Peter Kirby wrote:Ben C. Smith wrote:Mark 15.21: 21 They compel a passerby coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear His cross. [It sounds like the original author of this line expected his or her readership to know who Alexander and Rufus were, in a storyteller's device similar to what we find in Ruth 4.16-17, implying both the existence of their father Simon and his unwilling participation in the crucifixion, and therefore also an historical Jesus who was crucified.]
John 21.18-24: 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” 19 Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He says to him, “Follow Me!” 20 Peter, turning around, sees the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; the one who also had leaned back on His bosom at the supper and said, “Lord, who is the one who betrays You?” 21 So Peter seeing him says to Jesus, “Lord, and what about this man?” 22 Jesus says to him, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!” 23 Therefore this saying went out among the brethren that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” 24 This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true. [So much about the beloved disciple seems iffy to me, but still, the best explanation for the concerns expressed in this passage seems to me to be that there was such a disciple, implying the existence of the historical Jesus whom he had followed.]
Wouldn't these two be a bit (slightly) stronger than Papias and much (much) stronger than the Talmud, in closeness to the claimed witness?
As such, if these are considered important parts of the historicist case, should we not conclude that they are also a case for crucifixion under Pilate?
Yes, they are a case for a crucifixion under Pilate. I am leaving other possibilities open, however, simply because I think that both John and Mark are layered, accretional documents. The line about Alexander and Rufus stands on its own as self-interpreting to a certain extent, but which layer of Mark does it belong to? Is it the same layer that Pilate belongs to or later, or is it earlier? These are open questions for me. If you think that Mark is a self-contained whole, and that the last editorial hand before the scribes got hold of the text is the one that penned the bit about Alexander and Rufus, then that is one thing. But it is quite another if Alexander and Rufus are simply holdovers from an earlier account. John evinces similar questions for me. I practically take it for granted, for example, that the bit about the death of the beloved disciple belongs to a sort of appendix. Was that appendix penned by the same person or people who penned the first twenty chapters? Did the beloved disciple himself write anything, as one verse in the gospel attests? We like to speak of the community of the beloved disciple, but I am not even sure that it has to be the case that the community to which that disciple belonged is the same one affected by the sentiments mentioned in the appendix; it could be down to rumor from a distance: that somewhat famous guy over there died, but we thought the end would come first. I am not saying that this is the most likely scenario, but it seems a possibility to me, and I do not want to narrow things down prematurely.
That said, yes, the most straightforward path (the "vortex", as you call it) is to put it under Pilate.
There is of course the possibility to remove the date from the time of Pilate by making it more recent, like under Claudius or something, but eliminating the 1st century BC also helps to narrow down the space of options. In addition, it eliminates the Talmud as a witness for an option for this Jesus attested by Simon and the disciple (by the argument), since that passage is the 1st century BC option.
I am not sure that is true, if I am understanding you aright. The structure and composition of the Talmud makes me doubt that any and all traditions about Jesus have to be applied to the first century BC. The one in Sanhedrin 43a lacks chronological markers (besides the "eve of Passover" bit, which does not specify a year). But maybe I am not understanding your point here.
It doesn't completely rule out the idea of "Christ in Rome" (the Suetonius reference to "instigation" by "Chrestus") or some other "stunt double." But there are almost as many theories for who the double is, as there are theorists.
Yes, true. I really liked your idea of matching up the "Chrestus in Rome" from Suetonius with the person crucified "in the great city" in Revelation 11.8, by the way.
It can be added to this, that rather than viewing Tacitus and his "under Tiberius all was quiet" statement as something against a crucifixion of Jesus (most likely part of his understanding of what "quiet" means)....
All being "quiet" under Tiberius has never been a good argument
against a crucifixion under Pilate. To my mind it is merely something to consider once one has
other grounds for pushing the crucifixion into a different time period and has begun to ask the obvious questions, "Why Pilate? Why Tiberius?"
it seems just as likely that the hole in his history right where the story of a crucifixion of Jesus could be narrated might have held a longer account than the brief statement that shows up in Annals 15.44, one which was found offensive and thus left out. Moreover, if we want to start playing from the historicist deck, we could then follow it up with the idea that Antiquities 18.3.3 could have originally held a much longer and unflattering account, one that suits the descriptions of "misfortunes" and which pilloried the Jesus figure in the manner of Celsus, as paralleled by the following passages (in Ant. 18.3) on fables and follies and deceived women. It's almost impossible to disprove such an idea, since the text would now be lost and replaced by the current Christian paragraph, but it's an option for those who have started to walk down this road, and it can avoid any reference to a "Christ" in Josephus also (by still positing an interpolation in Ant. 20.9.1) and explain its lack of quotation by Origen.
I have never gotten very excited by those options that require rewriting what the historian has written. Excising something is one thing, but rewriting takes a whole new level of gumption. But I am not unable to be persuaded on that score; I would just need to see a great argument.
In any case, it still comes back to the fact that if we consider these "traditions" or "witnesses" to be historically valuable, the historical "kernel of kernels" of their claim would be the most likely consequence - a crucifixion under Pilate.
I agree that this is the
prima facie likelihood, at the very least.
rucified by Pilate. Seems like if one wants to be an HJ theorist but not a crank, it's difficult to avoid being sucked into that vortex.
Who are you to rain on my aspirations to be a crank?
