Autocratic Pilate: though the gospels seem to soften his image, the man who signed Jesus' death warrant was no Mr. Nice Guy.

WHAT PRICE WOULD YOU PAY FOR FAME? A friend of mine pointed out that, apart from the Trinity and the Virgin Mary, the only person mentioned by name in the Creed is Pontius Pilate. Our Profession of Faith does not name Joseph, husband of Mary, nor Peter, rock of the church, nor Paul, architect of the Gentile mission. But Pilate gets a nod. This puts the man who governed Judea from 26 to 37 A.D. in rare company. We recall his name for one reason only: "For our sake, [Jesus] was crucified under Pontius Pilate." So the Roman procurator is remembered, and vilified, for a seemingly inconsequential decision he rendered one spring morning regarding a peasant Jew from Galilee.

Who was Pilate? History hides most of us within a generation or two of our passing. After 20 centuries not much remains of the biographies of minor Roman functionaries. The people who counted in the empire were in the upper tiers of power, the ones with the authority to command the attention of historians--as the wealthy and the well-born do today.

Pilate's career is known only sketchily through the works of Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian of Israel, and Philo, a Jewish philosopher in Egypt who was a contemporary of Jesus. Those short dispatches, along with four gospel portraits, a handful of coins bearing his image, and one plaque erected in his honor discovered in Caesarea in 1961, are all that remain of Pontius Pilate's legacy.

IF WE WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT PILATE AND HOW HE FIGURED in the final hours of the life of Jesus, it helps to know more about the Roman Empire and its governors. First we have to put aside modern notions of governorship. These men were not elected, and their appointments were not made with the interests of their constituencies at heart. Empires claim territory by the use of force, and seats of power are distributed as rewards for those who serve the emperor well.

Like most Roman governors, Pilate would have been born into privilege and come up through the ranks of the military. Since empires exist to make an elite few even more powerful, Pilate's early career must have assured Emperor Tiberius that he would continue to serve in this capacity with greater authority. All Pilate had to do as governor of Judea was to accumulate taxes and tributes--some of which he kept for himself, of course--and keep the citizenry in line through laws and judgments.

Governors who ruled long and well did so by making alliances with local leaders willing to enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbors. No first-century Judean procurator held power longer than Pilate, who governed for 11 years; most lasted two to four years in that volatile province. Pilate endured by making key pacts with Herod Antipas, the Roman-appointed king of the Jews, and the household of high priests, run by Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas. They in turn worked with the Sanhedrin, a body of scribes, Pharisees, and elders who were pleased to increase their wealth by collaborating with the occupying powers. The temple authorities, as the gospels collectively refer to them, were not religious leaders so much as political actors willing to benefit from their nation's oppressors.

As Jesus points out, some folks are always willing to gain the whole world at the cost of their souls. Is it any wonder that, while the Galilean disciples ooh-ed and ah-ed at the grandeur of the Jerusalem temple, Jesus dismissively noted that it would all come down soon enough?

So Herod and Caiaphas and their ilk served at the pleasure of Pilate, who served at the pleasure of Rome. Caiaphas in particular must have made a good partner in Pilate's estimation: He remained high priest throughout Pilate's rule, from 18 to 36 A.D. By contrast, the previous governor deposed five high priests in the same amount of time.

What was the reputation of the average governor? Jewish historian Josephus calls them blood-sucking flies. Roman historians are no kinder, referring to the governors as those who suck dry the marrow of the bones of the provinces or those who wring men like so many sponges. Pilate, according to first-century historians, was no better. Philo claimed Pilate was responsible for "briberies, insults, robberies, outrages, wanton injuries, constantly repeated executions without trial, ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty." Josephus points out Pilate's willingness to antagonize the populace by placing images of the emperor in Jerusalem, using money from the temple treasury to build an aqueduct, and attacking Samaritans in their sacred place on Mount Gerizim.

