Frank Petrexa
Tribune
Sorry to keep harping on this theme of gospel reliability, but here goes.
Mark flat out says that the crucifixion occurred at the "third hour" of the day following the "first day of the unleavened bread". It gets dark at the sixth hour, and Jesus dies at the ninth.
Luke and Matthew concur on the day and a lot of stuff happens (the "evildoers" in Luke argue, for example, and they revile Jesus in unison in Matthew--and John agrees, and the priests mock him in both) before we are told it gets dark at the sixth hour and Jesus dies on the ninth.
In John Pilate is still dithering at the sixth hour on the day BEFORE the first day of the unleavened bread, but Jesus still dies at the ninth hour, and it is dark the whole time. Also, only John says Pilate uses scourging as an alternative.
Only Luke has Jesus sent to Herod (as the late Giza Vermes says, with the night trial and all the time is pretty tight--so maybe Jesus almost died of exhaustion from being rushed around?). Herod has him mocked--nobody scourges him, Pilate only suggests it as an alternative.
Matthew has soldiers mock him, but they do not scourge him (and it's the WHOLE cohort: 600 men, which seems more than a little ludicrous to me). Matthew is the only one who says the tomb was guarded.
Mark likewise doesn't say he was scourged, but only mocked by the whole cohort. In Mark, the Gospel ends with an empty tomb and no guard, and this was so unsatisfying to people that there had to be an additional ending tacked on to give the gospel we know today.
Sometimes the rooster crows three times for Simon, sometimes twice, sometimes once.
There are detailed scenes and precise dialogue with Pilate and Jesus and the Sanhedrin--Mark even has Pilate's wife come in and tell him about her dream. So, how did the gospel writers know all this? Memoirs? Pilate's wife wrote one? They also seemed to know exactly what happened in the night trial (which John does not have at all).
Only John breaks legs and pierces sides.
Vermes thinks Barabbas is historical, since he's mentioned in all four. But that doesn't mean he was an insurrectionist and murderer, a threat to order. Pilate (who was such a tyrant that Gaius (Caligula) of all people recalled him at the request of the Jerusalem authorities) would certainly not release such a person. Most likely, there was a Barabbas released coincidentally and this was seized upon, embellished, and made part of the legend. Paula Fredriksen points out that "the crowd comes from nowhere"--no hint of lots of people ready to kill Jesus after honoring him the Sunday before. It would be very foolish for Pilate be intimidated by a crowd cobbled together by the religious authorities--this is the same Pilate, after all, who marched into Jerusalem with imperial eagles and beat the hell out of protestors.
It is clear Jesus was crucified. It is clear that some people believed he rose from the dead (but the stories about it and the initial witnesses and the location of the apparitions vary wildly). The details are really problematic. Lots of history is distorted by additional fictitious detail written by the winners--especially ancient history. Is all the stuff about Alexander the Great really true--taming the wild horse, for example? We only really know Socrates from Plato. King Arthur and Robin Hood, "Good Queen Bess", Washington and Lincoln, all have lots of myth attached to them.
We aren't even sure how crucifixion was done, and methods probably varied. It surely defeats the purpose of an effective torture to scourge mercilessly beforehand. If one is supposed to carry a cross, why weaken the condemned so much that he can't do so?
There were three executed that day. If the whole cohort was busy with Jesus, who scourged the other two?
I should add something else. It took 300 years or so for people to settle on the Trinity and decide just who Jesus really was. The early Christian movement had every incentive to show that Jesus was not a threat, that if he hadn't been framed Pilate would have had no reason to even notice him, and that the Romans did NOT initiate the execution--leaving the Jews as the scapegoats. Also, Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism, and certainly by John's time there was every incentive to demonize the Jews who didn't go along (and John did just that). I'm not taking sides about whether Jesus was executed justly, I am only saying that as a John the Baptist type he was certainly someone the authorities would worry about. The Baptist, rightly or not, certainly threatened Herod's political legitimacy. Dictatorships like the Roman Empire can be unjust without being arbitrary or stupidly cruel. The gospellers had every reason to make Jesus out as an innocent, and their movement as a peaceful one respecting Roman authority. "Render unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's, and unto God the things that are God's." And they really had to come up with something to explain Jesus' crucifixion to potential converts. The Romans were actually pretty tolerant of all kinds of religion, as long as it didn't threaten public order or imperial interests. Nero was a tyrant, and certainly he used the Christians as scapegoats, but he wasn't just irrationally lashing out and could have just as easily picked on someone else. Josephus' "Isis" story about the crucifixion of Ide and the priests says that Tiberius acted because they scammed a Roman patrician, not because they were just there--they'd been there for some time without any molestation from the Emporer.
