Pontius Pilate

• “behold the man!”

100:7.1Al­though the av­er­age mor­tal of Uran­tia can­not hope to at­tain the high per­fec­tion of char­ac­ter which Je­sus of Naz­a­reth ac­quired while so­journ­ing in the flesh, it is al­to­gether pos­si­ble for ev­ery mor­tal be­liever to de­velop a strong and uni­fied per­son­al­ity along the per­fected lines of the Je­sus per­son­al­ity. The unique fea­ture of the Mas­ter’s per­son­al­ity was not so much its per­fec­tion as its sym­me­try, its ex­qui­site and bal­anced uni­fi­ca­tion. The most ef­fec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of Je­sus con­sists in fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of the one who said, as he ges­tured to­ward the Mas­ter stand­ing be­fore his ac­cusers, “Be­hold the man!”

• political position › began rule of Judea in A.D. 26

136:2.8(Je­sus was al­most thirty-one and one-half years old when he was bap­tized. While Luke says that Je­sus was bap­tized in the fif­teenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cae­sar, which would be A.D. 29 since Au­gus­tus died in A.D. 14, it should be re­called that Tiberius was co­em­peror with Au­gus­tus for two and one-half years be­fore the death of Au­gus­tus, hav­ing had coins struck in his honor in Oc­to­ber, A.D. 11. The fif­teenth year of his ac­tual rule was, there­fore, this very year of A.D. 26, that of Je­sus’ bap­tism. And this was also the year that Pon­tius Pi­late be­gan his rule as gov­er­nor of Judea.)

• slaughtered Galileans in temple

166:4.4“The Fa­ther causes his rain to fall on the just and the un­just; the sun like­wise shines on the righ­teous and the un­righ­teous. You know about those Galileans whose blood Pi­late min­gled with the sac­ri­fices, but I tell you these Galileans were not in any man­ner sin­ners above all their fel­lows just be­cause this hap­pened to them. You also know about the eigh­teen men upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, killing them. Think not that these men who were thus de­stroyed were of­fend­ers above all their breth­ren in Je­ru­sa­lem. These folks were sim­ply in­no­cent vic­tims of one of the ac­ci­dents of time.

• Pontius Pilate

174:2.4The pre­vi­ous day the rulers had sought to trip him be­fore the mul­ti­tude on mat­ters of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, and hav­ing failed, they now sought to in­volve him in a dam­ag­ing dis­cus­sion of civil au­thor­ity. Both Pi­late and Herod were in Je­ru­sa­lem at this time, and Je­sus’ en­e­mies con­jec­tured that, if he would dare to ad­vise against the pay­ment of trib­ute to Cae­sar, they could go at once be­fore the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties and charge him with sedi­tion. On the other hand, if he should ad­vise the pay­ment of trib­ute in so many words, they rightly cal­cu­lated that such a pro­nounce­ment would greatly wound the na­tional pride of his Jew­ish hear­ers, thereby alien­at­ing the good will and af­fec­tion of the mul­ti­tude.

• allowed Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus; posted 10 guards, sealed tomb
• upset by letter from his wife, Claudia Procula

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.

• political position › consent required to put Jesus to death

184:3.13Al­ready had the full San­hedrin agreed that Je­sus was guilty of death-de­serv­ing trans­gres­sions of the Jew­ish laws, but they were now more con­cerned with de­vel­op­ing charges re­gard­ing his con­duct and teach­ings which would jus­tify Pi­late in pro­nounc­ing the death sen­tence upon their pris­oner. They knew that they must se­cure the con­sent of the Ro­man gov­er­nor be­fore Je­sus could legally be put to death. And An­nas was minded to pro­ceed along the line of mak­ing it ap­pear that Je­sus was a dan­ger­ous teacher to be abroad among the peo­ple.

