Was Herod replaced by Pilate in virtue of the same reason why Jesus was replaced by John as giver of grace?

[Giuseppe]

Along this investigation:

so perhaps the original story ran something like what we find in the gospel of Peter, minus Pilate: basically, Herod commands the Jews to crucify Jesus (in Jerusalem), and they do, except it was thought to be Herod Antipas, not Agrippa, for his jurisdiction over Galilee (as noticed in Luke 23.7), yet as king instead of as tetrarch, as we find for Agrippa in the early Claudian years of 41-44. Making Jesus Davidic (to the point, even, of eventually locating his birth in the southern, Davidic town of Bethlehem) put him rather under the jurisdiction of Judea, ruled during the tenure of Antipas by Pontius Pilate.

it seems that the reason to remove Herod and to place Pilate and the Pilate's Herod in the narrative is the need of davidizing an original Ephraimite Jesus.

I have some doubt about being that the reason.

On the other hand, I have the strong suspicion that John the Baptist was introduced in the narrative to replace Jesus in the role of the giver of grace (John meaning "YHWH-gives-grace") , given the fact that a Jesus being him alone a giver of grace was too much in (catholically embarrassing) contrast with the giver of Law, Moses, docet John 1:17.


Hence, if you were a Judaizer, and if you would have had under the your eyes:

An original gospel without John the Baptist, without Pilate, where Jesus gives grace everywhere (in explicit opposition to Moses, per John 1:17), and then he is crucified by the Jews and by Herod (Pilate being absent all the time).

...the your remedy to avoid a such embarrassing Jesus giver of grace, could well be:

• the introduction of a "YHWH-gives-grace" (i.e., John the Baptist) to make it clear that the god of Moses is also able to give grace.

• the introduction of Pilate as killer of Jesus, to have now only "YHWH-gives-grace" (i.e., John the Baptist) killed by Herod, without possibility of confusion between the two victims.

In this way, if before the introduction of John and Pilate in the story, the name of Herod was connected too much with the image of a Jesus giver of grace in opposition to the god of Moses, now it is not more so: Herod kills John, while Pilate kills Jesus. The previous image of the anti-nomian Jesus killed by Herod is eclipsed forever. Or quasi.

If this is the case, then there is left no independent trace in the Josephian passage on John the Baptist that is not theologically (and not coincidentially) explained by the theory above. The name, the goal of the his action, the name of the killer. All expected under the theory above. John the Baptist never existed.

[Giuseppe]

Now, I don't think that the Ben's hypothesis (davidizing Jesus by placing him under Pilate and the Pilate's Herod) is mutually exclusive with the my hypothesis (eclipsing an anti-nomian Jesus killed by Herod by placing him after a "YHWH-gives-grace" killed by Herod and under Pilate).

Note that Markus Vinzent say that in Mcn the Jews believe that Jesus is the Messiah son of Joseph.

This is contentwise a somehow distorted passage, and the comparison with The Gospel teaches, why – it is the result of Luke avoiding to read it as a response to Jesus’ rejection of him being the Messiah ben Joseph, and as Jesus attacking his audience, knowing that they want to provoke him to heal himself, and to fight and to do precisely what they wanted to have proven, that he is the warrior ben Joseph Messiah.

http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/search?q=joseph


Now, I don't want to speculate here about the synoptical questions related by prof Vinzent. It suffices only, for the my argument, the allegorical motive behind the Nazaret's question and the reference to Joseph as father of Jesus:

And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him.
2 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?
3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
4 But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.
6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.

(Mark 4:1-6)


Let us ignore the fact that here Joseph is not mentioned as father of Jesus but as his brother (possibly the Matthean or Lukan version could be older in this case); the point is:


was the sense of the question "is not this one of us?" more precisely not denigrative at all, but on the contrary more demanding from what Jesus was required to do in order to be accepted by them?

I.e., not something as this:

is not this one of us, i.e. unable to do something wonderful?

...but something as this:

is not this one of us, i.e. the expected Messiah ben Joseph, hence: Shouldn't we expect something wonderful from him?

