Josephus, Pilate and Paul: It’S Just a Matter of Time
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Josephus, Pilate and Paul: It’s Just a Matter of Time On the Chronology of Paul and the Identity of Jesus By Laura Knight-Jadczyk May 2016 Source: https://www.academia.edu/25105062/Josephus_Pilate_and_Paul_Its_Just_a_Matter_of_Time Introduction The study of Paul, the most important figure of early Christianity, has taken on an all-new importance in recent years due to the development of new critical methods. As more research, utilizing those methods, indicates that the search for a historical Jesus of Nazareth, as depicted in the gospels, only leads to negative returns, the focus has turned to Paul. The realization is growing that Paul invented what we know as Christianity today.[1] Perhaps “invented” is too strong a word, since he had a full field of inspiration all around him in the abundant and varied theological speculations of his time.[2] While it appears that “Christian churches” – ecclesia populated by individuals following something referred to as Chrestus (Latin) or Chrestos (Greek)[3] – existed even before Paul, Paul’s writings influenced those organizations and ultimately became foundational for a particular variation of early Christianity. But that, in itself, poses the important question: If, in the end, we find that there is no “Jesus of Nazareth” – which seems certain – what then are we to make of what Paul was claiming about the Cross of Christ? How and why did Paul come to see a man on a cross as a symbol of triumph over evil powers and principalities? In order to get a full grip on who Paul was and what he was thinking and doing with such passionate conviction and intensity, we need to dispense with any reference to the later invention of Jesus of Nazareth. The gospels are late documents, probably written in the early to mid second century, close to 100 years after the events they claim to narrate. We need to concentrate on the fact that something moved Paul powerfully and we might want to know what it was. Situating him in an accurate historical context might be helpful in trying to figure out what it was that he was actually saying. And what he was saying may be of paramount importance to Christians and non-Christians alike. In trying to sort out the problem of Paul, we must also reject the use of Acts, the second-century "historical novel" that presents itself as a history of Christianity after Jesus, following the careers of Christianity’s two most famous apostles, Peter and Paul. As Richard Pervo has made abundantly clear in his detailed studies,[4] it is no such thing. The author picked out some authentic names and events from texts extant in his time and wrote his novel around them, with the purpose of presenting the image that everyone got along in the early church. They didn’t, as we’ll see. Acts is not a historical document, but the letters of Paul are. However, even reading them with the genuine history of the time firmly in mind can be problematical, since the conflicts between pagans and Christians often led to wars of words, particularly words written down. The history of the destruction and redaction of texts is appalling. Still, Paul’s letters might help us if we take some care.[5] The only historian whose works have survived to give us a detailed picture of the times in which Paul lived and worked is Titus Flavius Josephus, who lived ca. 37–100 AD, placing his work about one generation after Paul, who is said to have been active in the late 30s through to the 50s or 60s AD.[6] The problem here has to do with using Josephus as a historical source – both from the point of view of the modern researcher and from the point of view of the ancient authors of the gospels and Acts, who could not know that much of what Josephus wrote was embellished or falsified. Despite problems of editorial redaction and transmission of the text, his first work, The Wars of the Jews, published in the late 70s AD, is probably more reliable than his later work, The Antiquities of the Jews, published in the mid 90s, since it was written with Imperial support. Of course, this support strongly suggests that many representations were skewed in favor of the Flavians, Josephus’ patrons and the rulers of Rome during his time. At the same time, Josephus was hiding or disguising many of his own doings, effectively writing Jewish and Imperial apology simultaneously; the end result is a so-called history that must be handled very carefully. The most reliable reports would be those items that were generally known to the Greek- speaking/reading public, but one must keep in mind that even those can be “spun”, and Josephus was definitely spinning and blowing smoke everywhere while still trying to establish himself in the eyes of his readers as a truthful historian. Josephus’ second work, The Antiquities of the Jews, is even more problematical: personal and Jewish apologetics on steroids. Historian Harold Attridge calls it “propagandistic history”, which included a loose paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures with the aim of presenting Jewish history as “relevant, comprehensible and attractive in a new environment.”[7] As for his autobiography, The Life of Josephus, which serves as a self-congratulatory conclusion to Antiquities, it is closer to auto-hagiography, though it may include valuable clues and insights, and a reasonable sequence of events even if heavily spin-doctored. At the end of Antiquities, where he introduces his Life, he has the chutzpah to say he is one of only two or three Jews to have mastered the “national traditions”.[8] [NOTE: On the next two sentences, Price says: “I think Strauss comments on it. Following him, I believe I mentioned it somewhere.”] I am amazed that I have yet to encounter a serious discussion of the obvious parallels between a number of gospel pericopes and incidents in the Life of Josephus. The most striking is his claim to have been so precocious as to discourse with doctors of the law at the age of fourteen. Naturally, when Jesus did it, he was even younger: twelve. Like the gospels of Luke and Matthew, Josephus’ Life begins with his illustrious ancestry – a standard feature of ancient biography. His career focuses on Galilee, moving to Jerusalem with a stop in Capernaum. He recounts a shipwreck similar to that described in Acts, and a scene that is startling when compared to the “Sermon on the Mount/Plain”. Overall and in general, the tone of the Life of Flavius Josephus can be found infused into the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But it is not just the life of Josephus that finds echoes in the gospels; much of the life and words of Paul is creatively interwoven there as well. Any rational historical approach would recognize influence flowing from Josephus and Paul toward the later gospels and Acts, but that isn’t what happens in biblical studies. Biblical scholars tend to give the story told in the gospels and Acts a privileged position, the assumption being that they are histories and not myths, fables or historical fiction. However, if the gospel writers and the author of Acts utilized Josephus to compose their alleged histories – along with other texts and techniques[9] – we find ourselves already on a double layer of shifting sand. We must take great care to try to crosscheck anything we accept as factual when we use Josephus as our historical source, realizing that efforts would have been made to bring the texts into some sort of harmony. This realization leads us to reject any use of Acts or the gospels as historical checks. Pervo makes this evident in his analysis of the speech put into the mouth of the Jewish Pharisee Gamaliel in Acts. Gamaliel mentions Judas and Theudas, two Jewish rebels discussed by Josephus in The Antiquities of the Jews. The author of Acts was rather careless in his use of Josephus, who mentions Theudas first, and Judas second. While the author of Acts also mentions them in this order, he does so in such a way as to imply that they acted in that chronological order, but it is clear in Josephus that Judas came first historically and was brought up as a digression. This reversed order was carried over into Acts due to carelessness and reveals the novelizing activities – and one of the sources – of its author. Further studies by Michael D. Goulder, Thomas L. Brodie and D. R. MacDonald reveal other sources used in the composition of the gospels and Acts.[10] It seems that creating a religious “history” was quite an industry in the second century and the writers were using anything and everything at hand to do it. All of this makes a good, critical examination of the Pauline texts even more crucial for the understanding of the origins of Christianity as we know it. Since Paul’s letters are arguably the earliest Christian historical documents, we should utilize them conscientiously and effectively. However, using the letters of Paul can be problematical, as the work of Baur, Knox, Lüdemann, Trobisch, Price, Tyson, BeDuhn, Campbell, and others reveal.[11] There are still debates over which of the letters are authentic, whether editorial insertions and deletions have been made, and where they have been made. Many scholars have rejected several of the letters attributed to Paul as later forgeries, basing their judgments partly on theological and organizational developments that they believe occurred subsequent to Paul’s career. Nevertheless, setting aside the theological, Christological, and redactional problems that have invaded the letters to some extent, we can still consider the many of the letters attributed to Paul to be the earliest Christian literature and witness extant.