Todays Covenant Person of Scriptural history is: Pontius Pilatus (Greek: Πόντιος Πιλᾶτος, Pontios Pīlātos), known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate (/ˌpɒn(t)ʃəs ˈpaɪlət/ or /ˌpɒnti.əs ˈpaɪlət/, was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at the trial of Jesus and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus. As prefect, he served under Emperor Tiberius. The sources for Pilates life are the four canonical gospels, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, a brief mention by Tacitus, and an inscription known as the Pilate Stone, which confirms his historicity and establishes his title as prefect. Based on these sources, it appears that Pilate was an equestrian of the Pontii family, and succeeded Valerius Gratus as prefect of Judaea in AD 26. Once in his post he offended the religious sensibilities of his subjects, leading to harsh criticism from Philo and Josephus. According to Josephus, he was ordered back to Rome after harshly suppressing a Samaritan uprising, arriving just after the death of Tiberius, which occurred on 16 March in 37 AD. He was replaced by Marcellus. In all four gospel accounts, Pilate avoids responsibility for the death of Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate washes his hands to show that he was not responsible for the execution of Jesus and reluctantly sends him to his death. The Gospel of Mark, depicting Jesus as innocent of plotting against the Roman Empire, portrays Pilate as reluctant to execute Jesus. In the Gospel of Luke, Pilate not only agrees that Jesus did not conspire against Rome, but Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, also finds nothing treasonable in Jesus actions. In the Gospel of John, Pilate states “I find no guilt in him [Christ Jesus]” and he asks the Jews if Jesus should be released from custody. Scholars have long debated how to interpret Pilates portrayal in the sources. The significance of the Pilate Stone, an artifact discovered in 1961 that names Pontius Pilate, is debated by a few scholars. Limestone block discovered in 1961 with Pilates tribute in Latin to Tiberius. The words [...]TIVS PILATVS[...] can be clearly seen on the second line. Little is known of Pilate and there are no formal records of his birth or early life. There is an old tradition linking his birthplace with the small village of Bisenti, Samnite territory, in todays Abruzzo region of Central Italy. There are alleged ruins of a Roman house known as The House of Pilate in Bisenti. There is also a tradition in Scotland that Pilate was born in Fortingall, a small village in the Perthshire Highlands. Other places such as Tarragona in Spain and Forchheim in Germany have been proposed as Pilates birthplace, but it is more likely that he was a Roman citizen, born in central Italy. Eusebius, quoting early apocryphal accounts, stated that Pilate suffered misfortune in the reign of Caligula (AD 37–41), was exiled to Gaul and eventually committed suicide there in Vienne. The 10th century historian Agapius of Hierapolis, in his Universal History, says that Pilate committed suicide during the first year of Caligulas reign, in AD 37/38. Another legend places his death at Mount Pilatus, in Switzerland. The first physical evidence relating to Pilate was discovered in 1961, when a block of limestone, the Pilate Stone, was found in the Roman theatre at Caesarea Maritima, the capital of the province of Judaea (Iudaea). Bearing a damaged dedication by Pilate of a Tiberieum, the dedication states that he was [...]ECTVS IUDA[...] (usually read as praefectus Iudaeae), that is, prefect of Judaea. The early governors of Judaea were of prefect rank, the later were of procurator rank, beginning with Cuspius Fadus in AD 44. The inscription was discovered by a group led by Antonio Frova and has been dated to AD 26–37. The inscription is currently housed in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, while a replica stands at Caesarea. Pontius Pilates title was traditionally thought to have been procurator, since Tacitus speaks of him as such. However, an inscription on a limestone block known as the Pilate Stone — a dedication to Tiberius Caesar Augustus — that was discovered in 1961 in the ruins of an amphitheater at Caesarea Maritima refers to Pilate as Prefect of Judaea. The title used by the governors of the region varied over the period of the New Testament. When Samaria, Judea proper and Idumea were first amalgamated into the Roman Judaea Province (which some modern historians spell Iudaea), from AD 6 to the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt in 66, officials of the Equestrian order (the lower rank of governors) governed. They held the Roman title of prefect until Herod Agrippa I was named King of the Jews in 41 by Claudius. After Herod Agrippas death in 44, when Iudaea reverted to direct Roman rule, the governor held the title procurator. When applied to governors, this term procurator, otherwise used for financial officers, connotes no difference in rank or function from the title known as prefect. Contemporary archaeological finds and documents such as the Pilate Inscription from Caesarea attest to the governors more accurate official title only for the years 6 through 41: prefect. The logical conclusion is that texts that identify Pilate as procurator are more likely following Tacitus or are unaware of the pre-44 practice. The procurators and prefects primary functions were military, but as representatives of the empire they were responsible for the collection of imperial taxes, and also had limited judicial functions. Other civil administration lay in the hands of local government: the municipal councils or ethnic governments such as – in the district of Judaea and Jerusalem – the Sanhedrin and its president the High Priest. But the power of appointment of the High Priest resided in the Roman legate of Syria or the prefect of Judaea in Pilates day and until 41 AD. For example, Caiaphas