Robert said
Pilate normally lived in Caesarea, but came to Jerusalem with additional troops for the Passover crowds. When Pilate was not around, I would not be surprised if the sunedrion exercised their own Roman appointed authority with greater freedom. Despite John 18,31, there are those who argue that they retained the ordinary power of capital punishment (cf Jn 19,6), or at least exorcised it, as they had previously and would at later times. I by no means deny Pilate’s decisive role in the crucifixion, but I think Caiaphas ordinarily ruled in lock-step with the policies of Pilate, who in turn allowed Caiaphas more or less free reign to administer the temple as he saw fit during this period, yet always with the threat of Roman imperial desecration.
This is a very interesting angle I’ve not encountered yet in scholarship (just goes to the holes in my familiarity) – that perhaps the temple authorities at the time did have execution power. Would you expand on this, and/or if time constrained, is there a good read you’d suggest here?
You referenced John 19:6 – I’d been under the impression that it was just a historical mistake. For the capital punishment reason, but also because 19:7 says claiming messiahship is contra-Torah or blasphemous, which I’ve understood to not be the case (messianic claims might be arrogant but not blasphemous). Do you see this differently?
Robert said
I’m doubtful that the ‘new covenant’ language would be originally introduced at the last supper. It seems to me much more likely that if Jesus ever used the language of a ‘new covenant’, it would probably be in a sense similar to how this language was also used in the Dead Sea scrolls, more like a personal and communal renewal of an eternal covenant. The sharing of a communal meal to institutionalize their communal commitment to this renewed eternal covenant with God might have been an ordinary practice of Jesus and his followers, similar to the importance of the communal meal at Qumran, and would be part of the Pharisees’ practice elsewhere, except that Jesus was highly criticized for letting public sinners, drunkards, gluttons, prostitutes, even tax-collectors (who could afford better wine) participate at least at times. The fun table!
This would be seen as a precursor to the eschatological banquet, and if the holy people wouldn’t come, he would go out and invite the rabble. This may have had a special significance at a last supper, hence the line in the later account, “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” As we’ve seen, Paul’s earlier account already pointed more obliquely to a future, eschatological dimension, but not in the words of Jesus.
Agree that the fellowship at table for Jesus was both important to his overall message (actually as well as symbolically) and was a really good time (esp when he cranks out the aged nebbiolo for a wedding). I am, however, ignorant of the Qumran tradition of table. Would you mind expanding or pointing me in a direction of good literature? I’m generally aware of the JB/Qumran parallels, that Qumran seems to have a 1 or 2 messiah tradition (depending on the layer within the scrolls) and that the language in Mt/Lk when JB’s followers were to report back to him while incarcerated about Jesus demonstrating signs of messiahship actually maps almost verbatim onto a specific Qumran scroll, but I know very little about their practices, especially fellowship.
Robert said
If I grasp your meaning here, yes, I think Paul here focuses on the Judean authorities’ role in Jesus’ death here because of the context of this letter, where he is speaking to the Thessalonians about their persecution by their Thessalonian compatriots. To the extent that he was aware of the details of Jesus’ crucifixion, he would not have denied the role of Pilate in the execution.
Yes, great, thank you. Follow-up clarification: do you think he was being sloppy with his language, or (just occurred to my in light of your comments about temple authority above) do you think there’s an embedded connection to the temple execution authority topic?
Robert said
…[H]ence the line in the later account, “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Meant to say this earlier: it’s a very small point, but as a call-back to our taboo discussion – something resembling this statement makes a lot more historical sense (esp. versus the Pauline “new covenant” thrust, which we already agree on) to come from the lips of a guy staring into the teeth of an impending but amorphous doom.
Arrrgh – I had typed out, with my thumbs on my iPhone over the course of my present transcon flight, a rather lengthy and detailed response which returned to the original timeline topic, only to have the plane WiFi glitch out when I went to post it, and now it’s totally gone.
So, when my next attempt at same comes through at some future point and is thoroughly rubbish, blame Delta Airlines for that.
I’m so defeated, and no amount of ginger ale and pretzels can drown my sorrow…
Robert said
The ‘new covenant’ issue is really a separate topic from the use of taboo terminology in a symbolic manner.
My imprecise words there blurred what are two distinct animals. They are not muddled in my head – it was a location tag that the context in which we were discussing Jesus’s last words centered around the vein of taboo. Long winded way of saying: yep, we’re good here.
Robert said
With respect to this later topic, there are Hebrew and Aramaic and Jewish Greek references to drinking wine as drinking ‘the blood of the grape cluster’. Both Marcus (II, 967) and Pitre (p 412.) make reference to several of these texts, not as a way of dealing with the taboo issue but rather to make interesting allusions: some of these texts are typically interpreted as messianic, while others relate directly to temple sacrifice. Nevertheless it may bring us a small step closer to understanding the symbolic language of blood with reference to drinking wine.
