PILATE'S PROBLEM AND OURS

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It might be worth noting that other major sources on first-century Jewish history, Josephus and Philo, contain scathing accounts of Pilate's tenure as Perfect of Judea.  He frequently provoked popular hostility by departing from Roman precedent to display Roman religious images on soldiers' standards n public, and was reportedly rebuked several times by none other than Emperor Tiberius for these actions.  On at least two occasions, if not more, he instigated violent suppression of Jewish protest and religious observance, after one incident early in his perfectorate where he did concede to a protest about the aforementioned standards.  Tradition has it that his governorship was so inept and counter-productive to Roman wishes for relative peace in Judea in the '30's that Pilate was recalled to Rome and the exiled to Gaul.  He appeared, in view of all this, to have no admirers in the first-century community in Judea, which was in his charge; he was on the contrary seen as a nefarious and wicked Perfect.  On a personal level, he was observed to have a quick temper and prone to cruel vindictiveness.  In any case, if this was the accepted and widely-held view of Pilate in the first and second centuries, then Pilate might have been assumed to be the last guy in the world who would have been likely to have contemplated letting an accused "King of the Jews" go free.

This then raises a question about why Pilate would receive the portrayal in the Gospels that he does.  If the Gospel writers saw Pilate as bearing little responsibility for Jesus death, but instead saw him for the most part as giving in to the supposed popular will by having Jesus crucified, that would seem to indicate that they saw fit to lay most of the blame on Herod, temple leaders and the Jerusalem crowds.  Given how incredibly unpopular Pilate was among both Jewish and presumably even Roman audiences, the Gospels seem to be attempting to make a quite dramatic point, namely that if even an odious and ill-intentioned ruler like Pilate could tell Jesus was innocent of any crime, he must really have been innocent.  Whatever historical and religious reasons the Gospel writers had for trying to make this point, and there are a number of theories afoot for why they did, I think they were definitely trying to emphasize just that.

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Just to clarify, I was not trying to imply in my post above the Gospel portrayals of Jesus' encounter with Pilate were inaccurate, nor was I making any claim that the Gospels betray anti-Semitism in the way they depict that event.  There are scholars who make such claims, but I was not in the post above trying to endorse them.  

My only point in citing other important historical sources on first-century Judea was to emphasize that Pilate was really hated by the people of Palestine, since he needed no provocation to inflict cruelty on them--in fact, he was himself an instigator of cruelty.   So, the fact that even he is portrayed in the Gospel stories as recognizing Jesus' innocence would have really underscored to first-century audiences that Jesus must have been innocent.  Now, obviously, the Gospels don't let Pilate off scott-free by any means, since he does, as you point out jmf, have Jesus flogged and then permits his execution.  But, just imagine you're a first-century Jewish Christian sometime between the 60's and 80's, a time when Roman oppression of Judea reached its most terrible height.  If all you know about Jesus' death to start out with, perhaps following an early version of a creedal formula, was that Jesus was executed under Pilate, you probably would have thought to yourself: "oh, no kidding; Pilate was a monster."  But then, you heard one of the Gospel stories attesting to Pilate's recognition that Jesus was innocent.  That would have made an impression on someone on the first century that it doesn't necessarily immediately make on us today  It's a striking vindication of Jesus, given all else we know about Pilate.

As far as the notion that the Gospels seem to place relatively more blame on the temple leaders, Herod and the Jerusalem crowds, I don't think that necessarily implies, as some scholars today assume, that the Gospels are anti-Semitic.  It does imply, again in support of what you're saying jmf, that those particular people were horribly wrong, even more wrong than Pilate was, and that may in turn communicate a warning against a certain kind of religious and political authoritarianism coupled with a mob mentality.  

In short, I wasn't trying to be a contrarian; I was trying to put the Gospel stories in a historical context in order to highlight a point they always seemed to me to be making about Jesus.  

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jmf:

Understood and understandable.

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In any case, if this was the accepted and widely-held view of Pilate in the first and second centuries, then Pilate might have been assumed to be the last guy in the world who would have been likely to have contemplated letting an accused "King of the Jews" go free.

Quite the reverse since the ones bringing the charge was the Jewish leadership he had antagonized in so many other ways.  Based on the extra-Biblical sources, the very fact that the Sanhedrin wanted him to do something would likely cause him to be obstinately opposed to it.