was appointed High Priest of Herods Temple by Prefect Valerius Gratus and deposed by Syrian Legate Lucius Vitellius. Normally, Pilate resided in Caesarea but traveled throughout the province, especially to Jerusalem, in the course of performing his duties. During the Passover, a festival of deep national as well as religious significance for the Jews, Pilate, as governor or prefect, would have been expected to be in Jerusalem to keep order. He would not ordinarily be visible to the throngs of worshipers because of the Jewish peoples deep sensitivity to their status as a Roman province. Equestrians such as Pilate could command legionary forces but only small ones, and so in military situations, he would have to yield to his superior, the legate of Syria, who would descend into Palestine with his legions as necessary. As governor of Iudaea, Pilate would have small auxiliary forces of locally recruited soldiers stationed regularly in Caesarea and Jerusalem, such as the Antonia Fortress, and temporarily anywhere else that might require a military presence. The total number of soldiers at his disposal would have numbered about 3000. According to the canonical Christian Gospels, Pilate presided at the trial of Jesus and, despite stating that he personally found him not guilty of a crime meriting death, sentenced him to be crucified. Pilate is thus a pivotal character in the New Testament accounts of Jesus. According to the New Testament, Jesus was brought to Pilate by the Sanhedrin, who had arrested Jesus and questioned him themselves. The Sanhedrin had, according to the Gospels, only been given answers by Jesus that they considered blasphemous pursuant to Mosaic law, which was unlikely to be deemed a capital offense by Pilate interpreting Roman law. The Gospel of Luke records that members of the Sanhedrin then took Jesus before Pilate where they accused him of sedition against Rome by opposing the payment of taxes to Caesar and calling himself a king. Fomenting tax resistance was a capital offense. Pilate was responsible for imperial tax collections in Judaea. Jesus had asked the tax collector Levi, at work in his tax booth in Capernaum, to quit his post. Jesus also appears to have influenced Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector in Jericho, which is in Pilates tax jurisdiction, to resign. Pilates main question to Jesus was whether he considered himself to be the King of the Jews in an attempt to assess him as a potential political threat. Mark in the NIV translation states: Are you the king of the Jews? asked Pilate. It is as you say, Jesus replied. However, quite a number of other translations render Jesus reply as variations of the phrase: Thou sayest it.(King James Version, Mark 15:2); So you say. (Good News Bible, Mark 15:2). Whatever degree of confirmation modern interpreters would derive from this answer of Jesus, according to the New Testament, it was not enough for Pilate to view Jesus as a real political threat. The chief priests began hurling accusations toward Jesus, yet he remained silent. Pilate asked him why he did not respond to the many charges, and Jesus remained silent, so Pilate was astonished. Pilate appears to have been reluctant to allow the crucifixion of Jesus, finding no fault with him. According to Matthew 27:19, even Pilates wife spoke to him on Jesus behalf. According to the gospels, it was the custom of the Roman governor to release one prisoner at Passover, and Pilate brought out Barabbas, identified by Matthew as a notorious prisoner and by Mark as a murderer, and told the crowd to choose between releasing Barabbas or Jesus as per the custom, in the hopes of getting them to request the release of Jesus. However, the crowd demanded the release of Barabbas and said of Jesus, Crucify him! In Matthew, Pilate responds, Why? What evil has he done? The crowd continued shouting, Crucify him! Pilate ordered a sign posted above Jesus on the cross stating Jesus of Nazareth, The King of the Jews to give public notice of the legal charge against him for his crucifixion. The chief priests protested that the public charge on the sign should read that Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews. Pilate refused to change the posted charge, saying What I have written, I have written. (Quod scripsi, scripsi). This may have been to emphasize Romes supremacy in crucifying a Jewish king; it is likely, though, that Pilate was offended by the Jewish leaders using him as a catspaw and thus compelling him to sentence Jesus to death contrary to his own will. The Gospel of Luke also reports that such questions were asked of Jesus; in Lukes case it being the priests that repeatedly accused him, though Luke states that Jesus remained silent to such inquisition, causing Pilate to hand Jesus over to the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, namely Galilee which was not part of Roman Judea. Although initially excited with curiosity at meeting Jesus, of whom he had heard much, Herod (according to Luke) ended up mocking Jesus and so sent him back to Pilate. This intermediate episode with Herod is not reported by the other Gospels, which appear to present a continuous and singular trial in front of Pilate. Luke, however, made further reference to this involvement of Herod along with Pilate in Jesus execution and linked it with the prophecy about the Messianic King found in Psalm 2, as we can read in Lukes other book, Acts 4:24–28. This could explain why he counted this episode important. Unlike the synoptic gospels, the Gospel of John gives more detail about that dialogue taking place between Jesus and Pilate. In John, Jesus seems to confirm the fact of his kingship, although immediately explaining, that his kingdom was not of this world; of far greater importance for the followers of Christ is his own definition of the goal of his ministry on earth at the time. According to Jesus, as we find it written in John 18:37, Jesus thus describes his mission: I came into