example that has previously been discussed on this forum, is from Daniel Schwartz, who has argued that the chronological data on the length of the terms of Gratus and Pilate in Antiqu...

Mary Minor point: "Your just being silly," in generally-accepted proper English would be written "You're just being silly," though many people don't care; I understand. Major point: You urged a distinction between you and Ken in which you asserted that you were the as-it-were pu...

Pontius Pilate — An Aqueduct Builder? — Recent Findings and New Suggestions Kenneth K. A. Silver here Thank you for another great article. I naively thought that aqueducts were made of lead, from start to end. But according to Lönnqvist, this wasn't the case: ... in standard Roman engineering terms...

Mary, scrutiny of Ken's proposal is fair game, but belittling someone for learning Greek--the language of gospels and Josephus--while insisting you are, of the two, the only historian, is just plain silly. Goodness Stephen, I've done no such thing. The shoe is on the other foot here. I'm the one wh...

Consequently, I think Mason's claim that the interpolation of the Testimonium as a whole into the text of the Antiquities would have been an unparalleled act of scribal audacity should probably be read as a rhetorical flourish expressing Mason' opinion in favor of the theory of partial authenticity...