PONTIUS
PILATE
Since A. D. 26, Pontius Pilate had been
Procurator in the name of Tiberius Caesar. Historians know nothing of him
before his arrival in Judea. If the name comes from Pileatus it may be supposed
that he was a freedman or descendant of freedmen, since the Pileo, or skull
cap, was the head gear of freed slaves.
He had been in Judea only a few years,
but long enough to draw upon himself the bitterest hate of those over whom he
ruled. It is true that all our information about him comes from Jews and
Christians, who were, of course, his declared enemies; but it appears that he
finally lost favor even with his masters, since in A. D. 36 the Governor of
Syria, Lucius Vitellius, sent him to Rome to justify himself before Tiberius.
The Emperor died before Pilate arrived in the metropolis, but according to
tradition, he was exiled by Caligula, exiled into Gaul, where he killed
himself.
In the first place the
hatred of the Jews came from the profound scorn which he showed from the start
for this stiff-necked, indocile people, who must have seemed to him, brought up
in Roman ideas, like a snake pit of venomous serpents—a low, dirty crowd,
scarcely worthy to be tamed by the clubs of the mercenaries. To have an idea of
Pilate's personality, make a mental picture of an English Viceroy of India, a
subscriber to the Times, a reader of John Stuart Mill and Shaw—with
Byron and Swinburne on his bookshelves—destined to administer the government
over a ragged, captious, hungry and turbulent people, wrangling among
themselves over a confusion of castes and mythologies and superstitions for
which their ruler feels in his heart the profoundest aversion, looking down on
them from the height of his dignity as a white man, a European, a Briton and a
Liberal. Pilate, as shown by his questions put to Jesus, was one of those
skeptics of the Roman decadence corrupted with Pyrrhonism, a devotee of
Epicurus, an encyclopedic of Hellenism without any belief in the gods of his
country, nor any belief that any real God existed at all. The idea certainly
can never have occurred to Pilate that the true God could be found in this vermin-ridden,
superstitious mob, in the midst of this factious and jealous clergy, in this
religion which must have seemed to him like a barbarous mixture of Syrian and
Chaldean oracles. The only faith remaining to him, or which he needed to
pretend to hold because of his office, was the new Roman religion, civic and
political, concentrated on the cult of the Emperor. The first conflict with the
Jews arose in fact from this religion. When he had changed the guard of
Jerusalem, he ordered the soldiers to enter the city by night, without taking
off from their ensigns the silver images of Caesar. In the morning, as soon as
the Jews were aware of this, great was the horror and the uproar. It was the
first time that the Romans had lacked in external respect for the religion of
their subjects in Palestine. These figures of the deified Caesar planted near
the Temple were for them an idolatrous provocation, the beginning of the
abomination of desolation. All the country was in an uproar; a deputation was
sent to Caesarea to have Pilate take them away. Pilate refused; for five days
and nights they stormed about him day and night. Finally the Procurator, to get
himself out of the trouble, convoked them in the amphitheater and
treacherously had them surrounded with soldiers with naked swords, assuring
them that no one would escape if they did not make an end of their clamor. But
the Jews, instead of asking for mercy, offered their throats to the swords, and
Pilate, conquered by this heroic stubbornness, ordered that the insignia be
carried back to Caesarea.
But if this clemency did not diminish
the hatred of the Jews for the new Procurator, neither did it lessen Pilate's
distaste nor his desire to do them an ill turn. A little while after this, he
introduced into Herod's palace, where he lived when he stayed at Jerusalem, ritual
tablets dedicated to the Emperor. But the priests heard of it and once more the
people were aroused to outraged and furious anger. He was asked to take away
the idolatrous objects at once. An appeal to Caesar was threatened, an appeal
supported by evidence of the impositions and cruelties committed by Pilate.
Pilate this time also did not yield. The Jews then made the appeal to Tiberius,
who decreed that the
tablets should be sent back to Caesarea.
Twice Pilate had had the worst of a
dispute. But the third time he was triumphant. Coming from the city of public
baths and aqueducts, a friend, as is well known, of ablutions, he noticed that
Jerusalem lacked water and he planned to have a fine large reservoir
constructed and an aqueduct several miles long. But the undertaking was expensive
and to pay for it he used a goodly sum taken from the treasury of the Temple.
The treasury was rich, for all the Jews scattered about in the Empire came
there to bring offerings, and when they could not come in person sent them from
a distance—but the priests cried out on the sacrilege, and the people incited
by them made such a commotion that when Pilate came for the Feast of the
Passover to Jerusalem, thousands of men gathered in a tumultuous crowd in
front of his Palace. But this time he sent among the multitude a large number
of disguised soldiers who at a given signal began to lay about them so
vigorously, among the most furious of the crowd, that in a short time they all
fled away, and Pilate could enjoy in peace the water of the reservoir paid for with
the Jews' money, and make use of it for his various ablutions.
Only a short time had passed since this
last encounter and now these very priests who three times had risen against his
authority, the very ones who had tried to obtain his deposition, the very ones
who hated him heartily, hated him as a Roman, as a symbol of the foreign
dominion and of their slavery, and hated him still more personally as Pontius
Pilate, as plotter against their religion and thief of their money—these very
High Priests were forced to have recourse to him in order to vent another
hatred, which for the moment was more bitter in their wicked hearts. Only hard
necessity drove them to it, because death sentences could not be carried out if
they were not confirmed by Caesar's representative.
That Friday, at dawn, Pontius Pilate, wrapped in his
toga, still sleepy and yawning, was waiting for them in Herod's palace, very
ill-disposed towards those tiresome trouble-makers, whose contentions had
forced him to rise earlier than usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment