Ancient Sources: History and Theology.

[Mountain Man]

I gave the link for his credentials. He is a "Creationist Archaeologist" whatever that is supposed to be. Perhaps it is akin to a flat earth astronomer!

I honestly have no idea what you're going on about since I never referenced Dr. Wood.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

I honestly have no idea what you're going on about since I never referenced Dr. Wood.

From the link you provided: https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2...on-at-jericho/

The controversy centers on the dating of the destruction of City IV at Jericho. Everyone agrees that Canaanite Jericho was destroyed in a violent, fiery manner. Not everyone agrees on the date that this happened. The first excavators, Sellin and Watzinger, who dug from 1907 to 1909, concluded that Jericho had been destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, by at least 1600 BC.² In the 1930’s, British archaeologist, John Garstang excavated a residential area of Jericho and concluded that the fiery destruction of the city occurred in the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1400 BC, linking it with Joshua and the Israelites.³ From 1952-58, Dame Kathleen Kenyon excavated at Jericho and dated the destruction of City IV to the end of the Middle Bronze Age, ca 1550 BC⁴, meaning that there was no city of Jericho for Joshua to conquer at the time the Bible describes the conquest of Canaan. More recently, archaeologist Bryant Wood has suggested that Kenyon’s analysis of the date of this destruction is incorrect, as she based her conclusions largely on the absence of Cypriot bichrome pottery.⁵

[Mountain Man]

From the link you provided: https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2...on-at-jericho/

The controversy centers on the dating of the destruction of City IV at Jericho. Everyone agrees that Canaanite Jericho was destroyed in a violent, fiery manner. Not everyone agrees on the date that this happened. The first excavators, Sellin and Watzinger, who dug from 1907 to 1909, concluded that Jericho had been destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, by at least 1600 BC.² In the 1930’s, British archaeologist, John Garstang excavated a residential area of Jericho and concluded that the fiery destruction of the city occurred in the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1400 BC, linking it with Joshua and the Israelites.³ From 1952-58, Dame Kathleen Kenyon excavated at Jericho and dated the destruction of City IV to the end of the Middle Bronze Age, ca 1550 BC⁴, meaning that there was no city of Jericho for Joshua to conquer at the time the Bible describes the conquest of Canaan. More recently, archaeologist Bryant Wood has suggested that Kenyon’s analysis of the date of this destruction is incorrect, as she based her conclusions largely on the absence of Cypriot bichrome pottery.⁵

I never referenced Dr. Wood.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

I never referenced Dr. Wood.

Your link did.

[Mountain Man]

Your link did.

So?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

So?

Your article did.

[Mountain Man]

Your article did.

So?

Apparently you have no response to what I actually quoted, so you decided to attack something else. (And frankly, I don't even buy into your assessment of Dr. Wood, but that's really beside the point.)

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

So?

Apparently you have no response to what I actually quoted, so you decided to attack something else. (And frankly, I don't even buy into your assessment of Dr. Wood, but that's really beside the point.)

You posted a link. I read it and responded to the validity of allegations made by one "Dr" Wood.

Short answer: I do not consider the opinions of a "creationist archaeologist" to have any academic merit.

[Mountain Man]

You posted a link. I read it and responded to the validity of allegations made by one "Dr" Wood.

Short answer: I do not consider the opinions of a "creationist archaeologist" to have any academic merit.

But I never quoted Dr. Wood, so your self-serving assessment of him, even if by some miracle it proved to be accurate, is completely irrelevant.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

But I never quoted Dr. Wood, so your self-serving assessment of him, even if by some miracle it proved to be accurate, is completely irrelevant.

He is cited in your article that you presumably posted to give some form of credence to your views.

[rogue06]

Philo and Josephus both mention him.

Actually I am aware of not just them but Tacitus, who mentions him briefly as well -- as were all of the scoffers who kept claiming that Pilate was nothing more than a fictitious construct fabricated by Christians. They simply declared that those references are interpolations (pious forgeries) inserted later by Christians into the text in exactly the same manner they reject both Josephus' and Tactus' mention of Jesus. Since they summarily rejected the references I excluded them as well.

That later archaeological evidence confirmed his existence.

For the scoffers the discovery of the "Pilate Stone" was the first "legitimate" piece of evidence of his existence. until then, they dismissed him as a fictional character.

