Pontius Pilate: A Novel

by Paul L Maier

  Somewhere Pilate hoped to find the key which would unlock and expose the mystery of the new faith, the chink which would disprove it, something in one of Cornelius’s stories about the Galilean which would refute his claims. Instead, the new data supplied by his friend seemed to forge links which connected facts Pilate already knew. For example, there was the unresolved question of the star over Judea and the baby rumored to be king of the Jews. When he learned that this was the infant Jesus of Nazareth who had not been killed, he was stupefied. Jesus, then, had carried the title “king of the Jews” from Bethlehem to Golgotha, thirty-six years later!

  Now Pilate grew aroused and defensive. “Tell me this, Cornelius, don’t you really believe Jesus was son of god in the figurative sense in which all men are supposedly sons of a creating god?”

  “No, friend. Jesus came from the essence of God.”

  “Then you believe this as an inspiring religious myth, don’t you?”

  “No. As history. As event. As fact. Just as Jesus rose from the dead in reality and not in myth.”

  Cornelius had touched the most sensitive nerve in Pilate’s memory of the Nazarene affair. Pilate had never settled the question of the missing body. Pressing his hands to the sides of his head, he said, “But if what you say were true, then I would have executed deity!”

  “The human expression of deity,” Cornelius responded gently.

  “Then why didn’t your god burn me with a thunderbolt the moment I condemned his son to the cross? Yes!” Pilate brightened. “Why was no curse placed on me? As I sat on my tribunal that day, I had a faint recollection that this situation had occurred once before somewhere, but until now I couldn’t recall it. Yes, the Curse of Pentheus…from Greek mythology.”

  “The Pentheus story?”

  “It’s best told in a tragedy by Euripides. Pentheus was king of Thebes. One day, the god Bacchus, or Dionysus as the Greeks call him, came to Thebes for a celebration.—Now notice the amazing parallels in this story, Cornelius.—Dionysus was welcomed into town by women who were singing and waving garlands and branches of ivy. But Pentheus, who had no idea the stranger was an offspring of Zeus, a son of god, ordered him arrested. Dionysus was then led before Pentheus by a band of soldiers, who said their prisoner had not tried to resist arrest.—Sound familiar, Cornelius?—But word came that the maiden followers of the stranger, who were also imprisoned, had shaken off their fetters and escaped into the mountains…a great wonder!

  “Now Pentheus threatened Dionysus, but he responded gently that the king would not be able to keep him in prison. ‘God will set me free,’ the son of god claimed. But Pentheus didn’t recognize his divinity and ordered him bound and scourged. Then Dionysus arranged a special curse for the king. While he hurried off into the mountains to chase down the Theban women, the god maddened Pentheus’s own mother and sisters who were also out in the hills. They saw Pentheus only as a mountain lion and tore him limb from limb in their frenzy. But at the last moment, Dionysus opened all eyes. Pentheus knew he was paying with his life for having punished a god, and the women saw their atrocity.”

  “Oh, Pilate. Comparing a wild bacchanal to the Palm Sunday crowds? The god of drink to Jesus? You as Pentheus? The women as the disciples?”

  “The point of comparison is merely that if your Jesus is a deity, a human judge unknowingly condemned a god in both instances. In the Greek myth, the judge was dismantled. Why didn’t some similar catastrophic punishment fall on me? After all, I would have committed the most horrendous crime possible: executing divinity. I’d be a god-killer!”

  “But Pilate—”

  “A cosmic crime! In the name of my sanity, I must believe that Jesus was perhaps innocent, a good man—but thoroughly mortal like everyone else.”

  “Unless, of course, you’re mistaken. But to answer your question, Pilate, it happened by a higher design, according to which both Jews and gentiles were to be responsible for…for this final sacrifice. Just as all classes joined in condemning the Christos, so, by divine reflex, his death and resurrection atoned for all classes, all races. You, then, also took part in making the faith universal, Peter told me. Your unwitting error is forgivable, like any other sin, even if that error was spectacular, extraordinary. Peter was insistent on that point and told me to tell you about it if I ever saw you in Rome. So, again, you didn’t know it, but you were one of God’s instruments in the drama of salvation.”

