The Trial of Jesus

Session 2 Resumed


the Procurator

So here we are again, the bother of it no doubt a little mitigated by the pampered sense of vanity in Herod's deference to himself, and by the satisfaction of having reconciled a breach that apparently originated in Herod's intercession with Tiberius against Pilate in the matter of dedicatory shields set up in the Herodian Palace. These larger aspects of state must have seemed to outweigh the present individual nuisance. It is hardly as though, troublesome as it may be, this small matter carries the same momentous overtones as the business of procuring Antipas' silence in Rome.

What in the meantime has come into Pilate's ever exploratory mind is the thought that this is the annual occasion on which by tradition one prisoner is granted amnesty - Rome's participation in the Passover celebration. (Rome in fact made quite a few notable exceptions to its normal practice in the special administration of Judaea.)

Mark (15:8Mark 15:8 (NIV)

8 The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
), by contrast with Matthew (27:17Luke 23:4 (NIV)

17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, "Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?"
) and John (18:39John 18:39 (NIV)

39 "But it is your custom for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of the Passover. Do you want me to release 'the king of the Jews'"?
), suggests that the initiative in this came from the Jewish side. As we noted before, it is only because they have framed the charge to play upon Roman anxiety that the amnesty is available to be offered. And in that it could scarcely have been in their interests to initiate the idea, it may be assumed that it was Pilate who raised it. But the curiosity here is that as the prerogative exercise of a discretion, it is hardly a concession in which one supposes that in the normal event the populace would have been consulted. The supposition must be that in relation to one or more popular trouble-makers the Procurator would have handed out an arbitrary pardon without prior conference.

Note that according to Mark he offers it in the alternative, with a certain misplaced irony in terms, 'Barabbas or the King of the Jews?' (15:9Mark 15:9 (NIV)

9 "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate,
) - likewise John - although Matthew (27:17Matthew 27:17 (NIV)

17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, "Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?"
)puts it in the terms of the indictment as recorded by Luke - ' or the anointed one'.

The assembly, by him unexpectedly, it seems, demands the release of Barabbas. Taken by surprise, Pilate, according to the Synoptics, rather pointlessly queries, 'But what about the King of the Jews/anointed one?'

The responding demand for crucifixion can hardly have come as an equal surprise, by this point.

However, it's at this juncture, before the demand is resolved, that in the sequence we have preferred John freezes the frame to introduce the Ecce Homo. (In the other three accounts, the ensuing demand for crucifixion is made, without any direct confrontation of that kind between Victim and accusers. Ironically, in those accounts which offer none of the intimate, private scenes of John's inner-room exchanges, the central Character, across Whose Body the Iliadic struggle is waged, has become almost an abstraction. For all the common shouts of "Crucify!" John's account is thus both the most intensely human of the four and simultaneously the most passionate in its hostilities.) The Procurator's defence-works are crumbling by the second. He scrambles backward into the trench of a counter-offer: "You say he's been leading people astray. I can find no evidence of it, nor did Herod. How about if I were to have him flogged instead?'

He withdraws once more, to suit the act to the promise, before they can reject it.

And remarkably, in the middle of these exchanges, Matthew uniquely records the receipt of a message from his wife, that celebrated, cryptic announcement of the fearful dream that has haunted her through the early hours on this "just man's" account. Various writers have speculated unconvincingly on the content of Claudia Procula's arguably mystic vision, some trying to relate it to the legend originating in Plutarch of the mysterious cry about the death of the great God Pan heard by a traveller off the island of Paxos, but it remains one of history's most intriguing secrets. We are deprived of that piece of the mosaic by the momentum of events, that denied the Procurator also any space in which to try to fathom its meaning, or how he should respond to it.

A thorn-crowned Jesus is introduced in an attempt to compel clemency in the accusers, and restore them to reason. In the consistent text of the other Evangelists: "What has he done?!" The methods are divergent, the message the same, in both records a futile and equally irrational attempt to inject a measure of equity into the proceedings: death for guilt. It is from this point that we can say that Pilate ha hopelessly 'lost it'. Subsequently - belatedly, when his obstinacy can achieve nothing except salve his vanity - then he will reassume the mantle of impregnable hauteur (John 19:22John 19:22 (NIV)

22 Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written".
). For the present, he scrambles backward yet again from one trench to another. Into a hopeless absurdity:

"You go and crucify him in that case!"

One can almost see the High Priestly smile and shrug of the shoulders, and hear the comment: "O, for heaven's sake!"

John, however, gives a new slant to the business at this moment. From what follows it certainly seems that for all the rhythmic barracking of "Crucify! Crucify?", that is now drowning out any coherent exchange, the priests are not confident of having netted their quarry, and at last shift their ground. They take up Pilate's latest absurdity and turn it into a solid legal point, something more compelling to Rome's admimstrator. Remarkably, they actually revert now to the true basis of the indictment.

