95 Facts About Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilate is best known for being the official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ultimately ordered his crucifixion.

Many of these incidents involve Pontius Pilate acting in ways that offended the religious sensibilities of the Jews.

The Christian Gospels record that Pontius Pilate ordered the crucifixion of Jesus at some point during his time in office; Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus record this information.

Pontius Pilate was sent back to Rome by the legate of Syria to answer for this incident before Tiberius, but the emperor died before Pilate arrived in Rome.

In Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Pontius Pilate became the focus of a large group of New Testament apocrypha expanding on his role in the Gospels, the Pontius Pilate cycle.

Attitudes split by region: In texts from the Eastern Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate was portrayed as a positive figure.

Pontius Pilate was the focus of numerous medieval legends, which invented a complete biography for him and portrayed him as villainous and cowardly.

Pontius Pilate plays an important role in medieval passion plays, where he is often a more prominent character than Jesus.

Sources on Pontius Pilate are limited, although modern scholars know more about him than about other Roman governors of Judaea.

Pontius Pilate is briefly mentioned in Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus, who simply says that he put Jesus to death.

Two additional chapters of Tacitus's Annals that might have mentioned Pontius Pilate have been lost.

Pontius Pilate was likely educated, somewhat wealthy, and well-connected politically and socially.

Pontius Pilate was probably married, but the only extant reference to his wife, in which she tells him not to interact with Jesus after she has had a disturbing dream, is generally dismissed as legendary.

Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, during the reign of the emperor Tiberius.

The post of governor of Judaea was of relatively low prestige and nothing is known of how Pontius Pilate obtained the office.

Pontius Pilate had the power to inflict capital punishment, and was responsible for collecting tributes and taxes, and for disbursing funds, including the minting of coins.

Pontius Pilate seems to have been free to govern the province as he wished, with intervention by the legate of Syria only coming at the end of his tenure, after the appointment of Lucius Vitellius to the post in 35.

Pontius Pilate would have toured around the province in order to hear cases and administer justice.

Unlike his predecessor, Valerius Gratus, Pontius Pilate retained the same high priest, Joseph ben Caiaphas, for his entire tenure.

Similarly, Helen Bond argues that Pontius Pilate is depicted working closely with the Jewish authorities in the execution of Jesus.

Jean-Pierre Lemonon argues that official cooperation with Pontius Pilate was limited to the Sadducees, noting that the Pharisees are absent from the gospel accounts of Jesus's arrest and trial.

Daniel Schwartz takes the note in the Gospel of Luke that Pontius Pilate had a difficult relationship with the Galilean Jewish king Herod Antipas as potentially historical.

Pontius Pilate finds historical the information that their relationship mended following the execution of Jesus.

Various disturbances during Pontius Pilate's governorship are recorded in the sources.

Pontius Pilate then summoned them to an arena, where the Roman soldiers drew their swords.

Bond argues that the fact that Josephus says that Pontius Pilate brought in the standards by night, shows that he knew that the images of the emperor would be offensive.

Herod's sons then threatened to petition the emperor, an action which Pontius Pilate feared that would expose the crimes he had committed in office.

Tiberius received the petition and angrily reprimanded Pontius Pilate, ordering him to remove the shields.

The Gospel of Luke mentions in passing Galileans "whose blood Pontius Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices".

At the Passover of most likely 30 or 33, Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death by crucifixion in Jerusalem.

The evangelists' portrayals of Pontius Pilate have been shaped to a great extent by their own particular theological and apologetic concerns.

All four gospels mention that Pontius Pilate had the custom of releasing one captive in honor of the Passover festival; this custom is not attested in any other source.

The Gospels' portrayal of Pontius Pilate is "widely assumed" to diverge greatly from that found in Josephus and Philo, as Pontius Pilate is portrayed as reluctant to execute Jesus and pressured to do so by the crowd and Jewish authorities.

Brown rejects the historicity of Pontius Pilate washing his hands and of the blood curse, arguing that these narratives, which only appear in the Gospel of Matthew, reflect later contrasts between the Jews and Jewish Christians.

Warren Carter argues that Pontius Pilate is portrayed as skillful, competent, and manipulative of the crowd in Mark, Matthew, and John, only finding Jesus innocent and executing him under pressure in Luke.

The Samaritans, claiming not to have been armed, complained to Lucius Vitellius the Elder, the governor of Syria, who had Pontius Pilate recalled to Rome to be judged by Tiberius.

Joan Taylor, on the other hand, argues that Pontius Pilate seems to have ended his career in disgrace, using his unflattering portrayal in Philo, written only a few years after his dismissal, as proof.

The church historian Eusebius, writing in the early fourth century, claims that "tradition relates that" Pontius Pilate committed suicide after he was recalled to Rome due to the disgrace he was in.

The second-century pagan philosopher Celsus polemically asked why, if Jesus was God, God had not punished Pontius Pilate, indicating that he did not believe that Pontius Pilate shamefully committed suicide.

Pontius Pilate's supposed suicide is left unmentioned in Josephus, Philo, and Tacitus.

At the turn of the 20th century, it was generally held to be fake, a forgery in support of a local legend that Pontius Pilate died in exile in Ameria.

Joan Taylor has argued that the symbolism on the coins show how Pontius Pilate attempted to promote the Roman imperial cult in Judaea, in spite of local Jewish and Samaritan religious sensitivities.

The name Pilatus is rare, so the ring could be associated with Pontius Pilate; however, given the cheap material, it is unlikely that he would have owned it.

Positive traditions about Pontius Pilate are frequent in Eastern Christianity, particularly in Egypt and Ethiopia, whereas negative traditions predominate in Western and Byzantine Christianity.

Bart Ehrman, on the other hand, argues that the tendency in the Early Church to exonerate Pontius Pilate and blame the Jews prior to this time reflects an increasing "anti-Judaism" among Early Christians.

The fragmentary third-century Manichaean Gospel of Mani has Pontius Pilate refer to Jesus as "the Son of God" and telling his centurions to "[k]eep this secret".

Some Eastern versions of the Gospel of Nicodemus claim that Pontius Pilate was born in Egypt, which likely aided his popularity there.

Pontius Pilate's family become Christians after Jesus miraculously cures Pontius Pilate's daughters of their deaf-muteness.

Pontius Pilate is nevertheless forced to execute Jesus by the increasingly angry crowd, but Jesus tells Pontius Pilate that he does not hold him responsible.

Pontius Pilate's beheading is accompanied by a voice from heaven calling him blessed and saying he will be with Jesus at the Second Coming.

The Evangelium Gamalielis, possibly of medieval origin and preserved in Arabic, Coptic, and Ge'ez, says Jesus was crucified by Herod, whereas Pontius Pilate was a true believer in Christ who was martyred for his faith; similarly, the Martyrium Pilati, possibly medieval and preserved in Arabic, Coptic, and Ge'ez, portrays Pontius Pilate, as well as his wife and two children, as being crucified twice, once by the Jews and once by Tiberius, for his faith.

King Herod hears of this accomplishment and asks him to come to Palestine to aid his rule there; Pontius Pilate comes but soon usurps Herod's power.

Pontius Pilate is taken as a prisoner with her to Rome to be judged, but every time the emperor sees Pontius Pilate to condemn him, his anger dissipates.

One important version of the Pontius Pilate legend is found in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine, one of the most popular books of the later Middle Ages.

One tradition states that Pontius Pilate was banished to Vienne where a Roman ruin is associated with his tomb; according to another, Pontius Pilate took refuge in a mountain in modern Switzerland, before eventually committing suicide in a lake on its summit.

The town of Tarragona in modern Spain possesses a first-century Roman tower, which, since the eighteenth-century, has been called the "Torre del Pilatos," in which Pontius Pilate is claimed to have spent his last years.

Pontius Pilate is one of the most important figures in early Christian art; he is often given greater prominence than Jesus himself.

Pontius Pilate is entirely absent from the earliest Christian art; all images postdate the emperor Constantine and can be classified as early Byzantine art.

Pontius Pilate first appears in art on a Christian sarcophagus in 330 CE; in the earliest depictions he is shown washing his hands without Jesus being present.

The older Byzantine model of depicting Pontius Pilate washing his hands continues to appear on artwork into the tenth century; beginning in the seventh century a new iconography of Pontius Pilate emerges, which does not always show him washing his hands, includes him in additional scenes, and is based on contemporary medieval rather than Roman models.

Pontius Pilate comes to feature in scenes such as the Flagellation of Christ, where he is not mentioned in the Bible.

The eleventh century sees Pontius Pilate iconography spread from France and Germany to Great Britain and further into the eastern Mediterranean.

Images of Pontius Pilate are found on new materials such as metal, while he appeared less frequently on ivory, and continues to be a frequent subject of gospel and psalter manuscript illuminations.

One of the earliest examples of Pontius Pilate rendered as a Jew is from the eleventh century on the Hildesheim cathedral doors.

Pontius Pilate is typically represented in fourteen different scenes from his life; however, more than half of all thirteenth-century representations of Pontius Pilate show the trial of Jesus.

