How Did Pilate View Jesus?
How Did Pilate View Jesus?
Of the four Gospels, it is ultimately John that supplies us the most plausible explanation of Pilate’s reticence to execute an accused “king” (just as he supplies the most plausible reason for the Jerusalem aristocrats’ alarm about Jesus in Jn 11:48-50).229
Whereas in other extant gospel tradition Jesus reluctantly accepts the charge “king of the Jews” with the words, “That is what you are saying” (Mk 15:2; Matt 27:11; Lk 23:3), in Jn 18:36-37 John transposes Jesus’ response into his own idiom, allowing him to explain the sense in which he is and the sense in which he is not “king of the Jews.”230 Jesus declares that his kingdom was not this-worldly; thus his servants would not fight to protect him (Jn 18:36). Jesus shows Pilate that he and his followers invoke a different sort of kingdom. Whatever we make of the scene, it corresponds with historical information we already recognize. As we have noted, E. P. Sanders accepts as two “firm facts” Jesus’ execution by the Romans as a professed “king of the Jews,” and a messianic movement of Jesus’ followers who entertained no anticipation of military triumph. “Jesus was Messiah, but his kingdom was ‘not of this world’.”231
Jesus’ nonresistance (Jn 18:36) was a striking contrast to expected models of treason. What would have been clear from Pilate’s more hellenized perspective was the political harmlessness of a sage whose “kingdom” consisted of truth (18:37). As Diaspora readers would readily recognize, an educated Gentile who heard about a “kingdom of truth” would not think of political kingship, but that of philosophers.232 For example, Stoics claimed to be kings, by virtue of their character fitting them to rule properly;233 Cynics made the same sorts of claims.234 (From Plato on, philosophers claimed that they were the citizens best suited to rule the state,235 writing both essays and briefer discussions about wisdom’s role in ruling.)236 No one took such claims as a threat to the security of the state, because such philosophers rarely if ever genuinely challenged that security.
Although we argued in ch. 2 that Jesus was not a Cynic, a Cynic is not a bad analogy for how Pilate might view him. To a pragmatic Roman governor, Jesus was nothing more than a harmless philosophic sort of sage; a nuisance, perhaps, but surely no genuine political threat. Ironically, whereas Pilate views Jesus as a harmless sage, the Jerusalem aristocracy views him as a threat to Rome’s interests (Jn 19:12, 15; cf. 11:49-50). From their inadequate conceptual frameworks, both misconstrue his perception of his own identity. If John’s portrayal of their exchange is his interpretation of how Pilate understood Jesus and how Jesus understood himself, it is a very plausible interpretation.