[HN Gopher] The Strange Afterlife of Pontius Pilate (2016)
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       The Strange Afterlife of Pontius Pilate (2016)
        
       Author : diodorus
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-04-16 22:03 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
        
       | thinkingemote wrote:
       | Today is Easter Sunday, which many HN users may not be aware.
       | 
       | It's the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ after 3
       | days from when Pontius Pilate (of the featured article) sentenced
       | Jesus to death.
        
         | kasey_junk wrote:
         | In western church tradition. In the Eastern church it's next
         | week.
        
         | nickpsecurity wrote:
         | Quick summary with proof it's true is here for those
         | interested:
         | 
         | https://www.gethisword.com
        
         | tsimionescu wrote:
         | Note that this is true for the Catholic church and others who
         | use their calendar. The Eastern Orthodox church has Easter
         | Sunday next week.
         | 
         | Also note that the Eastern Orthodox church is not the church of
         | Russia, there are quite a few Orthodox churches who recognize
         | each other as having the same creed, but who don't otherwise
         | share leadership (with 14 Patriarchs - Constantinople,
         | Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Cyprus, Bulgaria,
         | Serbia, Russia, Greece, Poland, Romania, Albania, and the Czech
         | Republic and Slovakia, and a few others).
        
           | pyuser583 wrote:
           | It's Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church, which features
           | Pilate heavily.
        
       | MomoXenosaga wrote:
       | History is written by the victors. Christians never claimed to be
       | objective chroniclers of past events.
        
         | tomohawk wrote:
         | For several hundred years, Christians could hardly have been
         | considered victors other than in the sense that they survived
         | under often severe persecution by pagans and by the the Roman
         | state.
         | 
         | A foundational element of Christian faith is the the truth
         | claims contained in what is now the Bible. If the Bible is not
         | true, then there is no basis for Christian faith.
         | 
         | You can probably read the New Testament within a week without
         | trying too hard. If you do, you'll see several claims to be the
         | objective truth of the matters it reports on.
        
       | nickpsecurity wrote:
       | "The lack of a suitably grisly fate for Pilate put Christian
       | apologists in a quandary..."
       | 
       | It looks like they speculated on more than actually read the
       | Bible. There is a pattern of God blessing obedience and punishing
       | disobedience. This happens on two levels: being held accountable
       | for our actions on Judgement Day with eternal consequences
       | (definite); what happens in this life leading up to it (varies).
       | Psalm 73 and the Prophets (esp Habakkuk) show God in His
       | sovereignty lets the wicked succeed to use them as instruments
       | for His will. Job shows even the most righteous man on earth
       | might suffer if it leads to the greatest good. He's an
       | intelligent and sovereign being who dispenses grace (or not) as
       | He sees fit.
       | 
       | Just a few verses tell you what matters about Pontius Pilate:
       | 
       | "I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give
       | account of it in the day of judgment." (Matt. 12:36)
       | 
       | "I saw a great white throne, and him who sat on it... I saw the
       | dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and
       | they opened books. Another book was opened, which is the book of
       | life. The dead were judged out of the things which were written
       | in the books, according to their works... If anyone was not found
       | written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire."
       | (Rev. 20:11-15)
       | 
       | "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son,
       | that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal
       | life. For God didn't send his Son into the world to judge the
       | world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who
       | believes in him is not judged. He who doesn't believe has been
       | judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the
       | one and only Son of God. " (John 3:16-18)
       | 
       | "Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him
       | who sent me has eternal life, and doesn't come into judgment, but
       | has passed out of death into life." (John 5:24)
       | 
       | "If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in
       | your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
       | For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified
       | (sins paid for), and it is with your mouth that you profess your
       | faith and are saved." (Romans 10:9-10 NIV)
       | 
       | God exercising wrath during the earthly life is optional, varies,
       | and usually isn't recorded. What is clear are Pilate's options
       | when facing Jesus Christ the next time. Pilate is a sinner who
       | also killed the Son of God. He'll face judgement for his sins
       | with eternal punishment. If could and did repent, Jesus' death
       | absorbs God's wrath against him via substitution on the cross
       | (Romans 3:21-28). One of those two things happened.
       | 
       | The authors of the Gospels are more interested in what _you_ will
       | decide once they 've shared the Gospel with you. I'll link it one
       | more time: GetHisWord.com. Before you is life and death.
       | Eternally. Choose wisely. Put faith in and surrender your life to
       | Jesus Christ. Then, live this one with He who knitted you
       | together in the womb, has a plan for your life, and works all
       | things for the good of those who walk with Him. I pray more of
       | you experience the peace I was given back in 2020 by making that
       | decision. It's been an adventure, HN! I struggle but I'm never
       | bored!
        