Pontius Pilate comes to be frequently depicted as present at the crucifixion, by the fifteenth century being a standard element of crucifixion artwork.

Pontius Pilate is sometimes replaced by Herod, Annas, and Caiaphas in the trial scene.

Depictions of Pontius Pilate in this period are mostly found in private devotional settings such as on ivory or in books; he is a major subject in a number of panel-paintings, mostly German, and frescoes, mostly Scandinavian.

The most frequent scene to include Pontius Pilate is his washing of his hands; Pontius Pilate is typically portrayed similarly to the high priests as an old, bearded man, often wearing a Jewish hat but sometimes a crown, and typically carrying a scepter.

Images of Pontius Pilate were especially popular in Italy, where he was almost always portrayed as a Roman, and often appears in the new medium of large-scale church paintings.

Pontius Pilate continued to be represented in various manuscript picture bibles and devotional works as well, often with innovative iconography, sometimes depicting scenes from the Pontius Pilate legends.

Many, mostly German, engravings and woodcuts of Pontius Pilate were created in the fifteenth century.

Images of Pontius Pilate were printed in the Biblia pauperum, picture bibles focusing on the life of Christ, as well as the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, which continued to be printed into the sixteenth century.

One famous nineteenth-century painting of Pontius Pilate is Christ before Pontius Pilate by Hungarian painter Mihaly Munkacsy: the work brought Munkacsy great fame and celebrity in his lifetime, making his reputation and being popular in the United States in particular, where the painting was purchased.

In 1893, Ge painted another painting, Golgotha, in which Pontius Pilate is represented only by his commanding hand, sentencing Jesus to death.

The image of Pontius Pilate condemning Jesus to death is commonly encountered today as the first scene of the Stations of the Cross, first found in Franciscan Catholic churches in the seventeenth century and found in almost all Catholic churches since the nineteenth century.

Pontius Pilate plays a major role in the medieval passion play.

Pontius Pilate is frequently depicted as a more important character to the narrative than even Jesus, and became one of the most important figures of medieval drama in the fifteenth century.

Pontius Pilate goes on to play an important role in the increasingly long and elaborate passion plays performed in the German-speaking countries and in France.

The 1517 portrays Pontius Pilate as condemning Christ to death out of fear of losing Herod's friendship and to earn the Jews' good will, despite his long dialogues with the Jews in which he professes Christ's innocence.

The fifteenth-century Roman depicts Pontius Pilate as trying to save Jesus against the wishes of the Jews.

In several English plays, Pontius Pilate is portrayed speaking French or Latin, the languages of the ruling classes and the law.

Pontius Pilate appears as a character in a large number of literary works, typically as a character in the judgment of Christ.

One of the earliest literary works in which he plays a large role is French writer Anatole France's 1892 short story, which portrays an elderly Pontius Pilate who has been banished to Sicily.

Pontius Pilate makes a brief appearance in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's 1933 play On the Rocks where he argues against Jesus about the dangers of revolution and of new ideas.

The majority of literary texts about Pontius Pilate come from the time after the Second World War, a fact which Alexander Demandt suggests shows a cultural dissatisfaction with Pontius Pilate having washed his hands of guilt.

Pontius Pilate is presented as a materialist pessimist who believes mankind will soon destroy itself, whereas Jesus offers a message of hope.

Pontius Pilate has been depicted in a number of films, being included in portrayals of Christ's passion already in some of the earliest films produced.

Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion of the Christ portrays Pontius Pilate, played by Hristo Shopov, as a sympathetic, noble-minded character, fearful that the Jewish priest Caiaphas will start an uprising if he does not give in to his demands.

Pontius Pilate expresses disgust at the Jewish authorities' treatment of Jesus when Jesus is brought before him and offers Jesus a drink of water.

Pontius Pilate is mentioned as having been involved in the crucifixion in both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed.

Pontius Pilate is the only person besides Jesus and Mary mentioned by name in the creeds.

Pontius Pilate's washing his hands of responsibility for Jesus's death in Matthew 27:24 is a commonly encountered image in the popular imagination, and is the origin of the English phrase "to wash one's hands of ", meaning to refuse further involvement with or responsibility for something.

The main ancient sources on Pontius Pilate offer very different views on his governorship and personality.

Helen Bond argues that "[g]iven the history of pagan designs throughout Judaean coinage, particularly from Herod and Gratus, Pontius Pilate's coins do not seem to be deliberately offensive," and that the coins offer little evidence of any connection between Pontius Pilate and Sejanus.