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Did the gospel writers whitewash the role of Pontius Pilate on Good Friday, portraying him as a magistrate who condemned Jesus only under pressure from a Jewish prosecution, when in fact Pilate really wanted Jesus on the cross? This revisionist portrait of Pilate—presented to BR readers by Professor Stephen J. Patterson in “The Dark Side of Pilate” (December 2003)—is becoming normative among many biblical scholars today. As seen through this nontraditional lens, the evangelists, motivated by the growing dispute between church and synagogue in the first century, magnified Jewish involvement at Jesus’ trial; the traditional role of Pilate, as reported in the Gospels, is simply propaganda then, not history.
I beg to differ.
To make his argument, Professor Patterson presents the usual negative evidence on Pilate from the writings of Philo and Josephus that apparently contrasts with the milder impressions in the New Testament. But while Patterson uses all his negative critical acumen on the Gospel of Mark as a historical source, he does not do the same for Philo, the first-century Jewish philosopher at Alexandria. Had he done so, he would have noted why Philo wrote as he did.
In his Embassy to Gaius, Philo describes how Pilate had erected, in Herod’s Jerusalem palace, several gold-plated shields bearing inscriptions supposedly offensive to Jews. The Jews threatened to send a delegation to Rome to complain. According to Philo, Pilate feared the delegation might also report on some of his other wrongs, including his “briberies,” “robberies,” “senseless injuries,” and “executions without trial.”1
While this certainly sounds bad, we must keep in mind Philo’s own motivations for describing Pilate in such a negative light. Philo’s Embassy to Gaius was published after the emperor Gaius Caligula’s death in 41 A.D. and for the benefit of his successor Claudius. Philo’s interest was in portraying the previous Roman administration of Judea in the worst possible light so that the new emperor Claudius might be confirmed in his decision to relieve the Jewish homeland of direct Roman control by appointing Herod Agrippa king in 41 A.D., thus replacing the Roman governors of Judea.2
Had Pilate truly been the scoundrel painted by Philo, he would not have remained in office for an entire decade, the second-longest tenure of any Roman governor of Judea (not the longest, as Patterson has it). As emperor, Tiberius (14–37 A.D.) encouraged provincials to 028report instances of extortion and malfeasance by Roman governors, and he replaced several.
The first-century historian Flavius Josephus also had reasons to tell Pilate’s story the way he did. His first reference to Pilate concerns a similar episode, in which Pilate erected Roman military standards, which bore images of the emperor, in the Roman barracks inside the Tower Antonia northwest of the Temple (not “in the Jerusalem Temple,” as Patterson has it).3 According to Josephus, Pilate’s action inspired thousands of Jews to protest. While Josephus, writing under the Flavian emperors in the later first century, might have been expected to share Philo’s proclivity to denigrate the early Roman governors of Judea, the Jewish historian reports that Pilate was so overcome by the zeal of the Jews that he removed the offensive standards. Further, during a subsequent riot in Jerusalem (the so-called aqueduct riot, over Pilate’s use of Temple monies to build a new aqueduct), Pilate instructed his troops not to use excessive violence in their crowd control. (Clubs were permitted, but not swords.)4 Josephus certainly does excoriate later Roman governors of Judea who were truly vile such as Gessius Florus who “… flaunted his crimes … never omitting any sort of violence, nor any unjust manner of punishment.”5 He does not use the same language for Pilate.
The aqueduct riot, according to Patterson, began after Pilate simply “took” funds from the Temple treasury to construct the Jerusalem aqueduct, apparently without permission of the Temple authorities, a permission that, in fact, they most probably granted. The aqueduct, after all, fed the great cisterns under the Temple Mount, and surplus income from the half-shekel Temple dues could indeed be used for such purposes.6 Nor could Pilate have “taken” these funds so easily. The treasury was kept inside the Temple, and for a Roman to seize any of its funds would have resulted in his death. Later, Josephus will report how Titus reminds the Jerusalemites that the Romans gave permission to the Jews to execute even Roman citizens if they transgressed the Temple’s perimeter balustrade with its signs warning Gentiles to keep out.7
True, Luke 13:1 mentions “the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices,” but this refers either to the aqueduct riot (according to Josephus, some Jews were clubbed to death; others were trampled by their fleeing companions)8 or to some mishap occurring during Pilate’s administration, for which the government would inevitably receive blame. Note that when Jesus comments on this bloody episode, he does not fault Pilate but puts the event in the same category of accident as the collapse of the Tower of Siloam, which killed 18 innocent bystanders (Luke 13:1–5).
