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Pontius Pilate....
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Was the governor of the small Roman province of
Judea from AD 26
until around AD 36, although Tacitus believed him to be the procurator
of that province. According to the Christian Gospels, he presided at the
trial of Jesus and gave the order for his crucifixion. His biographical
details before and after his appointment to Judea
are unknown, but have
been supplied by legend, which included the detail that his wife's name
was Procula; she is canonized as a saint in Orthodox
Christianity. |
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Pilate is famous primarily as a crucial character in
the New Testament account of
Jesus, but most of our knowledge of him comes
from the account of the Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.
Pilate is said to have displayed
a serious lack of empathy for Jewish sensibilities, for example by
displaying Roman battle standards.
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Josephus does not name the leader of this act of
nonviolent resistance, but he goes on to mention that Pilate ordered the
crucifixion of Jesus. Benjamin Urrutia believes that the anonymous leader
was probably Jesus. Philo of Alexandria tells us that on one other
occasion he dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod in honor of
the emperor. On these shields there was no representation of any forbidden
thing, but simply an inscription of the name of the donor and of him in
whose honor they were set up. The Jews petitioned him to have them
removed; when he refused, they appealed to Tiberius, who sent an order
that they should be removed to Caesarea. |
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Pilate may possibly have responded so harshly to the
unrest because, due to political machinations, the powerful neighboring
Roman province of Syria was unable to provide him military support. In
approximately AD 36, Pilate used arrests and executions to quash a
Samaritan religious uprising. After complaints to the Roman legate of
Syria, Pilate was recalled to Rome;
many readers are surprised to find
that his suicide is merely part of the legend.
In contrast, Pilate's actual history was supplemented in 1961, when a
block of limestone was found in the Roman theatre at
Caesarea, the capital
of the province of Judea, bearing a damaged dedication by Pilate of a Tiberieum. This dedication states that he was prefectus (usually seen as
praefectus), that is, governor, of Judea. The word Tiberieum is otherwise
unknown: some scholars speculate that it was some kind of structure,
perhaps a temple, built to honor the emperor Tiberius. This inscription is
currently in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. |
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