Pontius Pilate

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What do you make of the fact that the story about Carabas was actually written prior to the gospels? It is where they got much of the passion narrative a generation later.

I presume by Carabas you are referring to karabas, a type of mock-king referred to by Philo?

Incidentally, while trying to decipher that reference to Carabas I came across a most peculiar website that makes the claim that the gospel accounts were based upon a now lost tragedy written by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger about the death of Jesus.

The idea that one or more of the gospel writers may have adapted the structure of Greco-Roman tragedies for their text strikes me as quite plausible, but I find it quite fanciful to go from that to inventing out of whole cloth a lost play by arguably the most famous Roman dramatist of the 1st century.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I think everyone, including the NT, agrees Pilate was a scum.

So, there is not a lot to argue about in the case of Pilate’s demeanor:

Luke 13:1 “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices..”

I’ve simply ignored (Tidewater_Wave's) contention that the gospels try to cast Pilate in a good light, because (the) argument is so asinine in light of how the gospels actually describe Pilate.

[Made sight edits in the above quote to make clear who jmfcst was responding to.)

The arguments over the depiction of Pilate in the gospels are not so much whether Pilate was a good man but over his use in the Gospel accounts to establish who was to blame for the death of Jesus. This early mention of Pilate in Luke can be seen as setting up his later appearance when Jesus is brought before him.

In Luke he is used to show that it was the Jewish leadership and their followers who were responsible, as the sole reason Pilate sentences Jesus to death is to placate them.

By the way, that somewhat wacko website I mentioned earlier that posits a lost tragedy by Seneca about the crucifixion of Jesus, has a different take on the disagreement over punishment between Pilate and the crowd.  It posits that Barabbas is a corruption of the title 'karabas' and that in the Senecan original that the gospels were based upon Pilate made use of the schemes of the Jewish elders to get him to kill Jesus for them to advance Roman interests.   Pilate offered the crowd a choice between punishing Jesus as a 'karabas' or mock king, who would warrant a mere scourging and sending away and punishing him as someone who really was king, and the crowd chose the latter.  Hence the crucifixion happened not because Jews denied Jesus as Messiah, but because they accepted him as Messiah.

Not a shred of evidence for any of that of course, but it does make for an entertaining tale.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The author of Acts had no problem presenting the martyrdom of Stephen and John’s brother, and you’re going to tell me the author supposedly wrote this post-70AD and chose to leave out the deaths of Jesus' brother James, Peter, and Paul in the 60’s?!

So, again, for the fourth time, my question to you is:  If written after 70AD, why does Acts, whose historical timeline spans ~30 years after Christ’s resurrection, leave the reader hanging in ~60AD?

We've discussed this point ourselves, and as I pointed out then a plausible possibility is that the writer of Luke-Acts intended to write more books but they either have been lost or were never written.  The fact that we lack a Martyrdom of the Apostles only leaves open the possibility of Luke and Acts being written before their martyrdom, but cannot be used to prove that they were.

Imagine if you will, that The Empire Strikes Back had been a flop so that Star Wars ended after two films.  The lack of The Return of the Jedi would not be an indication that Lucas never planned to film it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

There is simply no historical reason to spend the last 8 chapter of Acts detailing ONE single arrest of a single Apostle and 4 years of associated pretrial antics, UNLESS it represents the up to date history of the church at the time Acts was written.

Period.

That assumes that the author of Acts was writing a history and not a hagiography of Paul.  It also assumes that the author ended where he did because there was nothing more he wanted to write.

But even if the author intended to write no more, it can't be taken as proof that it was because there was no more that could be written. Writing in a manner intended to be taken as having been written by someone of a previous era was not uncommon in that time. So even if one accepts your argument that the intent of the writer was to present the events up to the point Acts concludes, it can't be taken as proof that the actual writing concluded at that point.

My personal belief is that most likely time, place, and person of the writing of the Gospel of Luke and of the Acts of the Apostles is c. 83-85 AD, in Boeotia, by either Luke or a scribe working at his direction or from his notes.  The ending of Acts where it ends, is explained by Luke dying before it was finished.

