I recently received a query about the debate between Pilate and the Jews about the inscription on Jesus' cross, as recorded in the following pericope:
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, "Do not write, 'The King of the Jews,' but, 'This man said, I am King of the Jews.'" Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written." (John 19:19-22, NRSV)
Commenting on this text, D.A. Carson wrote the following:
It was the custom for the crime of which the person doomed to crucifixion had been found guilty to be written on a tablet or placard and hung around his neck or carried before him as he made his way to the place of execution. Once the prisoner was crucified, the placard was often fastened to the cross. The Greek text says that Pilate ‘wrote’ it (egrapsen): this does not necessarily mean that the took the stylus in his own hand, but that he caused it to be written (NIV ‘had a notice prepared’) and controlled the content, as the ensuing verses show . The Latin word for such a placard was titulus, which generated titlos in Greek, and accounts for ‘title’ in many English versions (NIV ‘notice’).
The charge on the notice read Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. The Synoptics say much the same (Mt. 27:37; Mk, 15:26; Lk. 23:38); minor differences in wording may owe something to the trilingual form in which it was written. Aramaic was the language in common use in Judea; Latin was the official language of the army; and Greek was the lingua franca of the Empire, and well known in Galilee. Multilingual crucifixion notices are reported in other sources (cf. Bauer, p. 173). The reason for such linguistic enthusiasm is obvious: the Romans had a vested interest in publicizing the nature of the crime that resulted in such punishment, as a warning to every segment of the populace.
If we recall how the theme of Jesus’ kingship has been developing throughout chs. 18 – 19, there can be little doubt that this episode functions in the narrative at several levels. First, it makes clear that the charge on which Jesus was eventually found guilty was the first one, the charge of sedition (18:33). Second, the wording is Pilate’s last act of revenge in the case. He has already taunted the Jews with Jesus’ kingship (vv. 14-15); here he does so again, mocking their convenient allegiance to Caesar by insisting that Jesus is their king, and snickering at their powerless status before the might of Rome by declaring this wretched victim their king. Doubtless his own sense of powerlessness before their manipulation (v. 12) contributed to his unyielding insistence that the wording remain as he prepared it. The protest of the chief priests shows they feel the sting of Pilate’s savage irony; but their suggestion of an insertion, ‘I am the King of the Jews’, to make the matter one of Jesus’ claims and no more, would strip the governor of his last revenge. And so he stands firm. Thus Pilate’s firmness is not motivated by principle and strength of character, but by the hurt obstinacy and bitter rage of a man who feels set upon. It is not, as Dauer (p. 275) argues, tat Pilate refuses to change the truth into a lie, but that he is determined to humiliate those who have humiliated him. This view of Pilate is confirmed by other sources: e.g. Philo (Leg. Gaium 301) describes Pilate as ‘naturally inflexible, a blend of self-will and relentlessness’.
But at a third level, Pilate’s malice serves God’s ends. The Lord Jesus is indeed the King of the Jews; the cross is the means of his exaltation and the very manner of his glorification. Even the trilingual notice may serve as a symbol for the proclamation of the kingship of Jesus to the whole world: ‘Thus did Pilate Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King’ (Hoskyns, p. 628, emphasis his, adopting the language of Ps. 96:10 AV). Thus the two men most actively and immediately responsible for Jesus’ death, Caiaphas (11:49-52) and Pilate, are unwittingly furthering God’s redemptive purposes, unwittingly serving as prophets of the King they execute. ‘The Crucified One is the true king, the kingliest king of all; because it is he who is stretched on the cross, he turns an obscene instrument of torture into a throne of glory and “reigns from the tree”’ (Bruce, p. 369). (D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990], 610-11)
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