The Romans kept accurate reports from their consuls all over the Empire. I find the video Acta Pilate quite interesting and enlightening. The High Priest and Sanhedrin also kept accurate records:
What evidence is there for a biblical jesus?
by Touchofgrey 189 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Jeffro
Nope. The Gospel of Nicodemus (containing the spurious Acta Pilate) is known to be a later apocryphal Christian work. And it has Pilate writing to the wrong emperor.
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Jeffro
The forgery also gets the name of Pilate’s predecessor wrong. His actual predecessor was Valerius Gratus but the translation of the spurious work instead offers a misspelling of Valerius Flaccus, a poet from the late 1st century. -
Vidqun
Jeffro, not sure about your "fact" about the wrong emperor. In this version he wrote to Tiberius Caesar, who governed from 14 until 37 CE. That sounds about right.
It makes sense that there would have been original documents, detailing the events. Rome would have been interested in what's happening in the provinces, and the consuls would have reported to them. To what extent this is based on facts, is an open question. I found it quite accurate, comparing well with the accounts in the Gospels. Interestingly, the prevailing view is that the Christian Acts of Pilate were first devised and published as a confutation to an earlier pagan and anti-Christian work also known as the Acts of Pilate. So such documents were doing the rounds in one form or another.
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Jeffro
Vidqun:
Jeffro, not sure about your "fact" about the wrong emperor. In this version he wrote to Tiberius Caesar, which governed from 14 until 37 CE. That sounds about right.
Haha… I was waiting for that. The spurious work contains a separate letter to Caligula, who was not emperor during Pilate’s tenure. The letter to Tiberius was added later. But thanks for playing along.
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Touchofgrey
Acta pilate seems to be dated 4th/5th AD ,so not a eyewitness account
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Jeffro
Vidqun:
I found it quite accurate, comparing well with the accounts in the Gospels.
🤦♂️ Hardly surprising that the later Christian forgery is consistent with the Christian ‘gospels’.
a confutation to an earlier pagan and anti-Christian work also known as the Acts of Pilate
And that makes you more confident about the later Christian forgery? Cognitive dissonance at its worst. And confirmation bias to boot.
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Vidqun
But to get back to the Gospels, which you (and modern scholars) view as later fables and embellishments. According to tradition, all the apostles, excluding John who was exiled to Patmos, were killed for their beliefs. Why would anybody want to be killed or be exiled for make believe and/or imaginary stories? I am sure that a martyr would make very sure of the things that he was being martyred for.They must have had some powerful motivations for enduring such tortures.
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Jeffro
Most of the martyrdom stories of prominent first century Christians are Christian tradition only. And people die for their religious beliefs even now. And not just Christians. It is only evidence that they believed, not that it’s true.
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Vidqun
Well, I personally would not put my life on the line for a fable or hearsay. But as usual, in this line of conversation we have to get back to prophecy. Some wonderful imaginary predictions and prophecies, especially about Jesus, uttered thousands of years before, coming true. What are the odds! Amazing guesswork!