Pilate's biographical details before and after his appointment to Iudaea are unknown, but have been supplied by tradition, which include the detail that his wife's name was Procula (she is canonized as a saint in Orthodox Christianity) and competing legends of his birthplace.

Titles and duties

In the first historical period in which the setting of the New Testament became the Roman Iudaea Province (a compound of Samaria, Judea and Idumea), from 6 to the outbreak of the Great Jewish Revolt in 66, officials of the equestrian order (the lower rank of governors) governed. They held the Roman title of prefect until Herod Agrippa I was named King of the Jews by Claudius.

The procurators' and prefects' primary functions were military, but as representatives of the empire they were responsible for the collection of imperial taxes, and also had limited judicial functions. Other civil administration lay in the hands of local government: the municipal councils or ethnic governments such as — in the district of Judea and Jerusalem — the Sanhedrin and its president the High Priest. But the power of appointment of the High Priest resided in the Roman legate (legatus) of Syria or the prefect of Iudaea in Pilate's day and until 41. For example, Caiaphas was appointed High Priest of Herod's Temple by Prefect Valerius Gratus and deposed by Syrian legate (legatus) Vitellius. After that time and until 66, the Jewish client kings exercised this privilege. Normally, Pilate resided in Caesarea but traveled throughout the province, especially to Jerusalem, in the course of performing his duties. During the Passover, a festival of deep national as well as religious significance for the Jews, Pilate, as governor or prefect, would have been expected to be in Jerusalem to keep order. He would not ordinarily be visible to the throngs of worshippers because of the Jewish people's deep sensitivity to their status as a Roman province.

Equestrians such as Pilate could not command legionary forces, and so in military situations, he would have to yield to his superior, the legate (legatus) of Syria, who would descend into Palestine with his legions as necessary. As governor of Iudaea, Pilate would have small auxiliary forces of locally recruited soldiers stationed regularly in Caesarea and Jerusalem, such as the Antonia Fortress, and temporarily anywhere else that might require a military presence. The total number of soldiers at his disposal numbered in the range of 3000.

An inscription found at Caesarea Palaestina refers to him as prefect, while Tacitus speaks of him as procurator of that province. According to the Christian Gospel accounts, Pilate presided at the trial of Jesus of Nazareth and, despite stating that he found him not guilty of a crime meriting death, handed him over to crucifixion. Pilate is famous primarily as a crucial character in the New Testament account of Jesus.

Pilate according to early secular accounts

Pilate is said to have displayed a serious lack of empathy for Jewish sensibilities, for example by displaying Roman battle standards. The two accounts of the event in Flavius Josephus'writings may be summarised as follows:

On one occasion, when the soldiers under his command came to Jerusalem, he caused them to bring with them their ensigns, upon which were the usual images of the emperor. The ensigns were brought in privily by night, but their presence was soon discovered. Immediately multitudes of excited Jews hastened to Caesarea to petition him for the removal of the obnoxious ensigns. For five days he refused to hear them, but on the sixth he took his place on the judgment seat, and when the Jews were admitted he had them surrounded with soldiers and threatened them with instant death unless they ceased to trouble him with the matter. The Jews thereupon flung themselves on the ground and bared their necks, declaring that they preferred death to the violation of their laws. Pilate, unwilling to slay so many, yielded the point and removed the ensigns. cf. Flavius Josephus, Jewish War 2.169-174; Antiquities of the Jews 18.55-59

Philo of Alexandria states that on one other occasion Pilate dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod Antipas in honor of the emperor. On these shields there was no representation of any forbidden thing, but simply an inscription of the name of the donor and of him in whose honor they were set up. The Jews petitioned him to have them removed; when he refused, they appealed to Tiberius, who sent an order that they should be removed to Caesarea. (Philo, Legatio ad Gaium, 38)

Pilate is also said to have appropriated Temple funds for the construction of an aqueduct, as the following summary of Josephus' two accounts shows:

At another time he used the sacred treasure of the temple, called corban (qorban), to pay for bringing water into Jerusalem by an aqueduct. A crowd came together and clamored against him; but he had caused soldiers dressed as civilians to mingle with the multitude, and at a given signal they fell upon the rioters and beat them so severely with staves that the riot was quelled. cf. Josephus, Jewish War 2.175-177; Antiquities 18.60-62. Pilate may possibly have responded so harshly to the unrest because, due to political machinations, the powerful neighboring Roman province of Syria was unable to provide him military support.

In approximately AD 36, Pilate used arrests and executions to quash what appears to have been a Samaritan religious procession in arms that may have been interpreted as an uprising (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18:85). After complaints to the Roman legate (legatus) of Syria, Pilate was recalled to Rome; many readers are surprised to find that his suicide is merely part of the legend.

In contrast, Pilate's actual history was supplemented in 1961, when a block of limestone was found in the Roman theatre at Caesarea, the capital of the province of Judea, bearing a damaged dedication by Pilate of a Tiberieum. This dedication states that he was prefectus (usually seen as praefectus), that is, governor, of Judea. The word Tiberieum is otherwise unknown: some scholars speculate that it was some kind of structure, perhaps a temple, built to honor the emperor Tiberius. This inscription is currently in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem (inventory number 61-529; see Biblical archaeology for actual lettering).

