Overview: After first outlining the literary and theological reasons why scholars question the historical accuracy of the gospel passion narratives, this presentation tackles a range of hotly disputed questions: How likely is it that Jesus had a Jewish trial? Who was Pilate? And did he need to try Jesus? Why incude Barabbas? And was Jesus really buried in a rich man’s tomb?

Bond notes in Mark, Mark thinks the temple was destroyed in 70CE because of sin and the Jewish leadership killing Jesus, like the first temple fell to the Babylonians because of sin.  Mark is nicer to the romans because this is where the new converts are coming from. Still, Pilate goads the crowd.  Josephus notes in a plausibly authentic section of the TF that Jesus was executed by Pilate because he was accused “by the leading men among us,” the Jewish elite.  Similarly, the Jewish elite enlisted the Romans to deal with the doomsday nuisance of Jesus ben Ananias (62 CE).  The aristocratic Jews mock Jesus, and he is sarcastically titled King of the Jews.  Joseph of Arimathea may indeed have buried Jesus in a common pit with other felons as it was custom for a member of the council to bury felons (m. Sanh 6.5).  This has implications for the empty tomb idea and determining where the body was gone. 

Analysis

Following the Gethsemane desperation prayer Jesus thought he too like Jesus ben Ananias would only be scourged and so thought Elijah would come to save him as was prophesied God would send Elijah at the end of the age.  Jesus thus calls out for Elijah from the cross, but he doesn’t come because Jesus was wrong about it being the end of the age, so God overrules Pilate by mercifully killing Jesus quickly. Pilate is shocked about how quickly Jesus dies.  This would explain why Hebrews thinks the Gethsemane prayer was answered. Jesus’ trial by Pilate is a literary parallel with the Jewish trial, eg the question of whether Jesus is the Messiah.  This fits with Mark seeming to emulate Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. 

Boyarin notes John’s prologue is basically a homily on Genesis with the Word being spoken by God to bring creation into existence.  What is novel is the incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, which we have with Jesus being in the form of God and then in the likeness of man in Philippians, as well as the beginning of John.  If Paul’s letters are post 70 CE as Livesey and Berman argue, this has some interesting implications where originally a collection of Jewish/cynic wisdom saying were later fictively attributed to a single sage Jesus, like such aphorisms were attributed to Diogenes. The Q source has no salvific crucifixion/resurrection.

The question is how late you want to place Paul’s letters.  Livesey suggests they are post Bar Kokhba and post the creation of Paul in Acts.  If this is the case we would need to rethink the intertextuality between Paul and Mark, and whether Paul influenced Mark or Mark influenced Paul.  I tend to think Paul postdates the gospels because Paul (and Hebrews) seems to briefly summarize complex narrative themes in the gospels (e.g., “The commandment was given so that sin would become sinful beyond measure” in relation to the corrupt Jewish trial of Jesus),   Where Paul offers little explanation as though the reader would simply know what Paul was talking about.  I also don’t think you can date Mark earlier than the turn of the second century as Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (probably early second century) seems to be an important source for Mark in terms of content (Cleomenes III) and form (Parallelism, like the forgiving death of Jesus in Luke mirrors the forgiving death of Stephen in Acts).