the world...to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice, to which Pilate famously replied, What is truth? (Quid est veritas?) (John 18:38)... Nikolai Ge, Christ and Pilate (What is truth?), 1890. Whatever it be that some modern critics want to deduce from those differences, the end result was the same for Jesus and Pilate, as it was in all the other three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). In the same chapter of John 18 verse 38 (King James Version, compare with other versions) the conclusion Pilate made from this interrogation was: I find in him no fault at all. Pilate agrees to condemn Jesus to crucifixion, after the Jewish leaders explained to him that Jesus presented a threat to Roman occupation through his claim to the throne of King David as King of Israel in the royal line of David. The crowd in Pilates courtyard, according to the Synoptics, had been coached by the Pharisees and Sadducees to shout against Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew adds that before condemning Jesus to death, Pilate washes his hands with water in front of the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this mans blood; you will see. In all gospel accounts, Pilate is reluctant to condemn Jesus, but is eventually forced to give in when the crowd becomes unruly and the Jewish leaders remind him that Jesuss claim to be king is a challenge to Roman rule and to the Roman deification of Caesar. Roman magistrates had wide discretion in executing their tasks, and some readers question whether Pilate would have been so captive to the demands of the crowd. Pilate was later recalled to Rome for his harsh treatment of the Jews. With the Edict of Milan in AD 313, the state-sponsored persecution of Christians came to an end, and Christianity became officially tolerated as one of the religions of the Roman Empire. Afterwards, in 325, the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea promulgated a creed which was amended at the subsequent First Council of Constantinople in 381. The Nicene Creed incorporated for the first time the clause was crucified under Pontius Pilate (which had already been long established in the Old Roman Symbol, an ancient form of the Apostles Creed dating as far back as the 2nd century AD) in a creed that was intended to be authoritative for all Christians in the Roman Empire. Pilates reluctance to execute Jesus in the gospels has been seen as reflecting the authors agenda. It has thus been argued that gospel accounts place the blame on the Jews, not on Rome, in line with the authors alleged goal of making peace with the Roman Empire and vilifying the Jews. In chronicling the history of the Roman administrators in Judaea, ancient Jewish writers Philo and Josephus describe some of the other events and incidents that took place during Pilates tenure. Both report that Pilate repeatedly caused near-insurrections among the Jews because of his insensitivity to Jewish customs. Josephus notes that while Pilates predecessors had respected Jewish customs by removing all images and effigies on their standards when entering Jerusalem, Pilate allowed his soldiers to bring them into the city at night. When the citizens of Jerusalem discovered these the following day, they appealed to Pilate to remove the ensigns of Caesar from the city. After five days of deliberation, Pilate had his soldiers surround the demonstrators, threatening them with death, which they were willing to accept rather than submit to desecration of Mosaic law. Pilate finally removed the images. Philo describes a later, similar incident in which Pilate was chastened by Emperor Tiberius after antagonizing the Jews by setting up gold-coated shields in Herods Palace in Jerusalem. The shields were ostensibly to honor Tiberius, and this time did not contain engraved images. Philo writes that the shields were set up not so much to honour Tiberius as to annoy the multitude. The Jews protested the installation of the shields at first to Pilate, and then, when he declined to remove them, by writing to Tiberius. Philo reports that upon reading the letters, Tiberius wrote to Pilate with a host of reproaches and rebukes for his audacious violation of precedent and bade him at once take down the shields and have them transferred from the capital to Caesarea. Josephus recounts another incident in which Pilate spent money from the Temple to build an aqueduct. When Jews again protested his actions, Pilate had soldiers hidden in the crowd of Jews while addressing them. After giving the signal, Pilates soldiers randomly attacked, beat, and killed scores of Jews to silence their petitions. In describing his personality, Philo writes that Pilate had vindictiveness and furious temper, and was naturally inflexible, a blend of self-will and relentlessness. He writes that Pilate feared a delegation that the Jews might send to Tiberius protesting the gold-coated shields, because if they actually sent an embassy they would also expose the rest of his conduct as governor by stating in full the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty. Pilates term as prefect of Judaea ended after an incident recounted by Josephus. A large group of Samaritans had been persuaded by an unnamed man to go to Mount Gerizim in order to see sacred artifacts allegedly buried by Moses. But at a village named Tirathana, before the crowd could ascend the mountain, Pilate sent in a detachment of cavalry and heavy-armed infantry, who in an encounter with the firstcomers in the village slew some in a pitched battle and put the others to flight. Many prisoners were taken, of whom Pilate put to death the principal leaders and those who were most influential.The Samaritans then complained to Vitellius, Roman governor of Syria, who sent Pilate to Rome to explain his actions regarding this incident to Tiberius. However, by the time Pilate got to Rome, Tiberius had died.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 21:48:58 +0000