Pontius Pilate

“ He hopes, perhaps, to calm, by this concession, the rage of the enemies of Jesus. Alas! he deceives himself; he will only appease them by the death of this just man!'
Scarcely had Pontius Pilate given orders for Jesus to be chastised, than the soldiers seized him, tore off the last remnants of his mantle, stripped him of his tunic of linen, and his tunic of wool, which they turned down over his leather belt, and thus laid bare the upper portion of his body; they then bound him to one of the pillars that adorned the entrance door of the house of the Roman Governor. ”

“ The people no sooner heard of his unusual accomplishments than they crowded around him, eagerly imploring him to cast a quieting spell upon Pilate’s restless ghost, and proffering rich rewards if he would only put an end to their woes.
Thus urged, the magician consented to try his skill. Journeying up the mountain, he came, after several hours of hard climbing, to the foot of the peak upon which Pontius Pilate sat watching his approach with lowering brows. Placing himself upon a large stone, the conjurer drew a magic circle around him, and then began his incantations. ”

“ Pontius Pilate, despite the desire he had, perhaps, to save the young man, appeared more and more annoyed at these reproaches coming from the crowd, reproaches which placed in doubt his fidelity to the Emperor Tiberius. He went towards the pharisees, and conversed with them in an undertone, whilst the soldiers guarded Jesus, bound, in the midst of them. Then Caiphus, the high priest, said aloud, addressing Pilate, that he might be heard by the crowd, and pointing to Jesus:
'We have found that this man perverts our nation ”

“ Pilate said to the thieves, "Of you and your misdeeds the earth shall today be free. You shall die upon the cross. Let the sentence of death be now read."
Then the scribe stood forward and read thus: "I, Pontius Pilate, viceroy in Judea of the mighty Caesar Claudius Tiberius, pronounce at the desire of the high priests and the Sanhedrin and the people of the Jews, the sentence of death upon a certain Jesus of Nazareth, who is accused of having stirred up the people to revolt, of having forbidden to pay tribute to Caesar, and of having proclaimed himself king of the Jews. ”

“ Then was the blessed man Paul wroth with him, and he went out from his cell; now it was the season of noon, and the heat with the Egyptians [at this time] is so fierce that it is akin to the heat of the fiery furnace of the Babylonians. And he stood upon a stone and prayed, and spake thus, “Behold, O Jesus Christ, Who wast crucified in the days of Pontius Pilate, I will not come down from this stone, and I will neither eat nor drink until I die unless Thou dost cast out that devil from this man, and dost set him free from him.” ”

“ It was about the twenty-sixth year of our epoch that Pontius Pilate was nominated to the government of Judea. Ignorant or indifferent as to the prejudices of the Jews, he roused among them a spirit of the most active resentment, by displaying the image of the emperor in Jerusalem, and by seizing part of their sacred treasure for the purposes of general improvement. As the fiery temper of the inhabitants drove them, on most occasions, to acts of violence, he did not hesitate to employ force in return ”

“ JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD.
[Mat. 27, 2. Mark 15, 1. Luke 23, 1. John 18, 28.]
THE great council of the Jews, called the Sanhedrin, could not pronounce the final sentence of death without the permission of the Roman governor. Therefore the chief priests and the ancients of the people led Jesus before Pontius Pilate, who then governed Judasa for the Roman emperor. Pilate went out [1] to the excited crowd, and asked: “What accusation [2] bring you against this Man?” ”

“ His question referred to a declaration immediately preceding it, that He who was before him came to bear witness to the truth. Pilate inquired what truth?'
'Well, I always have a prejudice against Pontius Pilate,' said Lord Cadurcis; 'and I think it is from seeing him, when I was a child, on an old Dutch tile fireplace at Marringhurst, dressed like a burgomaster. One cannot get over one's early impressions ”

“ Wherever the two great creeds of the church are repeated, all over the earth, we hear it publicly proclaimed that Jesus—“suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
We see plainly illustrated in Pilate’s case the punishment that followed from his weakness [68] in not doing what he knew to be right. If we have the courage to refuse to do what is wrong, we shall always be rewarded for it.
“Brave Charlie.” ”