«And they were offended at him», because Jesus was not their coveted Messiah ben Joseph.


Hence the judaizing apology that is an interpolation:

But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

It is an interpolation because it serves to reiterate the fact that Jesus was from Nazaret and was son of Joseph even if he was just rejected as NOT the Son of Joseph by the same people of Nazaret.

Against the Ben's hypothesis, this interpretation can only hold under the Marcionite denial that Jesus was davidic or ephraimite Messiah, as recognized implicitly by prof Vinzent.

But then it becomes more plausible to see the Reductio ad Davidem (seen by Ben) as part and parcel of the desire of eclipsing the anti-nomian marcionite Jesus. The Judaizer interpolators wanted that Jesus was son of Joseph (as the people of Nazareth would have wanted him be) and was also the son of David (as the people of Nazareth didn't believe him be). The solution was to make Jesus both. How? By making Joseph himself davidic!

[neilgodfrey]

Why assume a single trajectory that was interrupted at various points along the way?

Why not accept the possibility of divergent, multiple, beginnings ... and in time an eventual suppression of "wrong thoughts" and the establishment of a single "orthodoxy"?

[Giuseppe]

Why assume a single trajectory that was interrupted at various points along the way?

Why not accept the possibility of divergent, multiple, beginnings ... and in time an eventual suppression of "wrong thoughts" and the establishment of a single "orthodoxy"?

because the temporal distance between an Herod and the other (or Pilate) is too much short to be casual random euhemerization (as it would be if Jesus was euhemerized under Janneus and independently under Pilate).

[Giuseppe]

But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.

It is an interpolation because it serves to reiterate the fact that Jesus was from Nazaret and was son of Joseph even if he was just rejected as NOT the Son of Joseph by the same people of Nazaret.

Note the unexpected absence of the name of the father of Jesus in the equivalent of Matthew, as too much embarrassing for him as reference:

not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas

(Matthew 13:55)

...but still found in Luke:

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn't this Joseph's son?” they asked

(Luke 4:22)

The Judaizer interpolator was embarrassed by the mention of Jesus as Son of Joseph, because the mention of Joseph was alone sufficient as reference to the Messiah Son of Joseph, as test for Jesus if he was really one of them, a true citizen of Nazateth. It is only us moderns who are inclined to see the reference to "son of Joseph" as reductive/offensive/humble for Jesus, when he seems - and only seems - addressed as such by the people of Nazareth, when at contrary the being a "son of Joseph" was the genuine conditio sine qua non to be accepted by them as really one of them, as really the warrior Messiah son of Joseph.

[Giuseppe]

The same embarrassment, by the Judaizer interpolator, to make it explicit that in the question of the people of Nazareth the name of Joseph was mentioned, is at the origin of the reduction of Joseph to the status of mere brother of Jesus, from the previous status of father of Jesus in the original Gospel.

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon?

and of course also in Mark this embarrassment causes the curious anomaly of having only Mary mentioned as mother of Jesus, and not also the too much embarrassing Joseph as father of Jesus.

[Giuseppe]

Hence Ben is correct to claim that in the first gospel Jesus was presumed to be son of Joseph, i.e. he seemed to fulfill the prophecies concerning the Messiah Son of Joseph. With later gospels davidizing him (even if preserving still the name of Joseph).

But Ben is wrong when he says that Jesus was really the Messiah Son of Joseph in the first gospel. He was not at all a Jewish Messiah in the first gospel. Neither ephraimite nor davidic.

[Giuseppe]

I already responded to the bit about the epistle of Barnabas, but I wanted to add that I actually kind of like the trajectory which precedes that comment; it needs fleshing out, and I am not sure that a crucifixion in Galilee, if that is the suggestion, is really a viable option (even the Jewish predictions about a dying Messiah ben Ephraim seem to have him perishing in Judea, not in Galilee), but the overall notion seems worth pursuing.