• Pontius Pilate

184:3.17An­nas de­sired that the trial pro­ceed fur­ther, and that charges of a def­i­nite na­ture re­gard­ing Je­sus’ re­la­tion to the Ro­man law and Ro­man in­sti­tu­tions be for­mu­lated for sub­se­quent pre­sen­ta­tion to Pi­late. The coun­cilors were anx­ious to carry these mat­ters to a speedy ter­mi­na­tion, not only be­cause it was the prepa­ra­tion day for the Pass­over and no sec­u­lar work should be done af­ter noon, but also be­cause they feared Pi­late might any time re­turn to the Ro­man cap­i­tal of Judea, Cae­sarea, since he was in Je­ru­sa­lem only for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion.

• charge of blasphemy carried no weight with

184:5.1At five-thirty o’clock the court re­assem­bled, and Je­sus was led into the ad­join­ing room, where John was wait­ing. Here the Ro­man sol­dier and the tem­ple guards watched over Je­sus while the court be­gan the for­mu­la­tion of the charges which were to be pre­sented to Pi­late. An­nas made it clear to his as­so­ciates that the charge of blas­phemy would carry no weight with Pi­late. Ju­das was pres­ent dur­ing this sec­ond meet­ing of the court, but he gave no tes­ti­mony.

• political position › Roman procurator of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea under legatus of Syria

185:0.1Shortly af­ter six o’clock on this Fri­day morn­ing, April 7, A.D. 30, Je­sus was brought be­fore Pi­late, the Ro­man procu­ra­tor who gov­erned Judea, Samaria, and Idumea un­der the im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion of the lega­tus of Syria. The Mas­ter was taken into the pres­ence of the Ro­man gov­er­nor by the tem­ple guards, bound, and was ac­com­pa­nied by about fifty of his ac­cusers, in­clud­ing the San­hedrist court (prin­ci­pally Sad­duceans), Ju­das Is­car­iot, and the high priest, Cai­a­phas, and by the Apos­tle John. An­nas did not ap­pear be­fore Pi­late.

• personal characteristics › moral coward; made threats he feared to execute
• political position › reasonably good governor

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.

• personal characteristics › hatred for, fear of, Jews

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.

• Jews’ lack of respect for
• personal characteristics › moral coward; made threats he feared to execute
• personal characteristics › skeptic; did not fathom strong religious feelings

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.

• built aqueduct with temple funds
• slaughtered Galileans in temple

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.

• political position › deposed after needless slaughter of Samaritans
• retired to Lausanne; committed suicide

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.

• upset by letter from his wife, Claudia Procula

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.

• political position › Jews threatened to charge with treason

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.

• certain Jesus not worthy to die
• personal characteristics › unjust and fear-ridden judge

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.

• Jews’ lack of respect for

185:2.1When Je­sus and his ac­cusers had gath­ered in front of Pi­late’s judg­ment hall, the Ro­man gov­er­nor came out and, ad­dress­ing the com­pany as­sem­bled, asked, “What ac­cu­sa­tion do you bring against this fel­low?” The Sad­ducees and coun­cilors who had taken it upon them­selves to put Je­sus out of the way had de­ter­mined to go be­fore Pi­late and ask for con­fir­ma­tion of the death sen­tence pro­nounced upon Je­sus, with­out vol­un­teer­ing any def­i­nite charge. There­fore did the spokesman for the San­hedrist court an­swer Pi­late: “If this man were not an evil­doer, we should not have de­liv­ered him up to you.”

185:2.2When Pi­late ob­served that they were re­luc­tant to state their charges against Je­sus, al­though he knew they had been all night en­gaged in de­lib­er­a­tions re­gard­ing his guilt, he an­swered them: “Since you have not agreed on any def­i­nite charges, why do you not take this man and pass judg­ment on him in ac­cor­dance with your own laws?”

• political position › consent required to put Jesus to death

185:2.3Then spoke the clerk of the San­hedrin court to Pi­late: “It is not law­ful for us to put any man to death, and this dis­turber of our na­tion is wor­thy to die for the things which he has said and done. There­fore have we come be­fore you for con­fir­ma­tion of this de­cree.”

185:2.4To come be­fore the Ro­man gov­er­nor with this at­tempt at eva­sion dis­closes both the ill-will and the ill-hu­mor of the San­hedrists to­ward Je­sus as well as their lack of re­spect for the fair­ness, honor, and dig­nity of Pi­late. What ef­fron­tery for these sub­ject cit­i­zens to ap­pear be­fore their provin­cial gov­er­nor ask­ing for a de­cree of ex­e­cu­tion against a man be­fore af­ford­ing him a fair trial and with­out even pre­fer­ring def­i­nite crim­i­nal charges against him!

