Claudia Procula

• asked Pilate not to arrest Jesus

183:2.3When they failed to find Je­sus in the up­per cham­ber, Ju­das asked the cap­tain of the guard to re­turn to the tem­ple. By this time the rulers had be­gun to as­sem­ble at the high priest’s home prepara­tory to re­ceiv­ing Je­sus, see­ing that their bar­gain with the traitor called for Je­sus’ ar­rest by mid­night of that day. Ju­das ex­plained to his as­so­ciates that they had missed Je­sus at the Mark home, and that it would be nec­es­sary to go to Geth­sem­ane to ar­rest him. The be­trayer then went on to state that more than three­score de­voted fol­low­ers were en­camped with him, and that they were all well armed. The rulers of the Jews re­minded Ju­das that Je­sus had al­ways preached non­re­sis­tance, but Ju­das replied that they could not de­pend upon all Je­sus’ fol­low­ers obey­ing such teach­ing. He re­ally feared for him­self and there­fore made bold to ask for a com­pany of forty armed sol­diers. Since the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties had no such force of armed men un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, they went at once to the fortress of An­to­nia and re­quested the Ro­man com­man­der to give them this guard; but when he learned that they in­tended to ar­rest Je­sus, he promptly re­fused to ac­cede to their re­quest and re­ferred them to his su­pe­rior of­fi­cer. In this way more than an hour was con­sumed in go­ing from one au­thor­ity to an­other un­til they fi­nally were com­pelled to go to Pi­late him­self in or­der to ob­tain per­mis­sion to em­ploy the armed Ro­man guards. It was late when they ar­rived at Pi­late’s house, and he had re­tired to his pri­vate cham­bers with his wife. He hes­i­tated to have any­thing to do with the en­ter­prise, all the more so since his wife had asked him not to grant the re­quest. But inas­much as the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the Jew­ish San­hedrin was pres­ent and mak­ing per­sonal re­quest for this as­sis­tance, the gov­er­nor thought it wise to grant the pe­ti­tion, think­ing he could later on right any wrong they might be dis­posed to com­mit.

• wife of Pontius Pilate; became prominently identified with gospel

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.

• wife of Pontius Pilate; became prominently identified with gospel

185:2.6It was a few hours pre­vi­ously, shortly be­fore mid­night and af­ter he had granted per­mis­sion to use Ro­man sol­diers in ef­fect­ing the se­cret ar­rest of Je­sus, that Pi­late had heard fur­ther con­cern­ing Je­sus and his teach­ing from his wife, Clau­dia, who was a par­tial con­vert to Ju­daism, and who later on be­came a full-fledged be­liever in Je­sus’ gospel.

• message to Pilate regarding Jesus

185:5.7Pi­late knew Je­sus was in­no­cent of the charges brought against him, and had he been a just and coura­geous judge, he would have ac­quit­ted him and turned him loose. But he was afraid to defy these an­gry Jews, and while he hes­i­tated to do his duty, a mes­sen­ger came up and pre­sented him with a sealed mes­sage from his wife, Clau­dia.

185:5.8Pi­late in­di­cated to those as­sem­bled be­fore him that he wished to read the com­mu­ni­ca­tion which he had just re­ceived be­fore he pro­ceeded fur­ther with the mat­ter be­fore him. When Pi­late opened this let­ter from his wife, he read: “I pray you have noth­ing to do with this in­no­cent and just man whom they call Je­sus. I have suf­fered many things in a dream this night be­cause of him.” This note from Clau­dia not only greatly up­set Pi­late and thereby de­layed the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of this mat­ter, but it un­for­tu­nately also pro­vided con­sid­er­able time in which the Jew­ish rulers freely cir­cu­lated among the crowd and urged the peo­ple to call for the re­lease of Barab­bas and to clamor for the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus.