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6. A MAN OF VERY INFLEXIBLE DISPOSITION

        Of all the actors in the gospels' passion drama, Pilate has left by far the most detailed record in secular history.  Not only do we have a summary of his career in Judea by Flavius Josephus, we also have the only secular account of any New Testament figure written by a contemporary.  

        That contemporary was Philo (Philon) Judaeus of Alexandria.  He considers Pilate in Embassy to Gaius (Legatio ad Gaium).  This treatise is largely an invective against the Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula, whose anti-Semitic sentiments and virulently anti-Semitic governor of Egypt, A. Avillius Flaccus, had provoked a pogrom against the large Jewish community in Alexandria in 38 C.E., after which the Jews were herded into a ghetto and deprived of their rights of citizenship.  Philo headed an embassy to Gaius to plead for Caesar's intervention.  To advance his argument -- which proved futile, hence Philo's invective -- Philo stressed the respect that Gaius' predecessors had traditionally shown for Jewish customs and rights.  As one example, Philo recalled an incident involving Pontius Pilate.

        Pilate, "Less with the object of doing honor to Tiberius than with that of vexing the multitude, dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod, in the holy city."  Philo goes on to explain that these shields had no image represented on them -- which would have been an obvious outrage to Jewish prohibitions against graven images -- but did have inscriptions declaring that Pilate had dedicated them to Tiberius.  Still, even this sort of inscription was evidently offensive, and "when the multitude heard what had been done, and when the circumstances became notorious,"  the people sent a panoply of dignitaries -- including, we are told, the four surviving sons of Herod the Great -- to beg Pilate "not to make any alteration in their national customs."

        Pilate "steadfastly refused this petition, for he was a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as  very  obstinate."  The emissaries of the people, complaining that Pilate would provoke a violent uprising if he continued to resist, insisted that Pilate show them some letter from Tiberius authorizing him to violate Jewish custom.  At this Pilate was "exasperated in the greatest possible degree, as he feared they might in reality go on an embassy to the emperor, and might impeach him with respect to other particulars of his government, in respect of his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity."  (We will consider the execution of untried prisoners shortly).  "Therefore, being exceedingly angry, and being at all times a man of most ferocious passions, he was in great perplexity, neither venturing to take down what he had once set up, nor wishing to do anything which could be acceptable to his subjects, and at the same time being sufficiently acquainted with the firmness of Tiberius on these points."

        The Jews made good on their threat, writing "a most supplicatory letter to Tiberius."  We are told that the letter sent Tiberius into a rage, and "immediately... he wrote a letter [to Pilate], reproaching and reviling him in the most bitter manner for his act of unprecedented audacity and wickedness, and commanding him immediately to take down the shields and to convey them away from the metropolis of Judea to Caesarea, on the sea...."

        In parallel passages in Ant 18.55-59 and War 2.169-174, Josephus describes an incident strikingly similar to affair of the shields, yet different in several interesting ways.  In Josephus' version, Pilate sends to Jerusalem, at night, the iconic standards that proceeded and signified Roman military units; these had busts of Caesar embossed on them, a clear affront to the Jewish law against images.  "This excited a very great tumult among the Jews when it was day."  The Jerusalem crowd rushed out of the city, collecting a "vast number of people" from the surrounding countryside.  "These came zealously to Pilate at Caesarea, and besought him to carry the standards out of Jerusalem....  Upon Pilate's denial of their request, they fell down prostrate on the ground, and continued immovable in that posture for five days and as many nights."

        Finally Pilate set up his tribunal (probably nothing more than a large chair on a dais) in the great stadium Herod had built, and summoned the crowd.  Pilate hid his soldiers, evidently in the seats or entrances to the stadium; when the crowd was assembled he gave a signal and the soldiers surrounded the Jews in three ranks.  Pilate instructed the Jews "that they should be cut in pieces, unless they would admit Caesar's images, and told the soldiers to draw their swords.  Hereupon the Jews, as if it were at one signal, fell down in vast numbers together, and exposed their necks bare, and cried out that they sooner ready to be slain, than that their law should be transgressed.  Hereupon Pilate was greatly surprised at their prodigious superstition, and gave order that the standards should be presently carried out of Jerusalem."