• political position › consent required to put Jesus to death

185:2.5Pi­late knew some­thing of Je­sus’ work among the Jews, and he sur­mised that the charges which might be brought against him had to do with in­fringe­ments of the Jew­ish ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal laws; there­fore he sought to re­fer the case back to their own tri­bu­nal. Again, Pi­late took de­light in mak­ing them pub­licly con­fess that they were pow­er­less to pro­nounce and ex­e­cute the death sen­tence upon even one of their own race whom they had come to de­spise with a bit­ter and en­vi­ous ha­tred.

• allowed Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus; posted 10 guards, sealed tomb

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.

• impressed by Jesus’ masterly bearing

185:2.15When Je­sus heard these ac­cu­sa­tions, he well knew that he had not been heard on these mat­ters be­fore the Jew­ish court, and so did John Zeb­e­dee and his ac­cusers, but he made no re­ply to their false charges. Even when Pi­late bade him an­swer his ac­cusers, he opened not his mouth. Pi­late was so as­ton­ished at the un­fair­ness of the whole pro­ceed­ing and so im­pressed by Je­sus’ silent and mas­terly bear­ing that he de­cided to take the pris­oner in­side the hall and ex­am­ine him pri­vately.

• personal characteristics › confused, harassed, fearful

185:2.16Pi­late was con­fused in mind, fear­ful of the Jews in his heart, and might­ily stirred in his spirit by the spec­ta­cle of Je­sus’ stand­ing there in majesty be­fore his blood­thirsty ac­cusers and gaz­ing down on them, not in silent con­tempt, but with an ex­pres­sion of gen­uine pity and sor­row­ful af­fec­tion.

185:3.1Pi­late took Je­sus and John Zeb­e­dee into a pri­vate cham­ber, leav­ing the guards out­side in the hall, and re­quest­ing the pris­oner to sit down, he sat down by his side and asked sev­eral ques­tions. Pi­late be­gan his talk with Je­sus by as­sur­ing him that he did not be­lieve the first count against him: that he was a per­verter of the na­tion and an in­citer to re­bel­lion. Then he asked, “Did you ever teach that trib­ute should be re­fused Cae­sar?” Je­sus, point­ing to John, said, “Ask him or any other man who has heard my teach­ing.” Then Pi­late ques­tioned John about this mat­ter of trib­ute, and John tes­ti­fied con­cern­ing his Mas­ter’s teach­ing and ex­plained that Je­sus and his apos­tles paid taxes both to Cae­sar and to the tem­ple. When Pi­late had ques­tioned John, he said, “See that you tell no man that I talked with you.” And John never did re­veal this mat­ter.

185:3.2Pi­late then turned around to ques­tion Je­sus fur­ther, say­ing: “And now about the third ac­cu­sa­tion against you, are you the king of the Jews?” Since there was a tone of pos­si­bly sin­cere in­quiry in Pi­late’s voice, Je­sus smiled on the procu­ra­tor and said: “Pi­late, do you ask this for your­self, or do you take this ques­tion from these oth­ers, my ac­cusers?” Where­upon, in a tone of par­tial in­dig­na­tion, the gov­er­nor an­swered: “Am I a Jew? Your own peo­ple and the chief priests de­liv­ered you up and asked me to sen­tence you to death. I ques­tion the va­lid­ity of their charges and am only try­ing to find out for my­self what you have done. Tell me, have you said that you are the king of the Jews, and have you sought to found a new king­dom?”

185:3.3Then said Je­sus to Pi­late: “Do you not per­ceive that my king­dom is not of this world? If my king­dom were of this world, surely would my dis­ci­ples fight that I should not be de­liv­ered into the hands of the Jews. My pres­ence here be­fore you in these bonds is suf­fi­cient to show all men that my king­dom is a spir­i­tual do­min­ion, even the broth­er­hood of men who, through faith and by love, have be­come the sons of God. And this sal­va­tion is for the gen­tile as well as for the Jew.”