Herod Antipas (tetrarch of Galilee and Perea) and Herod Agrippa (king of Judea, Galilee, Batanaea, and Perea) were easy to confuse in antiquity (and still are today!), so perhaps the original story ran something like what we find in the gospel of Peter, minus Pilate: basically, Herod commands the Jews to crucify Jesus (in Jerusalem), and they do, except it was thought to be Herod Antipas, not Agrippa, for his jurisdiction over Galilee (as noticed in Luke 23.7), yet as king instead of as tetrarch, as we find for Agrippa in the early Claudian years of 41-44. Making Jesus Davidic (to the point, even, of eventually locating his birth in the southern, Davidic town of Bethlehem) put him rather under the jurisdiction of Judea, ruled during the tenure of Antipas by Pontius Pilate.

I had forgotten about Ignatius:

Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 1.1-2: 1 I glorify God, even Jesus Christ, who has given you such wisdom. For I have observed that ye are perfected in an immoveable faith, as if ye were nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spirit, and are established in love through the blood of Christ, being fully persuaded with respect to our Lord, that He was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin, was baptized by John, in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him, 2 and was truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch [ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου καὶ Ἡρώδου τετράρχου], nailed to the cross for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we are by His divinely-blessed passion, that He might set up a standard for all ages, through His resurrection, to all His holy and faithful followers, whether among Jews or Gentiles, in the one body of His Church.

Here the connection of the anti-nomian Jesus with the mere "likeness" of Joseph and with Herod is made perfectly explicit:

This serpent, he says, is the power that attended Moses, the rod that was turned into a serpent. The serpents, however, of the magicians-- (that is,) the gods of destruction--withstood the power of Moses in Egypt, but the rod of Moses reduced them all to subjection and slew them. This universal serpent is, he says, the wise discourse of Eve. This, he says, is the mystery of Edem, this the river of Edem; this the mark that was set upon Cain, that any one who findeth him might not kill him. This, he says, is Cain, whose sacrifice the god of this world did not accept. The gory sacrifice, however, of Abel he approved of; for the ruler of this world rejoices in (offerings of) blood. This, he says, is he who appeared in the last days, in form of a man, in the times of Herod, being born after the likeness of Joseph, who was sold by the hand of his brethren, to whom alone belonged the coat of many colours

http://gnosis.org/library/hyp_refut5.htm

Hence the my view is correct: the link Herod/Jesus and the link Jesus/Joseph were known to be found in a Gnostic gospel.

[klewis]

The author of Luke-Acts wrote the two books together. We see can be seen by simply opening the two books and following the stories (e.g. http://www.bible.literarystructure.info ... cts_e.html). The major difference in the parallel formation is that in Luke, Jesus goes to Jerusalem and in Acts Paul goes from Jerusalem. It is likely that Luke added the reference to Herod as a complement to the Herod in Acts 25:13 - 26:32.

The Herod passage in Luke is a product of parallel formation with Acts. I don't think we can read anything into it beyond that.

[Ben C. Smith]

Now, I don't think that the Ben's hypothesis (davidizing Jesus by placing him under Pilate and the Pilate's Herod) is mutually exclusive with the my hypothesis (eclipsing an anti-nomian Jesus killed by Herod by placing him after a "YHWH-gives-grace" killed by Herod and under Pilate).

Just to be clear, my tentative hypothesis has shifted since then. It still involves a very heavy dose of making Jesus Davidic, but it no longer involves Herod and Pilate having had much to do with that process. Rather, it has to do with some early Christians apparently thinking that Jesus (and here I am presuming the exalted Jesus) was John the Baptist redivivus. For those Christians, Herod Antipas would be the "Christ killer." But other Christians made different guesses about who (the exalted) Jesus was, and one or more of those guesses entailed Pontius Pilate being the "Christ killer." Then these two thoughts (at least) were fused (and rather awkwardly at that).

All of this entails the original earthly Jesus either having never existed or having been obscure enough that most people would not know who he was. I am still leaning toward the latter on that, for at least one reason that I have already made clear (though you strenuously disagree, apparently thinking that crucifixion as the means of messianicide is already patently obvious from the scriptures, and I do not think it is nearly as clear as you think it is, though I agree it is possible); and there are other reasons, as well. But it is not an easy call, and I may change my mind (possibly more than once, if history serves as any guide).