Mark flat out says that the crucifixion occurred at the "third hour" of the day following the "first day of the unleavened bread". It gets dark at the sixth hour, and Jesus dies at the ninth.
Luke and Matthew concur on the day and a lot of stuff happens (the "evildoers" in Luke argue, for example, and they revile Jesus in unison in Matthew--and John agrees, and the priests mock him in both) before we are told it gets dark at the sixth hour and Jesus dies on the ninth.
In John Pilate is still dithering at the sixth hour on the day BEFORE the first day of the unleavened bread, but Jesus still dies at the ninth hour, and it is dark the whole time. Also, only John says Pilate uses scourging as an alternative.
Only Luke has Jesus sent to Herod (as the late Giza Vermes says, with the night trial and all the time is pretty tight--so maybe Jesus almost died of exhaustion from being rushed around?). Herod has him mocked--nobody scourges him, Pilate only suggests it as an alternative.
Matthew has soldiers mock him, but they do not scourge him (and it's the WHOLE cohort: 600 men, which seems more than a little ludicrous to me). Matthew is the only one who says the tomb was guarded.
Mark likewise doesn't say he was scourged, but only mocked by the whole cohort. In Mark, the Gospel ends with an empty tomb and no guard, and this was so unsatisfying to people that there had to be an additional ending tacked on to give the gospel we know today.
Sometimes the rooster crows three times for Simon, sometimes twice, sometimes once.
There are detailed scenes and precise dialogue with Pilate and Jesus and the Sanhedrin--Mark even has Pilate's wife come in and tell him about her dream. So, how did the gospel writers know all this? Memoirs? Pilate's wife wrote one? They also seemed to know exactly what happened in the night trial (which John does not have at all).
Only John breaks legs and pierces sides.
Vermes thinks Barabbas is historical, since he's mentioned in all four. But that doesn't mean he was an insurrectionist and murderer, a threat to order. Pilate (who was such a tyrant that Gaius (Caligula) of all people recalled him at the request of the Jerusalem authorities) would certainly not release such a person. Most likely, there was a Barabbas released coincidentally and this was seized upon, embellished, and made part of the legend. Paula Fredriksen points out that "the crowd comes from nowhere"--no hint of lots of people ready to kill Jesus after honoring him the Sunday before. It would be very foolish for Pilate be intimidated by a crowd cobbled together by the religious authorities--this is the same Pilate, after all, who marched into Jerusalem with imperial eagles and beat the hell out of protestors.
It is clear Jesus was crucified. It is clear that some people believed he rose from the dead (but the stories about it and the initial witnesses and the location of the apparitions vary wildly). The details are really problematic. Lots of history is distorted by additional fictitious detail written by the winners--especially ancient history. Is all the stuff about Alexander the Great really true--taming the wild horse, for example? We only really know Socrates from Plato. King Arthur and Robin Hood, "Good Queen Bess", Washington and Lincoln, all have lots of myth attached to them.
We aren't even sure how crucifixion was done, and methods probably varied. It surely defeats the purpose of an effective torture to scourge mercilessly beforehand. If one is supposed to carry a cross, why weaken the condemned so much that he can't do so?
There were three executed that day. If the whole cohort was busy with Jesus, who scourged the other two?
I should add something else. It took 300 years or so for people to settle on the Trinity and decide just who Jesus really was. The early Christian movement had every incentive to show that Jesus was not a threat, that if he hadn't been framed Pilate would have had no reason to even notice him, and that the Romans did NOT initiate the execution--leaving the Jews as the scapegoats. Also, Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism, and certainly by John's time there was every incentive to demonize the Jews who didn't go along (and John did just that). I'm not taking sides about whether Jesus was executed justly, I am only saying that as a John the Baptist type he was certainly someone the authorities would worry about. The Baptist, rightly or not, certainly threatened Herod's political legitimacy. Dictatorships like the Roman Empire can be unjust without being arbitrary or stupidly cruel. The gospellers had every reason to make Jesus out as an innocent, and their movement as a peaceful one respecting Roman authority. "Render unto Ceasar the things that are Ceasar's, and unto God the things that are God's." And they really had to come up with something to explain Jesus' crucifixion to potential converts. The Romans were actually pretty tolerant of all kinds of religion, as long as it didn't threaten public order or imperial interests. Nero was a tyrant, and certainly he used the Christians as scapegoats, but he wasn't just irrationally lashing out and could have just as easily picked on someone else. Josephus' "Isis" story about the crucifixion of Ide and the priests says that Tiberius acted because they scammed a Roman patrician, not because they were just there--they'd been there for some time without any molestation from the Emporer.
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