185:3.4“Then you are a king af­ter all?” said Pi­late. And Je­sus an­swered: “Yes, I am such a king, and my king­dom is the fam­ily of the faith sons of my Fa­ther who is in heaven. For this pur­pose was I born into this world, even that I should show my Fa­ther to all men and bear wit­ness to the truth of God. And even now do I de­clare to you that ev­ery one who loves the truth hears my voice.”

• “truth, what is truth?”

185:3.5Then said Pi­late, half in ridicule and half in sin­cer­ity, “Truth, what is truth—who knows?”

185:3.6Pi­late was not able to fathom Je­sus’ words, nor was he able to un­der­stand the na­ture of his spir­i­tual king­dom, but he was now cer­tain that the pris­oner had done noth­ing wor­thy of death. One look at Je­sus, face to face, was enough to con­vince even Pi­late that this gen­tle and weary, but ma­jes­tic and up­right, man was no wild and dan­ger­ous rev­o­lu­tion­ary who as­pired to es­tab­lish him­self on the tem­po­ral throne of Is­rael. Pi­late thought he un­der­stood some­thing of what Je­sus meant when he called him­self a king, for he was fa­mil­iar with the teach­ings of the Sto­ics, who de­clared that “the wise man is king.” Pi­late was thor­oughly con­vinced that, in­stead of be­ing a dan­ger­ous sedi­tion­mon­ger, Je­sus was noth­ing more or less than a harm­less vi­sion­ary, an in­no­cent fa­natic.

185:3.7Af­ter ques­tion­ing the Mas­ter, Pi­late went back to the chief priests and the ac­cusers of Je­sus and said: “I have ex­am­ined this man, and I find no fault in him. I do not think he is guilty of the charges you have made against him; I think he ought to be set free.” And when the Jews heard this, they were moved with great anger, so much so that they wildly shouted that Je­sus should die; and one of the San­hedrists boldly stepped up by the side of Pi­late, say­ing: “This man stirs up the peo­ple, be­gin­ning in Gal­i­lee and con­tin­u­ing through­out all Judea. He is a mis­chief-maker and an evil­doer. You will long re­gret it if you let this wicked man go free.”

• animosity with Herod

185:3.8Pi­late was hard pressed to know what to do with Je­sus; there­fore, when he heard them say that he be­gan his work in Gal­i­lee, he thought to avoid the re­spon­si­bil­ity of de­cid­ing the case, at least to gain time for thought, by send­ing Je­sus to ap­pear be­fore Herod, who was then in the city at­tend­ing the Pass­over. Pi­late also thought that this ges­ture would help to an­ti­dote some of the bit­ter feel­ing which had ex­isted for some time be­tween him­self and Herod, due to nu­mer­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings over mat­ters of ju­ris­dic­tion.

185:3.9Pi­late, call­ing the guards, said: “This man is a Galilean. Take him forth­with to Herod, and when he has ex­am­ined him, re­port his find­ings to me.” And they took Je­sus to Herod.

• certain Jesus not worthy to die

185:5.1When the guards had brought Je­sus back to Pi­late, he went out on the front steps of the prae­to­rium, where his judg­ment seat had been placed, and call­ing to­gether the chief priests and San­hedrists, said to them: “You brought this man be­fore me with charges that he per­verts the peo­ple, for­bids the pay­ment of taxes, and claims to be king of the Jews. I have ex­am­ined him and fail to find him guilty of these charges. In fact, I find no fault in him. Then I sent him to Herod, and the tetrarch must have reached the same con­clu­sion since he has sent him back to us. Cer­tainly, noth­ing wor­thy of death has been done by this man. If you still think he needs to be dis­ci­plined, I am will­ing to chas­tise him be­fore I re­lease him.”

• certain Jesus not worthy to die
• upset by letter from his wife, Claudia Procula

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.

