The Trial Before Pilate

185:1.1If Pon­tius Pi­late had not been a rea­son­ably good gov­er­nor of the mi­nor prov­inces, Tiberius would hardly have suf­fered him to re­main as procu­ra­tor of Judea for ten years. Al­though he was a fairly good ad­min­is­tra­tor, he was a moral cow­ard. He was not a big enough man to com­pre­hend the na­ture of his task as gov­er­nor of the Jews. He failed to grasp the fact that these He­brews had a real re­li­gion, a faith for which they were will­ing to die, and that mil­lions upon mil­lions of them, scat­tered here and there through­out the em­pire, looked to Je­ru­sa­lem as the shrine of their faith and held the San­hedrin in re­spect as the high­est tri­bu­nal on earth.

185:1.2Pi­late did not love the Jews, and this deep-seated ha­tred early be­gan to man­i­fest it­self. Of all the Ro­man prov­inces, none was more dif­fi­cult to gov­ern than Judea. Pi­late never re­ally un­der­stood the prob­lems in­volved in the man­age­ment of the Jews and, there­fore, very early in his ex­pe­ri­ence as gov­er­nor, made a se­ries of al­most fa­tal and well-nigh sui­ci­dal blun­ders. And it was these blun­ders that gave the Jews such power over him. When they wanted to in­flu­ence his de­ci­sions, all they had to do was to threaten an up­ris­ing, and Pi­late would speed­ily ca­pit­u­late. And this ap­par­ent vac­il­la­tion, or lack of moral cour­age, of the procu­ra­tor was chiefly due to the mem­ory of a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sies he had had with the Jews and be­cause in each in­stance they had worsted him. The Jews knew that Pi­late was afraid of them, that he feared for his po­si­tion be­fore Tiberius, and they em­ployed this knowl­edge to the great dis­ad­van­tage of the gov­er­nor on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions.

185:1.3Pi­late’s dis­fa­vor with the Jews came about as a re­sult of a num­ber of un­for­tu­nate en­coun­ters. First, he failed to take se­ri­ously their deep-seated prej­u­dice against all im­ages as sym­bols of idol wor­ship. There­fore he per­mit­ted his sol­diers to en­ter Je­ru­sa­lem with­out re­mov­ing the im­ages of Cae­sar from their ban­ners, as had been the prac­tice of the Ro­man sol­diers un­der his pre­de­ces­sor. A large dep­u­ta­tion of Jews waited upon Pi­late for five days, im­plor­ing him to have these im­ages re­moved from the mil­i­tary stan­dards. He flatly re­fused to grant their pe­ti­tion and threat­ened them with in­stant death. Pi­late, him­self be­ing a skep­tic, did not un­der­stand that men of strong re­li­gious feel­ings will not hes­i­tate to die for their re­li­gious con­vic­tions; and there­fore was he dis­mayed when these Jews drew them­selves up de­fi­antly be­fore his palace, bowed their faces to the ground, and sent word that they were ready to die. Pi­late then re­al­ized that he had made a threat which he was un­will­ing to carry out. He sur­ren­dered, or­dered the im­ages re­moved from the stan­dards of his sol­diers in Je­ru­sa­lem, and found him­self from that day on to a large ex­tent sub­ject to the whims of the Jew­ish lead­ers, who had in this way dis­cov­ered his weak­ness in mak­ing threats which he feared to ex­e­cute.

185:1.4Pi­late sub­se­quently de­ter­mined to re­gain this lost pres­tige and ac­cord­ingly had the shields of the em­peror, such as were com­monly used in Cae­sar wor­ship, put up on the walls of Herod’s palace in Je­ru­sa­lem. When the Jews protested, he was adamant. When he re­fused to lis­ten to their protests, they promptly ap­pealed to Rome, and the em­peror as promptly or­dered the of­fend­ing shields re­moved. And then was Pi­late held in even lower es­teem than be­fore.

185:1.5An­other thing which brought him into great dis­fa­vor with the Jews was that he dared to take money from the tem­ple trea­sury to pay for the con­struc­tion of a new aque­duct to pro­vide in­creased wa­ter sup­ply for the mil­lions of vis­i­tors to Je­ru­sa­lem at the times of the great re­li­gious feasts. The Jews held that only the San­hedrin could dis­burse the tem­ple funds, and they never ceased to in­veigh against Pi­late for this pre­sump­tu­ous rul­ing. No less than a score of ri­ots and much blood­shed re­sulted from this de­ci­sion. The last of these se­ri­ous out­breaks had to do with the slaugh­ter of a large com­pany of Galileans even as they wor­shiped at the al­tar.

185:1.6It is sig­nif­i­cant that, while this vac­il­lat­ing Ro­man ruler sac­ri­ficed Je­sus to his fear of the Jews and to safe­guard his per­sonal po­si­tion, he fi­nally was de­posed as a re­sult of the need­less slaugh­ter of Samar­i­tans in con­nec­tion with the pre­ten­sions of a false Mes­siah who led troops to Mount Ger­izim, where he claimed the tem­ple ves­sels were buried; and fierce ri­ots broke out when he failed to re­veal the hid­ing place of the sa­cred ves­sels, as he had prom­ised. As a re­sult of this episode, the lega­tus of Syria or­dered Pi­late to Rome. Tiberius died while Pi­late was on the way to Rome, and he was not reap­pointed as procu­ra­tor of Judea. He never fully re­cov­ered from the re­gret­ful con­dem­na­tion of hav­ing con­sented to the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. Find­ing no fa­vor in the eyes of the new em­peror, he re­tired to the prov­ince of Lau­sanne, where he sub­se­quently com­mit­ted sui­cide.

185:1.7Clau­dia Proc­ula, Pi­late’s wife, had heard much of Je­sus through the word of her maid-in-wait­ing, who was a Phoeni­cian be­liever in the gospel of the king­dom. Af­ter the death of Pi­late, Clau­dia be­came promi­nently iden­ti­fied with the spread of the good news.

185:1.8And all this ex­plains much that tran­spired on this tragic Fri­day forenoon. It is easy to un­der­stand why the Jews pre­sumed to dic­tate to Pi­late—to get him up at six o’clock to try Je­sus—and also why they did not hes­i­tate to threaten to charge him with trea­son be­fore the em­peror if he dared to refuse their de­mands for Je­sus’ death.

185:1.9A wor­thy Ro­man gov­er­nor who had not be­come dis­ad­van­ta­geously in­volved with the rulers of the Jews would never have per­mit­ted these blood­thirsty re­li­gious fa­nat­ics to bring about the death of a man whom he him­self had de­clared to be in­no­cent of their false charges and with­out fault. Rome made a great blun­der, a far-reach­ing er­ror in earthly af­fairs, when she sent the sec­ond-rate Pi­late to gov­ern Pales­tine. Tiberius had bet­ter have sent to the Jews the best provin­cial ad­min­is­tra­tor in the em­pire.