Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Nickel: In essence, therefore, he [Bermejo-Rubio] expands Dunn’s statement: “to be ‘historical’ the Historical Jesus must have been crucifiable” … and to be crucifiable, the Historical Jesus must have been seditious.33’

Before going on, let us realize that the above-mentioned sentence is not an isolated statement. He makes the same point, even more clearly, elsewhere:

Nickel: For Bermejo-Rubio, therefore, the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’s death lead to the following line of reasoning: (i) Jesus is crucified; (ii) crucifixion was the Roman punishment for sedition; therefore (iii) Jesus must have been seditious.’’

In other words, according to Nickel, I would imply that Jesus’ crucifixion is enough to prove that he was involved in sedition.

<snip>

Unfortunately, these things are ascribed to me that I have never written and that I do not believe at all. In fact, the syllogism used by Nickel as if it were my own is just a concoction of his. Significantly, that syllogism is an obvious and simplistic non sequitur, involving a logical flaw (not to mention a worrying insensitivity), because not every person crucified by Rome in Judea was an insurgent or one of his accomplices. Of course, the Roman authorities sometimes crucified innocent people. For instance, even the (usually) proRoman Josephus was very critical towards the procurator Florus because he crucified Jews undeserving of that kind of punishment.35

The simple truth is that, once again, Nickel misses the point and mischaracterizes what I have said. Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat, he makes a syllogism appear that shines by its absence in my own writings. In fact, to my knowledge no scholar has ever made such problematic interpretations. Be that as it may, as I have made crystal clear in several works, the hypothesis that the Galilean apocalyptic visionary was somehow involved in anti-Roman (and anti-Herodian) resistance does not merely depend on the fact that he was crucified by Roman soldiers. Far from it, that historical reconstruction depends on many pieces of evidence, most of them provided by the Gospel narratives themselves. It depends on the reports that he was crucified along with λῃσταί (prima facie ‘bandits’, but actually insurgents);36 on the many snippets of evidence pointing to his kingly-messianic claim;37 on the revealing clues witnessing a mutual hostility between the Galilean preacher and the pro-Roman tetrarch Herod Antipas, who wanted him killed;38 on the unmistakable political implications of the kingdom he was preaching, as far a it entailed the expectation of the end of Gentile dominion over Israel; on the traces in the Synoptics that, after John the Baptist’s beheading, Jesus tried to go unnoticed by the tetrarch of Galilee;39 on the radical demands of a preacher who impressed upon his followers that discipleship is synonymous with suffering, even with the danger of death (and of death on a cross);40 on the reports that he promised that his twelve disciples would sit on thrones to judge and rule Israel’s restored tribes;41 on the traces betraying a bellicose stance by him and by his most intimate followers;42 on the reports about the presence of swords in Jesus’ group;43 on the accounts conveying his nationalistic and anti-Gentile outlook;44 on the evidence suggesting his opposition to the payment of tribute to Rome;45 on the this-worldly character of such an expected kingdom;46 and so on.47 Even more crucially, the hypothesis depends on the fact that all these elements – along with others – make up an image of Jesus which is contextually plausible, entirely consistent, and endowed with the greatest explanatory capacity.

Since it is all this evidence that the hypothesis actually relies upon (and Nickel should know it well, because he cites several articles of mine in which this point is made absolutely clear), to assert that I contend it relies on the mere fact that Jesus was crucified is a phantom assertion and a distortion

I shall conclude that a messianic acclamation by Jesus' disciples coupled with Jesus' own view of his central role in the arrival of the kingdom of God, together explain how he came to be crucified as one who seditiously claimed to be “King of the Jews''.

That several men were crucified before Passover corresponds well with the report in the Tosefta (t. Sanh. 11.7) about how criminals sentenced to death were kept in prison until the festivals came around, at which point they would be crucified so that as many people as possible would see them.

Beyond his description in the Gospels, nothing else is known about Barabbas. However, the words of the evangelists leave little doubt about the type of man this was: Barabbas is described as a seditious revolutionary (στασιαστής¹⁸⁶), a notorious (ἐπίσημος¹⁸⁷) brigand who had been imprisoned for murder (φονός¹⁸⁸) and for his participation in a recent insurrection (στάσις¹⁸⁹).¹⁹⁰ Though the Synoptic evangelists do not use the word to describe him,¹⁹¹ Barabbas was clearly a λῃστής: a freedom fighter who desired Jewish ἐλευθερία, and took up the sword against Israel’s Gentile overlords to attain it.¹⁹

In Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical and Comprehensive Assessment

June 2024

The quest for the historical Jesus is, at least in theory, a rational enterprise which assumes that Jesus of Nazareth indeed existed and was a historical actor, understandable as any other human being in his sociopolitical, religious, economic, and cultural contexts. Its starting point is dissatisfaction with the available sources (above all, the Canonical Gospels), insofar as they are riddled with incongruities, contradictions, anachronisms, and unreliable claims.[1] By taking an epistemic approach which adopts a historical-critical view of those sources, and a detached stance towards the characters portrayed in them, it calls into question the traditional narratives, having as its goal to offer the most compelling reconstruction of Jesus’ career.

In practice, however, things are often substantially different. Although Jesus was a first-century Jew, his cultural relevance as the alleged founder of Christianity has given rise to all kinds of prejudices and controversies surrounding this issue.

https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/article ... assessment