Contents Commentarii Appendix Glossary How to Use this Site Contact the Editors
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Contents Commentarii Appendix Glossary How to Use this Site Contact the Editors |
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Read the commentarii of Pilate's wife. |
What's at this site? The complete English translation of the commentarii diurni, or daily journals, written from February 26 to April 16 of the year 31 A.D. by the wife of Pontius Pilate, Prefect of the Roman imperial province of Judea. This extraordinary narrative is annotated with the casual reader in mind; a book-length appendix provides more detailed analysis and documentation. What's in the commentarii of Pilate's wife? A startling, previously unknown version of the world's most familiar story. Instead of the weak and irresolute Pontius Pilate of the New Testament, we see the notoriously ruthless tyrant described by the ancient writers Philo Judaeus and Flavius Josephus. For the first time in any account, we find not merely some vague Roman policy toward unruly provincials, but instead observe the complex, far-reaching political intrigues that briefly brought Pilate -- and his wife -- into the orbit of a shadowy Jewish dissident referred to in these commentarii as the "false Joakanen." That this "false Joakanen" resembles in many features the Jesus Christ of the New Testament is indisputable; that he is a Jesus considerably more faithful to history than any previous portrait is a far more contentious argument, one explored in depth in the fully documented appendix to the commentarii. If the commentarii of Pilate's wife do indeed refer to Jesus, what do they tell us about him? Though deeply colored by her Roman prejudices, the portrait presented by Pilate's wife is surprisingly reconcilable with the Jesus of the New Testament -- once the deliberate symbolism of the gospels is put aside and the more authentic, often overlooked details located. The Jesus of the commentarii is likely to be even more familiar to readers acquainted with the vast corpus of historical works and non-canonical religious texts (including The Gospel According to Thomas and the Dead Sea Scrolls) now available to New Testament scholars. But the questions raised for both skeptic and believer will be profound and unsettling: Was Jesus an accidental messiah , stepping from the shadow of John the Baptist only long enough to become ensnared in a shocking conspiracy unfolding in distant Rome? Did Jesus live and die as a Jewish patriot who believed that God would soon crush Israel's oppressors and establish a utopian Jewish state? Are the accounts of Jesus' trial nothing more than poorly researched historical fiction? Was Golgotha actually the city dump, and Good Friday really a Tuesday? Why did the disciples who deserted Jesus at the end of his life believe so fervently in his resurrection, and what did Ezekiel's wheels and the Merkabah -- the mystical chariot-throne of God -- have to do with their renascent faith? Our image of Jesus has been shaped not only by an orthodoxy imposed centuries after Jesus lived, but by almost two millennia of popular art, fiction, and, most recently, cinema. Writing without the burden of that flawed collective memory, Pilate's wife offers us a hauntingly faithful vision of history's most important event.
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Read the appendix to the commentarii of Pilate's wife.
Abbreviations for cited works.
3. The Quest of the Historical Jesus
1. Knowing Only the Baptism of John 2. And He Sent Them to Preach the Kingdom of God 3. At the Hands of Pontius Pilate 6. A Man of Very Inflexible Disposition 8. A Very Dangerous Conspiracy 13. Falling upon them Unexpectedly 16. His Disciples Came by Night |
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Contents Commentarii Appendix Glossary How to Use this Site Contact the Editors
Copyright (C) 2004
Michael Ennis |