       | mc4ndr3 wrote:
       | Pilate wasn't the first or the last to commit evil acts and live
       | a dandy life. There is often no justice, either earthly or
       | divine.
       | 
       | Christopher Hitchens points out that humans suffered alone among
       | the elements, for aeons, before suddenly prophets began preaching
       | the "goodness" of sky daddy. The enduring existence of evil
       | provides a counterexample.
       | 
       | Either he delights in evil, or he is incompetent to do anything
       | about it. There's no justice, there's just us.
       | 
       | It's worth noting that during the time of Jesus (I accept there
       | may have been such a historical figure), there were reams and
       | reams of prophets. It is remarkable that the state chose to steal
       | his thunder by coopting that one. But decades before that
       | political decision, Jesus was just another prophet among
       | prophets. Nothing in the liturgical account of the trial makes
       | sense, given how ordinary the case would have been against the
       | wider background of similar cases.
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | God(s) made more sense when they were constructed as
         | reflections of nature and the human condition, as petty, cruel
         | and arbitrary as the mundane aspects they portrayed. No one
         | questions the brutality of the God of war, of the fickleness of
         | the Goddess of Love.
         | 
         | But the God of the Old Testament being a God of perfect love,
         | perfect wisdom and absolute power is so cognitively dissonant
         | that an entire heretical religion (Gnostics) could only square
         | that circle by claiming that God must have really been the
         | actual God's moustache-twirling evil twin all along.
        
       | canjobear wrote:
       | The Passion of the Christ does a good job fleshing out the
       | character of Pilate and his decisions. It comes across as a
       | "banality of evil" type scenario. He sees that he is being forced
       | to execute an innocent man, but what is on his mind the most is
       | office politics: he needs to Judaea under control so that he
       | won't be recalled to Rome and look like a fool. When he asks
       | "Quid est veritas?" he's saying that truth doesn't matter, all
       | that matters is the politics of the situation. But the question
       | also shows that he is deeply uncomfortable with the whole
       | situation and doesn't really know what to do.
        
         | trhway wrote:
         | Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" has a worthy take on it too,
         | a bit less about politics.
        
       | ncmncm wrote:
       | I gather that serious historians consider the mystical writings
       | of Paul as primary, followed much later by realization of the
       | need to invent a figure of Jesus to have been heard to dictate
       | doctrine; and then to invent apostles to have witnessed it; and
       | finally invent a timeline of dictation events.
       | 
       | Gospels would then have been variant versions of this timeline,
       | preached at different jurisdictions, that then had to all be
       | retained as each had already developed a regional constituency,
       | with no one of them finally able to dominate.
        
         | throw__away7391 wrote:
         | Pilate is a critical figure to the marketing of Christianity to
         | the Roman world, as in a couple of weird, awkwardly inserted
         | passages completely absolves the Roman government of
         | responsibility and solidly lays it all on the Jews.
         | 
         | The TL;DR goes like this:
         | 
         | Pilate: Guys, this Jesus dude is totally innocent.
         | 
         | Jews: Kill him anyway!
         | 
         | Pilate: OK, well how about this--between him and this notorious
         | murderer, who should I pardon?
         | 
         | Jews: Release the murderer! Kill Jesus!
         | 
         | Pilate: Gee, ok fine, but this is all on you guys.
         | 
         | Jews: Yes! His blood is on us and our descendants!
         | 
         | Then least there be any doubt, he _literally_ asks for water to
         | be brought and "washes his hands" of the decision.
         | 
         | It's absolutely the stupidest thing you'll ever read. It is
         | such an obvious after the fact fabrication, it sounds like it
         | was written by a child, and yet this story has been used over
         | the centuries to justify a great deal of violence towards Jews
         | at the hands of Christians.
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > Pilate is a critical figure to the marketing of
           | Christianity to the Roman world, as in a couple of weird,
           | awkwardly inserted passages completely absolves the Roman
           | government of responsibility and solidly lays it all on the
           | Jews.
           | 
           | It... doesn't though; it's long been the canonical Christian
           | illustration of how you _can't_ escape culpability. Even the
           | significant subset of Christianity that _does_ treat Pilate
           | as an actual saint rather than a villain does so on the basis
           | of extrabiblical narratives of a later heel-face turn--
           | including, in some versions, martyrdom as a direct
           | consequence of his failed attempt to convert Caesar--but
           | still sees him as a villain within the boundaries of the
           | scriptural account of the Passion.
        
