Ken Olson wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 3:09 am
The usual reconstruction of Pilate’s
term of office as running 26–37 CE is based on three explicit Josephan data:
at Antiquities 18.33a he reports Tiberius’ accession to the imperial throne,
at § 33b we read that Valerius Gratus was appointed governor of Judea,
and § 35 reports that after eleven years in the governorship Gratus was
replaced by Pontius Pilate. Given Tiberius’ accession to office in August
14, this would bring us down to 25 or 26 CE, depending upon how long we
imagine it took Tiberius to remove Gratus and appoint his replacement, and
how long it took the latter, Pilate, to arrive in Judea. Correspondingly, in
Antiquities 18.89 we read that Pilate served ten years, then (after suspension
from office) hurried to Rome but by the time he arrived Tiberius had died.
Tiberius died in March 37, which means that Pilate began to serve around
26 or 27 CE. These two data, in § 35 and § 89, which fit one another well
insofar as they fill up Tiberius’ years as emperor (as is pointed out explicitly
in Ant. 18.177 as well76), are quite clear and unambiguous, but they are also
the only explicit evidence for dating Pilate’s entry into office as Gratus’
successor [Schwartz, Reading, 140].
Mary Helena,
So the version of the text of the Antiquities which dates the beginning of Pilate's tenure to c. 26 CE, based on both the accession of Tiberius in 14 CE and his appointment of Valerius Gratus as governor who served 11 years before being replaced by Pilate and the statement that Pilate served as governor for 10 years, ending around the time of the death of Tiberius in 37 CE, had, according to you, been in circulation for roughly two hundred years before Eusebius wrote the HE and was presumably the version of the text Eusebius would have used.
We find the Testimonium in the text of the Antiquities in 18.63-164, after the first pericope describing the events of Pilate's governorship (which according to the extant version of the text, as we've just discussed above, began c. 26 CE).
Why do you say that the Testimonium is placed in the context of 19 CE, and that this would be a problem for the theory that Eusebius or a later Christian interpolated the text at its present location? Didn't the text of the Antiquities which we have, and which they probably had, put the beginning of Pilate's governorship c. 26 CE?
The existence of Acts of Pilate in the time of Eusebius - with it's 21 c.e. crucifixion date - indicates that sources were available to support a crucifixion prior to a Pilate 26 c.e. date. Which in turn indicates that Antiquities had a pre 26 c.e. Pilate crucifixion date.
(That the writers of Acts of Pilate favoured a 21 c.e. date rather than the Josephan 19 c.e. date is probably from a christian group, or Jewish christian group, deciding that 21 c.e., being 49 years (7/7 Jubilee years) from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 c.e. would be an appropriate crucifixion date. Also, the 21 c.e. dating might well suggest an attempt to move away from 19 c.e. - as the 19 c.e. dating might be viewed as having some relevance to Hasmonean history re Josephus linking Pilate to 19 c.e. and the death of Germanicus...)
19 c.e. is a problem for a theory about Eusebius, or his scribe, re an interpolation of the TF into Josephus Antiquities at that time slot. Why? Because Eusebius, and or his scribe, would be out of their mind to interpolate the TF in a pre 26 c.e. context. They want to negate the Acts of Pilate pre 26 c.e. crucifixion story - and then they go and insert a TF interpolation into a time slot that supports the Acts of Pilate pre 26 c.e. crucifixion dating. That is crazy stuff.
How many scholars now support a 19 c.e. dating for Pilate in Judea ? I don't know. Perhaps there are scholars who are holding out in accepting this date. As of now, I've not seen a refutation of Daniel Schwarts or Steve Mason - two very prominent Josephan scholars.
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS
VOLUME 1B
JUDEAN WAR 2
TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY
BY
STEVE MASON
Pilate’s dates in office are usually given as 26-36 CE,
on the strength of Ant. 18.35, which has his predecessor
Valerius Gratus in Judea for 11 years, and 18.89, which
gives Pilate 10 years in office, a calculation that accounts
for Eusebius’ claim that Pilate began to govern in the
12th year of Tiberius (= 26 CE; Hist. eccl. 1.9). D. R.
Schwartz (1992: 182-217), however, makes a compelling
argument for the years ca. 19 to 37 as Pilate’s term.
His case includes these points: (a) Valerius Gratus is
reported to have left Judea after deposing 4 high priests
in rapid succession (after about a year each from 15 CE)
and then leaving Caiaphas in office; (b) the extremely
brief account of Gratus’ tenure, which is only in Antiquities (18.34-35),
contrasts with an expansive treatment of
Pilate’s term in both works (Ant. 18.35-89); (c) the long
term of Caiaphas as high priest (18-36 CE) is most easily
explained by a change of governor and therefore of
policy with respect to high priests; (d) most important,
the surrounding events in the Antiquities narrative—the
founding of Tiberias in about 19 CE (18.36-38), the rule
of Orodes as king of Armenia (16-18 CE; Ant. 18.52),
the death of Germanicus in 19 CE (Ant. 18.53-54), an
the expulsion of Judeans and Egyptians from Rome in 19
(so Tacitus, Ann. 2.85; Ant. 18.65-84)—would normally
suggest that Pilate arrived at roughly the same time. As
Schwartz observes (1992: 184), it seems more economical
to explain the unsupported year counts for Gratus’
and Pilate’s terms in office, even as textual corruptions,
than to overturn this complex of accidental narrative
evidence.
Schwartz’s arguments are independently supported by
K. Lönnquist (2000). His “archaeometallurgical” analysis
of Judean provincial coinage in the period 6-66 CE
shows that in coins dated from 17/18 CE to 31/32 the
lead content dropped from about 11% to virtually nil
(2000: 465), then returned to its previous levels under
Claudius and Nero. Although lead (a common material
in Roman aqueduct construction) has not yet been found
in the Jerusalem aqueducts, its discovery in the contemporary
system at Panias leads Lönnquist to concluded
that it was also used at crucial points in the Jerusalem
system (though now lost through subsequent ravages)
and that Pilate’s removal of lead from his coins was for
this purpose. Although he allows that Pilate’s predecessor
Valerius Gratus may have begun construction or
planning (to account for the 17/18 CE), he thinks that
the appearance of a new coin type—with upright palm,
representing good luck—matches a type otherwise used
only for the arrival of new governors. And so he dates
Pilate’s arrival to 17/18 (2000: 467-68).
If Schwartz and Lönnquist are correct (but cf. Bernett
2007: 199 n. 111), Josephus’ quick movement here from
Tiberius’ accession 14 CE to the appointment of Pilate
in 18/19 CE would be more easily intelligible than it
is on the customary dating: his passing over the brief
term of Gratus would match his treatment of the other
2/3-year terms, of Coponius (barely mentioned at 2.117),
Ambivulus, and Rufus, to focus understandably on the
governor who spent some 18/19 years in the region and
left a decisive mark. It would not, then, be the enormity of
Pilate’s measures alone that attracted Josephus’
interest (note his apparent difficulty in characterizing
the aqueduct episode as a catastrophe), but much more
Pilate’s impressively long term in office. Such a long
term would match Tiberius’ known policy of leaving
provincial governors in office as long as possible (Ant.
18.170; Tacitus, Ann. 1.80; Suetonius, Tib. 41), assuming
only that there was some defect with Tiberius’ first
choice of prefect, Gratus.
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