With apologies to Jesus, Paul, and others, I think the most interesting figures in the New Testament are Judas and Pilate.
It's not that I gravitate to villains over heroes. (Then again, The Godfather is my favorite film. And at a dinner party I'd rather sit next to Sauron than a bunch of hobbits.) Judas and Pilate intrigue me because, even though they play such major roles in Jesus' destruction, the biblical writings hardly give clear insight into these men's motives or character. Situated at the central piece of the Christian story, both of them make me wonder.
I'm not alone. Throughout history Christians have tried to get into Pilate's and Judas' heads, subjecting them to all sorts of speculative scrutiny. Some consider them the vilest of sinners; some call them accidental saints. Kind of like Gollum, maybe.
Judas and Pilate are important parts of the story not just for their own sake. As the gospels present them, they also inform us about Jesus. I'm going to set Judas aside for another day and focus here on Pilate. This requires us to do a little probing into the gospel accounts and into history. Then we'll return to why Pilate is significant for understanding Jesus.
Pilate: Really Good at His Job
One common perception of Pilate is that he wavers uncomfortably when placed in the position of deciding Jesus' fate. After all, each gospel tells of him posing questions to others about what he should do with his prisoner. Some Bible readers see him as overwhelmed by insistent leaders of the Jerusalem priestly aristocracy and threatened by a volatile mob.
It's worth noting that this viewpoint may support the notion that the gospels' accounts of Jesus' trial deliberately downplay the offense Jesus might have caused to Roman society. It has also regrettably been made to serve agendas of anti-Semitism among Christians, with catastrophic consequences throughout history.
Others say Pilate was simply lazy or uninterested in pursuing justice. Drawing from New Testament passages that refer to Jesus as innocent (Luke 23:47), suffering unjustly (1 Peter 2:18-23), and guilty of nothing that would warrant a death sentence (Acts 13:28), they conclude that Pilate's main failing was negligence.
But there's a more plausible possibility. I've argued, following the lead of other scholars, that the gospels actually portray Pilate as shrewdly in control of the proceedings and very aware of what he needs to do when Jesus stands before him as a purported king.
The gospels depict Pilate as doing his job very well, pursuing the paramount values of the Roman Empire at Jesus' expense. Two things support this conclusion: a historical outlook on Pilate, and an awareness of how Jesus provoked opposition.
What History Tells Us
Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in or near Jerusalem during the reign of Pontius Pilate. This is perhaps the element of the gospels most easily verified by standards of historical inquiry. Only the most radical historical skeptics would doubt this.
Still, it's extremely difficult to reach firm conclusions about the precise events that transpired between Jesus' arrest and execution. The gospel accounts do not agree with each other about the details, and they employ the trial scenes to great effect as showdowns over authority and truth. Trials have always made for great drama. These scenes become opportunities to emphasize claims about Jesus' identity (as king and Christ) and to attest, ironically, Jesus' ultimate authority even as the political authorities tighten the noose around him.
Other historical information adds to the picture.
Pilate is not discussed much in ancient nonchristian sources, but at least one of them excoriates his abusive governance. We know much more about the authority of Pilate's office, as a prefect of a Roman province during the first half of the first century. These men functioned as extensions of the Roman emperor's authority, and so in practice their authority was nearly absolute when it came to dealing with perceived deviants.
Likewise, jurisprudence in a Roman province (like Judea) at that time didn't usually concern itself with formal legal procedures. The empire was too young and the provincial bureaucracies too small for a "legal system" to have become widely established. A prefect's job was to keep the peace and preserve Rome's interests. As long as his actions were not so egregious as to incite widespread opposition or to imperil the privileges that he and society's other elites enjoyed, a guy in Pilate's position could (and, in Rome's eyes, should) do whatever was necessary to promote Rome's prerogatives and assert its dominance.
Conflict
If, indeed, Pilate would have been prone to maximize imperial interests, then -- from the perspective of the social values that guided how he exercised his responsibility -- Jesus got what he deserved. My friend Greg Carey suggests exactly that when he writes:
"Jesus was executed by the legitimate authorities of his day for acts he actually committed ... An objective observer watching Jesus during the last week of his life could have predicted his death. [His] behaviors were provocative, and as the Gospels tell it, they led inexorably to the cross." (page 79)
As the gospels present them, Jesus' deeds and statements were hardly without political significance, even if Jesus himself may not have been trying to expel the Roman occupiers. Yet he challenges deeply embedded social conventions, embarrasses the Jerusalem authorities (who, as the local aristocracy, were more allies than adversaries to Pilate), and proclaims an alternate "kingdom."
The death he died -- a seditionist's death -- offers his executioners' take on the life he lived.
What Pilate means for Jesus
How does all this affect how we understand Jesus and his death?
The historical circumstances make the possibility of Pilate being overwhelmed, negligent, or unfair decrease in likelihood. When a low-status detainee like Jesus appears before him, with the words "king" and "kingdom" swirling about, there's no reason for Pilate to delay the inevitable, unless it's to provoke onlookers and in the process reassert Roman dominance a little more.
When you listen to the trial story, hear the cruel sarcasm in Pilate's voice as he menacingly considers aloud the fate of the "king" before him. Read the questions he poses to others as leading; they are artifices. Notice how he makes onlookers share in the judgment he pronounces; they come to voice his imperial "logic." He coerces expressions of fealty to Rome when he makes them declare what he must do to anyone purported to be a king.