Luke's gospel makes mention of Galilean pilgrims whom Pilate slaughtered, "mixing their blood with their sacrifices" (Luke 13:1), although this offense is not catalogued in the histories. Ultimately it was Pilate's abuse of the Samaritans that led to the end of his career in Judea. Emperor Tiberius called him to Rome to explain his actions, but Tiberius died before Pilate got there, and the expected reprimand may have dropped through the cracks of the transition. What happened to Pilate later is lost to history, although legends abound: He was exiled, drowned, shot with an arrow, or forced to commit suicide, depending on whom you believe.

IN LIGHT OF HIS FOOTPRINTS IN HISTORY, THOSE OF US acquainted with Pilate solely through the gospels may have misread him as a weak leader, fearful of the Jews and ambivalent about his role in judging Jesus. Pilate, we suspect, wanted to let Jesus go. But he was pushed by the strong Jerusalem hierarchy to condemn an innocent man. Yet history insists that Roman governors were powerful and had no reason to fear the local citizenry, nor were they particularly motivated to render just judgments. If Pilate sent Jesus to his death, it was because it was politically expedient for him to do so, after which he washed his hands and went to breakfast.

The gospel writers, however, wrote their stories from within the uneasy context of the greater empire, in a climate of escalating hostility with the Jewish authorities, and may have preferred to shift the blame for Jesus' death away from the Romans to the temple. We can see how this tendency progresses in each decade. Mark's gospel, written around 70 A.D., depicts Pilate sentencing Jesus after asking him two pro forma questions: "Are you the king of the Jews?" and "Have you no answer to the accusations made against you?" Pilate makes the Barabbas deal with the crowds to gain popular affirmation for his decision, it would seem. The whole matter is dismissed in two paragraphs.

But a decade later Matthew writes a more complicated story, one far less sympathetic to the Jews. Now we see Judas filled with remorse when Jesus is handed off from the chief priests to the Romans. We are led to imagine he did not foresee this level of treachery from his religious leaders and hangs himself because of it. Pilate, meanwhile, gets a little help with his discernment from his wife's troubling dream. He still gives in to the political realities but takes a fateful moment to wash his hands of responsibility this time. In reply, the Jewish onlookers boldly accept the bloodguilt themselves and, searingly, heap it upon their children.

Luke also adds a layer of insulation to Pilate's role in the decision. After asking Jesus that one politically significant question, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate declares Jesus not guilty at once. Then he dismisses the case as not worth his time, sending Jesus on to Herod. Herod also finds no guilt in the prisoner, so Pilate determines to flog Jesus and release him. It is the Jewish assembly's wild protest that propels the decision toward its tragic conclusion.

But it is in John's gospel, written at the end of the century, that the trial before Pilate takes its most memorable shape in the Christian tradition. Pilate passes back and forth between the outer courtyard, where the Jewish leaders (now simply "the Jews") are, and the inner praetorium, where Jesus is held, seven times. We are told the ritually obsessed temple crowd wishes to remain "pure" outside the Gentile space during the Passover--an indication of their hypocrisy.

Each time Pilate passes from one side of the debate to the other, he asks questions that deepen the darkness around him. He wants to know who Jesus is and who Jesus thinks Pilate himself is. He even famously asks Jesus what truth is. In John's account alone, at the end of a long trial, Pilate insists on identifying the crime of Jesus with these words, "King of the Jews." It's as if he himself became a convert to the idea.

THE PROGRESSION OF THE GOSPELS PRESENT PILATE AS increasingly benign, almost sympathetic to Jesus, but the purpose is not so much to exonerate Rome as to incriminate the temple authorities. Later generations would use Pilate's portrait to extend bloodguilt for the death of Jesus to the whole Jewish community, scandalously using Jesus' own gospel of love to incite a legacy of racism and destruction.

But the official word on Pilate remains that haunting phrase in our Creed. The Church Fathers were clear that you can't pawn the Crucifixion off on anyone else. The man who put Jesus on trial has shouldered the sentence for his decision ever since.

By ALICE CAMILLE, author of Seven Last Words, a meditation on the cross (ACTA Publications), and co-writer of the homily service Prepare the Word (TrueQuest Communications).