Christian Texts and History • Why Pilate according to Thomas Whittaker

The bearing of these "false Christs" on the mythical theory of the Gospel narrative is ambiguous. On the one hand, it may be said that if the apocaliptic model was so far predetermined that real persons conformed themselves to it, the same model would naturally contribute some of the lines when imaginary but typical incidents were to be woven around an ideal figure. And if, as is likely, insurgent leaders who had uttered apocalyptic prophecies were put to death by Pontius Pilate, it would be easy to assert, after the lapse of a generation, that the New Messiah had appeared during his procuratorship and suffered the same fate. Then we should find ascribed to him the customary predictions of the end of the world mixed with predictions of real events that had happened after the time of Pilate; as in what the critics call the "small apocalypsis" incorporated in the Gospels. On the other hand, the vivid sketch which Celsus gives of the religious agitation continually going on in the East makes it impossible to declare a priori that the historical Jesus, if he existed, could not have proclaimed himself the Son of God.