"Under our law he has been sentenced to death, for making himself Son of God."

This is indeed, at long last, a reasonable approximation to the finding of the Great Sanhedrin, the count on which the Prisoner stands convicted. More precisely, it was His associating Himself with the power of the Almighty, rather than professing a relationship which any of the faithful might legitimately claim - "Son of God" had been the substance of the cross-examination that failed to mature into anything culpable. But as a cipher for associate of God it is directly in alignment with the actual verdict, as suggestions of terrestrial kingship were not.

The charge is now, for the first time, not sedition but blasphemy - blasphemy which itself ranks the death penalty under Jewish law. Tellingly, it is this that increases Pilate's fear, not of the crowd, but of making such mistake in handling them as may once again land him in trouble with - Tiberius. There is a new substance in this allegation of a breach of Jewish law which he is not competent to assess, but which nevertheless carries the death penalty which the Procurator is expected to confirm. "Son of God" may be a title innocuous enough in the ears of the average Roman pantheist and conniver in the cult of Imperial divinity, but as a crime removed from his personal ability to appraise it, unlike "King of the Jews" it holds its own latent menace, in the face of which he experiences a new helplessness. Having brought Jesus outside for that ineffectual display, he now conducts Him back in again for one last, desperate examination.

"Time to start talking to me, and talking fast." (Not in so many words: "I'm out of my depth here." - but that's the gist of it.) "You heard all that. Don't you understand that I have authority to overrule them and release you? Or to have you crucified?" (I.e. you or Barabbas?).

In fact it's questionable whether his jurisdiction is indeed that broad. Here we come to a very mtere sting consequence of the shift in the indictment from one of blasphemy to that of sedition. It can seemingly only have been as regards an offence against Roman rather than Jewish order that he enjoyed this fullness of leniency and the luxury of the amnesty game: the extent of his powers in that direction where the crime was against Jewish law must surely have been to remit the Prisoner to the Sanhedrin for the imposition of a non-capital sentence. It can only have been in the former situation that amnesty operated : in the latter, it would have been superfluous. Jewish authorities didn't need any amnesty in order to choose not to present a convict for execution. As, on the other hand, an act inimical to their wishes, an imposition rather than a concession, it would make equally little sense. Had the conviction been conveyed to Pilate as originally framed, Barabbas would have been a total irrelevance.

We are now into less forensic and more kerygmatic territory as far as Jesus Himself is concerned - "Whatever power you have is as steward of god." (As, in effect, I've already told you.)

But with a startling new emphasis - - - -

"So you needn't be guilty about discharging your office as you have to. The real fault lies with those who've invoked you."

This is calculated to induce in the already distracted Roman confusion to the point of paralysis. His own culpability? A counter-charge against the Sanhedrin? Small wonder that this is the point at which Our Lord's depth of understanding has finally defeated him.

It may not even be necessary by this stage, yet when he emerges again in a state of obvious bewilderment (though continuing resentment) with Jesus in tow, the priests, recognizing the signs of a fighter reeling on his feet, get it right at last. The salient characteristic of Pilate seems to have been not outstanding ineptitude or brutality, but the desire to be seen as a competent administrator. Seen, that is, by the only one that counts - Tiberius. To this, most of the mistakes of his career can be traced. Add to this a not untypical Roman inability to fathom the niceties of Judaic law and practice, and we have a man unfortunate and irresponsible in roughly equal measure. We've already noted that Antipas managed in the past to turn his well-intentioned gestures toward Caesar against him. The priests have surgically isolated the correct point of the nerve-ending for the scalpel's tip - "If you release this one, you're no friend of the Emperor."

(Philokaisar and Philoromaoss were actually formal titles conferred as a mark of honour on various Commagene and other client rulers. Or possibly self-appropriated! Very few people in the world were "Caesar's friend", and Pilate certainly wouldn't have been one of those who aspired to it.)

"Anyone who arrogates the title 'king' to himself derogates from Caesar's authority."

True enough. Not because the Imperium didn't allow place for subordinate kings but because it was still the function of Rome (up to the installation of Herod the Great at least, of the Senate still) to confer recognition on any such claimant. Unauthorized assumption of the title amounted to Disorderly Conduct in a public place within the meaning of the Pax Romana. If he had not previously occupied the magisterial chair, it is at this point that he retreats to this psychological refuge. He is now stuck in the mechanistic behaviour of an automaton, reiterating by way of argument against intransigence the very substance of the indictment "Am I to cruc!fy your own king?"

Which predictably wins him no more favourable response than the repeated, "We have no king except Caesar."