I do not intend to rehabilitate Pontius Pilate but merely to challenge anyone who finds the nonbiblical evidence on the governor credible but the New Testament record on him incredible. Quite the contrary, the extrabiblical evidence not only correlates well enough with the gospel versions in showing a Gentile governor misunderstanding his Jewish subjects, but the outside evidence even adds important detail to the gospel record. For example, Philo’s Embassy provides an explanation for the hostility between Pilate and Herod Antipas that Luke (23:12) enigmatically tells us was repaired on Good Friday when Pilate remanded Jesus to Herod’s court. According to Philo, Herod Antipas had embarrassed Pilate politically by writing the emperor Tiberius about the golden shields affair. Without hearing Pilate’s side of it, Tiberius sent a very testy letter to Pilate, ordering him to transfer the shields to a temple in Caesarea and warning him to uphold all the religious and political customs of his Jewish subjects. Against this background, Pilate’s attempt to transfer Jesus’ case to Herod Antipas’s court (Luke 23:6–7) becomes even more understandable.9
The most detailed historical references to Pontius Pilate, of course, occur in the Gospels, of which Mark’s appears to be the earliest. But when was it written? Patterson would do well not to present questionable premises as fact, as when he writes: “Mark was written near the end of the Jewish War against Rome, when the city of Jerusalem had been (or would soon be) sacked, thousands slaughtered.” Even though this supposition is current enough, it has never been proven, and, in fact, there is mounting evidence for dating the Synoptics (the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke) earlier than 70 A.D., when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Temple. If Mark—and the other evangelists following him—wrote in response to the fall of Jerusalem and were as anti-Semitic in their versions of Jesus’ trial as Patterson makes them out to be, how in the world could they have refrained from adding editorializing comments in their Gospels, such as: “And this is how Jesus’ opponents were punished for indicting him before Pilate” or “Now was fulfilled what Jesus predicted on his way to the cross when he told weeping bystanders to weep instead for Jerusalem” (Luke 23:28). With their predilection for prophecy-fulfillment couplets, the gospel writers could not have resisted including the latter if they had written after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
Far more serious, however, is Patterson’s charge that the traditional New Testament versions of Jesus’ trial are not historical. This is simply incorrect. Nearly every stage in Jesus’ hearings before Pilate and his responses during the hearing have direct analogies in other Roman provincial trials of the time.
Furthermore, all the named characters are historical figures. Judge Pilate shows up not only in the Gospels but in the historical texts Patterson cites. In addition, the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus 029mentions Pilate in a famous passage that reports how Nero, in order to suppress the rumor that he had set fire to Rome, “substituted as scapegoats … the Christians. Christus, the author of that name, had been executed in Tiberius’s reign by the governor, Pontius Pilatus.”10 Pilate’s name even shows up in stone in the famous Tiberieum inscription discovered at Caesarea.
As for the man who must have been the chief plaintiff that day, Joseph Caiaphas, not only does his name occur in the pages of Josephus, his very bones were found in the famous ossuary discovery so admirably reported in BR’s sister magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review.11
Still, it will be argued, the debate is not over the historicity of the trial or the personalities involved but their characterization in the Gospels. Just so. But here Patterson—and so many revisionists like him—totally overlooks crucial evidence that has a direct bearing on what truly happened at Pilate’s tribunal that first Good Friday. An extraordinary parallel to the Jerusalem trial of Jesus took place in the same city only 29 years later—it might well be styled “Good Friday II”—and it is reported not by any New Testament author, but by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. It is worth quoting in its entirety, and to introduce this cast of characters: Ananus was the high priest, son of Annas and brother-in-law of Caiaphas; Festus was the Roman governor of Judea; and Albinus his successor. The year is 62 A.D., and the place Jerusalem.