Pilate in the Bible

Pilate's main question to Jesus was whether he considered himself to be the "King of the Jews".

And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so." (Mark 15:2 ESV)

4 Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man." (Luke 23:4)

⁴ Pilate went out again and said to them, "See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him." ⁵ So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Behold the man!" ⁶ When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, "Crucify him, crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him." (John 19:4-6)

In the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 27:24), before condemning Jesus to death, Pilate washes his hands with water in front of the crowd, who had demanded that Jesus be crucified, and says, "I am innocent of this man's blood; you will see".

In all New Testament accounts, Pilate hesitates to condemn Jesus until the crowd insists. Some have suggested that this may have been an effort by early Christian polemicists to curry favor with Rome by placing the blame for Jesus' execution on the Jews, and that it was part of the process by which Pauline Christians marginalized the still-observant Jewish Christians of the Levant (Ebionites). (See article Barabbas for the evidence that "Jesus Barabbas" - Yeshua Bar Abba - was another name for Jesus of Nazareth himself). Later, after state-sponsored persecution of Christians was stopped, the Nicene Creed adopted in AD 325 at the First Council of Nicaea convoked by the Emperor himself, stated unambiguously that Jesus "was crucified under Pontius Pilate", for Christian Rome was fully prepared to criticize even recent actions of a Pagan Rome. However, the main reason for the inclusion was to state the belief in Jesus as a real man living in a precise moment and place, i.e. a Historical Jesus.

Little enough is still known about Pilate, but mythology has filled the gap. A body of fiction built up around the dramatic figure of Pontius Pilate, about whom the Christian faithful hungered to learn more than the canonical gospels revealed. Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiae book ii: 7), quotes some early apocryphal accounts that he does not name, which already relate that Pilate fell under misfortunes in the reign of Caligula (AD 37 - 41), was exiled to Gaul and eventually committed suicide there, in Vienne. Other details come from less respectable sources. His body, says the Mors Pilati ('Death of Pilate') was thrown first into the Tiber, but the waters were so disturbed by evil spirits that the body was taken to Vienne and sunk in the Rhone: a monument at Vienne, called Pilate's tomb, is still to be seen. As the waters of the Rhone likewise rejected Pilate's corpse, it was again removed and sunk in the lake at Lausanne. Its final disposition was in a deep and lonely mountain tarn, which, according to later tradition, was on a mountain, still called Pilatus (actually pileatus or 'cloud-capped'), overlooking Lucerne. Every Good Friday the body re-emerges from the waters and washes its hands. There are many other legends about Pilate in the folklore of Germany particularly about his birth according to which Pilate was born in the Franconian city of Forchheim or the small village of Hausen only 5 km away from it. His death was (unusually) dramatized in a medieval mystery play cycle from Cornwall, the Cornish Ordinalia.

Pilate's role in the events leading to the crucifixion lent themselves to melodrama, even tragedy, and Pilate often has a role in medieval mystery plays.

In the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, Pontius Pilate is commemorated as a saint. According to their tradition, he secretly converted to Christianity sometime after the death of Jesus Christ, through the influence of his wife Claudia Procula (see Saint Procula). Pilate and Claudia are both commemorated as saints on June 25. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Claudia Procula is commemorated as a saint, but not Pilate, because in the Gospel accounts Claudia urged Pilate to have nothing to do with Jesus. In some Eastern Orthodox traditions, Pilate committed suicide out of remorse for having sentenced Jesus to death.

References

The references to Pilate, outside the New Testament:

• Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.35, 55-64, 85-89, 177; The Wars of the Jews 2.169-177;
• Philo, Legatio ad Gaium (Embassy to Gaius) 38;
• Tacitus, Annals 15.44.
• Ann Wroe: Pilate
• Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.
• Did You Know? - Fortingall Yew
• Ann Wroe: Pilate
• H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976, ISBN 0674397312, page 246: "When Archelaus was deposed from the ethnarchy in 6 CE, Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea were converted into a Roman province under the name Iudaea."
• law.umkc.edu
• Administrative and military organization of Roman Palestine". Retrieved on 2006-05-08.
• The word Tiberieum is otherwise unknown: some scholars speculate that it was some kind of structure, perhaps a temple, built to honor the emperor Tiberius.
• jesus-on-taxes.com
• Pontius Pilate from the Catholic Encyclopedia

• Roman governor of Judaea during the time of Jesus' ministry (Matthew 27:2; Luke 3:1)
• Causes the slaughter of certain Galileans (Luke 13:1)
• Tries Jesus and orders his crucifixion (Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 18:28-40;; Acts 3:13;)
• Allows Joseph of Arimathaea to take Jesus' body (Matthew 27:57,58; Mark 15:43-45; Luke 23:52; John 19:38)
• Fear, Unholy Pilate ( John 19:8)
• People of Galilee Cruelly treated by Pilate (Luke 13:1)
• Injustice, Pilate (Matthew 27:24-26)
• Wicked, Pilate (Matthew 27:24,26)