  Pilate was going to comment that he didn’t like being used without his knowledge, but he canceled the thought as petty. Finally he said, “It’s just too much to absorb, Cornelius. The implications for me personally…would be staggering.”

  For several moments the tribune reflected, then said, “I know, Pilate, I know…Well, friend, we’ve abused your hospitality long enough. I must report to Rome. From now on I’ll be at the Castra, so we must get together again. But don’t worry: no more sermons.” He laughed, then added with a wink, “But I will be around to help answer any questions you might have.”

  “And maybe I won’t ask any”—Pilate smiled, clapping him on the shoulder—“but you’re a good man, Cornelius.”

  He and Procula bade the Cornelii farewell.

  In the days following their visit, Pilate suspected from Procula’s random comments that she had more than a smoldering interest in Christianity. He was sure of it when they returned to Rome that fall. He discovered that she had started attending meetings for Christian worship at the home of a couple named Aquila and Priscilla. Cornelius and his family, together with a small group of Roman Christians also gathered here regularly for this purpose.

  But Procula did not invite her husband to join them. She had learned never to try to push Pilate into anything. Meanwhile, she began to pray for him. For her, the visit of the Cornelii at Antium was the latest milestone in a journey to faith which had begun years before in Judea.

  However, conversion to a belief centering in the man he had crucified was a grotesque hurdle for Pontius Pilate. If only Jesus had told him more that Friday. He might have released him. But in that case, what would have happened to Christianity?

  Pilate did sense one strong, personal argument in favor of the faith: if Jesus were not divine, Pilate’s own life and career would ultimately prove insignificant, meaningless. History would truly pass him by. But if the Christians were right, his lifework would take on profound dimension indeed. Yet was that, in itself, a sufficient motive for accepting the faith? Was it honest?

  Epilogue

  Pilate could never know it—he would have been astounded to know it—but, apparently insignificant ex-prefect that he was, his would eventually be the most familiar name in all of Roman history. For uncounted masses in future ages, who knew little about a Caesar or Augustus or even Nero, would still confess in The Creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ…who…suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

  Many would remember Pilate only in horror from that clause as the man who killed Christ. They would invent the most terrifying, and certainly imaginative, punishments for him: torture, exile, insanity, compulsive hand-washing, suicide, drowning, decapitation, being swallowed by the earth, and even that ancient punishment for parricide—being sewn up in an ox-skin with a cock, a viper, and a monkey, and pitched into a river. Medieval legends would add the familiar stories of his restless corpse, accompanied by squads of demons, disrupting localities from Vienne in France to Mount Pilatus in Switzerland, causing storms, earthquakes, and other havoc.

  On the basis of the earliest sources, however, it is clear that nothing of the sort ever happened to Pilate, let alone his corpse. The early Christian church understood “suffered under Pontius Pilate” not in the sense of blame so much as for purposes of historical documentation and chronology. Much subsequent Lenten preaching to the contrary, one of the earliest church fathers claimed that Pilate “was already a Christian in his conscience.” Greek Orthodoxy canonized his wife. To this day, October 27 is Saint Procula’s Day in their calendar, while the Ethiopian churc
h recognizes June 25 as “Saint Pilate and Saint Procula’s Day.”

  Sinner or saint, cosmic blunderer or expedient functionary, Roman prefect or instrument of the Divine, Pontius Pilate—beyond any debate—would become one of the very controversial figures in history.

  Historical Note

  All major episodes in this book are historical and have been documented in the Notes below. Aside from the familiar role of Pilate at the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, such principal events as his involvement in the standards affair, the aqueduct construction and riot, the episode of the golden shields, the clash with the Samaritans, and his recall are all attested by ancient sources, notably Josephus and Philo. Archaeology has supplied additional data concerning his construction of the Tiberiéum and the coinage he minted in Judea.

