Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

First, as we have already seen, The Things that Make for Peace is a book
whose author does not appear to appreciate how historical research is carried
out. Historians (and philologists) are aware of the problematic, biased nature
of ancient sources, and of the need to remain reasonably skeptical towards
them, but Nickel, despite his contrary claims, naively trusts the contents of the
Canonical Gospels, which he labels as ‘coherent’.
.......

In the light of all the former remarks I am compelled to infer that Nickel’s
book can and must be confidently described with the same words with which
he dismisses Reza Aslan’s Zealot, namely, ‘a pseudo-historical examination
of Jesus’. This is the reason why I will not discuss further numerous other
fallacious contentions of his work, ....
.....

In these circumstances, constructive and productive discussion is (often)
not possible, as some perceptive scholars have insightfully recognized. More
than half a century ago, the Jewish savant Samuel Sandmel, witnessing the
obstinacy which so many exegetes have devoted to the effort to ‘disparage
Judaism and its supposed legalism’, confessed that, after having addressed
himself to the topic in several essays, he did not intend to pursue such a task
any longer, ‘preferring to conclude that, with those Christians who persist in
deluding themselves about Jewish legalism, no academic communication
is possible’. Some years ago, Robert J. Miller argued that debates about
the historical Jesus that occur between the camp which sees the Canonical
Gospels as fully reliable historically and the camp which sees the Gospels as
blends of fact and fiction are futile, since there is no middle ground of shared
assumptions.I heartily concur, being prone to expand the field of skeptical
silence: with those authors who are incapable of removing the theological wax
from their ears and persist in deluding themselves about (and caricaturing)
the hypothesis taking seriously into account the ample evidence pointing to
Jesus’ (and his group’s) involvement in the politics of his time, no academic
communication is possible. 128

Although reading Nickel’s book is an intellectually frustrating experience,
there is still something important to gain. The unveiling of the many flaws and
shortcomings contained therein is a further contribution to argue yet again,
a contrario, the extraordinarily high historical likelihood of the sjh. That
hypothesis (having been endorsed by scholars coming from very different
ideological backgrounds through the centuries) has such a wide textual
and argumentative basis, enjoys such contextual plausibility, and has such
an explanatory power, that opposition to its most sophisticated versions is
only possible by engaging in the methodological missteps that we have seen
throughout Nickel’s book. That is just another reason for me to go on thinking
that it is the best hypothesis ever devised, not only to reconstruct Jesus of
Nazareth’s career, but also to understand the logic underlying the emergence
of those fanciful works that are the Canonical Gospels.

====
128 footnote:

This is the reason why I will no longer invest my time responding to alleged ‘refutations’
coming from people lacking serious historical training, goodwill, and academic ethics.
In these cases, the only reasonable response is a resounding silence.

Journal of study of the historical Jesus:.... we are planning to offer a full critical treatment of Bermejo-Rubio’s recent monograph, They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha in a future issue of jshj

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.

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

.... recurrent patterns are an essential point in understanding the argumentative force of the hypothesis under discussion.........The hypothesis, such as I have articulated it, does not depend, nor is focused, on the historicity – or on the interpretation – of this or that pericope, but on the reliability of the whole broad impression.

Unlike what many scholars assume, the hypothesis of a rebellious Jesus
(followed by an armed retinue) does not necessarily imply that Jesus
was a guerrilla-fighter, nor – as Bar Kokhba long after – the chief of an
army, nor that the kernel of his preaching was advocating armed struggle
against the Romans, nor that he aspired to take power through military
means. It is indeed probable, as most claim, that Jesus looked to God for
vindication of his message. He might have thought that the arrival of the
kingdom ultimately was in God’s hands, that it would not be established
by human might or by force of arms …. But the belief that deliverance
would mainly come by supernatural means does not necessarily discount
thinking that human activity plays a role in the eschatological conflict.
Although Jesus believed that it is God who would act in the end-time
to establish his kingdom, this does not imply that human beings should
only wait passively for an awesome miracle, nor that men’s attitudes and
activity were superfluous.23

There are indeed very good reasons to grant credibility to the titulus crucis. To start with, the association of the royal title with the cross lacks biblical precedence, and since the expression “king of the Jews” was not used as a Christian confession in the early literature, it should not be taken as the historicization of a dogmatic motive: Mark aims at presenting Jesus as son of God, not as king of the Jews, and the placard is just a circumstantial detail in his narrative.25 More importantly, as we have seen in the preceding section, the couching of the inscription has an unmistakable political meaning, which is made plain in John 19:12 and Acts 17:7. In these circumstances, it is hardly credible that Christians introduced by themselves the phrase “king of the Jews” as causa poenae, since this would have justified the Roman proceedings against Jesus as a rebel against the ruling state power. Besides, the irony of the Roman use of the inscription fits well with the parodic nature of crucifixion: the self-styled king finds the kind of death reserved for humiliores, thereby unveiling his unreasonable claim. Last but not least, the title conveys a longing for independence that is in harmony with the type of crimes (crimen maiestatis) to which crucifixion was applied in the Judaea subjected to Roman rule.
.....

In the light of the former survey, there are no serious reasons to doubt the historicity of this detail, which would have informed everyone in Jerusalem of the charge against the Galilean teacher. This conclusion is interesting, since it means that the only words written about Jesus during his lifetime contain an unmistakable charge of sedition against the Roman Empire.

Bermejo-Rubio, Fernando. They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha (p. 228). Lexington Books. Kindle Edition.

Steven Brian Pounds

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''.The Crucifiable Jesus

Peterhouse
Faculty of Divinity University of Cambridge

This dissertation is submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

February 2019

Link is an automatic download pdf

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Wikipedia:
Roman origin

In the later Roman Republic, seditio (lit. 'going apart') referred to the offence of collective disobedience toward a magistrate, which included both military mutiny and civilian mob action. Leading or instigating seditio was punishable by death.[1] Civil seditio became frequent during the political crisis of the first century BCE, as populist politicians sought to check the privileged classes by appealing to public assemblies. The Julio-Claudian emperors addressed this situation by abolishing elections and other duties of the assemblies. Under Tiberius the crime of seditio was subsumed in the law of majestas, which prohibited any utterance against the dignity of the emperor.[2]

Seditio has often been proposed as the offence for which Jesus was crucified,[2][3] as described in Luke 23:14: "inciting the people to rebellion" (Greek: ἀποστρέφοντα τὸν λαόν, "leading the people astray").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition