© 2006 Jan Herca (license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0)
Several origins are accepted for the name Pilate. One is that it may have meant “skilled with the pilum,” the pilum being the typical iron-tipped javelin of Roman soldiers. A more definitive origin lies with the worship of the Dioscuri, a cult that was widespread in Sarmatia and Dacia. Many descendants of the great king of the Dacians, Burebista, were called Pileatus. This places the ancient family of Pontius in these regions of the empire.
One tradition suggests that Pontius was of Samnite origin, an ancient region of Italy, and that his name was derived from pileus, the cap symbolizing the freed slave, suggesting that his ancestors were freedmen. It is thought that he may have been a descendant of the Samnite general Gaius Pontius.
Tiberius appointed him fifth prefect (and not procurator, as he is sometimes incorrectly called) of an area of Jewish territory comprising Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, which until 6 AD had been under the rule of the ethnarch Archelaus, son of Herod I.
Like all prefects, Pontius belonged to the equestrian order (ordo equester), the lower of the two Roman aristocratic orders, below the senatorial order. Its members were called eques (plural equites), or knights.
¶ The disturbances he provoked against the Jews
From the moment Pilate took office in the summer of 26 AD, the clashes continued. We have discussed these events in another article (Pacifism in the Time of Jesus), so here we will simply summarize them, offering an approximate chronology:
During the winter of 26 AD or early 27 AD, Pilate sent a reinforcement detachment to Jerusalem, which entered bearing Roman insignia and standards. These symbols, which were almost venerated by the soldiers, were not tolerated by Jewish religious law, which prohibited any representation of humans or animals. Roman standards were called signum (a pole containing several discs and a hand), vexillum (a pole with a small red flag embroidered with an eagle), and imagine (poles with a bust of the emperor’s head at the top). The leaders of Jerusalem and the tetrarchs Antipas and Philip sent delegations to Caesarea, where Pilate was located, to protest this outrage. Pilate rejected their proposals. Then a delegation of representatives of the people, along with a large population, went to Caesarea. After five days of demonstrating in front of Pilate’s palace, and without being granted an audience, Pilate finally gathered them in the city stadium, where he listened to their proposals but, under threat of death, ordered them to yield. He surrounded them with soldiers. The Jews prostrated themselves on the ground, declaring that they were ready to die. Pilate, impressed, retracted his position and ordered the removal of the standards from Jerusalem. (This event is recorded in The Urantia Book, UB 185:1.3)
Still reeling from the humiliation of the previous incident, Pilate sought another way to confront the Jews. In the summer of 27 AD, he had shields inscribed with the emperor’s name, but without any image, placed on the walls of Herod the Great’s palace in Jerusalem, where the troops were quartered next to the Antonia fortress. The fact that the Jews were again scandalized clearly indicates that it was not the icons that were offensive to these objects, but rather their sacred character to the Roman troops. Again, the four sons of Herod the Great living in Palestine (among them the tetrarchs Antipas and Philip), along with the religious leaders, protested this new provocation. But Pilate paid no attention, believing that these shields would not violate any religious law. Then the Herodians and influential Jews sent a message to the Emperor Tiberius. The reply, ordering the removal of the shields, must have arrived two months later, in the autumn. Pilate had once again suffered another disgraceful defeat. (UB 185:1.4)
During the year 27 AD, Pilate must have decided that the aqueduct that supplied water to Jerusalem, which had been built by Herod the Great and was already very old, needed to be improved and rebuilt. He discussed the matter with the Sanhedrin, as the water supply was largely their responsibility, as much of the water was consumed for the performance of temple rituals. However, it seems that the Sanhedrin was not very willing to collaborate in this project. They must have argued that they lacked the money for such a purpose. The money collected from the temple tax, called corban, was not considered available for such purposes. The Jews considered this treasure sacred, available only in cases of extreme need, and especially to finance the religious aspects of the people. Pilate saw an opportunity to make up for his previous mistakes. So, at the end of 27 AD, he forcibly seized part of the temple treasury with the intention of using it for this purpose. The renovation work on the aqueduct must date from the end of that year. This aqueduct ran from Solomon’s Pool in Jerusalem to southwest of Bethlehem, in a town called Ethan. However, this event constituted a further outrage for the Jewish people, who, taking advantage of Pilate’s stay in Jerusalem, probably on the occasion of Passover in 28 AD, did not hesitate to protest en masse. A huge crowd gathered in front of the Antonia fortress. Pilate agreed to hear the delegation and sat on its tribunal. But his benevolent intentions were merely a farce. While the audience was taking place, Pilate deployed soldiers disguised as Jews, carrying clubs studded with nails. When, in response to Pontius’s refusals and words, the agitated people began to insult and abuse the prefect, Pontius gave an order to the soldiers, who began to beat the crowd. In the midst of the commotion, many people were trampled to death by their own countrymen or by Roman soldiers. The Jews, despite being caught by surprise, defend themselves and also cause the deaths of soldiers. The end result: a massacre. But the people seem to fall silent. There will be no more delegations.