As the well-traveled Apostles' Creed puts it, Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate." What does this mean for Christians who confess it? The primary focus in the gospels is not on the raw pain Jesus endures in dying on humanity's account (sorry, Mel Gibson). Under Pontius Pilate, Jesus suffers subjugation. He suffers the full dehumanizing brunt of the authority structures that embed themselves in our world and protect their turf at all costs.
The trial narratives also emphasize Jesus' identity; he appears as an ironic, seemingly powerless king. Where can Jesus be found, and how is he discovered? Jesus' experience under Pilate suggests he becomes glimpsed and known even now precisely in those kinds of contexts. He becomes a savior who exposes ravenous expressions of oppression, even as he becomes vulnerable to the same. The human resolve to protect ourselves from both criticism and new possibilities becomes forever inscribed upon him, as permanently as the nails of the cross will.
We might find ourselves in these stories, too, if we move from wondering about Pilate to wondering about ourselves. Jesus' trial, as the gospels tell of it, criticizes ancient Roman abuses. But it also shows -- as Pilate perceived -- that Jesus' message always holds out hope for a really different society. And so it exposes our weak spots, especially the ones we shore up the most with our instruments of power.
Yet even hobbits know how dangerous power can be, whether it's lodged in a ring or an office. Pilate was who he was. But we shouldn't forget that the Bible doesn't promise any of us alone can do much better at avoiding power's destructive potential.
Matt J. Rossano: Why Was Jesus Crucified?
Michele Somerville: Unholy Week
John W. Whitehead: The Government of God: An Easter Message
Pontius Pilate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate (governor of Judaea) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Are the Jesus 'Mythers' being censored from this thread? I mean, the comments here are eerily thoughtful by HuffPo standards.
Even if you assume there was no supernatural efforts used to set up the scene, it doesn't change anything. If you know action X usually leads to death by crucifixion, then the only surprising bit to those involved would be that Jesus WANTED to be put to death.....they definitely wouldn't be surprised by the outcome. In modern times it is called "suicide by cop" and is far from rare let alone hard to understand. The officer isn't at fault when such things happen. Same goes for Pilate, whatever faults he might have had otherwise, Jesus wasn't looking for a special case to be made in his stead. Quite the opposite.
SO HOW DO WE KNOW ANY OF IT?
[Shades of Washington! They learned well.]
"The gospel accounts do not agree with each other about the details", and this should
tell us something, but we continue to ignore it. Other gospels exist that would help in
understanding all of this, but we continue to ignore them also. They're not "official", you
see.
But the context here is a people held captive by the most notoriously brutal empire the world has ever known amidst which the Jews themselves were wracked in internal conflict. It was a family problem.
However, Gentile scholars came along and to them the Jews were alien, other, and right away they saw anti-semitism everywhere they read and ignored the simple fact that with few exceptions the writers of the Bible were Jewish, and when they spoke against other Jews in the Biblical accounts it was never against all Jews, everywhere, at all times.
And as far as Roman rule is concerned, how many Christians in their millions have clashed with brutal laws and the interests of some Godless government or empires another in carrying out the will of God? And I think the Gospel accounts show us just this situation in the Lord's precious and crucial Messianic calling in an weakened Israel ruled by cruel and implacable pagans, and to even imply that Jesus bated the Romans into executing Him, when surely He walking a dangerous and perilous tighrope daily in fulfilling all that the prophets had said of hIm....
How are pagans at fault for a weakened Israel? You threw that in there without any explanation.
If you are interested in much greater sources of this and other interesting facts and opinions regarding distortions of truths and traditions of the Jesus movement, early Judeo-Christians/Essenes/Dead Sea Scrolls, church history, and the Gospels (espically Paul & Acts), read Robert Eisenman, its fascinating.
The very point I try to illustrate above.
I see the manuevers of Pilate to avoid the death of Jesus as a means to give other political forces a problem that would absorb their attention. When he finally signs the death warrant, it a "now you owe me" moment.
Now, Caiaphas is mentioned in both Matthew's and John's accounts. You knew that, right?
It's clear that Pilate didn't think Jesus deserved execution and tried several times to avoid it. But he did eventually give in, making him responsible, despite his "washing his hands" of the matter.
I'm an atheist. But if Christians believe Jesus HAD to die on the cross, then Pilate never had a choice, right? If Jesus didn't die nobody would be saved. And Jesus had to die sinless to be the unblemished sacrifice that was required, so his conviction had to be on false charges. Someone had to kill Jesus wrongly, and it happened on Pilate's watch.
So if Pilate's actions seem to be contradictory, it makes sense. He wasn't comfortable with the execution and personally thought it was wrong, but God must have "hardened his heart" (as he did with Egypt's Pharoah in Moses' time) to make sure the sacrifice happened..
To Pilate that would have been confusing. His sense of justice kept telling him it was wrong to execute Jesus, but there was an alien thought in his mind, much more powerful, driving him to approve the execution. Today we'd describe it as schizophrenia.
Also, you seem to be projecting 21st century sensibilities into a 1st century Roman official. Typically, in the Roman power structure, the question wasn't, "does X deserve to be executed?" but, rather, "does X deserve not to be executed?" Life was cheap.