• personal characteristics › unjust and fear-ridden judge

185:5.9Fi­nally, Pi­late ad­dressed him­self once more to the so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which con­fronted him, by ask­ing the mixed as­sem­bly of Jew­ish rulers and the par­don-seek­ing crowd, “What shall I do with him who is called the king of the Jews?” And they all shouted with one ac­cord, “Cru­cify him! Cru­cify him!” The una­nim­ity of this de­mand from the mixed mul­ti­tude star­tled and alarmed Pi­late, the un­just and fear-rid­den judge.

• personal characteristics › confused, harassed, fearful

185:5.13Pi­late was ter­ror­ized by the in­sis­tent clamor of the mob, act­ing un­der the di­rect lead­er­ship of the chief priests and the coun­cilors of the San­hedrin; nev­er­the­less, he de­cided upon at least one more at­tempt to ap­pease the crowd and save Je­sus.

185:6.1In all that is tran­spir­ing early this Fri­day morn­ing be­fore Pi­late, only the en­e­mies of Je­sus are par­tic­i­pat­ing. His many friends ei­ther do not yet know of his night ar­rest and early morn­ing trial or are in hid­ing lest they also be ap­pre­hended and ad­judged wor­thy of death be­cause they be­lieve Je­sus’ teach­ings. In the mul­ti­tude which now clam­ors for the Mas­ter’s death are to be found only his sworn en­e­mies and the eas­ily led and un­think­ing pop­u­lace.

• personal characteristics › confused, harassed, fearful

185:6.2Pi­late would make one last ap­peal to their pity. Be­ing afraid to defy the clamor of this mis­led mob who cried for the blood of Je­sus, he or­dered the Jew­ish guards and the Ro­man sol­diers to take Je­sus and scourge him. This was in it­self an un­just and il­le­gal pro­ce­dure since the Ro­man law pro­vided that only those con­demned to die by cru­ci­fix­ion should be thus sub­jected to scourg­ing. The guards took Je­sus into the open court­yard of the prae­to­rium for this or­deal. Though his en­e­mies did not wit­ness this scourg­ing, Pi­late did, and be­fore they had fin­ished this wicked abuse, he di­rected the scourg­ers to de­sist and in­di­cated that Je­sus should be brought to him. Be­fore the scourg­ers laid their knot­ted whips upon Je­sus as he was bound to the whip­ping post, they again put upon him the pur­ple robe, and plait­ing a crown of thorns, they placed it upon his brow. And when they had put a reed in his hand as a mock scepter, they knelt be­fore him and mocked him, say­ing, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they spit upon him and struck him in the face with their hands. And one of them, be­fore they re­turned him to Pi­late, took the reed from his hand and struck him upon the head.

• “behold the man!”

185:6.3Then Pi­late led forth this bleed­ing and lac­er­ated pris­oner and, pre­sent­ing him be­fore the mixed mul­ti­tude, said: “Be­hold the man! Again I de­clare to you that I find no crime in him, and hav­ing scourged him, I would re­lease him.”

185:6.4There stood Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, clothed in an old pur­ple royal robe with a crown of thorns pierc­ing his kindly brow. His face was blood­stained and his form bowed down with suf­fer­ing and grief. But noth­ing can ap­peal to the un­feel­ing hearts of those who are vic­tims of in­tense emo­tional ha­tred and slaves to re­li­gious prej­u­dice. This sight sent a mighty shud­der through the realms of a vast uni­verse, but it did not touch the hearts of those who had set their minds to ef­fect the de­struc­tion of Je­sus.

185:6.5When they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of see­ing the Mas­ter’s plight, they only shouted the louder and the longer, “Cru­cify him! Cru­cify him! Cru­cify him!”

185:6.6And now did Pi­late com­pre­hend that it was fu­tile to ap­peal to their sup­posed feel­ings of pity. He stepped for­ward and said: “I per­ceive that you are de­ter­mined this man shall die, but what has he done to de­serve death? Who will de­clare his crime?”