According to The Urantia Book (UB 185:1.5), in a version not confirmed by any ancient literature, this event, far from being forgotten, provoked no less than twenty riots, probably all concentrated in Jerusalem, during the year 28 AD. Possibly the Roman troops stationed in Judea were attacked by Jewish radicals, and some soldiers died. Pilate must have suppressed these revolts rigorously, seeking out the perpetrators and crucifying them. Golgotha, in Jerusalem, must have been a crowded place during this year. Curiously, if any of these disturbances occurred during the Passover of 28 AD, then Jesus and his disciples were witnesses to the event, for, according to The Urantia Book, they were in Jerusalem that year (UB 147:2.1). Yet, no such incident is mentioned in The Book.
Finally, we do not know the exact cause of this. Some Galileans who were performing their rites in the temple must have aroused the anger of the tribune of Jerusalem, who, following Pontius’s orders, attacked them. Perhaps they struggled with the soldiers, and in the end, the scuffle caused many to die even within the sacred precincts. The blood of those men, which spilled on the temple pavement, must have defiled the place for several days, a fact that provoked the indignation of all the people. Surely the protests of the Herodians and the Sanhedrin reached Tiberius again, but it seems that this time no contrary orders came from Rome. This last altercation is mentioned in the Gospels (Luke 13:1-5).
¶ Pontius Pilate and Jesus
The event that evidently completely fills the interest in this character, who otherwise would have remained totally anonymous, is undoubtedly Jesus. During Jesus’ preaching, the Master had passed through Samaria without attracting the attention of the prefect, who, as we see, was not a man concerned with the religious affairs of the Jews. Thus, there Jesus could have preached in peace in the area under direct Roman control, if it were not for the fact that this territory, that of the Samaritans, did not enjoy the sympathy of the Jews.
However, the Sanhedrin managed to successfully entangle him during his stay for the Passover of 30 AD in order to authorize Jesus’ death. It is curious to note that if Pilate had not been in Jerusalem for this Passover, as seems to have happened in other years (when the prefect did not undertake to visit Jerusalem given the heated mood of the Jews), the events might have unfolded completely differently. We have an example of this in Luke’s account of the arrest of the apostle Paul (Acts 21:27-40). The Sanhedrin conspired against him, but since the prefect was not present, it was the tribune of the Jerusalem garrison who took charge of the arrest. His intention was to flog the prisoner and then release him, but seeing that he deserved to be judged by the prefect, he was sent to Caesarea. This might have been the case with Jesus if Pilate had remained in his capital during Passover.
As it turned out, Pilate again fell into the error of allowing the Sanhedrin’s influence over Tiberius to force him to back down from his half-hearted defense of Jesus. Since Pilate didn’t care about the death of a Jew (what actually prolonged Jesus’ trial somewhat was Pilate’s desire to oppose the Jewish Sanhedrin), he finally handed him over, but not without one last small victory: placing a notice on his cross that read “Jesus, King of the Jews,” something offensive to the Hebrew mind. Not even a message from his wife (Mt 27:19), Claudia Procula, who had apparently been converted to Jesus by a servant, changed his mind. Later Christian traditions elevated Pilate’s wife to a prominent position in nascent Christendom (corroborated in UB 185:1.7), and it is thanks to apocryphal texts that we know her name, which the evangelists do not mention.
¶ The End of His Political Career
In the end, constant clashes with the Jews were the cause of Pilate’s downfall. There was a belief among the Samaritans that the sacred temple vessels had been buried on Mount Gerizim since the time of Moses. In 35 AD, a Samaritan promised to bring the vessels to light if the people would assemble on this mountain. The more credulous listened to him, and great crowds of armed Samaritans converged on the town of Tiratana, on the foot of the mountain.
But Pilate, learning of this gathering and believing that a revolt might be organized, sent his troops against the believers. Some died, others were captured. Pilate condemned the most distinguished to death. The Samaritans, stunned by the ferocity of Pilate’s repression, went to Vitellius, the legate of Syria, explaining that the event had been purely religious and not seditious. Vitellius sent Pilate to Tiberius to answer for his conduct and handed over the administration of Judea to Marcellus.
The journey from Judea to Rome must have taken Pilate approximately a year, since he did not arrive in the capital until after Tiberius’s death. Nothing is known with certainty about his subsequent fate. With the spread of Christianity, the figure of Pilate gained greater interest among historians of the nascent Church. Some have him executed by Tiberius, who repented for the condemnation of Jesus and converted to Christianity. Eusebius describes him as having been exiled by Caligula to Gaul, and then committing suicide in Vienna. Others describe him as having committed suicide in Rome, or in Lausanne (on Lake Geneva), or in Lake Lucerne (where the site is still shown to tourists today). Still others imagine him executed by Nero. Even the Coptic Monophysite Church came to venerate him as a saint. The Urantia Book states that he committed suicide in Lausanne (UB 185:1.6), where he was living in retirement, possibly suffering from symptoms of deep depression.
¶ References
-
Hernando Guevara, Ambiente político del pueblo judío en tiempos de Jesús (Political environment of the Jewish people in the times of Jesus), Ediciones Cristiandad, 1985.
-
Emil Schürer, Historia del pueblo judío en tiempos de Jesús (History of the Jewish people in the times of Jesus), Ediciones Cristiandad, 1985.
-
Flavio Josefo, Obras completas, Antigüedades judías y Guerras de los Judíos (Complete works, Jewish Antiquities and Jewish Wars), Editorial Acervo Cultural, 1961.