Carrier also appears to have made a mistake in his most recent reply to Ehrman:
“The view that Claudius changed the title of Judaean governors from prefect to procurator has long since been refuted (most conclusively by the work of Fergus Millar.”Carrier then directs readers to his paper about Herod as a Syrian procurator in support of this assertion.
Richard Carrier, “Ehrman’s Dubious Replies (Round Two),” Richard Carrier Blogs, April 29, 2012.
I assume Carrier refers to these articles by Fergus Millar:
Millar, Fergus. 1964. “Some Evidence on the Meaning of Tacitus ‘Annals XII’. 60,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 13.2: 180–187.However, a reading of these does not support Carrier’s assertion.
Millar, Fergus. 1965. “The Development of Jurisdiction by Imperial Procurators; Further Evidence,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14.3: 362–367.
In Millar 1964, he says plainly on p. 181:
“It is clear that such procurators [sc. governing small provinces], originally called praefecti, exercised a criminal and civil jurisdiction in their areas, which was equivalent to that of senatorial governors, except in that it was only in special cases that they possessed the ius gladii.” (Millar 1964: 181).He is clear that procurators who were governors of minor provinces were originally called prefects (praefecti in Latin), and Millar (1964: 181, n. 9) cites A. H. M. Jones’s Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960), and does not engage in any refutation of this idea. The rest of the article is an interpretation of Tacitus, Annales 12.60, and Millar argues that it refers to Claudius’s granting of increased jurisdictional power to those procurators who managed imperial properties, a different type of procurator from the type who governed small provinces.
In addition, Millar (1965) simply adds more evidence to the case that Tacitus, Annales 12.60 refers to the authority of procurators of imperial properties: there is no refutation of the view that Claudius changed the official titles of the minor equestrian or freedmen provincial governors from prefect to procurator.
Carrier also asserts that the source Prosopographia Imperii Romani (or PIR for short) that Ehrman cited for his assertion that Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator, is “outdated.”
The most recent edition of Prosopographia Imperii Romani saec. I. II. III. (2nd edn. part 6; eds. Leiva Petersen and Klaus Wachtel; De Gruyter, Berlin, 1998), revised in the 1990s, is quite clear that Pilate carried the title praefectus (PIR [2nd ed.] part. 6, no. 815, p. 348), on the basis of the Pilate inscription (see Année Epigraphique 1963 no. 104).
This source is not “outdated,” but represents the opinion of scholars from the 1990s, who had updated an earlier edition of the work.
In short, I see no evidence at all that the “view that Claudius changed the title of Judaean governors from prefect to procurator has long since been refuted.”
Rather, the view that, from the reign of Claudius, the equestrian governors who were called prefects (or praefecti in Latin) were now called procurators appears to be the common opinion: it is held by Syme (1962: 92), Jones (1960: 124), Weaver (1972: 267-268), Garnsey and Saller (1987: 23), B. Levick (Levick 2001: 48) in her biography of the emperor Claudius, and Schäfer (2003: 105).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brunt, P. A. 1966. “Procuratorial Jurisdiction,” Latomus 25: 461-489.
Garnsey, Peter and R. Saller. 1987. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Jones, A. H. M. 1960. Studies in Roman Government and Law, Blackwell, Oxford.
Levick, Barbara. 2001. Claudius, Routledge, London.
Millar, Fergus. 1964. “Some Evidence on the Meaning of Tacitus ‘Annals XII’. 60,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 13.2: 180–187.
Millar, Fergus. 1965. “The Development of Jurisdiction by Imperial Procurators; Further Evidence,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14.3: 362–367.
Schäfer, Peter. 2003. The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World (rev. edn.), Routledge, London.
Schürer, Emil. 2000 [1973]. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (vol. 1; rev. and ed. by G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Black), T&T Clark, Edinburgh.
Sherwin-White, A. N. 1939. Procurator Augusti, Papers of the British School at Rome, v. 15, N.S. 2.
Syme, R. 1962. “The Wrong Marcius Turbo,” Journal of Roman Studies 52: 87-96.
Weaver, P. R. C. 1972. Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor’s Freedmen and Slaves, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
I clicked your links in the previous post, hoping to see some definitive discussion on how historical was Yeshua ben Joseph, the man.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it really seems to be bogged down in technicalities, and the meat of the discussion is missing.
You are correct.
DeleteThe earliest information on the historical Jesus comes from the genuine letters of Paul, and I have listed it here, though it is admittedly very sparse:
http://thoughtsphilosophyculture.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-jesus-mythicism-is-unconvincing.html
What do you think of Richard Carrier's brief response:
ReplyDeleteMillar 1965, pp. 364-65: “The legal evidence shows clearly that procurators never had a recognised right to exercise criminal jurisdiction.”
See also P. A. Brunt, “Procuratorial Jurisdiction,” Latomus 25.3 (July-September 1966): 461-89, with my analysis in Herod, pp. 34-35 (and in context, pp. 29-36.
To me this shows sloppy scholarship on Richard Carrier's part. He cites sources for his conclusions which, when you look into them with greater detail, don't actually appear to back him up. He takes that general statement from Miller and applies it literally to the situation involving Pilate in order to rule out the possibility he was involved in criminal matters, but then completely ignores the fact that Miller is clear that such titles changed and that they did have some criminal jurisdiction in this context. That Carrier calls Ehrman's scholarship is pure irony.
(1) I am preparing to write a response to Carrier soon. Please check my latest posts in a week or so.
DeleteI quite frankly doubt whether P. A. Brunt, “Procuratorial Jurisdiction,” Latomus 25.3 (July-September 1966): 461-89, says that prefects weren't re-named procurators under Claudius, but I will get it from my university library and read it properly before posting a response.
(2) On Carrier:
"Millar 1965, pp. 364-65: 'The legal evidence shows clearly that procurators never had a recognised right to exercise criminal jurisdiction.'"
The quotation of this is just a red herring fallacy by Carrier.
Millar is talking here of a special type of procurator - the ones who managed imperial properties, not the ones who governed provinces (the so-called "praesidial procurators", such as in Judaea or Rhaetia). Therefore this passage is just irrelevant: it refutes nothing.