“Suffered under Pontius Pilate”. In this clause we have quite the most remarkable instance on record of the degrading and narrowing influence of the tendency which we have called (c), for by the insertion of the tiniest letter of the Greek alphabet (the iota, corresponding to the “jot” spoken of in the gospel) the original meaning has been not merely obscured, but absolutely lost and forgotten. The alteration is so simple and easy to make, and yet its effects are so extraordinary and so colossal, that those who discovered it could for some time scarcely believe their eyes, and when they had grasped the situation, they were unable to comprehend how it had been possible so long to overlook anything so exceedingly obvious.
Instead of ΠONTIOYΠIΛATOY, the earliest Greek manuscripts which the clairvoyant investigators have yet been able to find all read ΠONTOYΠIΛΗTOY. Now the interchange of A and H is by no means infrequent in various Greek dialects, so that the only real alteration here is the insertion of the I, which changes πόντος, meaning a sea, into Πόντιος, which is a Roman proper name. I have no wish to suggest that this alteration, or either of the others which I have mentioned, was necessarily made with any deceitful object, or with intention to mislead; it may quite easily have been made under the impression that it was merely a correction of the unimportant mistake of some earlier copyist. It was obvious to the investigators that the Essene monk who first translated the formula into Greek was by no means perfectly acquainted with that tongue, and the result was consequently anything but classical. Men into whose hands the manuscript (or copies of it) came at later periods amended here and there obvious errors in spelling or construction, and it is quite possible that one who approached its consideration with a mind incapable of appreciating its true mystical signification, and filled with the anthropomorphic interpretation, might suppose that in this case, for example, a letter must have been omitted by some ignorant scribe, and so might insert that letter without the least idea that he was thereby changing the entire meaning of the clause and introducing a conception absolutely foreign to the spirit of the whole document. No doubt in ecclesiastical history there has been a large amount of direct, unblushing forgery, done “for the greater glory of God”, which in the eyes of the monks simply meant the advancement of the interests of the Church; but we are fortunately not compelled to postulate dishonesty in this case, since we see that ignorance and prejudice may very easily have done quite innocently the fatal work of the utter materialization of conceptions originally so grand and so luminous.
It was no doubt with the same laudable though mistaken idea of polishing the diction that the preposition ἐπί was (much later) substituted for the earlier ὑπό, though after the theory of the proper name was once accepted the mischief was done, and this further alteration merely put the phrase into more elegant shape, and so lessened the probability of inquiry as to any other possible meaning than the apparent one. In the original translation the real intention of the writer was made even clearer still by the use of the dative case, thus indicating that the expression referred to a place, not a person; but this was almost immediately changed to the more usual genitive, even before the unfortunate insertion of the iota.
The words πόντος πιλητὸς, then, simply mean a compressed or densified sea — by no means a bad description of the lower part of the astral plane, which is so constantly typified by water. The clause usually translated “suffered under Pontius Pilate” should be rendered “He endured the dense sea”—that is to say, for us men and for our salvation he allowed himself to be for the time limited by, and imprisoned in, astral matter. We should note the exact order of the clauses here. Neither of the Creeds as they stand at present contains quite the whole of the original idea; for in the Apostles', though the order is accurate, several stages are omitted, and while the Nicene is fuller, there is a confusion in its arrangement. The first step mentioned is the assumption of the vesture of matter — “the incarnation”; then the taking of human form, though still in its higher principles only; then the “suffering under Pontius Pilate”, or descent into the astral sea; and only after that the crucifixion on the cross of physical matter, in which he is graphically described as “dead and buried”.
Thanks to Blood for this finding, too:
People scoff at such interpretations today, but such thinking would hardly be out of place for Philo or any first century Christian historicizer. Regardless, I think Detering is on to something.
https://vridar.org/2018/04/22/gnostic-i ... ment-85168