  As for coinage, there is no evidence that Pilate issued any coins during his first years in Judea. But in 29 A.D., he minted bronze quadrans pieces embossed with the simpulum, a sacred ladle used for Roman sacrifices. Since the simpulum was widely used on coinage throughout the Empire, this may have been a small attempt on Pilate’s part to Romanize Judea. Later, in 30–31 A.D., perhaps under pressure from Sejanus, Pilate issued the coin shown below featuring a lituus, the curving, spiral-headed staff symbolizing the priestly-prophetic office of the Roman augur. Thoroughly embedded in Rome’s past—this crosier was used in consecrating the early kings of Rome—the lituus motif was in general vogue on imperial coins at that time. Pilate’s using a symbol freighted with such a Roman mystique on quadrans pieces minted in Judea appears to be a further Romanizing pledge of provincial allegiance to Tiberius and the Empire.

  Left: The lituus is at the center of the obverse, and the lettering is Greek: “TIBERIOU KAISAROS,” (“of Tiberius Caesar”). Right: In the left fringe of the reverse are berries, while “LIZ” within the wreath indicates the “17th” year of Tiberius’s reign, i.e., 30–31 A.D.

  Paradoxically, the pagan Pontius Pilate embossed what would shortly become a Christian symbol on his coins, since the lituus would be reused as the crosier or bishop’s crook, the symbol of episcopal office to the present day.

  This novel’s portrayal of the politics, Roman and Judean, in which Pilate was engulfed is absolutely authentic. Some of the connective material, however, was contrived, but done so on the basis of probabilities with no violation of known historical facts. Because of missing evidence, some relationships were necessarily presumed. The true family gens of Procula is unknown, and even her name comes only from a very early tradition, the Acta Pilati in the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus. Procula’s is the only proper name in this book not attested by an original primary source, but no other name for her is known, and Procula is most probably accurate. Since the name “Claudia Procula” derives from a late tradition, “Claudia” is discarded.

  The precise relationship of Pontius Pilate to the various Pontii cited in these pages is presumptive, but members of the gens Pontius would indeed be related, and the ancestral home of the Pontii was Samnium. Nothing is known of Pilate’s parents. His presence at the collapse of The Grotto is merely assumed, though his advancement through Sejanus’s efforts is demonstrable. Even if the letters cited in these pages are not authentic, as such, the correspondence itself and the sentiments expressed are highly probable. Indeed, some of the phrases in the letters are direct citations from the sources.

  Pilate’s trip to Machaerus with Antipas is possible, but not documented. His contact with Cornelius is highly probable, since both were Roman officers in Caesarea at the same time. It is not known if Pilate ever conversed with Saul (St. Paul), Herod Agrippa, or Caligula. Finally, his friendship with Cassius Chaerea is based only on the inference that Pilate did rise in office through the Praetorian Guard, where he would have known Chaerea as a fellow tribune.

  As indicated, there is an interesting divergence of opinion concerning the fate of Pontius Pilate. Aside from Tiberius’s dying before he could hear his case, the original sources tell us nothing. The traditional negative view that Pilate committed suicide has been common ever since the church historian Eusebius. In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius wrote:

  …tradition relates that…Pilate, he of the Saviour’s time, in the days of Gaius…fell into such great calamity that he was forced to become his own slayer and to punish himself with his own hand, for the penalty of God, as it seems, followed hard after him. Those who record the Olympiads of the Greeks with the annals of events relate this.

  (ii, 7. Kirsopp Lake’s translation in Loeb Classical Library)

  However, no extant records, Greek or otherwise, confirm this statement, and Eusebius himself calls it tradition. Indeed, in his Chronicon Eusebius cites “the Roman historians” rather than the Greek as his source for the same statement, indicating that he had trouble documenting Pilate’s presumed suicide (ed. Migne, XIX, 538). Moreover, Eusebius’s motivation in recording the tradition of Pilate’s suicide is less that of a critical historian and more that of an apologist and moralist in describing divine vengeance as overtaking Pilate. Finally, Eusebius was writing in the fourth century A.D., and there is considerably earlier evidence than this.