It's far from the only possibility, but I find it more plausible than it was written by Luke c. 60-62 AD in part because of that incompleteness you take as proof of it being written then.  According to tradition, Luke lived another two decades, dying in Boeotia in 84.  If it was written by Luke c. 60-62, then why did Luke not write a third book in the next two decades?  He had ample opportunity to continue writing and given the reception of his text after it had been written, every reason to believe that a continuation of what he had written would be warmly received by the early church.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My personal belief is that most likely time, place, and person of the writing of the Gospel of Luke and of the Acts of the Apostles is c. 83-85 AD, in Boeotia, by either Luke or a scribe working at his direction or from his notes.  The ending of Acts where it ends, is explained by Luke dying before it was finished.

sorry, missed responding to that point...

Considering you wasted two lengthy posts saying there was no possible explanation for why Paul's trial would not have been covered if Acts had been written after the trial, when I had given an explanation, that's a pretty big miss.

The end of Acts is NOT truncated as if someone died before finishing it…so that theory doesn’t hold water. 

How does a truncation from death differ from a truncation due to reaching the present moment?   The structure indicates that the author was intending to conclude his work with the trial of Paul and that something prevented him from finishing it.

As for your "dilation of time" argument that the structure indicates that Acts was definitely written c. 60-62, if it were applied to Luke, that would assign a date of c. 30-36, which no one I know of holds to be the case, and for good reason.  That structure is common to many works, both historical and fictional, as the author glosses over the events prior to his focus, then settling down to cover what interests him now that the foundation has been built.

Incidentally, there is another aspect of Acts that is suggestive of a post-martyrdom date of composition.  We never learn in Acts why Saul was initially so virulently opposed to the Church.  While there are other explanations that serve, one that works is that the author both did not know and was unable to ask.  If the writing of Acts was contemporaneous with Luke's journeys with Paul, then why no interest in the early life of the main character?  It certainly seems out of step with the theory some traditionalists have, that Acts was written to assist with Paul's defense at his trial in Rome.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What are your views on the Bible True Federalist?

The Old Testament is a work of man dealing with God from the viewpoint of the Jews.  I don't think that the text we have today has been received without error in transmission, but it does convey accurately the principles of the covenant God made with the Jews. Trying to interpret the Torah as history in the modern sense is a profound mistake as that was not why it was written.  (There are elements of history embedded within the Torah, but taking the Torah as literal history is a mistake.)

The New Testament suffers from having been codified by Gentilizers who were in a love-hate relationship with the Jewish roots of their religion.  They loved the antiquity of it, but they hated not sharing the status of the Jews as God's chosen people.  My views are in between those of the Gentilizers who I feel are in error in denying the Jews any difference in status within the church, and those of the Judaizers who erred in thinking that one must be a Jew to worship God correctly.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Ernest,

How does it feel to be mostly in agreement with the dumbest poster in the history of the Atlas Forum?

You think he's dumber than Derek?  I guess you have a new yardstick to use for dumbness.

Thing is, I don't consider myself all that much in agreement with Tidewater.  He goes too far in rejecting tradition for my tastes.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Also, it should be noted the author spent only the last 3 chapters in Luke to address the LastSupper/Betrayal/Arrest/Trial/Crucifixion/Death/Burial/Resurrection/Accession of Jesus Christ and the first 20 chapters in Acts to cover the first ~28 years of church history...while spending the final 8 chapters of Acts addressing this one case of Paul’s.

The division of the Bible into chapters is highly arbitrary and the chapters are not all the same length.  If you compare the final 3 chapters of Luke to the final 8 chapters of Acts, you'll notice that those 8 chapters together are only about 1/3 longer than the final 3 chapters of Luke.

But besides choosing a metric that exaggerates the difference in length, your idea that the length of text must correspond to the importance of the subject matter is ludicrous.  There is a fairly straightforward reason for Acts to slow down once Chapter 16 is reached.  The "we" passages indicate that from Acts 16 on, the author is making use not just of second-hand knowledge, but his own first-hand knowledge of events.  If Acts did not slow its pace at that point it would be surprising.  The author has more material to work with.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

How does it feel to be mostly in agreement with the dumbest poster in the history of the Atlas Forum?

You think he's dumber than Derek?  I guess you have a new yardstick to use for dumbness.

No, Derek (aka Tidewater...aka Jackass) has always been my yardstick for dumbness...unless, of course, you care to take his place. 

Nah, he seems willing to work hard for the privilege of being called dumb by you.  I see no reason to deny him the fruits of his labors.