        Some scholars believe that Josephus and Philo described the same incident, the discrepancies accounted for by the vagaries of ancient histories; others see two separate incidents.  But Pilate's response is psychologically identical in both:  He digs in his heels and refuses to budge despite vehement public opinion.  There is no question of him submitting to the coercion of the crowd.  He relents only after allowing near-riot situations to go on for considerable time, and only then to preserve his office -- in one case against a direct threat from Tiberius, in the other against the certainty of his dismissal if he were to slaughter thousand of supine Jews in an athletic stadium.

        There is considerable agreement that the shields/standards incident took place very early in Pilate's tenure, most likely upon his assuming office in 26 A.D; it shows a beginner's mistakes.  Josephus goes on to give us two later incidents involving Pilate, and these illustrate a distinct learning curve.  It isn't that Pilate learns how to avoid confrontation with the provincials -- his provocations increase throughout his tenure.  He learns how to stay a step ahead of the crowd.

        The second incident Josephus mentions is the aqueduct riot, which according to the commentarii of Pilate's wife occurred at the Passover of 30 A.D.  The fullest treatment is Ant 18.60-61:

        But Pilate undertook to build an aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem, and did it with the money from the sacred treasury....  However, the Jews were not pleased... and many ten thousands of the people got together, and made a clamor against him....  So he dressed a great number of his soldiers in the Jew's dress, with daggers under their garments...  and sent them to a place where they might surround them.  So he bade the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not, nor did they spare them in the least; and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they  were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded; and thus an end was put to this sedition.

        Wars 2.175-177 adds to this that Pilate instructed his soldiers to use wooden clubs rather than swords; that many were trampled in the panic; and that the crowd was so cowed by the violence that there was no subsequent protest.  Here, then, was Pilate's progress from failed surprise attack to successful, even stealthier attack.

        The final incident recorded by Josephus, which can be dated precisely to 37 C.E., shows further evolution in Pilate's tactics.  A Samaritan whom Josephus describes as "one who thought lying a thing of little consequence, and who contrived everything so that the multitude might be pleased," attempted to take a great crowd up to Mount Gerizim, the holy site of the Samaritan religion, telling them that he could show them sacred vessels placed there by Moses (the Samaritans were schismatic Jews who observed only the first five books of the bible).  The crowd which began gathering in a village at the base of the mountain was armed, according to Josephus.  Pilate, who in that case would have prudently suspected revolution rather religious revelation as the purpose of the gathering, "prevented their going up, by seizing upon the roads with a great band of horsemen and footmen, who fell upon those that were gotten together in the village; and when they came to an action, some of them they slew, and others of them they put to flight, and took a great many alive, the principal of whom, and also the most important among those who fled, Pilate ordered to be slain."

        Josephus may have been in error in describing the crowd as armed, or perhaps the crowd was only armed to defend themselves against bandits.  Otherwise, it seems unlikely that  Pilate would have lost his job over this incident.  The Samaritans complained to the governor of Syria, who sent Pilate to Italy to explain the incident to Tiberius Caesar.  That governor of Syria was a close associate of Tiberius' named Lucius Vitellius.  Vitellius replaced Pilate with a Prefect of his own choosing, then promptly went to Judea at Passover and  announced several reforms, including a remission of the hated sales tax.

        Tiberius died in March 37 C.E., before Pilate reached Rome; thereafter Pilate vanishes from history.

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Claudia Procula, or Claudia Procle, the name given Pilate's wife in such popular fictions as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, is based solely on preposterous legends and forgeries long discredited by biblical scholars.