Pontius Pilate: Then you are a king.
Jesus: It’s you that say I am. I look for truth, and find that I get damned.
Pontius Pilate: And what is ‘truth’? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
If that dialogue sounds a bit off from what you might remember of the original gospel text, you are right. It is a dialogue rewrite of John 18:38 by Tim Rice, lyricist of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. [See JCS – “Confessions of an Idolater”]. It is a clever rewrite for the following [among many] reasons:
- It fits the intense music that builds up during the trial scenes in JCS,
- It makes you pause and ponder the 3-word question, ‘Quid est veritas?‘ albeit in Latin,
- placed in the mouth of a Roman prelate assigned to oversee among other Roman territories, Judea under King Herod the Idumanean,
- It makes you think who was this Pontius Pilate,
- is the gospel portrayal accurate
- and does it fit the records about this historical Roman figure?
Already, we’re grappling with just one “truth”—an accurate biographical sketch of Pilate. Speaking of which, (not to be sidetracked but have patience, there is a point to this), “religious films” or movies that portray biblical stories are no doubt one successful evangelical method of bringing the Bible to the masses; after all, there are more film-goers than there are church-goers, so that many movie buffs get biblically-educated while they’re being entertained. The problem with film is of course the spin that film-makers put into any original story; let’s face it, Hollywood isn’t exactly as interested in accuracy as it is in box office $$$ success. And of course, they are dependent on screenwriters who transform biblical text into screen storytelling and dramatic dialogue. Just read this write-up about a film on Pilate who is to be portrayed by . . . .
Brad Pitt is being lined up for the lead role in a new Hollywood film about the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, reports Deadline.
Studio Warner Bros is backing the big-budget project, which is based on a screenplay by Woman On Top author Vera Blasi. Her take, details of which first emerged in the summer, follows Pilate from his youth as the sensitive son of a Roman knight to the reluctant governorship of Judea, climaxing with his decision to order Christ’s crucifixion. The screenplay, which Blasi claims to have researched for more than a decade, imagines the Roman prefect as an unfortunate figure caught amid antagonistic religious factions who is forced to make the fateful decision after finding himself in desperate need of popular goodwill. As well as Christ, it features the Roman emperors Caligula and Tiberius and New Testament figures such as John the Baptist, Salome and Mary Magdalene.
In a brief review of Blasi’s screenplay, Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr writes: “Rather than a straight-ahead biblical film, Blasi’s script reads almost like a biblical-era Twilight Zone episode in which a proud, capable Roman soldier gets in way over his head. [Pilate’s] arrogance and inability to grasp the devoutness of the citizenry and its hatred for the Roman occupiers and their pagan gods leads him to make catastrophic decisions.”
Biblical epics are currently flavour of the month in Hollywood, with movies based on the lives of Noah, Moses and battling brothers Cain and Abel (under the auspices of Darren Aronofsky, Steven Spielberg and Will Smith) all being mulled by executives. So far only Aronofsky’s Noah, with Russell Crowe as the animal-hoarding antediluvian patriarch, has actually entered production.
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/08/brad-pitt-pontius-pilate]
What is the point of bringing this up? Historical, Biblical, biographical films do have mass appeal to illiterates, non-readers, lazy readers, or interested readers who have no access to the books, they at least get exposed to history, bible, biography. The problem is, people hardly go farther than viewing films and what is recorded in their memories are film versions. The HIstory Channel does a better job than Hollywood, but both rely on written records . . . and written records are written from a point of view, sometimes selective, often reconstructed from available evidence, etc.
To get back to Pilate—is the NT depiction of this historical figure accurate? Here are excerpts from one of our MUST READ books, Josephus and the New Testament, by Steve Mason. But first a word about Josephus for those who are not familiar with this name:
. . . the importance of Josephus for the serious study of the New Testament . . . He was born in 37 C.E, just a few years after Jesus’ death and very soon after Paul’s conversion to Christianity. He grew up in Jerusalem and was intimately acquainted with the religion of Israel, its temple and its feasts, at one of which Jesus had been arrested. He knew a lot about the important background figures in the gospel—King Herod and his own sons, Roman governors such as Pontius Pilate, the Pharisees and Sadducees—and he was a priest himself. Having lived for a time in Jesus’ home region of Galilee, he knew intimately its geographical and social conditions. Josephus was reaching maturity at about the time that the apostle Paul was imprisoned and sent to Rome; he even moved to Rome within a decade of Paul’s execution there, though under circumstances very different from Paul.
This means that when Josephus undertook his literary career in Rome, from about 70 to 100, he was an exact contemporary of the gospel writers, whose work is usually assigned to the same period. His compositions . . . are four: Jewish War (7 volumes), Jewish Antiquities (20 volumes), Life (1 volume), and Against Apion (2 volumes). Further, Josephus did not write only about political and social life in Judea and the Eastern Mediterranean; he reached back to begin the story of the Antiquities from creation with an extensive paraphrase of the Bible. Thus his writings provide abundant examples of the ways in which a first-century Jew read the “Old” Testament.