• personal characteristics › confused, harassed, fearful

185:6.7Then the high priest him­self stepped for­ward and, go­ing up to Pi­late, an­grily de­clared: “We have a sa­cred law, and by that law this man ought to die be­cause he made him­self out to be the Son of God.” When Pi­late heard this, he was all the more afraid, not only of the Jews, but re­call­ing his wife’s note and the Greek mythol­ogy of the gods com­ing down on earth, he now trem­bled at the thought of Je­sus pos­si­bly be­ing a di­vine per­son­age. He waved to the crowd to hold its peace while he took Je­sus by the arm and again led him in­side the build­ing that he might fur­ther ex­am­ine him. Pi­late was now con­fused by fear, be­wil­dered by su­per­sti­tion, and ha­rassed by the stub­born at­ti­tude of the mob.

• not so guilty since ignorant of gospel
• personal characteristics › moral coward; made threats he feared to execute

185:7.2But Je­sus could hardly an­swer such ques­tions when asked by a man-fear­ing, weak, and vac­il­lat­ing judge who was so un­just as to sub­ject him to flog­ging even when he had de­clared him in­no­cent of all crime, and be­fore he had been duly sen­tenced to die. Je­sus looked Pi­late straight in the face, but he did not an­swer him. Then said Pi­late: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not re­al­ize that I still have power to re­lease you or to cru­cify you?” Then said Je­sus: “You could have no power over me ex­cept it were per­mit­ted from above. You could ex­er­cise no au­thor­ity over the Son of Man un­less the Fa­ther in heaven al­lowed it. But you are not so guilty since you are ig­no­rant of the gospel. He who be­trayed me and he who de­liv­ered me to you, they have the greater sin.”

185:7.3This last talk with Je­sus thor­oughly fright­ened Pi­late. This moral cow­ard and ju­di­cial weak­ling now la­bored un­der the dou­ble weight of the su­per­sti­tious fear of Je­sus and mor­tal dread of the Jew­ish lead­ers.

• political position › consent required to put Jesus to death

185:7.4Again Pi­late ap­peared be­fore the crowd, say­ing: “I am cer­tain this man is only a re­li­gious of­fender. You should take him and judge him by your law. Why should you ex­pect that I would con­sent to his death be­cause he has clashed with your tra­di­tions?”

• political position › Jews threatened to charge with treason

185:7.5Pi­late was just about ready to re­lease Je­sus when Cai­a­phas, the high priest, ap­proached the cow­ardly Ro­man judge and, shak­ing an aveng­ing fin­ger in Pi­late’s face, said with an­gry words which the en­tire mul­ti­tude could hear: “If you re­lease this man, you are not Cae­sar’s friend, and I will see that the em­peror knows all.” This pub­lic threat was too much for Pi­late. Fear for his per­sonal for­tunes now ec­lipsed all other con­sid­er­a­tions, and the cow­ardly gov­er­nor or­dered Je­sus brought out be­fore the judg­ment seat. As the Mas­ter stood there be­fore them, he pointed to him and taunt­ingly said, “Be­hold your king.” And the Jews an­swered, “Away with him. Cru­cify him!” And then Pi­late said, with much irony and sar­casm, “Shall I cru­cify your king?” And the Jews an­swered, “Yes, cru­cify him! We have no king but Cae­sar.” And then did Pi­late re­al­ize that there was no hope of sav­ing Je­sus since he was un­will­ing to defy the Jews.

185:8.1Here stood the Son of God in­car­nate as the Son of Man. He was ar­rested with­out in­dict­ment; ac­cused with­out ev­i­dence; ad­judged with­out wit­nesses; pun­ished with­out a ver­dict; and now was soon to be con­demned to die by an un­just judge who con­fessed that he could find no fault in him. If Pi­late had thought to ap­peal to their pa­tri­o­tism by re­fer­ring to Je­sus as the “king of the Jews,” he ut­terly failed. The Jews were not ex­pect­ing any such a king. The dec­la­ra­tion of the chief priests and the Sad­ducees, “We have no king but Cae­sar,” was a shock even to the un­think­ing pop­u­lace, but it was too late now to save Je­sus even had the mob dared to es­pouse the Mas­ter’s cause.