The fact remains, as you have stated, that we know very little about this historical figure.

However, I still have no idea why anyone thinks that even if he was married why his wife would have been present in Jerusalem at this time.

A wife going to be with her husband. Why that's so rare and unheard of that obviously we must therefore dismiss anything that mentions it

You, along with some other Christians here, have an unfortunate tendency to conflate a real Galilean Jewish peasant who was executed by the Roman Praefectus of Judaea with a much later theological construct. The two are not the same.

And you keep making this assertion without ever providing evidence for it.

Again, I note that you appear to have forgotten the comments on Pilate from both Philo and Josephus. Or perhaps you did not know about them!

See my first comment above, and I'll note that you excluded Tacitus. Or perhaps you did not know of him!

What I don't understand is why so many scoffers dismissed Pilate as being a fictitious person in spite of three separate references. If you read Philo, he rails at Pilate for various acts that upset the Jews in Jerusalem. He says nothing about Jesus or the Christians, yet atheists felt some bizarre compulsion to deny that reference.

Firstly, and regrettably, so many ancient sources have not survived and secondly you need to realise that this province was not overly important as evidenced by the rank of those early Praefecti. They were men of the equestrian classes. Judaea was a comparative backwater. Yes it had geographical importance to Rome given its location on the Mediterranean littoral but the two really significant Roman provinces were Syria and Egypt.

The bolded is a point that I've repeatedly made and yet for some reason you keep demanding contemporary writings documenting the existence of Jesus. If we have none for Pilate (the three citations date from many decades later), who was a Roman governor and would be mentioned in all sorts of documents, why would you expect to find any for Jesus, who would have been completely unknown outside of Galilee and Judea (as you say, a "backwater") during his lifetime (but boy did that change)?

Moderated By: rogue06

My apologies. I thought I posted this Thursday, but when I looked for it I couldn't find it. Apparently I never hit "Post Reply" so it has been sitting there in the "Restore or Delete" file since then

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[Mountain Man]

He is cited in your article that you presumably posted to give some form of credence to your views.

So?

[rogue06]

Who actually went to the tomb?

• Mary Magdalene and the other Mary?
• Mary Magdalene, Jesus' mother, and Salome?
• The "women"?
• Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved?

I'll go over this one again since you ignored it the first time.

When you have separate witnesses describing something they saw or experienced you are going to get different versions of the same thing. That is exactly what one should expect to happen since different people perceive things differently and when they describe things, will naturally leave out details that they don't think are relative whereas someone else would include them and leave out different details for whatever reason.

That is just how it works. If you don't think so then ask any attorneys or judges that you might be acquainted with. They'll quickly set you straight.

Now... As for the differences.

As I previously noted, Matthew appears to give a fairly bare bones accounting of it, as well as the rest of the resurrection accounts because he wants to emphasize the Great Commission. Very possibly, the one thing that folks interested in Christianity had already heard about was the Resurrection and since paper and ink were expensive he may very well have decided not to waste it going into detail about what others had already covered, and as I noted, he wanted to focus on the commission Jesus bestowed upon his followers, hence laying the foundation for their evangelizing.

Both Matthew and Mark mention Mary Magdalene as going. They also mention a second Mary, who they described differently. This is likely because Matthew's audience may have been familiar with who she was so "the other Mary" sufficed, whereas Mark's audience needed a better identifier. This is supported by the belief among scholars that Matthew's original audience was likely a Jewish Christian one living within or close to Judea, which would certainly increase the chances that they were very familiar with this Mary, whereas Mark's audience were likely Roman and not Jewish (as evidenced by his constantly explaining things that a Jew would need no explanation for), so a little more detail explaining who the second Mary was might have been necessary.

As for Salome, who only Mark mentions, this could either be due to Mark's audience being familiar with her or the reasons others don't mention her might simply because she doesn't play much of a role later on so no need to mention her and therefore explain who she is. Again, remember, this was a time when paper and ink were expensive so no need to waste it on what they regarded unimportant details.

And while John only mentions Mary Magdalene, it is clear she was not alone because she uses the term "we" when describing events. So for whatever reason John wanted the spotlight on her. And even if he wasn't specifically trying to emphasize her role, it is hardly unusual to mention only the leader of the group when they do something. for instance, it is not uncommon to talk about how Caesar conquered Gaul, or Hannibal crossed the Alps. Obviously they did not do it alone and saying it that way is not contradicting the facts that they did so at the head of armies.

