In the Gospel of John, Pontius Pilate poses a
question to Jesus of Nazareth: “What is truth?” It's a question that could also
be asked about Pilate’s own history. From the perspective of the New Testament
of the Christian Bible, the Roman governor of Judea was a wavering
judge who initially exonerated Jesus before bending to the will of the crowd and
condemning him to death. By contrast, non-Biblical sources portray him as a
barbarous leader who willfully defied the traditions of the Jewish people he
oversaw. Which was the truth? |
| Jesus before Pilate before his death. |
Pilate’s
early life is a mystery.
History says little about Pilate before he served
as the Roman prefect of Judea between 26 and 36 A.D. It is thought he was born
into an equestrian family in Italy, but some legends claim Scotland
was the land of his birth.
One of the earliest—and most scathing—accounts of
Pilate comes from the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Writing around 50
A.D., he castigated the prefect for his “briberies, insults, robberies,
outrages and wanton injuries, executions without trial, constantly repeated,
ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty.”
“Philo summarizes Pilate’s rule as corrupt and
full of bribery,” says Stephen
J. Patterson, an early Christianity historian at Willamette University and
the author of several books including The
Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle Against Bigotry, Slavery, and
Sexism. That sort of behavior wouldn’t have been all that
extraordinary for a Roman ruler, but Pilate apparently did it more ruthlessly
than most.”
Problem is, it’s not easy to know how historical
Philo’s account actually was, says Helen Bond, head of the University of
Edinburgh’s School of Divinity and author of Pontius
Pilate in History and Interpretation. “Philo is a hugely dramatic
writer,” she notes, and one with very clear biases: “People who uphold Jewish
laws are recorded in highly positive ways, while people who do not are
described in highly negative terms.”
Given Pilate’s opposition to Jewish law, Philo
describes him “very harshly.” |
| The scourging of Jesus, who was tortured prior to his crucifixion. |
Pilate
clashed with the Jewish population in Jerusalem.
Philo also wrote that Pilate permitted a pair of
gilded shields inscribed with the name of the Roman Emperor Tiberius into King
Herod’s former palace in Jerusalem, in violation of Jewish customs.
Writing a half-century later, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus told a
similar tale that Pilate permitted troops carrying military standards bearing
the likeness of the emperor into Jerusalem, although Jewish law forbade images
in the city. A great crowd traveled to the Judean capital of Caesarea in
protest and lay prostrate around Pilate’s palace for five days until he
relented.
“Josephus was born in Jerusalem the year Pilate
left office and so would have had reasonably good information,” Bond says. “The
story has the ring of a new governor seeing what he can get away with and
completely underestimating the strength of local opinion when it came to graven
images.” At the same time, Bond notes, the story shows his willingness to back
down and respect public opinion.
In
another incident—with a bloodier ending—Josephus recounted that Pilate used
funds from the Temple treasury to build an aqueduct to Jerusalem. This time
when protesters amassed, Pilate dispatched plain-clothed soldiers to infiltrate
the crowd. On his signal, they removed clubs hidden in their garments and beat
many of the protesters to death.
The
Gospels portray an indecisive Pilate.
Josephus also mentioned Pilate’s notorious role in
agreeing to the execution of Jesus. According to the Gospels, the Sanhedrin, an
elite council of priestly and lay elders, arrested Jesus during the Jewish
festival of Passover, deeply threatened by his teachings. They dragged him
before Pilate to be tried for blasphemy—for claiming, they said, to be King of
the Jews. And they pressured Pilate, the only one with power to impose a death
sentence, to call for his crucifixion.
Contrary to the depiction of Pilate as a merciless
ruler by Philo and Josephus, all four Gospels portray him as a vacillating
judge. According to the Gospel of Mark, Pilate came to the defense of Jesus
before yielding to the desire of the crowd.
But Mark had an ulterior agenda, notes Patterson,
since he wrote the Gospel in the midst of the failed Jewish Revolt against
Roman rule between 66 and 70 A.D., while the Christian sect was
undergoing a bitter break with Judaism and seeking to attract Roman
converts.
“Mark’s purpose is not really historical,”
Patterson says. “It’s to cast the Jewish War in a particular light. Mark blamed
the Jewish rulers in Jerusalem for its destruction [during the rebellion]
because the high priests and officials rejected Jesus when he had come to the
city. Mark’s telling of the story of the trial of Jesus is less about Pilate
and more about shifting the blame to the Jewish leaders.” |
| Pilate washing his hands, claiming Jesus' ultimate death would not be from his doing. |
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate washed
his hands in front of the crowd before announcing, “I am innocent of this man’s
blood; see to it yourselves.” The Jewish people shouted in response, “His blood
be on us and our children.” It’s a passage that would be used for millennia to
persecute the Jewish people.
“Matthew says that while the Romans actually
carried out the deed, the Jews were responsible—a line of argument that has of
course had disastrous consequences ever since,” Bond says. “If Jesus was
causing trouble at a gathering like Passover, when the city was crowded to
bursting, I don’t think Pilate would have spent much time worrying about what
to do with him. It was entirely up to the governor as to how he dealt with the
case, and after hearing the evidence he no doubt thought that getting rid of
Jesus was the best course of action.”
Another element of the New Testament story still
unsupported by historical evidence is Pilate’s offer to commute the death
sentence of a criminal by popular vote—which according to the Gospel writers
was an annual Passover tradition. In the Gospels, the crowd chose the criminal
Barabbas over Jesus. “Scholars have looked for evidence," Patterson
says, and so far "have never found anything in reference to the so-called
custom of releasing a prisoner on Passover.”
Pilate
disappears from history after his rule.
According to Josephus and the Roman historian
Tacitus, Pilate was removed from office and sent back to Rome after
using excessive force to disperse a suspected Samaritan insurrection. Once in
Rome, Pilate vanished from the historical record. According to some traditions,
he was executed by the Emperor Caligula or committed suicide, with
his body thrown into the Tiber River. The early Christian author Tertullian
even claimed that Pilate became a follower of Jesus and tried to convert the
emperor to Christianity.
In 1961, archaeologists in Caesarea discovered
hard evidence of Pilate’s existence. A fragment of a carved stone with Pilate’s
name and title inscribed in Latin was found face down, being used as a step in
an ancient theater. It’s likely the “Pilate Stone” originally served as a
dedication plaque for another structure. A November 2018 article in Israel
Exploration Journal announced a further discovery as
advanced photography revealed Pilate’s name inscribed in Greek on a
2,000-year-old copper alloy ring excavated from Herodium.
