Chapter 280 of 404

The Plausibility of Pilate’s Role

Philo and especially Josephus are ill-disposed to report good of Pilate;¹⁸⁵ they seem to have felt that the unrest in Judea is better blamed on deceased prefects like Pilate (once supported by the corrupt Sejanus)¹⁸⁶ than left with the Judeans themselves. Even as governor Pilate seems to have been quite unpopular.¹⁸⁷ From a Roman perspective, however, he was a minor official; his only appearance in the Roman historian Tacitus involves his execution of Jesus.¹⁸⁸

Few historians would dispute that Jesus in fact appeared before Pilate (accepted even by Crossan as unlikely to have been invented);¹⁸⁹ only the governor ¹⁹⁰ could order a person crucified. Further, if Pilate wished some semblance of order, he would provide at least a brief hearing. True, Pilate was known for his brutality,¹⁹¹ and sometimes had reportedly executed Jews without trial.¹⁹² But that Pilate executed Jesus without some form of hearing is improbable. Even apart from the risk of needlessly provoking anyone who followed him as a mere sage, this is the very sort of breach of normal procedure the earliest Christian sources (eager to show Jesus’ innocence under true Roman justice) would be most likely to report; yet they mention nothing of the kind.¹⁹³

That Jesus was crucified by the Romans is likewise inevitably historical; Christians would hardly have invented execution at all, but certainly not Roman execution, that would have painted them thereafter as subversives in the Roman world.¹⁹⁴ Pilate often went to great lengths to quell so much as public complaints, including violent suppression of a crowd, leading to many deaths.¹⁹⁵ Romans had borrowed an earlier custom of hanging people alive,¹⁹⁶ and the victims of the punishment were disproportionately slaves¹⁹⁷ and the provincial poor.¹⁹⁸ Roman citizens could not be crucified legally, but slaves and provincials could be.¹⁹⁹ Although dangerous criminals,²⁰⁰ like slaves, were regularly crucified, crucifixions of free persons in Palestine usually involved the charge of rebellion against Rome.²⁰¹

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