And do you seriously think mention of "the women" is some sort of contradiction?

And Peter was there with them later, he didn't accompany them at dawn to anoint the body (which IIRC was considered a woman's duty)

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Actually I am aware

If you were aware of these non Christian sources, I have to wonder why you made this categorical and patently erroneous statement:

"But here we have a governor that we didn't have a scrap of documentation about outside of Christian sources." [My emphasis].

By the way who are “all of the scoffers”, “they”, and “atheists” to whom you repeatedly allude?

Nor have I never read any serious work that questioned the existence of Pontius Pilate.

Why does Tacitus consider it necessary to explain to his audience the originator of this cult as well as the fate of its followers in Rome including the lurid tortures they suffered? Why does he explicitly refer to the public pity produced among the Roman populace by those cruelties? His intended readership would, one suspects, have had little interest in an insignificant oriental cult.

It is also even more questionable that he gets the nomenclature wrong regarding Pontius Pilate. Given Tacitus’ administrative background [Proconsul of Asia,112-113 CE and son in law of Cn. Julius Agricola] he would assuredly know that prior to 44 CE the governors of Judaea were designated Praefecti. After the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 CE, when Rome once again assumed direct control of Judaea, the governors were given the title Procurator. After 71 CE, following the First Jewish War, the governor of Judaea was the commander [Legatus Legionis] of Legio X Fretensis which unit now constituted the military garrison of the province. Roman legionary legates were ex Praetors drawn from the Senatorial class, quite unlike the Praefectus Pontius Pilate who came from the equites/knights, that is [approximately] the Roman middle classes.

As for the comments in Josephus re James being the brother of the Christ, this is generally held to be genuine and not some later Christian interpolation. However, the possibility of emendation/interpolation always remains, given what we know concerning Josephus’ own hostile view of messianic claimants, wonder workers, and popular preachers; and the untold misery that their activities invariably wrought upon the ordinary people of Judaea.

The other of the so-called Testimonia Flaviana as it has come down to us [found in extant Greek MSS of Josephus [Ambrosianus in the eleventh century, Vaticanus in the fourteenth, and Marcianus in the fifteenth] is another matter. It is quoted by Eusebius in the fourth century in his Evangelical Demonstration [3.5]; Ecclesiastical History [1.11] and the Theophany. However the Christian scholar Origen writing in the second century states of Josephus “Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ” [Commentary on Matthew X.17].

We must therefore conclude that either this passage in Josephus received a few later Christian glosses or the entire passage was later inserted by a Christian hand at that point in the text.

It should also be considered that, as a practising and observant Jew, Josephus would not allege that a crucified messianic agitator was some sort of supernatural entity. Furthermore, given that he was writing under Roman imperial patronage, he would not have authenticated the validity of an event that was obviously seditious and antagonistic to Roman order.

For the scoffers the discovery of the "Pilate Stone" was the first "legitimate" piece of evidence of his existence. until then, they dismissed him as a fictional character.

Again who are these “scoffers” to who you regularly allude?

A wife going to be with her husband. Why that's so rare and unheard of that obviously we must therefore dismiss anything that mentions it

We do know that the wife and sons of Septimus Severus accompanied him on his military campaign to Britain in 201-211 CE. Provincial governors and some senior officers may also have been accompanied by their spouses [depending on the location and nature of the posting] but why do you imagine Pilate’s wife [assuming he had one] would accompany him on a standard military/administrative exercise that would have lasted for two or possibly three weeks?

And you keep making this assertion without ever providing evidence for it.

The first century Jew we know as Jesus of Nazareth was not a divinity. To be acclaimed as [or being suspected of claiming] Messianic status in Judaea at this period was a serious political offence and carried the death penalty.

Nor is the Jewish Messiah a divinity. In Judaism there is only one ineffable and transcendent deity. That deity is not triune, nor is it homoousion, and neither does it possess three distinct hypostases. These theological conceptions were only formulated much later in the history of Christianity.

See my first comment above, and I'll note that you excluded Tacitus

See my comment on this section in Tacitus’ Annals.

What I don't understand is why so many scoffers dismissed Pilate as being a fictitious person in spite of three separate references.

