On 03-31-98 Keith Knapp wrote to Day Brown... 
 KK> DB>Schoenfield's 'The Passover Plot', and Pliny's letters to Trajan 
 KK> DB>don't suggest much Roman malevolence so much as simply trying to 
 KK> DB>keep public order.  I doubt that Pontius Pilot ever gave Jesus a 
 KK> DB>second thought; as you suggest, rabble rousers were all over the 
 KK> DB>place, as Pliny makes pretty clear. 
 KK>  
 KK> True, but that's exactly my point.  As was pointed out here recently, 
 KK> the Romans were the supreme politicians of their time, and they 
 KK> understood what a charismatic troublemaker could do in a land 
 KK> seething with hatred for them. 
'Seeting with hatred'? I dunno Keith. The dead sea scrolls I read 
were full of invective for the sychophants and idolatrous masses, 
not in Rome or Macedon, but *Jerusalem*.  This bunch of reclusive 
zealots hiding out in the bush were full of the same kind of self 
righteous bullshit you can see on the tube every sunday mouring. 
 
Yeah, there was hatred all right, but most folks just got over it 
and got on with their lives.  And, of course, the zealots in that 
region still make life difficult for everyone else. 
 
 KK> DB>Roman governors were literate and vain enough to seek notoriety. 
 KK> DB>Had Pilot thought anything remarkable had happened in Jerusalem, 
 KK> DB>he wouldda wrote a book; he was well enough known to get it sent 
 KK> DB>around for serious consideration. 
 KK>  
 KK> I would restate this to say that the only significance Pilate saw 
 KK> in Jesus was the crowds who followed him and could have become 
 KK> an insurrection. 
 KK>  
 KK> DB>He did not bother to blame the Sanhedrin; Jesus wasn't important 
 KK> DB>enough. 
 KK>  
 KK> I think the 'washing of hands' bit can be seen as political genius: 
 KK> he gets rid of his potential insurrectionist, but presents himself 
 KK> as refusing to interfere in local religious jurisdiction. 
Genius? I dunno. From Pliny, it looks like standard operations. 
 KK>  
 KK> I think it's a separate issue that: 
 KK>  
 KK> DB>          That slander was concocted by Paul and the others so as 
 KK> DB>to separate the Christians from the Jews, and make the new faith 
 KK> DB>more agreeable to the sensibilities of a Roman power structure. 
 KK>  
 KK> Certainly, the NT was written much later, by people who had 
 KK> long since split with the Jewish Christians, whose lives continued 
 KK> at the pleasure of the Emperor, and who had no suicidal urge to 
 KK> align themselves with a people who had been practically wiped out 
 KK> by the Romans around 70 AD.  And it's possible that the 'washing 
 KK> of hands' bit was a later invention. 
"Practically wiped out" is a later invention too Keith.  What the 
Claudian emperors did was to deport the upper classes; farmers or 
others who actually worked for a living were left alone, as you'd 
expect, since *they* were the ones who actually paid the taxes. 
 
Consider Titus' attack against Mesada, where 500 or so, Jews were 
*wiped* out by suicide.  Where were the *other* 3 million Jews? I 
think they were minding their own business.  As for Mesada, which 
became a big deal to the Jews, the Romans didn't want that nearly 
as much as Petra and the frankensence trade Mesada was on the way 
to... which BTW, they never got. 
 
 KK> IIRC, the recently found Gospel of Thomas sez that Jesus was 
 KK> done in by the Romans.  That doesn't 'prove' anything in the 
 KK> scientific sense, but it's a source outside of Paulism. 
I too, would like to have a look at that. 
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