  When the noted pagan philosopher Celsus wrote his Logos Alethes (True Word) in 178 A.D., one of the arguments he used against Christianity was the fact that, unlike King Pentheus, Pilate suffered nothing for having condemned alleged divinity. In 248 A.D., the early church father Origen published his refutation Kata Kelsou (Against Celsus), but against Celsus’s argument concerning Pilate’s fate Origen replied only that the Jews, not Pilate, were responsible for the crucifixion (ii, 34). Clearly, there was no church tradition of Pilate’s suicide, execution, or punishment in the second or third centuries.

  Earlier still, Tacitus, who mentioned Pilate in his famed passage about the Christians (Annals, xv, 44) published in 117 A.D., as well as Josephus, make no reference to any suicide or punishment, though none to Pilate’s death either. Probably most illuminating is the testimony of a contemporary of Pilate who despised him, the Jewish philosopher Philo. In his Embassy to Gaius, which reports his famed mission of 39–40 A.D., Pilate is castigated (xxxviii), but no mention is made of any subsequent suicide or any punishment inflicted on him by Caligula, who certainly either decided Pilate’s case or dismissed it. Though this is an argument from silence, the silence is eloquent, since on other occasions Philo took keen delight in recording the punishments of people he scorned, as witness his In Flaccum (Against Flaccus, xviii, 146ff.).

  This raises the final question of whether a reasonable rather than hostile portrait of Pontius Pilate is possible. For the past seventeen centuries, Pilate has had an unusually bad press, and most tend to cloister him next to Judas Iscariot in mind and memory. This view seems unjustified, both by the practice of the early church in its crucial first three centuries, and, more importantly, by the sources themselves. Aside from scattered references in ancient authors, the chief primary sources for Pilate are: Flavius Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities and Jewish Wars; Philo in his Embassy to Gaius; and the New Testament Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Of these seven writings, one is hostile to Pilate, while the other six range from slightly critical to favorable. Philo, the hostile source, has Herod Agrippa write Caligula (in the memorandum cited on page 329 above) of “the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty” of Pilate (xxxviii; F. H. Colson’s translation in Loeb Classical Library). Nothing in any of the other sources on Pilate corroborates this judgment, and it is doubtful that Tiberius, even with his predilection for keeping his governors at their posts for long terms, would have allowed Pilate a whole decade of administration in Judea if he were such a wretch.

  The dissonant source must therefore be examined, and the context may explain Philo’s censure. The Jewish philosopher despised foreign administration of Judea, and in the above citation he seemed to be unloading his holy ire at the loss
of Judean independence on the man who represented Rome in Palestine before his beloved Agrippa was made king. Since his account was published after Caligula’s death, he was writing for the benefit of the emperor Claudius, and it would therefore be in the interest of his cause to portray the previous Roman administration of Judea in the worst possible light so that the Jewish homeland would not be returned to provincial status. Accordingly, we look, not for clear history from Philo in this connection, but heavily colored emotion and lyricism, rhetoric and exaggeration. As Stewart Perowne aptly comments on Philo’s reference to Pilate (in The Later Herods, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1958): “This may be dismissed as just the sort of stuff that is traditional in a region where words have never been regarded as necessarily a reflection of fact, but are held to possess a being of their own, independent and free. The idea is as old as Homer…To call Philo’s rhapsody lying would be a mistake: he was merely conforming to a conception of language which is not that of the modem west” (p. 50). This opinion is largely shared by other commentators, in works cited in the Notes.

  Therefore with Josephus recording Pilate’s humanity as well as his blunders, and the New Testament casting him virtually as Jesus’ lawyer for the defense before capitulation to popular pressure, a more balanced portrait of Pontius Pilate is possible, even if he is hardly the saint the Ethiopians would make of him.