It's just that historians don't believe that it happened verbatim, because it would be ridiculous to think that the details of a conversation could be passed down exactly over decades or centuries. I don't see why anyone would consider any of the conversations in the Bible to have happened exactly as they appear.
What you are saying makes perfect sense in the abstract. But as applied to specific conversations, such as the specific conversation with Pilate, the type of error you describe is mitigated by the fact that there is not a large quantity of dialog recorded, but only a few key lines. It is much easier to preserve the integrity of a few sentences of dialog than a full 10-minute conversation.
Did you never play telephone as a kid? A single word can get morphed pretty easily, especially by humans.
There are some reasonable conclusions drawn....but all conclusions drawn have evidence within the text itself. The Bible does say that Jesus spoke to his apostles AT LENGTH after his resurrection. It is reasonable to conclude that Jesus "filled in the gaps" of what happened to him.
Take this response as also a response to most of your argument over the past several pages, not just at this:
For starters, you keep forgetting that the Bible is the thing in question, meaning, you can't use evidence from the Bible to support your claim that the Bible is innerant, etc. It's circular logic, and it shouldn't even be thought of as logically acceptable.
But more importantly, there's a
huge problem with your entire argument, and it's that you're arguing for a polysemous, contextual or perspective definition of Truth, but still arguing for an absolute Truth in the Bible. The two
cannot possibly go together. I have no argument against your argument that what can appear to be a contradiction, is in fact not upon later reflection, or upon gaining the right perspective. I am, in fact, a believer in such a world, and such a definition of "Truth." However, the consequence of this epistemological standpoint is that Truth, as defined as say the Bible being innerantly True, being the Word of God, etc, is no longer a viable or tenable position to hold. In your attempt to make the Bible no contradict itself, you basically completely destroy the foundation whereby it's important for the Bible not to contradict itself. Its preposterous to look at the Bible as the world of God in such a world, at least if you want to only look at the Bible, and not the countless of other works which deal with the nature of reality, "God," and the like. Think Christianity has some antinomies? Well try bridging the gaps between Christianity and Hinduism, or Chrisianity and any other religion in the World, and try to imagine ways in which those "contradictions" are no such thing.
Also, I remember you defending yourself earlier by saying you're not just acting on blind faith, etc. Well as to that argument, I would say that I think
everyone operates, basically, upon blind faith. Every single person in this conversation has to make leaps of faith, in some manner, to function. Scientists have to assume that the world is logical, and consistent. Both of those things require a "leap of faith," because there's not much you can do to actually experimentally prove those propositions.