CoastalRat wrote:Just an observation, but why would the Romans have recorded anything at all about the execution of a criminal in the back-water province of Judea? Up until a few years ago, scholars and experts refuted the existance of Pontius Pilate because no Roman record of his rule in Judea existed. If they didn't bother to record for history the man they placed in authority there, why would you expect them to be concerned with recording anything at all about an execution that for all they knew was no different than any other?
Just a thought.
Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus, or Giaus Cornelius Tacitus--either name is correct, and the explanation is not worth the candle--was a Roman historian who live approximately from 56 to 117 CE) records Pontius Pilate as the procurator of Palestine in the relevant period. Therefore, your contention that no Roman record of the rule of Pontius Pilate existed is false--and probably a result of a christian source which was either ignorant of, or willfully ignoring the entry in Tacitus. In fact, Tacitus was slightly incorrect in referring to Pontius Pilate as procurator, as there was a king in Judea in his (Pilate's) time, which means that technically Pilate was a prefect. This error on the part of Tacitus is understandable, though, as the reign of Agrippa in Judea ended before Tacitus took up his post governor of Asia (western Anatolia, you would think of it as western Turkey), and in the time that Tacitus was in public service, the Roman officer who governed Palestine was a procurator.
There is further significane in you perpetuating this false claim. Tacitus is used as a source for the historical existence of the putative Jesus. However, scholars (those who don't have a christian agenda to "prove" that Jesus existed) are universal in asserting that the passage in the
Annals which is asserted to prove this is certainly an interpolation. Not only is it asserted to be an interpolation, but it is grammatically wrong, and awkward, in classical Latin. If the interpolation is removed, the passage not only remains coherent, it becomes grammatically correct, and is no longer awkward. Furthermore, Tacitus' position as governor of Asia is even more embarrassing to christians who attempt to use his works as evidence for the historical Jesus in that the
Histories is the book in which it is alleged that he mentions "christians." But the term christian was not used at Rome, where he wrote that history, and it does not appear anywhere, even in chruch histories, until about the time that he was governor of Asia. Yet, when he wrote the
Annals, he never mentions christians, nor the putative Jesus--even though it covers the period
before the
Histories and the period in which the putative Jesus would have lived, if he did indeed live. The claim that Tacitus mentions Jesus (only interentially, even christians eager to "prove" that Jesus lived and was mentioned in contemporary histories do not assert that Tacitus mentioned him by name) and christians in a passage of a book he wrote before he could possibly have heard the term christian, and the evidence that he does not mention the putative Jesus and christians in a book he wrote after he was in a position to have heard of christians is further inferential evidence that the claim is false.
Furthermore, when Caesarea Palaestina was excavated in the late 1950s, an dedicatory inscription to Pilate was found in the ruins of the ampitheater. That hardly coincides with your contention that "up until a few years ago" scholars refuted the existence of Pilate--fifty years is a hell of lot longer ago than "a few years," and the mention of Pilate by Tacitus has been known for almost two thousand years.
What ever you choose to call it is up to you; I'm not going to do the research for you. 