And if his choice were between complying with one Sanhedrin execution request and freeing a charismatic religious leader whom many were casting as basically an insurrectionist?  Throw into this choice what the extra-Biblical sources tell us about Tiberius' repeated reprimands to Pilate that he be more sensitive to Judean wishes.  But, in the end, as a historical matter, who knows?  My point was about the impact that the Gospels' Pilate narrative would have had on first-century Palestinian Christians, since they were also targeted by Roman authorities, despite whatever efforts they undertook to distinguish themselves from anybody else.

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Ok.  I get that you fundamentally disagree with the theory that the Bible was trying to score points by making the Jews the patsies of this story.  Thats one way to go about it...but I think...and I hope he will clarify if I get this wrong, Ernest is arguing that the Bible's depiction of Pilate, given when the gospels were likely put to paper...was to not further anger Roman Authorities following the suppression of the Jewish revolt...I can see where people think that necessarily makes the Jews the fall guys...but I dont think it necessarily has to be so...it seems possible one can avoid angering rome by avoiding a totally offensive portrayal of Pilate without dropping a proverbial deuce on the Jews.

I agree with your point, bullmoose.  It doesn't seem to me that the Gospels were meant even indirectly to serve as a political apologia to the Roman authorities, and so their goal in telling the Pilate story was not to signal to the Romans that Christians were cool with them and so the Romans should therefore go after Jewish communities instead.  Such an argument would almost certainly not have been compelling to the Romans, since they did not think highly of Pilate either, and I doubt the events of the 60's to the 80's did anything to rehabilitate Pilate's reputation as a Perfect among them.  Plus, by the '60's, it can be argued that the Romans authorities did know who Christians were and still had no qualms about scapegoating and killing them too.  The Gospels are instead religious documents addressed to religious communities, and it seems to me that the stories about Pilate and the Sanhedrin were not really about how to apportion blame for Jesus' execution, since in the end that execution was believed necessary for the redemption of humanity, but they were mostly about vindicating Jesus himself, and faith in Jesus, to believers.  After all, nobody else comes out of the Jesus execution story looking good except Jesus himself and his mother; the Sanhedrin supposedly failed to recognize him and broke their own law to get rid of him, Pilate recognized his innocence but executed him anyway, crowds that hailed him as a prophet and a messiah one day shouted for him to be put to death by their hated imperialist occupiers the next, and even his own disciples betrayed him.  It's a story about God keeping a redemptive covenant with humanity despite humanity's faithlessness.  The Gospels are religious documents for people of faith, not diplomatic communiques or historical documentaries.  

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Ok, bullmoose, I've reread your posts and perhaps have a little better handle on what you are suggesting.  You think the Gospels were making a political point with the Pilate stories, not so much trying to scapegoat the Jews as to make Pilate seem more benevolent so that the Roman authorities wouldn't be ticked off at Christians.  Am I rightly understanding you now?

I think what I was agreeing with earlier was your apparent disinclination to see the Gospels as scapegoating the Jews.  But about the latter point, I have some reservations.  Those reservations are mainly that 1.) the Gospels don't appear to me to be addressed to Roman authorities, and so, even if such an argument were implied by the Pilate narratives, it doesn't seem to me that the Roman authorities would be much effected by it, and 2.) would such an argument, even if the Romans heard it, have made any difference to them?  There doesn't appear to have been any Roman record of Jesus' trial, no controversy between them and Christians regarding culpability for Jesus' death, and not particularly any love among Romans for Pilate himself either.  Just because Christians didn't "blame" Pilate for Jesus' death, that didn't necessarily imply that Judean Christians would have the kind of loyalty to the Roman throne that the emperors at the time were demanding.  What would be the point of dramatizing an argument about Pilate that would likely have fallen flat with the Romans anyway?  I think the Gospels do have political implications, for sure, but I'm not so sure they were making political arguments.

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I don't have any particular stake in all the dating debates.  But, just briefly:

A lot of the arguments for a Luke-Josephus connection can be found here.  Of course, these arguments are made by Canada's own Mr. Josephus; he probably hears echoes of Josephus in his sleep...

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/lukeandjosephus.html

Also, a lot of scholars nowadays speculate that, because Luke seems to have used large portions of Mark's narrative in composing his own Gospel, and because Luke seems to know a great deal more detail about the destruction of Jerusalem than Mark (compare Luke 21:5-30 to Mark's brief "fig tree" allusion to the fate of Jerusalem in 11:12-14), Luke's Gospel must have been written post-war while Mark's may have been written in the midst of it.  

But, as for myself, I don't know.  In my experience, trying to accurately date ancient texts is like geologists guessing how old strata in hillsides are; everybody stands around, points out a few things, argues a little, shrugs their shoulders and moves on to the next hill.