“ We are required to believe, that Pontius Pilate informed the emperor of the unjust sentence of death which he had pronounced against an innocent, and, as it appeared, a divine, person; and that, without acquiring the merit, he exposed himself to the danger of martyrdom; that Tiberius, who avowed his contempt for all religion, immediately conceived the design of placing the Jewish Messiah among the gods of Rome ”

“ CHRIST'S FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE PILATE. As we have already learned, no Jewish tribunal had authority to inflict the death penalty; imperial Rome had reserved this prerogative as her own. The united acclaim of the Sanhedrists, that Jesus was deserving of death, would be ineffective until sanctioned by the emperor's deputy, who at that time was Pontius Pilate, the governor, or more properly, procurator, of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. ”

“ Longinus ventured, “you directed 329 me to return to the Hill of the Skull. The Jewish Sabbath is fast nearing. Perhaps I should go now.”
Without raising his eyes, Pontius Pilate nodded. Longinus crossed the darkening chamber and went out. After a while the Procurator stood up and walked to the window. Out beyond Antonia’s front square and the squat stone structures flanking it, on a wretched knoll beyond the city’s wall, the three crosses still lifted their quiet burdens into the waning light. But already the shadow of the wall was groping for the pinioned feet of the man on the middle cross. ”

“ And when he was brought to the city of the Romans, the Cæsar, hearing that Pilate had arrived, sat in the temple of the gods, in the presence of all the senate, and with all the army, and all the multitude of his power; and he ordered Pilate to stand forward. [1] And the Cæsar says to him: Why hast thou, O most impious, dared to do such things, having seen so great miracles in that man? By daring to do an evil deed, thou hast destroyed the whole world.
And Pilate said: O almighty [2] king, I am innocent of these things; but the multitude of the Jews are violent and guilty. ”

“ But the newer and more troublesome provinces were governed as conquered territory directly by the emperor as the head of the army. Now Judaea came in this latter division. Pontius Pilate and his superior, the Legate of Syria, were both directly responsible to Tiberius Caesar. Pilate was Caesar's officer under military direction. Military methods characterised the procurator's rule. To a man placed as Pilate, the notion of a ruler independent of fighting supporters, and that in territory held down by force of arms, was simply absurd. ”

“ In all the Roman records there was to be found no evidence that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate. This sentence, if genuine, is the most important evidence in Pagan literature. That it existed in the works of the greatest and best known of Roman historians, and was ignored or overlooked by Christian apologists for [43] 1,360 years, no intelligent critic can believe. Tacitus did not write this sentence. ”

“ I. The representative of Imperial Rome in Palestine at this time was Pontius Pilate. The position which he held may perhaps be best realised by thinking of one of our own subordinate governors in India; with the difference, however, that it was a heathen, not a Christian power, that Pilate represented, and that it was the spirit of ancient Rome, not that of modern England, which inspired his administration. Of this spirit—the spirit of worldliness, diplomacy and expediency—he was a typical exponent ”

“ One of these is in the First Apology, and reads thus:—
"Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the Second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the Third, we will prove." (Apol. I. ch. xiii.)
Again, he endeavours to show that Plato held the doctrine of a Trinity. ”

“ Arrest the young man, imprison him, crucify him if he deserves it, ‘tis your right, make use of it; as for me, I represent here the emperor, my master; as long as his power is not attacked, I shall not budge.'
"And besides, Seigneur Procurator," said Jane, "has not the young man of Nazareth said: 'Render unto God that which is God's, and unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar's?'"
'‘Tis true, noble Jane,' replied Pontius Pilate ”

“ In a time rich in historians and philosophers one man, Tacitus, in a disputed passage, mentions a Christus punished under Pontius Pilate, and the existence of a sect bearing his name. Suetonius, Pliny, Adrian, possibly Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, casually mention some people called Christians. ”

“ PILATE, PONTIUS, the Roman governor of Judaea under whom Jesus Christ suffered crucifixion. Of equestrian rank, his name Pontius suggests a Samnite origin, and his cognomen in the gospels, pileatus (if derived from the pileus or cap of liberty) , descent from a freedman. In any case he came in A.D. 26 from the household of Tiberius, through the influence of Sejanus, to be procurator over part of the imperial province of Syria, viz. ”