           | Amezarak wrote:
           | There's nothing awkward about that "insertion" at all, Jesus
           | repeatedly insists over the course of the gospels that the
           | Jewish authorities are going to kill him, they actually
           | attempt to stone him at multiple points, and he tells lots of
           | parables to enrage them that also include this feature, such
           | as the parable of the vineyard, where the keepers kill the
           | master's son, and then the master comes and kills them all.
           | And he accuses them of killing all the other prophets too!
           | 
           | And of course you end up having to change the whole narrative
           | to sustain this, too - the charges of blasphemy, the betrayal
           | of Judas, etc.
           | 
           | The argument that the passages you cite are insertions just
           | makes no sense, they are totally in keeping with all the
           | rest. If you want to say it's all inspired anti-semitism,
           | fair enough and there's probably some truth to it, but
           | there's no reason to think that those passages alone are
           | fake. It's probably also worth keeping in mind that the
           | people who wrote this were probably also all Jewish.
        
             | throw__away7391 wrote:
             | > they actually attempt to stone him at multiple points
             | 
             | Right, so they are also alleged to have killed others, and
             | suddenly for Jesus it is claimed that they "don't have the
             | authority" and need Pilate to do it.
             | 
             | Written by a child.
        
               | Amezarak wrote:
               | The stonings would have been illegal under Roman law and
               | would have resulted in severe punishment by the
               | authorities.
               | 
               | That's exactly why in any case they would have had to
               | obtain approval from/remand the case to Pilate.
               | 
               | We have many other documented such incidents resulting in
               | dire consequences. Pilate himself would have been averse
               | to allow mob violence not just because it was illegal but
               | because allowing such to take place as the Roman in
               | charge would have likely merited punishment for him as
               | well especially if it got more out of hand.
               | 
               | Josephus is a great source on the historical situation of
               | the time period, if you have the time to read the
               | Antiquities and the Wars.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | You have to remember that Jesus (at least the character in
           | the Bible, but likely the historical figure as well) was
           | definitely an extremely anti-establishment figure, as had
           | been most of the Prophets of the Old Testament. And the
           | Establishment at this time is mostly Jewish authorities, not
           | the Roman ones, who had only recently conquered.
           | 
           | This is especially true on the religious side, where the
           | Romans would have cared much less about Jesus' views than the
           | local authorities. Think about the incident at the Temple,
           | the protection of someone collecting wood on the Sabbath, him
           | laying his hands on Lazarus, a dead man, his aspersions
           | against stoning and many other teachings that went well
           | against the fundamentals of Judaism.
           | 
           | To this end, it is not that bizarre to believe that the
           | Jewish authorities would have been far more heated against
           | Jesus than the Roman authorities would have been, and that
           | this is symbolically represented in the story using the
           | character of Pilate.
        
         | MomoXenosaga wrote:
         | You can only argue religion with atheists. Everyone else is a
         | stakeholder. Something someone told me at university and it has
         | been remarkably true.
        
           | tomohawk wrote:
           | Atheism is itself a religion, and athiests are definitely
           | stakeholders.
           | 
           | Atheists have a definite belief about God - He does not
           | exist.
           | 
           | Atheists have a definite belief about the afterlife - it does
           | not exist.
           | 
           | These are metaphysical beliefs that cannot be proven by
           | science or any other methods we know of. They must be taken
           | on faith.
           | 
           | Historically, when the communist atheists took over countries
           | like Russia, they would hold debates with indigenous
           | religious leaders to try to prove the superiority of their
           | beliefs.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | > Atheism is itself a religion, and athiests are definitely
             | stakeholders.
             | 
             | Only if not having anything to drink is a type of soda.
        
               | tomohawk wrote:
               | Atheism is not "nothing".
               | 
               | There are definite metaphysical beliefs that make up
               | Atheism.
               | 
               | Atheism is not the empty set.
               | 
               | An Atheist doesn't say "I believe in nothing".
        
