Giuseppe wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2023 5:34 am
Sinouhe wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2023 5:29 am
You’re right Giuseppe.
In general, mythicists are not interested about the reasons of the dating under Pilate.
To answer you, Mark (or the author of the first gospel if you prefer) put Jesus under Pilate for multiple reasons.
But the principal would be the oracle in Daniel 9:24-27.
This oracle fed the Jewish messianic expectations of the second temple period and Mark could not miss it.
Hi Sinouhe, have you started to read Bruno Bauer (just translated by Neil on Vridar)?
He gives this very powerful
explanation.
Funny how I came to the same outcome when I knew nothing about any of it all:
Why did Mark have Jesus baptised? The Messiah comes to the temple of the forerunner, is what Malachi said:
Malachi 3: 1 "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, behold, he comes!" says Yahweh of Armies.
John the Baptist doesn't have a temple, and the gospel-writers couldn't have supplied him with one because that would obviously have had to remain in its place and it would have become well known with all the people having to visit him there - what other purpose would the temple of John the Baptist serve? It would have had to be a large temple, perhaps the size of a church or even cathedral, or people would have stood in line for it for many kilometres - at least that is what one would suspect, based on the text of the gospels.
All the events in the life of Jesus, all the miracles, everything: they all are perfectly transient.
Temporary, short-lived, ephemeral, impermanent - and so on. Driving out demons, healing people, raising one or two (three, actually) from the dead who will die eventually anyway;
magically conjuring food out of thin air that hours later has been digested and disappeared:
nothing that Jesus does persists for longer than a few hours. The veil of the Temple that is allegedly torn is the only exception, yet an event that can't be witnessed or confirmed because it covers the most sacred of the entire Temple and only the High Priest is allowed to visit it - once a year. Naturally, there is no record of the event outside the gospels.
Nothing that Jesus does can be proven - and that is great, because that means it can't be disproven either: it can't be disproven that the Temple veil did not tear, nor can it be disproven that Jesus raised people from the dead, nor can it be disproven that he cured hundreds of sick people. So John the Baptist isn't assigned a temple by the gospel-writers, because it should have been located at a place easily accessible to multitudes of people, in plain sight of many: it could be disproven that there ever was a temple at that location.
Hence, Jesus has to visit John wherever he is, and the gospel-writers carefully omit the location: "in the river Jordan" says Mark, a river that is 250 kilometres long. Luke states "all the region around the Jordan", even less precise (even though "the river Jordan" is more than imprecise enough), and Matthew states that Jesus came to the Jordan to John. What is he to do there? Whatever the Lord is to do in the temple of the messenger - it doesn't say, only that it is 'suddenly', and that it is.
Jesus and John could have had a conversation, but about what? It would deepen John's character, but most importantly it would settle the matter between which of the two really was Elijah - of all the things incredible it would have been more than most incredible that neither of the two would bring up the topic. That is why there is no conversation at all between the two, and why John sends his messengers to Jesus so the gospel-writers can use that as a pretext to come up with the logion about John the Baptist.
So Mark, desperately searching for an angle, a way to shape and fulfil just another terribly inconvenient prophecy, probably has a mental breakdown - and in a momentary lapse of reason, Mark has Jesus baptised.
At that point, Church history is written, the event is fixed, Mark's legacy extended, and Jesus is to be baptised by the others as well - period. As easily as Mark could have forgotten to mention that Mary was a virgin, it really is impossibly implausible to omit an incredibly significant event - even when that is a significantly incredible event. The baptism of Jesus couldn't be undone, yet the clever and cunning Matthew turns their weak point to a strong point and takes on all challenges at the same time: he does let Jesus and John have a conversation with each other, and he does infer scripture. Matthew certainly doesn't quote Malachi 3:1 nor use any other words to infer scripture, but only has Jesus say the very vague 'Allow it now, for this is the fitting way for us to fulfil all righteousness'.