DB> KK>...  And then there's that
DB> KK> other incident where they killed a long-haired charismatic
DB> KK> rabble-rouser, but swung it so that the blame was put on the
DB> KK> Sanhedrin.  Sneaky, eh?
DB>Schoenfield's 'The Passover Plot', and Pliny's letters to Trajan
DB>don't suggest much Roman malevolence so much as simply trying to
DB>keep public order.  I doubt that Pontius Pilot ever gave Jesus a
DB>second thought; as you suggest, rabble rousers were all over the
DB>place, as Pliny makes pretty clear.
True, but that's exactly my point.  As was pointed out here recently,
the Romans were the supreme politicians of their time, and they
understood what a charismatic troublemaker could do in a land
seething with hatred for them.
DB>Roman governors were literate and vain enough to seek notoriety.
DB>Had Pilot thought anything remarkable had happened in Jerusalem,
DB>he wouldda wrote a book; he was well enough known to get it sent
DB>around for serious consideration.
I would restate this to say that the only significance Pilate saw
in Jesus was the crowds who followed him and could have become
an insurrection.
DB>He did not bother to blame the Sanhedrin; Jesus wasn't important
DB>enough.
I think the 'washing of hands' bit can be seen as political genius:
he gets rid of his potential insurrectionist, but presents himself
as refusing to interfere in local religious jurisdiction.
I think it's a separate issue that:
DB>          That slander was concocted by Paul and the others so as
DB>to separate the Christians from the Jews, and make the new faith
DB>more agreeable to the sensibilities of a Roman power structure.
Certainly, the NT was written much later, by people who had
long since split with the Jewish Christians, whose lives continued
at the pleasure of the Emperor, and who had no suicidal urge to
align themselves with a people who had been practically wiped out
by the Romans around 70 AD.  And it's possible that the 'washing
of hands' bit was a later invention.
IIRC, the recently found Gospel of Thomas sez that Jesus was
done in by the Romans.  That doesn't 'prove' anything in the
scientific sense, but it's a source outside of Paulism.
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