(A pleasing little irony. Even the most despotic of the emperors, megalomaniacs like Caligula and Commodus, consistently and fervently maintained the Republican fictions of an architecture of Consuls and Senate throughout these four final, absolutist centuries, religiously disclaiming the title 'king'. Hence Shakespeare's Antony "You all did see... .I thrice presented him a kingly crown which he did thrice refuse."..)

Revealingly, Matthew tells us that what Pilate finally succumbs to is the imminent prospect of this antagonism boiling over into a riot, something that his injudicious actions have precipitated more than once in his Palestine career. Astonishingly, the mind that gets Jesus sent to the Cross is something approaching a frenzy of ostensible pro-Roman sentiment on the part of zealots for Jewish culture. It is the demand for stabilizing the Imperial order that destroys a Jewish Messiah. ("Thine own nation... have delivered thee...."!) No wonder Pilate couldn't handle the unbridled forces that confronted him that morning. The complexities of Pharisaic and Sadducean caprice in collaboration defeated many a subtler administrator than he.

That's it. Barabbas is released, to nobody's great interest or enthusiasm, like a sheep turned out to pasture. An essential piece in the mechanism that turned the history of the world, and little more than an empty symbol - his name can be translated, "son of a father".

Because all death sentences required not only to be confirmed by the Roman government but also administered by or under the supervision of Roman troops, it did not automatically follow that the prescribed punishment had to be crucifixion. That was a method normally reserved by Rome for the exemplary punishment of offences directed against Rome. Where, as here, the offence which has at last been officially noted, blasphemy, is one of little concern (or comprehension) to Rome, normal procedure would have dictated no more than that the Procurator should pronounce a sentence appropriate to the peculiarly local nature of the crime, and ideally one prescribed by the local law - in this case, according to Leviticus, stoning. That he imposed the sentence he did indicates at least that the imprint finally lingering on his mind was not of that esoteric Jewish crime, instrumental in his capitulation as it may have been, but the cause first stated, the deliberate attempt to undermine Roman order implicit in His affectation of local kingship.

Various people, notably Bishop Geoffrey Jones in his analysis of the distinct purposes of the several Evangelists, and S.G.F. Brandon in his 'Trial of Jesus of Nazareth', have speculated on the exact offence for which Jesus was actually, if notionally, executed; but it is only this synthesis of all four accounts which allows us to come close to answering that.

We have a Prisoner condemned, properly or improperly, on a count of blasphemy, but sentenced by reference to one of sedition. Under the English legal system a discrepancy sufficient in itself to afford grounds of appeal against sentence. But for Pilate's having side-tracked them at the outset into an unnecessary attempt to "beef up" the indictment, they might have recognized that their strength lay in that very accuracy, that containing the Procurator within the limits of his official capacity was most likely to be achieved by just such an assertion of matters both outside his competence and visibly within theirs. "Son of God" - sitting on God's right hand - either way, these could never have been the matters of fine detail in which the Procurator could have been expected to immerse himself. In exercising his own separate and narrow function, no doubt, outline advice on the nature and gravity of the crime could have been provided and would have sufficed; and in the ordinary course of events, confirmation, and direction as to the method to be used, followed almost at once. Why did this particular case run on what we must take to be such unusual lines from the outset? It was Pilate himself who, as we have noted, introduced the initial departure from the expected procedure. In that small but significant variation in the protocol, "accusation" rather than "conviction" - from that opening, all else seems more or less to have followed.

Some meaningless whim, then? Or less even than that - a total accident? A simple slip on his part, to precipitate that colossal avalanche of consequence?

Or ought we to make one last adjustment to our sequence of events as seemingly reported?

That which might have been sufficient contributory factor, the intervention of Claudia Procula, as we have seen would have gone for very little if occurring at the point of maximum harassment where Matthew seems to locate it - while Pilate is actually occupying the magisterial seat and already distracted beyond the point where he can give it his attention. (27:19Matthew 27:19 (NIV)

19 While Pilate was sitting on the judge's seat, his wife sent him this message: "Don't have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.
) (This sense of straightened circumstance is caught by Shakespeare's Caesar "Break up the Senate till another time, When Caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams." ) May it then have been that that message in fact reached him before he ever went out to confront the deputation?

Admittedly this is pure conjecture, that does certainly go against the written record in so far as that record may be thought categorical - but does offer a very satisfactory explanation of the most significant of all history's moments of crisis, and puts Pilate's wife, as much as Pilate himself, at the very hinge of human history. The Procurator departs from the customary protocol precisely because he has been advised to detach himself from the case and is searching for the possibility of a pretext to do so. It is then no accident at all that he calls the entire substance of the proceedings into question at the outset, in an endeavour to get to know his subject.

Footnote.

The last ironic twist to these proceedings is that both Calaphas and Herod Antipas also lost office along with Pilate in the general mêlée that surrounded Sejanus' plot (Pilate's brother-in-law and patron) and Tiberius' death in 36 A.D.