Quote:There are a great number of articles on this, one of which contains the following "Until recently, there was no contemporary evidence outside the Bible for Pilate's existence (although Tacitus, Josephus, and Philo all wrote about him). Then in 1961, Italian archaeologists excavating the theatre at Caesarea found this stone inscription of Pontius Pilate. Coins have also been found dating from Pilate's rule as governor." (http://www.facingthechallenge.org/pilate.php)
Thanks for trotting this particular item out of hiding as it shows the extent to which xtians will go to pump up their nonsense.
Yes - we had no contemporary evidence "at all" for Pilate ( except Philo who died c 50 AD was a contemporary of Pilate which kind of blows the whole statement out of the water!)...and then there are the coins issued by the Roman prefects of Judaea...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Procu...ius_Pilate
and then there is the near contemporaneous writing of Josephus ( he was born the year after Pilate was dismissed by Lucius Vitellius.)
The Caesarea inscription shows that Pilate was aware of his proper title
"Prefect" rather than the highly dubious Tacitus interpolation which calls him by the later title "Procurator."
So, yeah - if we didn't have so much evidence we would have had to rely on the Caesarea inscription....but we did.
BTW, both Philo and Josephus show a Pilate who was an arrogant prick quite unlike the vacillating pussy described in the so-called "gospels." Given what was expected of a Roman magistrate it seems that Philo and Josephus are a little closer to the reality.