So, Josephus’s works offer us a potential gold mine for understanding the world of the New Testament. . . .
Here is where the problems begin. Although everyone realizes the value of Josephus’s writings, not many are able to sit down and read through them with profit.
Steve Mason’s Chapter 1 is titled Chapter 4: Who’s Who in the New Testament World? Excerpts from In the New Testament:
How does Josephus’s portrayal of the Roman governors throw light on the various NT presentations? . . . Knowing Josephus’ account allows us to penetrate beneath the surface. . . . [S6K: the inconsistency between historical fact and gospel portrayal of Roman rulers in Acts is discussed.]
Much more difficult to understand in the light of Josephus are the gospels’ presentations of Pontius Pilate. Whereas Josephus (like Philo) treats him as the prototype of the cruel, capricious, and insensitive Roman governor, slaughtering Jewish provincials on a whim, the gospels all show him insisting on Jesus’ innocence, and deeply concerned that he receive a fair trial. [S6K: He then discusses difficulties with historical facts in Luke and Mark, particularly Pilate’s supposed reluctance to give in to the Jews demand for the crucifixion of Jesus.]
This unusual presentation of Pilate as a sensitive and just man, as a pawn in the hands of the Jewish leaders, is intensified in Matthew. This gospel says that Pilate’s wife, having suffered in a dream because of this “righteous man,” told her husband not to harm Jesus (27:19). The dutiful and conscientious governor even declares his innocence in Jesus’ death with the Jewish symbol of washing his hands (27:24; cf. Deut 21:6-9). Who then is responsible? The author [S6K: Matthew writer] leaves no doubt that it is “all the Jewish people” and their descendants (27:25), who deliberately assume the blame. Once again, Pilate appears here as the instrument of the Jewish leaders who had long since plotted against Jesus. Though committed to justice, he was compelled to carry out the people’s wishes.
The author of John seems to be aware of the problem of reconciling Pilate’s reputation with the claim that he was innocent in Jesus’ death. So he begins his relatively lengthy exchange between Jesus and Pilate by having the governor act in a suitably cavalier and distracted manner. He says to the Jewish leaders, “You take him and judge him by your own law” (18:31). In response to Jesus, he scoffs “Am I a Jew?” (18:35). And this jaded bureaucrat rhetorically poses the famous question, “What is truth?” (18:38). His soldiers, in character with Josephus’s portrayal, beat and mock Jesus even before the trial (18:2-3). Still, Pilate quickly becomes afraid when he hears that Jesus calls himself the son of God (19:8–not mentioned in the other accounts) and wants to release him in response to Jesus’ wise answers (19:12). He protests on behalf of Jesus’ innocence, and John seems to say that he even handed Jesus over to the Jewish leaders so that they would conduct the execution (19:16). Only John answers the question why, if Pilate was innocent in Jesus death, he was involved at all. John has the Jewish leaders helpfully remind the Roman governor that he alone has the power of capital punishment (18:31).
A particular problem in the gospel accounts is their claim that Pilate used to release a criminal chosen by the Jews every year at Passover (Mark 15:6; Matt 27:15; John 18:39). The story is difficult for several reasons:
(a) it violates both Jewish and Roman law, according to which the guilty, especially murderers, must be punished—they cannot simply be freed by public vote;
(b) it is not attested anywhere else in Jewish or Roman history and literature;
(c) according to Josephus, feasts such as Passover were precisely the occasions when the Romans were most concerned about maintaining order, and so were most severe in their punishments (War 2.10-11, 42, 224, 232-234);
(d) if Pilate could release one man to the crowds, he could presumably also have released Jesus;
(e) Luke, who seems most familiar with Roman law, transforms the story so that Pilate simply yields to popular demand for Barabbas as a one-time concession, not as an annual custom (23:18); and
(f) Barabbas is a peculiar name because it means “son of a father,” which is hardly a distinction.
None of this means that the episode is impossible, only that it is difficult to understand. On the other hand, the story does fit well with the gospels’ attempts to demonstrate the depth of Jewish opposition to Jesus: given the opportunity to choose him over a convicted terrorist, they chose the terrorist.
The gospels’ attempts to relieve Pilate of any guilt and to place it squarely on Jewish heads are understandable in light of the Christians’ social-political situation after 70 C.E.: the Jews were already considered troublemakers as a result fo their failed revolt, and the Christians were in desperate need of a claim to legitimacy. Christians had to explain to the Roman world (and to themselves) how it happened that their Lord had been crucified by a Roman governor. It was natural that in such circumstances, the Jewish role in Jesus’ death would be exaggerated and the Roman role minimized. And it was inevitable that Christian portrayals written in these circumstances would conflict with the writings of the Jewish author Josephus. The Roman governors’ misdeeds were so predictably notorious that Josephus could cite them as causes of the revolt while still maintaining that Jews were on the whole committed to peace with the central, divinely supported Roman government.
Next: What is gospel truth?
NSB@S6K