         | throw0101a wrote:
         | > _realization of the need to invent a figure of Jesus_
         | 
         | There seems to be very little doubt in academic circles on the
         | whether a Jesus of Nazareth existed:
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
         | 
         | What you are espousing is referred to as "Jesus mythicism":
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
         | 
         | Tim O'Neill (an atheist) has an entire section of his weblog on
         | the topic (and why it's generally non-sense):
         | 
         | * https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
        
           | infradig wrote:
           | This Tim O'Neil?
           | https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14324
        
             | anjbe wrote:
             | Richard Carrier is about the least disinterested individual
             | one could cite on the subject of Jesus mythicism. His
             | "celestial Jesus" view requires an ahistorical Jesus, which
             | plausibly explains his vociferous attacks against anyone
             | holding the mainstream (secular!) view that Jesus was a
             | real person.
        
         | DonaldFisk wrote:
         | Jesus is mentioned by Roman and Jewish historians.
         | 
         | See: https://strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-
         | the...
         | 
         | and: https://strangenotions.com/an-atheist-historian-examines-
         | the...
         | 
         | and also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
         | 
         | which states: "Virtually all biblical scholars and classical
         | historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively
         | refuted"
        
           | throw0101a wrote:
           | The two _Strange Notions_ articles are written by Tim O
           | 'Neill who has his own site:
           | 
           | * https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
        
         | gregw2 wrote:
         | Interesting. But Jesus being invented post-Paul to dictate
         | doctrine just doesn't make any sense to me.
         | 
         | First, Jesus and his resurrection is central to Paul's
         | teachings, not an optional addon restricted to a few bits of
         | text. Second, Paul is much more doctrinaire than Jesus. And
         | third, parable-based teaching is probably not an ideal form for
         | transmitting doctrine because previous writings weren't
         | doctrinaire enough, right?
        
           | Amezarak wrote:
           | Yes, this is certainly not anything approaching the consensus
           | of "serious historians", this sounds like a crank theory put
           | out likely by a single individual who is publishing popular
           | books on the subject.
           | 
           | The Pauline epistles are indeed though usually cited as the
           | works in the New Testament that were the earliest written
           | down, but there's plenty of reason to doubt the academic
           | consensus, which has shifted over time, and like all
           | historical subjects, somewhat subject to fads. (After all,
           | you can't gain notoriety or publish a new paper that simply
           | says "yeah, what's written is likely true, or the closest
           | approximation to the truth we're likely to ever have, and the
           | people who came before me were right.)
           | 
           | Take the Gospel of Mark, usually cited as the earliest
           | gospel. One of the strongest held reasons that it's believed
           | to have been written after 70 AD is because Jesus prophesies
           | what sounds like the Siege of Jerusalem. That's it. It
           | certainly doesn't seem crazy even from a one hundred percent
           | secular worldview that Jesus correctly or even _accidentally_
           | predicted the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans via one
           | hundred percent natural means, given the contemporary
           | political situation. If anything, you can understand how the
           | 1 of 100 prophets who completely by chance made an accurate
           | prediction would become more popular afterward.
           | 
           | Or consider the gospel of John - one of the strongest held
           | arguments against Johannine authorship is about the only
           | biographical information we know about him is that he's a
           | fisherman, and the author of John sounds like an intelligent
           | Greek writer. That's it. I don't think it's radically
           | implausible that he may have been employed at the time as a
           | fisherman, and still had an educated background. Scholars
           | usually call it "anonymous", even though the author clearly
           | focuses on John and refers to him in a special way..and the
           | ends the book by claiming that _this is the disciple which
           | testifies these things, and wrote these things_. He also
           | repeatedly humblebrags that John beat Peter in race...the
           | kind of detail that doesn 't seem like a religious community
           | would find worth highlighting.
           | 
           | It's also not surprising that different accounts of something
           | that occurred over a long timespan contain differences or
           | highlight different things. You see this _all the time_ from
           | eyewitnesses today and throughout history. I was just reading
           | the Landmark Edition of _Anabasis_ that just came out, and
           | there 's a whole appendix about how Xenophon and Cyrus's
           | doctor narrate a battle differently and make different claims
           | about how Cyrus was wounded. But they were both eyewitnesses,
           | or the closest to it you could ever hope to get for an event
           | that happened 2500 years ago.
        
             | bombcar wrote:
             | Reminds me of all the hoorah over Shakespeare- summed up by
             | Wodehouse that "Shakespeare wasn't written by Shakespeare
             | but someone else with the same name."
        