Blood of the grape metaphor potentially leading to a symbolic connection to wine – a very interesting historical datum, and a thankfully intuitive one.
That said, the dietary prohibition is for animal blood, or do I have that wrong? Grape “blood” wouldn’t count as taboo, seemingly.
And just for clarity in the picayune, even if grape blood were to have solved the taboo issue, the “new covenant” issue isn’t touched by that and remains unresolved – and we both agree Jesus is unlikely to have given voice to these words in this way.
Robert said
No, I think he was merely emphasizing the role of the Judean authorities in persecuting the Judean ‘Christians’ (and Jesus and the prophets and opposing Paul’s ministry) in parallel with the Thessalonians being persecuted by their Thessalonian compatriots, presumably because they had turned away from the communal pagan gods and rites.
Gotcha. My question is rooted in the empirical observation that people seem to have historically tripped over his phrasing. Would not the more literally / precision-minded of his recipients have had a similar reaction?
In any event, it’s a small point, so happy to leave off it – defer to you.
Robert said
It’s a minority opinion, but I think it has more merit than is typically attributed to it. Relying purely on memory, it has been defended in the past by Paul Winter and somewhat more recently by Geza Vermes.
Interesting. I’m ignorant of the former scholar’s catalogue, but a fan of what little I know of the latter’s work. You continue to increase my reading list… Keep it coming!
Robert said
Keep in mind that there is a gray area as to what may have been officially allowed and what may have practiced at various different times. The contradictory views expressed in the gospel of John (18,31 vs 19,6) might even point to this very ambiguity, ie, the high priest represented to Pilate that they did not have this authority, but Pilate knew that they did not necessarily abide by this.
Fair enough on the potentially elastic nature of how capital punishment authority was wielded unofficially. I can see how, during times when the Roman governor was not present, that liberties might be taken.
I guess my question to that would be: during Passover, would not Pilate have had total control of execution authority, especially crucifixion? My (shallow) understanding has been that Rome was jealous of its sole power for execution/crucifixion. Pilate in Caesarea, the temple authorities may have some (spoken or unspoken) latitude. Pilate in Jerusalem, he is the alpha – it’s solely his prerogative.
If one’s priors were that the apostles scattered post-arrest, that whatever judicial processes took place outside the public’s gaze, and that no one inside the proceedings was sufficiently sympathetic such that they’d have relayed the stories to Jesus’s followers, then it would seem that John 18:31 and 19:6 would be disallowed as primary evidence, given lack of any purchase on eyewitness testimony. If these passages were later surmises by followers, then perhaps it could be secondary evidence in the context of an elastic execution authority backdrop. But then, if Rome had sole crucifixion authority, it would still be in error – a tradition rooted in explicable misunderstanding, but misunderstanding nonetheless.
It seems that all roads lead to the Johannine account being wrong – by varying degrees depending on lens. And if wrong, it would be primarily evidence for the author(s) coloring-in of facts when faced with epistemic gaps.
Robert said
Claiming to be messiah was not in and of itself blasphemous, but it could be accompanied by a variety of other nuances that could move it into the sometimes rather vaguely or variously defined mortal offense. There’s a passage in the Talmud that says the Bar Kokhba was sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin for his false claim to be the Messiah. Obviously, that is not true, but it illustrates the range of opinion.
Gotcha. Said differently: If one takes a stance for precision, then it’s wrong as stated. If one takes a more imprecision-tolerant stance, then the messianic claimant could have collected a number of other counts of blasphemy and the passage overly restricts what would have been on the full wrap sheet. Like missing a charge of perhaps messing with the operations of God’s holy Temple cult. And that was done by a person who claimed, and was emboldened to action by said claim of, messiahship. Is that a broadly fair characterization?
Robert said
I doubt the Thessalonians would have looked for such historical precision so as to object and say, “Hey, wait a minute there, can Paul actually be tryng to imply that Pontius Pilate, who we know was in Jerusalem at that time, was not involved in the crucifixion? We need to write him back and correct his obvious misunderstanding of the Roman administration of Judea.” Would the poor members of the church in Thessaloniki in 40-50 CE even know that Pilate had been the governor of Judea at that time? If they even thought about this, I suspect they would have merely assumed that, of course, the local Judean government, would have been involved in the administration of justice.
Ha. Point taken. It probably doesn’t help me much that the one (living) person I actually know from (modern) Thessaloniki should perhaps be nominated for the award of most precise human on the planet.
Your view on this would seem to be, put in other words, it’s only those (later) readers of Paul who would have lacked the proper social context that would have fallen over the perceived imprecision, because his audience would have grasped it (assuming for the moment they had the background information). It’s the divorce between the context and the text that produces the perception of error, because within its context, it would be a natural phrasing (for the parallelism). If that’s the case, I’m now aboard. Thank you.
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