3G4
PILATE
PILATE
of his birth. He ■was a Roman citizen, and was born probaljly in Italy. From the position \\hich he afterwards occnpied, it is certain that he be- longed in manhood to the middle or equestrian class in the connnunity ; but whether bj' favour of the Emperor or by birth is unknown. Admission to this class could be obtained only by those who possessed 400,000 .sesterces (equivalent to about £3000 of our money, but with much greater pur- chasing power). The question whether he in- herited this property qualilication or not cannot be answered.
In order to reach the position of procurator of the Roman jn'ovince of Jud;ea, he'nnist ha\'e passed through a course of earlier appointments open to his order. He must have had considerable military experience, and have held one or more of the follow- ing appointments : prefecture (or tribunate) of an auxiliary cohort, or a legionary tribunate of the second class (those of the first being open only to tlie .senatorial order), or the prefecture of a wing (rfln) of cavalry (Cagnat, Cuitrs (VEjiig. Lat.'^ p. 109 ff. ). The earliest age at which one could become a [)rocurator was between twenty-seven and thirty years. These procuratorships ditier^d in standing (see PROCURATOR), and that of a province like Judrea was not the highest. Fui-ther promotion was open to one who did well in that position. The date of the birth of Pilate cannot nave been later than about B.C. 4-1. In Mt 27"* he appears as married, but whether he left any descendants or not is uncertain.
In A.D. 26, Pilate was api)ointed by the Emperor Tiberius procurator of the province of Judrea. This province comprised the former kingdom of Archelaus, — ronghlj' Samaria and the territory south of it to Gaza and the Dead Sea, — and the procurator's duties were both administrative and military. He was in a position of subordination to the governor of the province of Syria, but the exact nature of tlie subordination is not known. For all practical purposes his rule over all in the province, except Roman citizens, was absolute. At the same time, it must be remembered that in this, as in other provinces, certain communities were permitted a large measure of self-government — one of the secrets of Rome's success as a A\orld- power. Thus in Jerusalem the Sanhedrin retained many judicial functions ; death sentences, however, had to be conlirmed by the governor, and were carried out under his supervision (Jn 18'" ; Jos. .<4n#. XX. ix. 1, BJ II. viii. 1). The religious and political zeal of the various sections of the popula- tion made the task of governing the province one of extreme difficulty, requiring statesmanlike gifts of no ordinary quality.
We derive most of our knowledge of Pilate's rule from Jo.sephus, from whom tlie following incident is repeated, to illustrate the statement above made. The Jewish prejudice against images of gods Avas incomprehensible to the other ancient peoples ; but their attitude was officially respected by the Romans, Avhose practice it was to refrain from introducing .such into the Jews' country. They carried their conciliatory policy so far as to remove the hgures of the god-emperor from those military standards which bore them. In contravention of this custom, Pilate caused the standards with their usual decoration to be carried by night into Jeru- salem. The people pleaded Avith liim to remove the objectionable images, but he remained obdurate, and eventually ordered his soldiers to surround the crowd and ]iut them to death if tliey persisted. This threat hafl no terror for men wliose religious frenzy was worked up to the highest pitch, and Pilate had to yield, for it was impossible to massacre .so many. His action in this matter showed want of tact, hot temper, and weakness ;
and as the occurrence took place early in his period of government, it was an evil augury for his rule {Aiit. xviri. iii. 1). On another occasion he used money from the Temple-treasury for the building of an ac^ueduct, and Ijroke up the riot which threatened by introduchig disguisetl soldiers into the crowd {Ant. xvill. iii. 2). Lk 13' is the only authority for the mention of the Galikeans whose blood Pilate 'mixed with their sacrifices.' The cause of his action was doubtless some riot. Pilate is repre- sented in the worst possible light by a passage in Philo, which is put into the mouth of Agrippa (Lcgritio ad Guium, 38). —
[The Jews' threat to coniniunicate with Tiherius] ' exasperated Pilate to tlie greatest possible dejjree, as he feared lest ihey inij^ht go on an embassy to the Emperor, and might impeaoh him with respect to other particulars of his government — his corruptions, his acts of insolence, his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity.'
We do not need to go beyond the Gospel narra- tives, and the fact tliat he was retained in his position for ten years by Tiberius, to realize that this picture is grossly overdrawn.
For our knowledge of tlie pail Pilate played in the trial of Jesus we are dependent on all four canonical Gospels. As it may be assumed that Clark's narrative is the oldest, we shall take it first, then proceed to Matthew's and Luke's, which ai'e probably almost contemporaneous with one another, and, lastly, we shall draw on the Fourth Gospel.