• political position › reprimanded by Caesar
• washed hands before multitude

185:8.2Pi­late was afraid of a tu­mult or a riot. He dared not risk hav­ing such a dis­tur­bance dur­ing Pass­over time in Je­ru­sa­lem. He had re­cently re­ceived a rep­ri­mand from Cae­sar, and he would not risk an­other. The mob cheered when he or­dered the re­lease of Barab­bas. Then he or­dered a basin and some wa­ter, and there be­fore the mul­ti­tude he washed his hands, say­ing: “I am in­no­cent of the blood of this man. You are de­ter­mined that he shall die, but I have found no guilt in him. See you to it. The sol­diers will lead him forth.” And then the mob cheered and replied, “His blood be on us and on our chil­dren.”

• on trial before Jesus

186:2.6From first to last, in his so-called trial be­fore Pi­late, the on­look­ing ce­les­tial hosts could not re­frain from broad­cast­ing to the uni­verse the de­pic­tion of the scene of “Pi­late on trial be­fore Je­sus.”

• “behold the man!”

186:2.11Pi­late spoke more truly than he knew when, af­ter Je­sus had been scourged, he pre­sented him be­fore the mul­ti­tude, ex­claim­ing, “Be­hold the man!” In­deed, the fear-rid­den Ro­man gov­er­nor lit­tle dreamed that at just that mo­ment the uni­verse stood at at­ten­tion, gaz­ing upon this unique scene of its beloved Sov­er­eign thus sub­jected in hu­mil­i­a­tion to the taunts and blows of his dark­ened and de­graded mor­tal sub­jects. And as Pi­late spoke, there echoed through­out all Neb­a­don, “Be­hold God and man!” Through­out a uni­verse, un­told mil­lions have ever since that day con­tin­ued to be­hold that man, while the God of Ha­vona, the su­preme ruler of the uni­verse of uni­verses, ac­cepts the man of Naz­a­reth as the sat­is­fac­tion of the ideal of the mor­tal crea­tures of this lo­cal uni­verse of time and space. In his match­less life he never failed to re­veal God to man. Now, in these fi­nal episodes of his mor­tal ca­reer and in his sub­se­quent death, he made a new and touch­ing rev­e­la­tion of man to God.

• personal characteristics › hatred for, fear of, Jews
• washed hands before multitude

186:4.1Af­ter Pi­late had washed his hands be­fore the mul­ti­tude, thus seek­ing to es­cape the guilt of de­liv­er­ing up an in­no­cent man to be cru­ci­fied just be­cause he feared to re­sist the clamor of the rulers of the Jews, he or­dered the Mas­ter turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers and gave the word to their cap­tain that he was to be cru­ci­fied im­me­di­ately. Upon tak­ing charge of Je­sus, the sol­diers led him back into the court­yard of the prae­to­rium, and af­ter re­mov­ing the robe which Herod had put on him, they dressed him in his own gar­ments. These sol­diers mocked and de­rided him, but they did not in­flict fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment. Je­sus was now alone with these Ro­man sol­diers. His friends were in hid­ing; his en­e­mies had gone their way; even John Zeb­e­dee was no longer by his side.

• wrote “King of the Jews” over Jesus’ cross

187:1.2Ac­cord­ing to cus­tom the cap­tain led the pro­ces­sion, car­ry­ing small white boards on which had been writ­ten with char­coal the names of the crim­i­nals and the na­ture of the crimes for which they had been con­demned. For the two thieves the cen­tu­rion had no­tices which gave their names, un­der­neath which was writ­ten the one word, “Brig­and.” It was the cus­tom, af­ter the vic­tim had been nailed to the cross­beam and hoisted to his place on the up­right tim­ber, to nail this no­tice to the top of the cross, just above the head of the crim­i­nal, that all wit­nesses might know for what crime the con­demned man was be­ing cru­ci­fied. The leg­end which the cen­tu­rion car­ried to put on the cross of Je­sus had been writ­ten by Pi­late him­self in Latin, Greek, and Ara­maic, and it read: “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.”