               | Amezarak wrote:
               | Yes, and it looks like the article is the same type of
               | thing. The author in the first section presumes that the
               | only available historical accounts are all wrong, and
               | that the early Christians needed to find a reason why
               | Pilate didn't suffer horribly so they redacted the record
               | to absolve him. But supposing the only available
               | historical accounts are loosely accurate, there was no
               | need to absolve him, even assuming the premise that
               | anyone who did bad stuff to Jesus theologically and
               | psychologically had to meet a Bad End.
               | 
               | ...but uh, there's also no record of what happened to
               | Caiaphas in the gospels. Presumably he didn't meet a
               | grisly fate either, and he's certainly blamed by the
               | gospels much more than Pilate.
               | 
               | You can do anything reasoning backwards from the desired
               | conclusions, and that's what a lot of historiography is.
        
             | dr_dshiv wrote:
             | How is the new Anabasis?
             | 
             | I love that book but can't recommend it to non nerds
             | because it doesn't flow quite right for a modern book.
             | Education of Cyrus similarly. I LOVE these books but they
             | take a little patience. Ironically, the Socratic Dialogues
             | of Xenophon read easier than Plato's.
             | 
             | Now, Golden Ass (Apuleius- trans. Robert Graves) reads like
             | a modern book. Amazing.
        
               | Amezarak wrote:
               | I haven't actually read the book itself yet, I've just
               | been going through the appendices. :) I actually first
               | read the Loeb Classics version, which was great
               | considering how much a book like that benefits from stuff
               | like maps!
               | 
               | The Landmark Edition from what I've skimmed through of
               | the actual translation looks like the usual quality fare
               | - I always recommend them, though I was a little
               | disappointed with their Gallic Wars; Caesar is made a
               | little too informal, I wish they had just used an
               | existing translation.
               | 
               | I do need to get to the Golden Ass, thanks for the
               | reminder, and that'll be the translation I go for based
               | on your recommendation. :)
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | > I gather that serious historians consider the mystical
         | writings of Paul as primary, followed much later by realization
         | of the need to invent a figure of Jesus to have been heard to
         | dictate doctrine; and then to invent apostles to have witnessed
         | it; and finally invent a timeline of dictation events.
         | 
         | Someone, somewhere may believe that, but it certainly isn't a
         | shared belief of most serious historians (much less something
         | most, or any, serious historians would consider strongly
         | supported by historical evidence.)
         | 
         | About the only part of that on which there is broad consensus
         | is that, of the writings incorporated into the scripture, the
         | Pauline corpus is most likely the earliest to have been written
         | in its current form.
        
       | pessimizer wrote:
       | It's strange to cast Christian antisemitism as a _result_ of the
       | depiction of Pontius Pilate as an innocent stooge (or alternately
       | a secret pious Christian doing God 's work in executing Christ.)
       | It's not the result, it's the cause. The reason Pilate is painted
       | as anything other than guilty is because the Jews must be guilty,
       | and the method of the Jew in destroying all that is good is to
       | sneakily take advantage of the innocent non-Jew.
       | 
       | Non-Jewish, and later Roman state Christianity, required an
       | orthodoxy. As part of that orthodoxy, Jewish Christians had to be
       | demonized and/or converted, and Jewish claims that Jesus was not
       | the messiah and the messiah had yet to come had to be painted as
       | evil. This was one of a hundred ways that was done.
       | 
       | edit: the extratextual antisemitism that largely still exists in
       | various Christian orthodoxies (but isn't actually in the books)
       | should probably be considered a kind of Christian Talmud.
       | Protestantism was partially a reaction motivated by a perception
       | that the Roman church had grown soft, and _too lenient_ on the
       | Jews. The authoritarianism and corruption of the Catholic church
       | was _preventing_ believers from adequately punishing the Jews who
       | refused to, or who pretended to, convert.
        
         | Amezarak wrote:
         | > The reason Pilate is painted as anything other than guilty is
         | because the Jews must be guilty, and the method of the Jew in
         | destroying all that is good is to sneakily take advantage of
         | the innocent non-Jew.
         | 
         | Do you have any evidence of this?
         | 
         | All the earliest available historical evidence depicts the
         | event in essentially the same way, which also makes logical
         | sense - why would Pilate otherwise care about some random
         | Jewish mystic?
         | 
         | Secondly, it seems like we need to overcome the pretty big
         | hurdle of explaining why a population of mostly Jewish people
         | who largely continued to identify themselves as Jewish during
         | the period in question would write books in a way that painted
         | the Jews as guilty because of their _antisemitism_ rather than
         | because it was an accurate reflection of what they actually
         | believed happened, or, most charitably, because they were
         | afraid any anti-Roman sentiment would bring down the hammer.
        