What I do not understand is why you made a categorical statement that “we didn't have a scrap of documentation about outside of Christian sources.” And then suddenly, and after I mentioned Josephus and Philo, you are acknowledging that we actually do have “documentation” that is “outside of Christian sources”, thereby completely contradicting your initial somewhat emphatic pronouncement.

If you read Philo, he rails at Pilate for various acts that upset the Jews in Jerusalem.

No he does not. He had nothing to do with Jerusalem.

Once again you demonstrate your profound ignorance of the matter.

For your information Philo of Alexandria led the Alexandrian Jewish delegation to the Roman emperor Gaius [Caligula] following the Alexandrian riots of 38 CE and the brutal attacks on Alexandrian Jews. The text of which you write is in fact from a letter written by Herod Agrippa and which Philo incorporated into his own text.

From A Letter from Pontius Pilate, Paul Winter, Novum Testamentum, Mar., 1964, Vol 7 pp.37-43, Brill.

Of the persons whose names are mentioned in the gospels, Pontius Pilate of one of the few about whom we are informed relatively well from independent sources. One of these so comes from Pilate's own time. It is a letter, written by Agrippa I which gives some account of Pilate's rule in Judaea and a detailed description of the prefect's character. Philo of Alexandria incorporated the letter in question in his Legatio ad Caium and thus we have a sketch of Pilate's personality from the hand of one of his contemporaries. Agrippa describes Pilate as "a man of inflexible disposition, ruthless and obstinate" (Legatio 30I) ;he mentions the procurator's proneness to corruption, his insolent demeanour, his rapine, his inveterate habit of wounding the feelings of other persons, his cruelty which resulted in numerous murders of people neither tried nor legally condemned, and of his outright inhumanity to those whom he governed. Agrippa concludes his description of Pilate by calling him "a man who at all times displayed ferocious passions".

Of the authenticity of this letter there is no doubt. It is the earliest extant document to mention Pilate by name, and only one that comes from any of his contemporaries.

He says nothing about Jesus or the Christians, yet atheists felt some bizarre compulsion to deny that reference.

Given that you have previously stated “we didn't have a scrap of documentation about outside of Christian sources” I would look to your own ignorance on these matters.

And again I must press you. Who are these “atheists” to whom you regularly refer? Your repeated references to "atheists" and "scoffers" is beginning to hint at slight paranoia.

The bolded is a point that I've repeatedly made and yet for some reason you keep demanding contemporary writings documenting the existence of Jesus

I do not “keep demanding” extraneous contemporary sources about the existence of Jesus. I simply point out that none exist. The Jewish writer Justus of Tiberias, a contemporary of Josephus, and who lived not far from Capernaum, a small town closely associated in the gospels with Jesus and his ministry, never mentions the man. Nor of course does Philo [another contemporary] albeit one living at some distance from the alleged events in Judaea.

If we have none for Pilate (the three citations date from many decades later)

How do you arrive at that conclusion regarding Philo of Alexandria’s writing?

I hardly think 41 CE counts as “many decades later”. If we accept Jesus’ execution took place somewhere between 30-36 CE we are considering [at the very most] a mere eleven years.

who was a Roman governor and would be mentioned in all sorts of documents

Not necessarily. This was a relatively minor province. If the praefectus managed to keep the peace and the taxes were regularly collected there would be little apparent need for anything else to be regularly “mentioned in dispatches” And of course we have the contemporary account from Agrippa via Philo on Pilate. Something of which you seem [once again] blissfully unaware.

[QUOTE=rogue06;n1266743] why would you expect to find any for Jesus, who would have been completely unknown outside of Galilee and Judea [/quote Yet another Jewish rebel being crucified was hardly a matter of any major significance or immediate importance to Rome or its provincial administration.

(as you say, a "backwater") during his lifetime

No I wrote that it was a “comparative backwater”.

[QUOTE=rogue06;n1266743] (but boy did that change)?[quote] What is the relevance of your question?

Moderated By: rogue06

My apologies. I thought I posted this Thursday, but when I looked for it I couldn't find it. Apparently I never hit "Post Reply" so it has been sitting there in the "Restore or Delete" file since then

What a bizarre comment. Firstly, who cares? Secondly, to whom are you apologising? Me?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

I'll go over this one again since you ignored it the first time[snipped for irrelevancy].

