If we take the view that “this story is meaningless because we can’t be certain that all its facts are 100% accurate” then we are little more than reverse-fundamentalists – if you see what I mean.

In other words, I don’t answer John’s question with “Yes, this was a 100% accurate account” but rather with a “So what if it’s not?” I admit it’s a provocative question. I admit that if Jesus never lived, if he actually taught a message that was radically different from what was recorded in the bible then we do have a problem. The facticity is important in the broad sense but the truth does not die because one particular pericope doesn’t meet accepted 21st century standards of accuracy of reporting (and how many of our reports are slanted with our own worldviews, anyway?)

As to the ipsissima vox I tend to agree with you – Dunn’s “Jesus Remembered” is very good on the strength and firmness of of oral tradition. The real question is what the Gospel writers did with that oral tradition – even a simple comparison of synoptic parallels shows how they traditions are theologically interpreted, and a comparison with John shows how much further he went. For example, the style of Greek in John’s discourses is exactly the same as the style in the narrative passages – these are John’s retelling of Jesus’ words, in what in English would be reported rather than direct speech. John’s Jesus never discusses the Kingdom of God, and the synoptic Jesus never mentions eternal life – these are different theological interpretations of what Jesus taught, in language and ideas which made sense to the writers’ immediate audience. That was part of the success story of the Christian proclamation – for example, as it spread from Jewish to Gentile territory, the emphasis on “Christ/Messiah” is changed for an emphasis on “Lord” because “Christ/Messiah” was meaningless outside Judaism. Folk today think Christ was Jesus’ surname – I bet that was true in a lot of Gentile areas back then.

So, no, I’m not that sceptical at all. I’d prefer to call myself ‘critical’ – checking out how the Gospel tradition does what it does, with a proper awareness of historical background, so tat what I preach is faithful to the truth, and not simply a reflection of one layer of interpretation.

I took John’s post to mean something along the lines of “Don’t be thinking that this story can have any meaning for humanity since we can’t even be certain of the veracity of the facts”. (He can correct me if this isn’t what he meant.) If that is so, then my own answer in that context is that I don’t even think it matters if the conversation ever took place. The truth of the story is in what Pilate stood for and what Jesus stood for and that Truth remains as intact as it ever was.

Christians really have to start recognizing the Truth in our story and experience. (The German word for “story” and “history” are the same word and hint at this Truth.) As long as Christianity believes that Scripture has no meaning if it is not factually true in a modernist sense then we are going to drift further and further from Scripture and tradition.

I’m part of the way with you on this. I agree that the Gospels don’t contain the ipsissima verbi, the authentic words of Jesus, but I’d still argue they reflect the ipsissima vox, the authentic voice. I’d also agree that the Gospels are theology, but I’d be dubious about them being dislocated from history (I’m not sure you’re that sceptical, BTW). I’d therefore agree to some extent with the idea that certain scenes are reconstructed. However, I’d see the theology rooted in the history. As for Pilate, yes, he’s aggressive elsewhere but I also think,as I suggest in the sermon, that the contemporary history suggests he had a serious political problem on his hands and that this puts him in a politically weak position at the time of Jesus’ arrest.

The other aspect of this concerns the nature of history reporting in the ancient world. Speeches and conversations were never recorded verbatim – there was no equivalent to short-hand. Historians would write their version of what the person was remembered to have said. So Luke’s version of Peter’s sermon on Pentecost is not a record of what was said, but a version of what was remembered (by others) to have been said.

More significantly, the Gospels are at least as much theology as history, and John more evidently so. This conversation is clearly a dramatic and theologically spun reconstruction – the sensitive and thoughtful Pilate of John’s Gospel bears no relation to the rather harder character from history.

He (Jesus) would not have been able to report the contents of this conversation to any of his followers while still a closely guarded prisoner.

And do you really think that he would have been able to do so while hanging in agony on the cross.

Who would Jesus have reported the conservation to, and how did it thus end up in the Gospel stories?

My Adult Sunday School Class (like a house group that meets on Sunday morning before the service) has been talking about this a lot: how Jesus turns everything that the world expects on its head.