Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria
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Then in the early 60s all of that changed when the "Pilate Stone was uncovered during an archaeological dig at Caesarea Palestinae. And since that time some coins and a ring have been found bearing his name.
And that is pretty much the extent of the historical record outside of the Bible that we have on him.
So for you to disdainfully sniff that there is "no extraneous contemporary evidence that Pilate was married at this time" is at the very least disingenuous and likely dishonestly duplicitous. The fact is that we know exceedingly little about Pilate due to a lack of contemporaneous accounts concerning him.
Moreover, isn't it interesting that we finally uncovered evidence for his existence during our lifetime. I mean, considering that he was the Roman governor of Judea? What I mean is that you have repeatedly demanded all sorts of contemporary documentation for someone you argue "had no impact on the world. He lived and died a nonentity" and then use the scarcity of such material to argue against his existence. But here we have a governor that we didn't have a scrap of documentation about outside of Christian sources.
So if documentation from Pilate's time that mention him, probably the most important person in the region, were unknown until a little over 50 years ago, why should anyone expect a bunch of documentation concerning Jesus?
And ironically, even with only the tiny fragments we have, as Warren Carter informs us in Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor, modern scholars know a good deal more about him than about any other of the Roman governors there. Apparently, for some all we have is a name.
So much for demands for contemporary documents mentioning someone.
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