187:1.3Some of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties who were yet pres­ent when Pi­late wrote this leg­end made vig­or­ous protest against call­ing Je­sus the “king of the Jews.” But Pi­late re­minded them that such an ac­cu­sa­tion was part of the charge which led to his con­dem­na­tion. When the Jews saw they could not pre­vail upon Pi­late to change his mind, they pleaded that at least it be mod­i­fied to read, “He said, ‘I am the king of the Jews.’” But Pi­late was adamant; he would not al­ter the writ­ing. To all fur­ther sup­pli­ca­tion he only replied, “What I have writ­ten, I have writ­ten.”

• wrote “King of the Jews” over Jesus’ cross

187:2.5Af­ter the Mas­ter was hoisted on the cross, the cap­tain nailed the ti­tle up above his head, and it read in three lan­guages, “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.” The Jews were in­fu­ri­ated by this be­lieved in­sult. But Pi­late was chafed by their dis­re­spect­ful man­ner; he felt he had been in­tim­i­dated and hu­mil­i­ated, and he took this method of ob­tain­ing petty re­venge. He could have writ­ten “Je­sus, a rebel.” But he well knew how these Je­ru­sa­lem Jews de­tested the very name of Naz­a­reth, and he was de­ter­mined thus to hu­mil­i­ate them. He knew that they would also be cut to the very quick by see­ing this ex­e­cuted Galilean called “The King of the Jews.”

• would not take money for Jesus’ body

188:0.3In the mean­time, Joseph of Ari­mathea, ac­com­pa­nied by Nicode­mus, had gone to Pi­late and asked that the body of Je­sus be turned over to them for proper burial. It was not un­com­mon for friends of cru­ci­fied per­sons to of­fer bribes to the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties for the priv­i­lege of gain­ing pos­ses­sion of such bod­ies. Joseph went be­fore Pi­late with a large sum of money, in case it be­came nec­es­sary to pay for per­mis­sion to re­move Je­sus’ body to a pri­vate burial tomb. But Pi­late would not take money for this. When he heard the re­quest, he quickly signed the or­der which au­tho­rized Joseph to pro­ceed to Gol­go­tha and take im­me­di­ate and full pos­ses­sion of the Mas­ter’s body. In the mean­time, the sand­storm hav­ing con­sid­er­ably abated, a group of Jews rep­re­sent­ing the San­hedrin had gone out to Gol­go­tha for the pur­pose of mak­ing sure that Je­sus’ body ac­com­pa­nied those of the brig­ands to the open pub­lic burial pits.

• allowed Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus; posted 10 guards, sealed tomb

188:2.2This Fri­day night, af­ter the Pass­over sup­per, about mid­night a group of the Jew­ish lead­ers gath­ered at the home of Cai­a­phas, where they dis­cussed their fears con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s as­ser­tions that he would rise from the dead on the third day. This meet­ing ended with the ap­point­ment of a com­mit­tee of San­hedrists who were to visit Pi­late early the next day, bear­ing the of­fi­cial re­quest of the San­hedrin that a Ro­man guard be sta­tioned be­fore Je­sus’ tomb to pre­vent his friends from tam­per­ing with it. Said the spokesman of this com­mit­tee to Pi­late: “Sir, we re­mem­ber that this de­ceiver, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, said, while he was yet alive, ‘Af­ter three days I will rise again.’ We have, there­fore, come be­fore you to re­quest that you is­sue such or­ders as will make the sepul­chre se­cure against his fol­low­ers, at least un­til af­ter the third day. We greatly fear lest his dis­ci­ples come and steal him away by night and then pro­claim to the peo­ple that he has risen from the dead. If we should per­mit this to hap­pen, this mis­take would be far worse than to have al­lowed him to live.”

188:2.3When Pi­late heard this re­quest of the San­hedrists, he said: “I will give you a guard of ten sol­diers. Go your way and make the tomb se­cure.” They went back to the tem­ple, se­cured ten of their own guards, and then marched out to Joseph’s tomb with these ten Jew­ish guards and ten Ro­man sol­diers, even on this Sab­bath morn­ing, to set them as watch­men be­fore the tomb. These men rolled yet an­other stone be­fore the tomb and set the seal of Pi­late on and around these stones, lest they be dis­turbed with­out their knowl­edge. And these twenty men re­mained on watch up to the hour of the res­ur­rec­tion, the Jews car­ry­ing them their food and drink.