Monday, December 20, 2021

What did Pontius Pilate ever do for Jerusalem?

ANCIENT INFRASTRUCTURE: Notorious Pontius Pilate Is the One Who Built Jerusalem Aqueduct, Study Finds. The researchers, who collected their data while spelunking into shafts and digging through mud and chilly water, also discovered the aqueduct’s 'cutting-edge' method of construction (Nir Hasson, Haaretz premium). HT Joseph Lauer.

You can find the underlying article in Geoarchaeology here, but it is behind a subscription wall.

I was hoping for an inscription that said "Pontius Pilate built this aqueduct." No such luck. I wasn't really expecting one. Such things are exceedingly rare.

The Haaretz headline overstates the certainty of the connection with Pilate. This case for the building of the aqueduct under him rests on archaeological dating correlated with comments by Josephus. The Geoarchaeology article favors the connection but is cautious about it. It keeps a second-century CE dating as a live possibility.

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