Why can you just not accept that these four texts manifestly contradict one another? All this prattle about attorneys and judges is entirely irrelevant and a feeble attempt to suggest that the internal narratives of these four gospel accounts have some attested veracity.

As I previously noted, Matthew appears to give a fairly bare bones accounting of it

Hardly! The author alleges there was an earthquake and one angel descending from heaven.

Very possibly, the one thing that folks interested in Christianity had already heard about was the Resurrection and since paper and ink were expensive he may very well have decided not to waste it going into detail about what others had already covered

How would he know what the others "had already covered"? Did they have an meeting prior to “going to papyri” in order to decide what to include and omit from their respective narratives?

, and as I noted, he wanted to focus on the commission Jesus bestowed upon his followers, hence laying the foundation for their evangelizing.

More unsupported speculation.

Both Matthew and Mark mention Mary Magdalene as going. They also mention a second Mary, who they described differently.

Why? You allege these four authors all knew one another.

This is likely because Matthew's audience may have been familiar with who she was so "the other Mary" sufficed, whereas Mark's audience needed a better identifier.

Unsupported speculation.

This is supported by the belief among scholars that Matthew's original audience was likely a Jewish Christian one living within or close to Judea,

Might we have the names of those scholars and their respective observations?

The place of origin for this text is more likely to have been in Antioch, which was the capital of the Roman province of Syria, and the city where [according to Acts 11.26] Jesus’ disciples were first called Christians. Matthew is first cited by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, in the second century; and Syria is mentioned in Matthew 4:24. The prominence given to Peter in this gospel may reflect his importance to the Antioch community where one tradtion made him a bishop before he went on to Rome. The gospel is written in koine [common] Greek, the lingua franca of Rome’s Eastern empire and the intended audience was possibly an enclave of urban Greek-speaking Jewish converts. [see Howard Clarke, The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers, Indiana University Press, 2003]

which would certainly increase the chances that they were very familiar with this Mary,

Unsupported speculation given the above.

whereas Mark's audience were likely Roman and not Jewish (as evidenced by his constantly explaining things that a Jew would need no explanation for), so a little more detail explaining who the second Mary was might have been necessary.

What makes you think that these gospels were written for primarily Jewish audiences?

As for Salome, who only Mark mentions, this could either be due to Mark's audience being familiar with her or the reasons others don't mention her might simply because she doesn't play much of a role later on so no need to mention her and therefore explain who she is.

Unsupported speculation

Again, remember, this was a time when paper and ink were expensive so no need to waste it on what they regarded unimportant details.

Well that depends.

From Roger S Bagnall's Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman World, University of California Press, 2011, chapter 6, p.134.

That is not to say that papyrus was not used for short letters, for tax receipts and order for payment and so on. [...] Was cost a factor?...Cheap or costly is a judgment that depends on an individual’s circumstances. A roll of blank papyrus cost a bit over one-eighth of what an artaba of wheat did, according to an account written around 338-341 CE. Two centuries earlier, the situation was not a lot different, if the calculations of T.C. Skeat are to be believed. At that rate, a sheet of papyrus would cost something like a quarter to a third of the value of the food for an active adult for a day. If a sheet of paper cost you as much as a hamburger, would you choose a free alternative [here Bagnall is referencing ostraca] for short texts you (or the recipient) would surely throw away almost immediately? It all depends on how wealthy you were.

And while John only mentions Mary Magdalene, it is clear she was not alone because she uses the term "we" when describing events. So for whatever reason John wanted the spotlight on her. And even if he wasn't specifically trying to emphasize her role, it is hardly unusual to mention only the leader of the group when they do something. for instance,

Again somewhat speculative comments.

it is not uncommon to talk about how Caesar

Snipped for irrelevancy.

And do you seriously think mention of "the women" is some sort of contradiction?

That depends upon how many women are being referenced. In Luke 24.10 "Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles". That sounds like quite a large party and no other gospel mentions Joanna.

And Peter was there with them later, he didn't accompany them at dawn to anoint the body (which IIRC was considered a woman's duty)

The accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not mention him at all.

To return to your legal comparison I can envisage any semi competent judge throwing out your “eye-witness” accounts as mutually contradictory and therefore unsound and inadmissible evidence.