Having such a character [“a rash, heartless” Sadducee, as Josephus styles him], Ananus thought that with Festus dead and Albinus still on the way he would have the proper opportunity. Convening the judges of the Sanhedrin, he brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, whose name was James, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. But those of the city [Jerusalem] residents who were deemed the most fair-minded and who were strict in observing the law were offended at this. Accordingly, they secretly contacted the king [Agrippa II], urging him to order Ananus to desist from any more such actions, for he had not been justified in what he had already done. Some of them even went to meet Albinus, who was on his way from Alexandria, and informed him that Ananus had no authority to convene the Sanhedrin without his consent. Convinced by these words, Albinus wrote in anger to Ananus, threatening him with punishment. And King Agrippa, because of this, deposed him from the high priesthood.12
The parallels are more than obvious. Not Caiaphas but his brother-in-law Ananus is involved this time. The later Sanhedrin, much like the Sanhedrin in the case of Jesus, condemns to death not Jesus but his brother (or half-brother) James,13 while the later Roman governor Albinus, like his predecessor Pilate, opposes this miscarriage of justice. In view of its non-Christian authorship and congruence to the events of Good Friday, this evidence, I think, is overpowering. Clearly the gospel writers were not concocting propaganda in their accounts of Jesus’ trial, but reporting reliable historical data.
However, there is another extremely significant parallel. On the latter occasion, only a small fraction of Jews—“the judges of the Sanhedrin”—condemned James, just as only a small fraction of Jerusalem Jews indicted Jesus on Good Friday. (No more than a few hundred could have fit inside Pilate’s courtyard, and these were clearly part of a claque controlled by the Caiaphas administration.) In both cases, the Sadducean aristocracy, which controlled the Temple and the high priesthood, served as prosecution. Both times, the Jewish majority in Jerusalem opposed this group. In the case of Jesus, neither the general Jewish populace nor the Passover pilgrims had any reason to turn against him, and many, in fact, were weeping when he dragged his cross to Calvary, according to the most-overlooked passage in the Bible, Luke 23:27: “And there followed him a great multitude of people [Jews], and of women who bewailed and lamented him.” Acts 5:13 and 5:26 underscore the fact that the general Jewish population in Jerusalem held the early Christians in high regard. Later, in the case of James, the Jewish majority even had the high priest canned from office.
Accordingly, it was a terrible error for anti-Semitism ever to have arisen in the church, especially when the founder, his followers, the early Christian community in Jerusalem, and the Pentecost converts were all Jewish. Obviously, Professor Patterson is absolutely correct on this. But anti-Semitism arose from a misunderstanding of the Gospels, not because the Gospels—three of them written by Jews—are themselves anti-Semitic.
Much is made, for example, of Matthew 27:25, where the crowd presumably shouts, “His blood be on us and on our children!” This might well have been historical in fact, but its later interpretation, as impugning all Jews then and now, is simply ridiculous. First, only those making the statement that day would potentially be involved. Second, a curse has no value unless God endorses it, and Matthew does not record the heavens opening up with the voice of God 030affirming, “So be it!” And finally, with a majority of Jerusalemites not concurring with the Sadducean indictment of Jesus, only a wretched mis-interpretation of this passage led to the tragedy of anti-Semitism in the church.
Jews today can surely be excused for their extreme sensitivity to any hint of their predecessors’ involvement on Good Friday. After being ghettoized as “Christ-killers” and suffering medieval (and modern!) pogroms and the horror of the Holocaust, their response each decade to the Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany or, currently, to Mel Gibson’s Passion film is certainly understandable. Christians should know this and work diligently to correct the terrible errors of some of their forebears.
Hating Jews today because of Good Friday is as ridiculous as hating Italians because Nero once threw Christians to the lions. The only final blunder would be to try to claim that Nero never persecuted Christians, because the records that claim he did must have a hopelessly anti-Italian bias! One can only long for the day when the tragedy of anti-Semitism is not compounded by revisionist misunderstandings of the Gospels as fiction rather than fact. What ever happened to proper interpretation?14