“ Henceforward, except in the Sanhedrim, we shall meet no more, for Romans like not cowards; and, if there be a resurrection, all I pray is that thou and I may never meet at it."
With these words, Pilate left the room, and the little priest, who was huddled up in his seat, and looking more like ape than exasperated man, and so amazed, so swelling with rage and hate, that voice and tongue refused their office. ”

“ And as I stayed, I knew all the charm of him—all that in him had charmed Miriam and Pilate's wife, that had charmed Pilate himself.
You know the rest. Pilate washed his hands of Jesus' blood, and the rioters took his blood upon their own heads. Pilate gave orders for the crucifixion. The mob was content, and content, behind the mob, were Caiaphas, Hanan, and the Sanhedrim. Not Pilate, not Tiberius, not Roman soldiers, crucified Jesus. It was the priestly rulers and priestly politicians of Jerusalem. I saw. I know. ”

“ Claudia said to him. “I’m not afraid of Pilate, nor am I afraid of the people out there. It’s because I want to see Jerusalem.”
“You don’t think Pilate might become suspicious, do you, or even jealous?”
“Pilate thinks only of Pilate and how he can advance his own fortune. He’s ambitious and egotistical; he craves authority, and he covets riches. He’ll do nothing to displease me, not because of affection for me, but because I’m the stepdaughter of the Emperor and because our marriage was arranged by the Prefect. ”

“ For as to what we have now in great number, they are not authentic, being neither ancient nor uniform. There are also some pretended letters of Pilate to Tiberius, giving a history of our Saviour; but they are universally allowed to be spurious. Pilate being a man who, by his excessive cruelties and rapine, had disturbed the repose of Judea, during the whole time of his government, was at length deposed by Vitellius, the proconsul of Syria, A. D. 36, and sent to Rome to give an account of his conduct to the emperor. ”

“ After Hanan had sent Jesus to Caiaphas, and the Sanhedrim, assembled in Caiaphas' house, had condemned Jesus to death, Jesus, escorted by a howling mob, was sent to Pilate for execution.
Now, for his own sake and for Rome's sake, Pilate did not want to execute him. Pilate was little interested in the fisherman and greatly interested in peace and order. What cared Pilate for a man's life? —for many men's lives? The school of Rome was iron, and the governors sent out by Rome to rule conquered peoples were likewise iron. ”

“ In his blindness to the radiant truth that stood before him, in the tragedy of his condemnation of that to which he should have yielded himself, Pilate stands out as a beacon for all time, warning the world against looking for the forces that move the world among the powers that the world recognises and honours. ”

“ You would have no power at all over me if it was not given to you by God; so that he who gave me up to you has the greater sin.
19:12 Hearing this, Pilate had a desire to let him go free, but the Jews said in a loud voice, If you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend: everyone who makes himself a king goes against Caesar.
19:13 So when these words came to Pilate's ear, he took Jesus out, seating himself in the judge's seat in a place named in Hebrew, Gabbatha, or the Stone Floor.
19:14 (It was the day when they made ready for the Passover; and it was about the sixth hour.) ”

“ The limitations of the Roman intellect and its characteristic over-estimate of deeds and contempt for pure thought, as well as the spirit of the governor, who would let men think what they chose, as long as they did not rebel, spoke in the question. Pilate is an instance of a man blinded to all lofty truth and to the beauty and solemn significance of Christ's words, by his absorption in outward life. He thinks of Jesus as a harmless fanatic. ”

“ Hungry, discouraged, exhausted, they were not defeated. They swarmed about Pilate’s palace, they fell in their tracks on the marble of the esplanades to sleep fitfully when sheer exhaustion overtook them; they crowded the market places, they slept in rich men’s doorways. But they would not turn their backs on Caesarea.
On the morning of the sixth day, Pilate called Longinus to the Palace. “Centurion,” he said, his face livid with anger, “since Sergius Paulus continues at Jerusalem, I wish you to take command of the troops here and put into execution the orders I am about to give you. ”