       | throw0101a wrote:
       | _Pontius Pilate: the biography of an invented man_ by Ann Wroe is
       | an interesting  'biography' on the figure:
       | 
       | > _The foil to Jesus, the defiant antihero of the Easter story,
       | mocking, skeptical Pilate is a historical figure who haunts our
       | imagination. For some he is a saint, for others the embodiment of
       | human weakness, an archetypal politician willing to sacrifice one
       | man for the sake of stability. In this dazzlingly conceived
       | biography, a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize, Ann Wroe
       | brings man and myth to life. Working from classical sources, she
       | plunges us into the world of biblical Judaea under the reign of
       | the erratic and licentious emperor Tiberius and lets us see the
       | trial of Jesus, in all its confusion, from the point of view of
       | his executioner._
       | 
       | * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/490449.Pontius_Pilate
       | 
       | Tries to reconstruct, using records about the lives other Roman
       | governors and notable government types, what kind of person
       | Pilate could/may have been.
        
         | dpeck wrote:
         | | the defiant antihero of the Easter story
         | 
         | That feels like quite a stretch. Pilate is an important figure
         | in the story, but antihero? He largely is the state actor "just
         | trying to keep the peace" and giving in to the religious
         | leaders to make that happen.
         | 
         | Seems more like a real politik type of character of his day
         | than anything to my memory. Keep the tax revenue flowing, don't
         | require more legions to be brought in, keep your governorship.
        
           | antognini wrote:
           | I've always found it interesting that the Nicene Creed, which
           | is recited by millions of Catholics around the globe every
           | Sunday, mentions only three people: Jesus, Mary, and Pontius
           | Pilate.
        
             | humanrebar wrote:
             | Adherents of the Nicene Creed also consider God the Father
             | and the Holy Spirit to be people as well.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | I don't think God the Father and the Holy Spirit are
               | considered "people" though they are considered "persons".
               | "People" seems to imply "human beings" to me, and only
               | God the Son is considered to have been a human being by
               | most Christians (as Jesus, of course).
        
         | coldtea wrote:
         | > _For some he is a saint_
         | 
         | He might be a "realist" politician for some, but he has never
         | been considered a saint for anybody. Also neither "antihero",
         | nor "defiant". He had the power of life and death, and he
         | yielded it to a mob with a shrug, something neither anti-
         | heroic, nor defiant.
        
           | kasey_junk wrote:
           | The actual article you are commenting on states he was
           | sainted by the Coptic church...
        
             | pyuser583 wrote:
             | There's an extra-scriptural tradition Pilate's wife
             | converted to Christianity, and then converted her husband.
             | 
             | No creed celebrates Pilate as Saint for his actions in
             | scriptures.
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | Just as the tally sticks of english tax records since 1066 wound
       | up first stashed under Westminster hall and then burned in the
       | parliamentary heating boiler fires, I like to imagine some late
       | Roman functionary looking at all the internal staff tribunal
       | records muttering _there 's possibly a thesis in this on failure
       | rates in early Roman provincial management_ and them flinging
       | them into a scroll pulping machine turning them into wallpaper,
       | coffin liners, paper mache busts of Hadrian for kiddies...
       | 
       | There must have been a tonne of records, of which less than 1%
       | has survived. Arcanum, incanabula, stiffening for the spines of
       | book binding, the bits of ancient paper which survive defy the
       | reality of Marie Kondo through the ages.
       | 
       | "This record of pontius pilates tribunal for stuffing up as
       | governor does not spark joy" _riiiiip_
        
         | baud147258 wrote:
         | I would have though that the writing material at the time
         | (especially in Judea) would have been papyrus and not
         | parchment. Which makes the archive conservation situation even
         | worse, as papyrus don't keep well outside of arid climate.
        
       | bjt2n3904 wrote:
       | Marking to read later. I've always enjoyed reading, "What Pilate
       | said to Gaius one night".
       | 
       | Edit: Read it. Interesting to hear the historical traditions
       | about Pilate and his guilt. Here's the link to the story I
       | mentioned.
       | 
       | https://aletheasmind.wordpress.com/2019/08/03/what-pilate-sa...
        
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